Predictive power

I am interested in novelties presented to me in history, genetics, and astronomy. Those who work in those fields are better at their field than I am. I assume many of them are smarter than me at the base level. Some of those researchers have an online presence. I won't cite all their names here because I've posted them many times already and it would seem like flattery to keep at it. I must mention one name because it's her post I'm to discuss here: Dr Sabine Hossenfelder, who is laying out some epistemology.

Hossenfelder herself worries me. I don't like when someone, especially a someone who chooses her battles with care, in the battles she does choose descends to namecalling ("deniers", Ar. kuffâr). But I've cut that to its own post so I can evaluate her (ideal) philosophy here.

When most of us evaluate some internet rando's comment, we lack the time or the knowledge or even the tools to redo his (it's usually a 'he') work. As you see above, I prefer to accept authority. But I am not a slave. Also I try not to sweat the rando's outside statements, or lack thereof, for the field in question. So on occasion I'll do "A" flight-check. For me, that's the Popper thing to see how their predictions have panned out - this is how I've narrowed my field of authorities over April.

Hossenfelder figures that's a first step... only. To do more, she argues against predictive power, in favour of explanatory power.

That, I'll interject, is how history must be done. In history predictions can be done, but they usually fail. There is just too much unknown. Palaeontology's predictions have worked out slightly better, in its prediction of fossils between (say) Eusthenopteron and Ichthyostega, or Robert Bakker 1986 on dromaeosaur feathers (The Dinosaur Heresies; shame about that name). Here too, though...

Fortunately for us, Hossenfelder reaches for a topic I have leant against: anthropogenic climate change, The Phenomenon Formerly Known As Global Warming. As noted, the Experts have convinced her to its side.

As with those other fields I have (more) interest in, intelligent people work with climate. And this field's hardly hurting for Proper Funding. Now: about those people :

Ten years ago we had the East Anglia models leaked to the Internet and, oh my, they were bad. Also personal emails showing how the sausage was being made - "hide the decline" was taken as damning. The skeptic camp to this day considers mainline climate science as Fruit Of A Poisoned Tree, as a result of these. Eric Raymond recommended transparency. I think we've had that since, though.

One problem East Anglia had was that too many temperature-stations were set up in suburbia, which in the meantime built up and got paved with dark asphalt - warming the immediate area. By that token, when glaciers melt in, say, Norway I cannot rule out that more heat is being generated in the valleys below them. Is it "global" warming, or a global propagation of local surface warming? Similarly, the population and technology explosion in the Maghreb, Catalonia, and Italy could have some effect on temperatures east and northeast of them.

If I was running a scientific journal of modern climatology, which I am not, I'd rule never ever ever ever to utter laziness like "global" or "climate change" in your local study. I'd demand the authors note what's happening in the local climate - only. Then bring in trends from other local studies, to see how they line up.

If doing a study on the stratosphere, however... yeah.