# Climatologist Dr. Michael Mann completely vindicated...again.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climatologist-dr-michael-mann-completely-vindicated-again/593724>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [August 23, 2011, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climatologist-dr-michael-mann-completely-vindicated-again/593724 "2011-08-23T00:17:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 262

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**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\
**Post date:** [September 1, 2011, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/climatologist-dr-michael-mann-completely-vindicated-again/593724/262 "2011-09-01T21:05:49Z")

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> [@septimus](#):
>
> Comments:
> 
> 1. According to a preferred dataset the 1998 record has already been broken.

According to the definitions in the article, that would be an “ambiguous record” at best. So at best, we have 6 years without an ambiguous record and 13 years without an unambiguous record. Either way, a new record is overdue.

> [@](#):
>
> 1. At best you could “hope” to falsify some models; concluding that “the global warming hypothesis has been falsified” because some models fail is a stretch.

I disagree. The global warming hypothesis – as commonly understood – rests primarily on computer simulations. If the prominent computer simulations as selected by the IPCC turn out to have been wrong, then where does that leave the hypothesis?

It gets back to **Pepper’s** point. This isn’t a game where the warmists get to keep moving the goalposts.

> [@](#):
>
> 1. Even if a \<5% event “falsifies a hypothesis” you will have more than a 5% chance of falsification if you can pick and choose which of several predicted events you use.

I agree, but this is not a situation where the warmists said that there was a 95% chance of X and a 95% chance of Y and a 95% chance of Z. The prediction is confined to temperature records.

> [@](#):
>
> 1. Note that this 5% event you call “falsification” will occur about once every 20 records. There have already been several such records within the 95% confidence window.

Well you have to draw the line somewhere. Where would you draw it? 99%? 99.9%? At some point you are just clinging to a hypothesis.

> [@](#):
>
> but he just repeated the same ambiguous question he’s been asking over and over. (If wants to reread my question and give a different answer, fine. But I’m losing interest.)

Waldo’s question seems pretty clear to me. At the end of the day, a scientific hypothesis asserts that something will NOT happen. If the global warming hypothesis doesn’t rule out any possibilities (or at least make those possibilities unlikely), then it’s not a scientific hypothesis.

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