On Monday of this week, The InterAcademy Council released a new report that advises the IPCC on changes that should be made to its structure and processes. After I have time to read and process the report, I'll try to offer some informed commentary on it.
In the meantime, I was struck by a few lines from the preface of the executive summary:
Scientific debates have always involved controversies over the value and importance of particular classes of evidence, and this can be expected to continue. Moreover, all scientific knowledge always contains some level of uncertainty and any actions based on scientific evidence inevitably involves an assessment of risk and a process of risk management.These words should be read as a disclaimer to anyone reading the IPCC reports (or really any scientific article or op-ed piece). If you take these two sentences into consideration before reading any climate change related paper, you should be able to understand what climate change scientists are actually trying to say (and avoid being hoodwinked by climate change skeptics).
In plain English, the first sentence indicates that technical disagreements between scientists about the exact figures and types of evidence should not be misconstrued (as they often are by skeptics) as forms of non-consensus. As an over-simplified example, if Bob and Frank (2 hypothetical scientists who have been studying climate science for decades) are debating which technique for estimating global mean temperature is "best", Bob may suggest that warming over the next several decades will be X degrees while Frank argues that it will instead be Y degrees. This means that both scientists, which are using different techniques to calculate their estimations, agree that warming will occur. They are just unable to agree on the extent of the warming.
Unfortunately, many skeptics will look at such disagreement and claim that since Bob and Frank cannot agree there is no consensus. They may even take it several steps further to conclude that such varying results mean that none of the results can be trusted. This is simply not the case.
The second sentence in the quote helps to explain why there can be technical disagreements between Bob and Frank without "disproving" or negating the general conclusions. The most important word of the quote being uncertainty. Scientific uncertainty has a fairly specific meaning, and it is normally discussed as a range of uncertainty. On the most basic level, scientific uncertainty relates to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. While the uncertainty principle has a specific definition, it in essence means that no matter how sophisticated technology becomes scientific measurements will never be able to be 100% accurate.
Thus, scientists make measurements and estimations to a degree of uncertainty that is deemed acceptable (or as accurate as possible given the equipment at their disposal). This means that even though Bob and Frank do not have figures that align perfectly, the figures from Bob, Frank, and 10 other scientists can be compared to find a range of uncertainty. Such a range should give you a pretty good idea of what is likely to happen. Unfortunately, skeptics jump on the ambiguity that the word uncertainty conjures in the mind of the non-scientist in order to make their own claims seem more credible.
I hope you this post helps you to have a better grasp on climate change debates and articles!
Sean Diamond
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