That is not the way the greenies see it. To them a probability is an absolute. (Of course, they were never known for their sanity.) And this absolutism relies on who is putting forth the theory. For instance, if a true scientist provides absolute proof that GW isn't happening, that person is shut down. But if a shyster like Al Gore says, "The earth has a fe-e-e-e-v-v-e-e-r!" The greenies go orgasmic. When the UN-IPCC report raises their certainty rate from 90% to 95%, that flies in the face of real data, the greenies all raise their hands in prayer, "Praise be to the Lord and Master Al Gore, for he is the savior who will lead us out of the wilderness of GW!" Their science is actually a religion, well identified by the use qualifiers.

All of them, to a greater or lesser extent.

Now, there are a lot of sciences where the "probably" and "likely" and so on are close enough to a sure thing that they can be treated as fact. If I take a rock to the top of a tall tower, and toss it out the window, it will probably hit the ground. But it could theoretically disintegrate in mid air, or get teleported somewhere, or hit the Space Shuttle and get carried into orbit, or...

In a chaotic system like climate, you'll get a lot more "probably"s. Kind of like with, say, biology. Scientists said "We'll probably find a fossil something like this in about this layer of rock", and lo and behold, they found more or less what they expected (the transition between fish and early land vertebrates) more or less where they expected. But if you'd asked them to pin down the exact location, or exactly what they'd find, before they did so, they would most likely have been wrong. Not because they were inherently wrong about the fossil they were seeking, but because they just didn't know quite enough to pin down what they knew to narrow specifics.

Even with the "nuclear power" example you gave to CR--they may say "We're sure", but what they really mean is something more like "there is a less than .0~1% chance this isn't the case" (with the number of 0's indicating the degree of uncertainty)

To be fair, most of them do.

The real problem is that study of the climate is being compared to physics. But physicists give up when things get too complicated like when atoms get too big or too numerous, for instance.

When that happens, they change the subject area to chemistry. Again, chemists are ok within certain boundaries but if things get too large, and possibly start walking about, the subject area changes again to biology and biologists have a similar relationship to botanists.

So at one end, you know everything about nothing and at the other you know nothing about everything. Climatology tries to incorporate aspects of all the above. The fact that they can't quite manage it is not surprising.

The other problem is observations. Ptolemy was making observations of the heavens before he died in 168AD. Global weather observations only really started when we had satellites. The rest of the data seems to be in a bit of a mess as far as I can tell. Most of it is not global. It takes someone with a PhD to sort it out.

The problem starts when this young science has politically-motivated proponents using the kudos developed over centuries by really famous scientists deciding that they have a chance to influence the future - become a bigshot and get famous. Then their knowledge needs to be stretched as far as possible. That is where the coulds, mights and maybes start to appear.

All of the "qualifiers" that you mentioned are exactly why climate science has no validity. Most good scientists use those qualifiers as a reason to be skeptical (even when it comes to their own results), yet skeptics are always branded as being anti-science. That's the BIG JOKE of why the scientific arrogance of environmental climate science is unacceptable in public opinion.

Environmental extremists don't care about the facts, but they absolutely adore a 90% to 95% probability that humans are the cause from the scientific community. It gives them relief to know that climate science cares about their feelings ("90% to 95% certainty" is more of a political statement to appease the environmentalists). These people are a joke (Environmentalists and climate scientists who cater to environmentalist's wants and desires)!

Many scientific fields do. However, most other fields have a higher standard. Physics would not abide by the one or two sigmas being used as error margins in climate science, nor would they accept the lazy statistical models. Climate science is full of statistics that are created ad hoc, and not first presented in any statistical or econometric journals for peer review. In physics you would probably want to see five sigma(standard deviations) for reporting results.

Any science that has any degree of uncertainty depends on qualifiers. In such sciences, it would be a lie not to use such qualifiers.

Some examples would include;

The Andromeda galaxy is probably 2.4 million light years away.

The ebola virus probably will kill you.

Its like a South Park Superhero Could of , Should of , would of

Global climate change is a religion. Religions are not science.

Qualifiers like "may", "probably", "likely", "could", "probably" to describe their conclusions? Are qualifiers used as a hedge incase they're flat out wrong, or because they're flat out lying?