I agree that admitting one's mistakes and specifying (honest) uncertainty lends credibility. But, as Eric says in his recent post, expressions of uncertainty can be abused, as well. In this regard, scientists face a very difficult dilemma.
It's interesting to consider a topic just as controversial to scientists, but opaque to the laity: the big bang and inflation. I think it's pretty clear there was no big bang, at least not as naively conceived. When one cosmologist talks to another, they probably freely admit that. But when a cosmologist talks to a regular person, of course there was a big bang. So, it's easy to see why the IPCC would hesitate to proclaim their uncertainty very loudly. Their conclusions could easily be lost. But more to your point, yes, their predictions from 1990 were bound to be wrong to some extent (as are all predictions). Their new predictions will be wrong, too. And it's good for everyone to know the full dimension of the predictions. However, what you didn't mention was the extent to which the models have *evolved* from 1990 to 2014 (and 2014 to today). What we need is a fuller understanding of the modeling workflow. All models are iteratively constructed. Do you know how the models have evolved from 1990 to today? On 12/29/2017 11:16 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote: > In 1990 the IPCC predicted a temperature increase of 0.3 degrees centigrade > per decade. In 2014 they reported an actual increase of 0.05 degrees > centigrade for the previous 15 years. > > Maybe they are right in their new disaster predictions? IMO it would give > them some credibility if they admit the uncertainties. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
