No, it isn't, unless you believe that climate scientists are a definitionally more moral group than others. The incentives remain the same, in all branches of science, so manipulation is likely the same in all branches.
As a physics grad student I have seen plenty of "negative" results published, and the standard of positive results for instance 3 or even 5 sigma is a much tighter standard than p > 0.05. Science is a big field, the problems in one domain do not necessarily translate into all domains. However there are other fundamental problems with physics as a field.
Furthermore, we have significant evidence that climate scientists are motivated to protect their work against critics - just read the climategate emails. That's not how science should be done, and goes well beyond the replicability issues discussed here.
How is this OK?
Ok then.
I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. We have very clear chemistry/physics on the composition of food, how it is digested, etc. But nutrition science is still an embarrassing shitshow.
We have clear physics on how neurons fire, etc. but neuroscience is still in its infancy and psychology... well, it is psychology.
Earth's climate is a large scale multi-variable control system with thousands of feedback loops. A good understanding of the physics that drive a single forcing doesn't really tell us shit I'm afraid. It is just as open to manipulation as these other fields.
More generally you are correct, we don't know exactly how much the earth will warm or if there are complicated feedback mechanisms in place that could cause this warming to speed up or reverse course. We can't even reliably say that next year will be hotter than this year (actually it probably will be cooler because this year has been unusually hot).
We have a clear causal physical explanation that eating fat should make you fatter right? Are you willing to say that? Or would you qualify yourself - 'eating more fat will make you fatter in the absence of negative feedbacks (perhaps the fat reduces your appetite more than carbs or protein?) and assuming that all other inputs (exercise level etc) remain constant'.
I mean, more specifically, aether was flat out wrong. it still had predictive power. Someday we'll have something more refined, or perhaps completely refuted.
[1] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/evalua...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories
See for example,
The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo.
Compare the chart in the linked article with Hansen's own assessment that he put out in 2005 (third page): http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Crichton_20050927.pdf
How do you reconcile those two? A lot seems to come down to centering decisions?
Scenario A I believe is closest to the emissions path we are on.
global mean global giss is here - http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
So anyway, i'd agree the centering of zero sure could change things, but it sure seems like predictive power in the rates of change. Like, temperature isn't stable, it's not going down, it's going up and it looks like it's going up at about that rate.
edit
but that sort of goes back to the original point, all we really have is models. you held up physics as an example, but if we look at something like the gravitational constant, things are really screwy. As far as i can tell, 3 really first rate teams came up with 3 different answers - not even overlapping in the error bands. big G is obviously helpful, but it must be more complicated than we understand right now.
I dunno. I kind of like the european model for chemical handling. Super toxic chemicals in tiny quantities aren't that big of a deal, maybe 50 people die, so it's not heavily regulated. Mildly toxic chemicals in large quantities, same deal. Maybe 50 people die. Large quantities of toxins are regulated in proportion to the risk. The point is, balancing the risk against the best current understanding really seems like the best that can be done.
We can't have reasonable debates on cost-effectiveness when so many people deny the fact that there is even a problem at all.
The other problem with physics is that it is really hard to become a professor, and the field forces 90% of bright, dedicated and talented people to go into industry because there is a lack of jobs in physics. We really need permanent positions at labs outside of academia.
They certainly have better data to work with in most cases, but what makes you think that physicists understand statistics better than psychologists? Is this just the physics superiority complex?