Reply To: Might the predictions of climate change be wrong? Or do you believe on faith!
A lot of money will be diverted and a lot of lives adversely affected based on these climate models, so it’s rather important that they be right.
Yes indeed.
The challenge is that it’s impossible to predict complex outcomes with certainty. The best we can do is estimate the odds of different scenarios coming to pass and assess the quality of the supporting data. Policymakers are well advised to give the most credence to the ‘high confidence’ and ‘virtually certain’ aspects of the report.
[If we are wrong] what do we tell all those affected by our futile efforts then? Oops!!!?
Oops would sum it up.
The outcomes of different scenarios span the next 85 years, so by 2100 the predicting scientists will be dead and spared having to admit any mistakes. But it seems unlikely they are that far off, given the accuracy of IPCC temperature predictions since 1990, which were made using less data.
