Forecast and Planning
Predictions are never accurate; after all, they are predictions and not certainties. In his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb noted that:
Our forecast errors have traditionally been enormous and there may be no reasons for us to believe that we are suddenly in a more privileged position to see in the future compared to our blind predecessors. Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy makings.
William A Sherden (The Forture Sellers) argued, moreover, that:
A fundamental barrier to forecasting technological change is the unpredictability of the evolution of technology. The path of technological progress is clouded by uncertainty and blocked by unknowns, impasses and dead ends; only occasionally is it illuminated by serendipitous events. Like most aspects of nature, the evolution of technology is so complex and uncertain that it is almost impossible to foresee break through innovations… we have tended, and still tend, to imagine future technologies as mere extensions of things that already exist.
About the same point, Taleb wrote:
Prediction requires knowing about technologies that will be discovered in the future… to understand the future to the point of being able to predict it, you need to incorporate elements from this future itself.
Computational models are hard to define and develop; there are many variables and uncertainties. It is, thus, absurd to consider that we can predict the future of the earth, its climate or the consequences of our interference with it. Apart from all the uncertainties of long-range weather forecasting, other uncertainties need to be added, in particular those of long-range economic forecasting, long-range population forecasting, and introduction of new technologies. In sum, 20-year projections about the state of the earth’s climate are as good as guesses. So, even with the more powerful computers, it is unreasonable to believe that models show us the future.
So, given all the inaccuracy that characterize the study of the climate, whenever one is intent in planning or making protocols it is necessary to consider very carefully the costs and benefits of our choices.
A final note refers to the use of the word scenario. The word was omitted on purpose. Scenario is an imagined sequence of events, especially any of several detailed plans or possibilities (New Webster’s Encyclopedia Dictionary). It is possible to create a scenario about anything (movies do it all the time). Significantly, scenarios do not require proof. Given certain beliefs about the climate, it is easy to create a scenario of how the world will look like as a result of, for example, a 50 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature. However, this scenario meaningless: it is only the scenario of a movie.
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