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The "not climate scientists" comment is odd on so many levels?

Wouldn't hurricane scientists be precisely the correct group to consult if one wants to figure out if hurricane intensity or number has increased recently? That's an empirical question that can and must be evaluated independently of any predictions or thoughts about causal mechanisms. So, with regard to the empirical question, where does the "climate" expertise become relevant?

Let me see if I get this right:

Participants in the WG1 debate were concerned that the draft text on hurricanes was too alarmist ("too strong") and then decided to revise the text against the explicit wishes of the Coordinating Lead Authors.

I guess this also means that the scientific report, to be published in May, will now have to 'fix the facts' according to the agreed position?

Some questions about climate science.

Science, according to my understanding, proceeds both empirically and theoretically, the two going hand in hand.

For example, the gas law known as Boyle's law ( P.V = k ) was empirically derived by expanding and contracting a fixed volume of real gas inside a real container. A few centuries later, the kinetic theory of gases, which regarded gases as consisting of particles bouncing around inside a container, produced agreement with Boyle's law (with some provisos). If the kinetic theory of gases had disagreed, then the theory would have been wrong, and the theoreticians would have had to go look at their equations again.

The same applies to heat flow in buildings. A real bricks-and-mortar building gets built, and is wired up with instrumentation to measure temperature, humidity, air speed, insolation, etc. This provides empirical data about how a building actually behaves over a year or two. When computer simulation models are constructed of the same building, using the best available physics, these models should show good agreement with the empirical data. If they don't, then there's something wrong with them.

Now, my question about climate science. As best I understand it, climate scientists construct computer simulation studies of climate behaviour using the best available physics. But where is the empirical data confirming their results? How many planets have climate scientists built, and wired up with instrumentation, to empirically study their behaviour over a few centuries, and check their theoretical simulation models' results against?

The answer, to the best of my knowledge, is none, nada, zero, zilch.

So how do we have confidence that climate scientists' theoretical models have solid empirical support? The answer is that we can't have any confidence at all, because there is no long term empirical data against which to test their models. Maybe after a few hundred years of empirical study of the behaviour of the Earth, we might begin to feel some small degree of confidence. But right now we don't have those empirical studies, and can't have that confidence.

OK, someone tell me where I went wrong there.

Roger

Can you or any of your readers help enlighten me about a couple of questions?

After the Summary for Policymakers has been accepted, the science teams are now required to revise their draft sections to make them compatible with the positions agreed in Paris.

Now, the IPCC procedures demand that "Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter."

So here's my question: Who is going to assess whether this demand for consistency and compliance is actually fulfilled?

Let's say, for arguments sake, that the Coordinating Lead Authors on the hurricane section are not very happy with the marching orders they've been given by the Paris panel. They try to muddy the water with some dodgy text changes that still favour their apparent bias. Is there anyone who is going to monitor and arbiter whether the lead authors comply with the position taken in Paris? Will they have to submit their final version for approval? By whom? And what if the scientists refuse to back down?

I would appreciate it if anyone who knows the rules of the IPCC game could illuminate a curious observer.