The fact that 10 models were correct doesn't say much unless we also know how many models were wrong. It's easy to cherrypick the best ones in retrospect. If there are enough models, even if all of them are bullshit, some will be correct, the same way a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day.
If it weren’t paywalled I could’ve done that. It seems that either you expected me to pay, or you didn’t realize this, which would put some irony in your almost obsessively and smugly bugging people about reading your links, when you didn’t even put in the effort yourself.
> How many climate models do you think there are?
I don’t know, probably more than the 14 they analyzed? What matters more than count anyway is whether the high-impact policy-shaping papers were accurate.
> What evidence do you have that there's been any cherry picking?
What evidence do you have that there’s not? If you trust the authors, that’s fine. I just personally happen to think trust isn’t enough.
Now: what evidence do you have of cherry picking on the part of the authors? You raised the issue, you questioned the integrity of the researchers, so it's your burden to show that there was cherry picking.
Actually, here, let me spoon feed you even more. Here are the first 2 paragraphs of the methods section:
> We conducted a literature search to identify papers published prior to the early‐1990s that include climate
model outputs containing both a time series of projected future GMST (with a minimum of two points in
time) and future forcings (including both a publication date and future projected atmospheric CO2 concentrations, at a minimum). Eleven papers with 14 distinct projections were identified that fit these criteria.
Starting in the mid‐1990s, climate modeling efforts were primarily undertaken in conjunction with the
IPCC process (and later, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects, CMIPs), and model projections were
taken from models featured in the IPCC FAR (1990), Second Assessment Report (SAR‐IPCC, 1996), Third
Assessment Report (TAR‐IPCC, 2001), and Fourth Assessment Report (AR4‐IPCC, 2007).
> The specific models projections evaluated were Manabe, 1970 (hereafter Ma70), Mitchell, 1970 (Mi70),
Benson, 1970 (B70), Rasool & Schneider, 1971 (RS71), Sawyer, 1972 (S72), Broecker, 1975 (B75), Nordhaus,
1977 (N77), Schneider & Thompson, 1981 (ST81), Hansen et al., 1981 (H81), Hansen et al., 1988 (H88), and
Manabe & Stouffer, 1993 (MS93). The energy balance model projections featured in the main text of the
FAR, SAR, and TAR were examined, while the CMIP3 multimodel mean (and spread) was examined for
the AR4 (multimodel means were not used as the primary IPCC projections featured in the main text prior
to the AR4). Details about how each individual model projection was digitized and analyzed as well as assessments of individual models included in the first three IPCC reports can be found in the supporting information
Do you still want to accuse these researchers of bad faith?
To you, the fact that their methods section didn't loudly announce they're cherrypicking might be enough evidence to trust them.
To me, the fact that climate science has made its fair share of vast, vast mispredictions, such as the prestigious Club of Rome's 1972 model saying we'd run out of petroleum in ~2000, means that the default assumption is mistrust, not trust.
You can call me a tinfoil hatter, but I think if one wants conclusive evidence on the accuracy of climate models they'd have to go over the body of research from that time and judge for themselves whether the researchers chose a representative sample. That's obviously way too much effort for a snide internet discussion, but the point is that if the field is mostly bullshit, that's just not refutable by pointing to the same people saying they're not bullshitting.
> You do realize that's what "literature survey" means, right? You know, the thing the researchers already did?
The very point I was making is you should do it yourself. Good job ignoring it.
> Do you insist on personally replicating every research paper you read, or just the ones that don't fit your world view?
You're mistaken, this paper fits my world view perfectly. It's saying climate science is mostly accurate, if you look at a set of accurate models. This is obviously sound reasoning. It's just not saying anything.
So, which is it? Do you believe climate change is an existential threat to humanity in the near term, as the models predict, and as climate science predicts, or no?
> You're really saying that anyone who reads a scientific paper should replicate it themselves? Really?
Stop strawmanning me. You're doing it so poorly I'm wondering whether you actually understood my comments. Same with contradicting myself, you'll have to point me to exactly where you think I do that, because I don't see it.
But because you're asking so incredulously:
Math papers always require proofs, and if you agree the proofs are correct you've basically replicated the result. So there's actually an entire field of rather smart people who think you should always replicate the results. For fields without this built-in replication, there's such a thing as the replication crisis, which means scientists probably aren't infallible (duh), and you probably should verify results before you rely on them being correct (duh). For climate science, add the fact that as soon as you can verify the results, they're useless.
