let me ask you this: climate change models are compatible with or actually predict terrible droughts in texas and georgia and non-stop soaking rains in pennsylvania and new york. now, if there were a terrible drought in pennsylvania and new york and non-stop soaking rains in texas and georgia, i predict that climate-change models would make just as good sense of that. (seriously, if it were reversed, do you think anyone would withdraw their claims or wonder about them even for a moment? the slightest doubt is evil.) if that is the way it is, the process of modeling etc is entirely non or anti-empirical: a pure a priori science, like that of the pope or michelle bachmann.
the drought in texas and the flood in new jersey shows the results of climate change. let's say that rainfall was average in both places this year. would that count against climate change? you cannot do 'science' or, indeed, think at all along these lines.
what i'd say a bit more thoughtfully is that the climate-change spokesmen such as gore think that every dramatic weather event is a pr opportunity. but what they say is that it constitutes evidence. now there could be - i suppose, there is - actual empirical data that would bear on the question: careful temperature measurements over a significant number of years in a variety of locations, for example. but wielding every hurricane and every drought in a pr campaign is discrediting; it might even work as pr, but it ought not to. and it hints that you'd use anything; it discredits you as representing a rational approach.
