Ghengis the ''Engineer'' is using climate model output as data for a modelling exercise. Feed climate model results into another model and looky here: we have another grant. Trebles all around.
Sorry to rain on your lucrative professionally rewarding ''Engineer'' parade, but model outputs aren't data.
You obviously feel that calling myself an "engineer" is offensive in some way - well I am a chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, but if you prefer "pilot" (CPL, 1600 hours, various ratings) or "Scientist" (PhD, 20+ papers in scientific journals, several courses in atmospheric science) you're most welcome. Although, if you'd caught my grandmother in a good mood with a quip like that, I think she'd have just pointed out that the person who first resorts to name calling has just admitted they've lost the argument. More normally, she'd have used much stronger words than that.
I'm not really Genghis the "modeller" - the last computer model I wrote was years ago to model the behaviour of the Jaguar after pickling in a steep dive in ISA++ conditions; validating it from the back seat of a T2 was fun. I work however with people who do modelling very well, my skills are elsewhere, mostly in helping them obtain real world data to validate those models.
But you are quite right that models are only models - but they're also something the entire world relies upon nowadays. Financial models, weather forecasting models, aircraft performance models, medical research drug response models.... Personally I'm mostly working with data, good old fashioned equations, and professional knowledge. And working with some hellishly clever scientists and aviation professionals across several countries.
If you actually bothered to read what I'd posted, you'd also see that I said that CAT data is very weak, and relatively fringe to what we're studying. It happens that a newspaper found it interesting to pick up and print, and a major carrier is interested enough to let us data mine 4 million hours of FDR data to try and make some sense of the question.
Care to tell us your own scientific qualifications, as you're doubting other peoples'?
You could also perhaps explain why you disapprove of the process of (1) establish basic track record, (2) create research proposal, (3) competitively use proposal to apply for research grant, (4) do research if you got funded, is wrong in some way? It is the way most of the western world manages and commissions scientific research, and unsurprisingly, different funders have their own various priorities they use in allocating funds - which for some funders includes anthropogenic climate change (I don't like the term "global warming" as it's too simplistic, ditto the obsession with CO2 to the disregard of all of the other factors.)
G