Are Global Warming %26quot;Predictions%26quot; Science or Mysticism? Can Science %26quot;predict%26quot;? Is reading tea leaves, crystal balls, animal bones now considered science?

Or is Science defined as knowledge?

Do we gain knowledge if someone makes a lucky guess, or makes a guess that%26#039;s so wide, it can%26#039;t miss? Or is this a basic pallor trick?

If someone is given credit for being so smart that they can foresee the future 25 years from now, shouldn%26#039;t we ask them to predict the future of the climate next week, next month, in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years from now, while showing us how they came to these conclusions?

If this can%26#039;t be done, then shouldn%26#039;t we consider these guesses to just be lucky guesses, not any better more scientific than a flip of a coin?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_gro...
http://www.dvgu.ru/meteo/library/3076000...
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/files/cox...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/publi...
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content...
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1997/1997...
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v39...

I expect you to accept AGW now, unless you%26#039;re in denial.

Most scientific knowledge that I know of is rooted in %26#039;prediction.%26#039; Someone hypothesizes that a cause and effect relationship exists, and sets out to test the variables in an objective and repeatable fashion. The hypothesis is basically the prediction of what the outcome will be when the variables are applied by another name.

You can%26#039;t separate prediction and science. I understand that you are trying to shade the very essence of the science by comparing weather forecasting to global warming reasearch and hypotheses, as well as characterize the research as equivalent to reading tea leaves, etc. etc. etc. but the effort strikes me as extremely transparent artifice.

Apparently though, some people-at least here at Yahoo Answers-ARE taken in by parlor tricks.

Look, I%26#039;m trying my hardest to be nice and calm in the face of questions like this, but I%26#039;m getting down to the last straw here...

Can Science %26quot;predict%26quot;?
Physics is a science.
Physics can predict many things (such as the vector of a moving object).
Therefore science can predict.

We have used the science of astronomy to predict the future movement of the planets. Astronomy predicts when the next solar eclipse will be and where it can be seen. In chemistry, scientists can predict how much energy will be given off when two reactants are combined. In biology, scientists can predict that certain organisms will die when frozen.

Do we gain knowledge if someone makes a lucky guess?
Do you know what a hypothesis is? It%26#039;s a guess that is tested through experimentation.

Nobody%26#039;s claiming that their prediction for future temperatures will be exact, but they need to at least give an estimate. We can%26#039;t make an informed decision about what to do now without an estimate of what could happen in the future. We need these estimates to to decide what to do now, not when it%26#039;s too late and after the damage has been done.

To be honest Science is based on the faith that if something is reproducible then it is accepted. There are very few truths in the world that can be derived without a leap of faith (Lemmas or preconditions).

Now if you decided that you have 50% of getting a heads and 50% of getting tails. People can probably say out of a 10000 flips you will have about 5000 heads and 5000 tails and the margin of error is small. It would be really hard for them to say if the third one will be tail or heads (or if you had 100 flips 53 heads and 47 tails to say if after the next flip there will be 54 heads or still have 53 heads with any satisfaction).

That is what they are doing to predict the weather. They make a model based on their understanding on climatology and the interventions that we are adding to the climate and having a computer run thousands of scenarios then they make an estimate of what is most likely trend.