Your reference is to this paper:

Pielke, Jr., R. A. and D. Sarewitz, 2003. Wanted: Scientific Leadership on Climate, Issues in Science and Technology, Winter, pp. 27-30.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/2003.01.pdf

In it we asserted that:

“Our position, based on the experience
of the past 13 years, is
that although the current and proposed
climate research agenda has
little potential to meet the information
needs of decisionmakers,
it has a significant potential to reinforce
a political situation characterized,
above all, by continued
lack of action.”

I am comfortable that this situation has persisted.

We further assert:

“The situation persists
not only because the current
research-based approach supports
those happy with the present political
gridlock, but more uncomfortably,
because the primary beneficiaries of this situation include
scientists themselves. Things are
unlikely to change for the better
unless the climate research community
adopts a leadership role
that places societal responsibility
above professional self-interest.”

What would such a leadership role look like?

We answer this as follows:

“Politicians
are able to substitute research for
other action because a large portion
of the climate science community,
particularly those focused
on global and regional climate
modeling and the earth and spacebased
platforms to provide data for
such models, continue to claim that
more of their research will indeed
lead to the reduced uncertainties
allegedly necessary for policymaking.
If scientists blew the whistle
on this claim, its political viability
would vanish.”

Hey I wrote about that just this morning;-)

We also said:

“We support a robust, wellfunded
basic research effort on the
global earth system to provide a
long-term base of understanding.
But there should be no pretending
that such research will be directly
policy relevant, except in the obstructionist
sense demonstrated
during the past decade.”

We say more, it is a good paper, thanks for highlighting it!

So, what were you doing with your pet theory all these years? Were you thinking about how to test your theory, how to falsify it? Or were you waiting all these years for someone to label you, or misquote you, or quote you out of context, or whatever the latest excuse is, so that you can avoid talking about falsifiability?

You can talk to yourself now, Roger.

– bi, http://frankbi.wordpress.com/

So falsifiability of theories is only an issue when other people aren’t saying unflattering things about you?

I’d thought that you’d have given some thought on how to falsify your “climatologists artificially prolong the debate to get funding” theory, when you proposed it way back in _2003_. Were you waiting for someone to call you a “crank” so that falsifiability no longer matters?

– bi, http://frankbi.wordpress.com/

“You asked for a falsifiable prediction, and you got one, and now you’re giving excuses to ignore it.”

Roger asks,

“What was that falsifiable prediction again?”

You know, you just wrote an entire blog post about one such falsifiable prediction… right above this very comment.

“Thanks for the link, where you call me a crank and a conspiracy theorist. You’ve got me there ”

So that’s what you have to say about the falsifiability of _your_ theory…

– bi, http://frankbi.wordpress.com/

See comment #3, it was already known to be a fair impossibility.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/global-cooling-wanna-bet/#comment-86110

In replies Stefan Rahmstorf makes at Real Climate it clarifies it all.

“The green points, despite being connected by a line, do not represent one model run. Rather, each green point is an individual forecast starting from somewhere near the red line. That is why in the paper they say they predict a slight cooling relative to 1994-2004. You are right that already their prediction (or better to call it hindcast) for the 1994-2004 period was too cold. Otherwise, if you compare the green and black curves from 1999-2010, their evolution is the same, they are simply offset. So if you just took the relative change since 1999, not the absolute numbers as compared to the red curve, their new model would predict the same warming as a standard scenario run (i.e. the black one), which would hardly have been a reason to go to the worldwide media with a “pause in warming” prediction.”

“We are absolutely not proposing this on the assumption that the authors are “denier sympathizers”. The authors are very good and respected colleagues, and this post is entirely about the ability to predict natural climate variability a decade ahead. It is not about anthropogenic warming, a topic on which we completely agree with Keenlyside et al. The short time scale of this prediction makes it amenable to have some fun with a bet, because the outcome will be seen in a reasonable time frame. If for some a bet is not “serious” enough, we will follow it with a serious discussion of the scientific issues shortly. We think framing this as a bet with specified conditions will help to clarify what exactly it is that the authors are predicting – after reading the paper at first this was not entirely clear to us, and it clearly is not entirely clear to many of the journalists reporting on it either.”

“I think you understand the point we are trying to make. This supposed pause in global warming has been reported widely as if it were almost a fact, not a forecast, and as if this was widely supported by the climate science community, almost on a par with IPCC reports. Some articles framed it as if this new forecast now revises IPCC forecasts. If the prediction turns out to be wrong (which is what we think, and quite a few other climate scientists I have spoken to), this will damage the credibility of the whole community. This bet is supposed to signal to the public: on this decadal forecast the climate science community is not in wide agreement. In contrast to the global warming issue, where we have a wide agreement.”

“We bet against their forecast as they made it in Nature. We did not pick the years.”

“Actually, they made a forecast and took it to the media. We proposed this bet because we want to see how confident they are about it.”

Gavin Schmidt – who is not listed as in the bet – got a bit of it wrong himself.

“Oops. I was fooled by the green line in figure 4. That joins up different predictions but is not a trajectory itself.”

He is quite clear what this is about.

“Hint – this wager has nothing to do with who’s the better scientist, it is all to do with how new research results play out in the public perception. The forecast for the first decade has almost no chance of being correct, and the one for the second decade implies a degree of natural variability that is significantly larger than their model generates on their own or is seen in the obs. Yet, the forecast was seized upon all over the media as a likely, nay probable, truth.”

Fear not, the next post is up.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/the-global-cooling-bet-part-2/

2) If (i.) someone were a “temperature is a random walk” skeptic (on a monthly time frame) and the last two anomalies were the same as January (0.056), then it would be a good bet to take.

3) And on the theme of 2) what would be nice is if someone would play Las Vegas between the, shall we say, differing opinions and offer up actuarially unfair bets with the following catch: If position A is believed, bet bet is a much better than a 50/50 proposition. And if position B is believe, the opposite bet is a better than a 50/50 proposition. Somebody did this a while back for regarding the speed of various horses, and well — the they say — the rest is history. Today’s bookie/epistemologist would no doubt offer this a Peer-testing, verification methodology for an NSF grant, but probably wouldn’t be allowed to keep the vig.

What was that falsifiable prediction again?

Thanks for the link, where you call me a crank and a conspiracy theorist. You’ve got me there

While we’re at this “falsifiability” game, I’d also like to ask: what observations would convince you that climatologists (on either or both sides of the “debate”) are not In It For The Money?

http://tinyurl.com/42eutp

– bi, International Journal of Inactivism, http://frankbi.wordpress.com/