When climate models agree: The significance of robust model predictions

Abstract

This article identifies conditions under which robust predictive modeling results have special epistemic significance-related to truth, confidence, and security-and considers whether those conditions hold in the context of present-day climate modeling. The findings are disappointing. When today's climate models agree that an interesting hypothesis about future climate change is true, it cannot be inferred-via the arguments considered here anyway-that the hypothesis is likely to be true or that scientists' confidence in the hypothesis should be significantly increased or that a claim to have evidence for the hypothesis is now more secure. © 2011 by the Philosophy of Science Association.