billc -
I think we can avoid confusion with ‘prove’, and ‘disallow’,
I wonder. If 17 passes (just) the 95% confidence level, and you have four cooling periods of 17 years in a century, how do you feel about your model. Do you call it inaccurate?
Purely by chance, your expectations are that you’ll have up to four periods of cooling – assuming the null hypothesis. Isn’t your expectation just that you would expect (for your model to be accurate) 96 or more 17 year periods of warming? That’s all you need?
P.S. Assuming 100, 17 year periods…..