The game of Science vs. Nature is more complicated than that, and it's the interesting structure that allows scientists to make predictions that are better than "what we've seen so far is everything there is." In particular, the interesting things in both Chemistry and particle Physics is that scientists were able to find regularities in the data (the Periodic Table is one example) that led them to predict missing particles. Once they knew what properties to look for, they usually were able to find them. When a theory predicts particles that aren't revealed when the right apparatus is constructed, we drop the theory.

But in the meantime, you'd have a more interesting game (and closer to Zendo) if Nature gave you a way of classifying objects. In Zendo, there is only one dimension. Something is a match (I forget Zendo's terminology) or it isn't. [In the real world, one of the possible moves is inventing a new test. "If I hold the object up to the light, what do I see?"] Some new tests turn out not to reveal anything useful, while others give you a whole new way of categorizing all the things you thought you knew about before.

In this context, Occam's razor is a rule about inventing rules to explain complex behavior, not rules about how many things there are. Your objective is to explain a pile of evidence, and you get to make up whatever story you like, but in the end, your story has to guide you in predicting something that hasn't happened yet. If you can make better predictions than other scientists, you can have as complicated a rule as you like. If you and they make the same predictions, then the observers get to break the tie by deciding which rule is simpler.

I don't believe much in penance. (The dictionary I checked said "self punishment as a sign of repentance". I don't think either aspect is valuable.) It's not related to the question of how we should treat people when they have conditions that are often under voluntary control.

We should convince them that (assuming they agree that it would be better to not have the condition) their best approach is to accept that the condition is at least partially under voluntary control, that control always appears hard, and therefore to change their lifestyle so as to address the problem. If they agree that the condition is a problem, and they find a magic bullet to solve the problem, then no penance is required. If there's no magic bullet, then they can try to change their lifestyle, but there is no need to for them to punish themselves for not understanding the situation before.

Was it Yoda who said "There is no try, there is only do"? The point is Alicorn's point about making it a top priority. You may have meant to be this positive, but you didn't sound this positive.

I love "Codd help you". Brilliant!

"The Cult of Statistical Significance" suggests that we're looking for tests that display power rather than significance.

the temperature change is not uniform everywhere

But it's non-uniform enough that some people are observing warming and some are observing cooling. So it seems clear from a perspective that accepts the terms of the claim that all purely local observations are uninformative.

second, the effects of such changes on weather may be noticeable in ways other than simple warming (e.g. more extreme weather events).

Tracking extreme weather events from a local perspective seems likely to give even less reliable results than looking for trends in your local climate.

If you accept the terms of the debate, you have to hope for non-biased global observations that are properly normed against a long baseline in order to make any decisions about what weather evidence counts for or against the positions. At this point, I'm having a hard time finding any non-biased observations.

Isn't this an opportunity to allow them a line of retreat?

Part of my problem with arguing about AGW is that it has gotten to the point that it's not a science question, it's a political question at this point. So I can be reasonably sure that any "scientific evidence" that will be announced will come from one faction or another, and will have been carefully vetted by the policy board to ensure that it hews to the party line. (Whichever party it comes from. All sides are equally to blame as far as I can tell.)

In this kind of environment, it's hard to take any evidence at face value. Both (all) sides accuse the others of double-counting evidence, hiding unflattering data points, and shading results and simulations.

The only thing that makes any sense in this context is to compare historical projections to the world. Some AGW proponents seem to have over-predicted doom, so I heavily discount doom projections. It's not obvious that the worldwide climate is warmer than the (very) long term trend would indicate. There seems to be obfuscation about polar melting. It seems obvious that sea levels rising is miniscule to date. Climate change doesn't make any specific predictions AFAICT that have been upheld.

There are probably other rules of thumb that ought to be useful in this context, but that's all that comes to mind at the moment.

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance: let us ask, "Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?" No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. --- David Hume

(quoted in Beyond AI by JoSH Hall)

There's also a group of proponents of this style working on Caja at Google, including Mark Miller, the designer of E. And some people at HP.

Actually, all these people talk to one another regularly. They don't have a unified plan or a single goal, but they collaborate with one another frequently. I've left out several other people who are also trying to find ways to push in the same direction. Just enough names and references to give a hint. There are several mailing lists where these issues are discussed. If you're interested, this is probably the one to start with.