[dannyb]

A scientific theory is a self-contained description of a natural phenomena starting from first principles. My interpretation of a theoretical construct is something which is predicted to exist but has not been observed (or cannot be observed due to physical limitations). It can also be a set of results derived from thought experiments but not yet observed experimentally.

I apologize if anyone else has mentioned this, but I think most working scientists are uncomfortable with purely computational work and "theories" because they don't appear to be falsifiable within the framework developed by Popper. Current global climate models (GCM) are only subject to verifiability and this relegates them to a lower status then, say, Maxwell's equations. Maxwell's equations are capable of being used to explain almost all macroscopic electrodynamic phenomena, at least within the confines of classical physics. OTOH, there is no proper theory of the climate than can be treated with equal footing. There are only computational models and input data. There is a large amount of parameterization and data treatment (cynics would say massaging) that need to be done to get the models to converge.