This page is a staging post for what I have been reading. It is for me to collect ideas. It might be helpful or not…
Uncertainty
Judith Curry helps with framing the doubt and uncertainty around natural variability vs human forcing.
Science is when you have an idea of what is happening and why. This is your hypothesis. Then you have data that is evidence for or against this hypothesis, and you assess what is uncertain in your data and what you don’t yet know:
- evidence for a hypothesis
- uncertainty and unknowns
- evidence against a hypothesis
In any statement on climate, what is the person saying or not saying about uncertainty/unknowns? What is their belief about evidence for and evidence against their hypothesis.
The IPCC has language on likelihood of their statements. That is the uncertainty bit, I think.
Before we go to policies we need to be clear on the risk of the outcomes we are talking about. How likely are they? How good is the evidence?
Richard Feynman: When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty damn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt.
We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.
Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.
It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.
From his book: What do You care what other people think?
Doubt – a status between belief and disbelief. Involves uncertainty. Lack of sureness of an alleged fact.
Denial – to state that something is not true. Something declared to be true is not true.