CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE PREDICTIONS FROM A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE
Here is the link to the symposium which I mentioned a few weeks back. It is being sponsored by the Ramón Areces Foundation and the Royal Academy of Sciences of Spain, and will be held in Madrid on the 2nd and 3rd of April. Part of the introduction says:
The Royal Academy of Sciences of Spain and the Ramón Areces Foundation wish to contribute to the creation of an informed public opinion on global change in the country. To this end, they are organising a two-day symposium aimed at scientists from different fields, decision makers and general public. Existing facts and analysis tools will be discussed, and the robustness and uncertainties of predictions made on the basis of the former, critically assessed. The meeting will provide a scientific view of existing knowledge on climate change and its expected consequences. Existing physical, chemical and mathematical tools will be discussed and climate effects will be analysed together with other concurrent changes, which tend to be overlooked in the climate change scenarios.
Presentations by the different contributors will emphasise existing scientific evidence as well as the strengths and weaknesses of predictions made on the basis of available data and modelling tools. Contributors are encouraged to express their opinions on the most relevant problems concerning the topics they will present, including scientific issues, main threats and possible mitigation or adaptation strategies.
The program is now online. My talk is entitled “Robustness and uncertainties of climate change predictions”. The deadline for me to turn it in is today. I am still working on it and not at all satisfied that I have done a good job with my topic. I am simultaneously writing a paper and the talk, and I will post both of them here, not un-coincidentally, on 1 April.
The gist of my talk I have summarized:
Global warming is not important by itself: it becomes significant only when its effects are consequential to humans. The distinction between questions like “Will it warm?” and “What will happen if it warms” is under-appreciated or conflated. For example, when asking how likely are the results of a study of global warming’s effects, we are apt to confuse the likelihood of global warming as a phenomenon with what might happening because of global warming. When of course the two kinds of questions and likelihoods are entirely separate.
Because of the frequency of confusion, I want to follow the path to the conclusion of one particular study whose results state A = “There will be More kidney and liver disease, ambulance trips, etc. because of global warming.” I start from first principles, and untangle and carefully focus on the chain of causation leading up this central claims, and quantify the uncertainty of the steps along the way.
In short, I will estimate the probability that AGW is real, the probability that some claim of global warming’s effects is true given global warming is true, and the unconditional probability that the effect is true. That’s not too much to tackle, is it?
Thank God there will be simultaneous translation of the conference, because my Spanish is getting worse and worse the more I think about it. If I was going to play soccer, then I’d be on more familiar ground. I do know how to ask that a ball be passed to me because I am alone an unguarded, and how to offer constructive criticism to a fellow teammate for not recognizing this fact and for taking a ridiculous shot at goal himself. But I am not sure how this language would apply to global warming.
10 comments March 14th, 2008
