Anything. Determine your heart's desire, and assume that it is true.

First, any model, by virtue of being a reasonable expression of a particular worldview, is necessarily incomplete and contingent. Second, because models immediately become part of the dialog that they are drawn from, they reflexively affect that dialog in ways which are essentially impossible to predict, and which invalidate the assumptions that underlie the model. Thus, modern science requires models, but all models are necessarily normative, partial and contingent, and most models reflexively falsify their assumptions, and thus invalidate their predictions. Needless to say, this conundrum poses significant problems for the scientific discourse going forward.

Do all models reflexively falsify their assumptions, or it is just the ones that deal with politically contentious issues?

Note, however, that the problem of models arises primarily from their misuse in discourse, rather than from models themselves. That models are contingent and normative does not mean they are wrong in themselves. But the ease with which quantitative model results can be mischaracterized, and the strong incentives to do so by those involved in contentious discourses, means that models in our society are highly susceptible to abuse. Moreover, the tendency to overstate and misuse the predictive and analytical capabilities of models, by both scientists and activists, has serious implications, for it undermines not just the particular models involved, but the patina of objectivity which is itself the strongest validation of the scientific and technological discourses.

There's a lot of tarnish on those discourses already. It's been there for decades and awareness of this fact is becoming ever more widespread.

The constellation of data, models, and projections constituting the global climate change discourse are instantiated in public dialog, to the point where some governments, such as the U.K., are considering issuing each citizen individual emissions permits, and many scientists and activists are demanding immediate cuts in consumption and fossil fuel use in developed and developing countries alike. The sense of reality, indeed catastrophe, derived from model predictions, is powerful. As part of this exercise, projections into the far future (100 to 200 years), assuming incremental technological evolution, are common. We know that assumption is wrong, for the dynamics of future technologies are virtually impossible to predict -- but we have to assume something.

There is at this point little question that poorly understood anthropogenic changes in many natural systems, including climate, are occurring. Nor is there any question of the need for models as tools to explore potential systems behaviors, especially undesirable ones. The problems arise because many in the community, either inadvertently or deliberately, speak of model projections and scenarios in language that reifies them: predicted patterns "will" happen, or certain phenomena "are the result of climate change."

This is partly because mere scenarios lack the authority to drive the social engineering that they perceived as necessary and desirable; both to be heard, and to force people to change, requires a certainty that models cannot provide. The risk, of course, is that at some point the public will become aware that they have been stampeded by deliberate manipulation of information, and turn against both the environmental community, and the scientific discourse more generally, thus undercutting efforts to address real and serious problems.

We are long past that point already. Though there are fashion victims that aren't fully aware of this - or much of anything else - the public in general does green like any other passing fad. It isn't a deeply held, solidly founded, core principle: it's fashionable for a while. Environmentalists and scientists are the lunatic fringe of this world, too tedious to be included in polite company, but tolerated on the fringes and referred to obliquely at fashionable gatherings. A certain amount of tokenism is tolerated so a few of these fringe denizens are invited to gatherings to gawp and rant, and be gawped at in return. It's an upscale freak show, polite but not serious.

Real attitudes are concealed or contradicted by the words used. Things are not what they are said to be or what they seem. Green is done tongue in cheek precisely because of the deliberate manipulation of information by the environmental community, and the scientific discourse more generally. It's self defense. No one wants to be caught out by the deceits intended to stampede the unwashed, and so seem foolish to peers. Environmentalists and activist scientists are the walking dead, already discounted to zero or below by thinking people, approaching public distrust levels once reserved for journalists and politicians.

What a mess you have made Ollie.