Scientific Ambiguity
As I have cited a few times in the past, relative to climate advocacy. the late Dr. Stephen Schneider, professor of environmental biology at Stanford University said, “To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.
According to the linked study and an article by Eureka Alert an online magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), they are getting better at it. At least that’s the claim.
In order to improve their own writing and documentation, the study’s authors analyzed the language, terminology, and graphics used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their reports from 1990 through 2021.
This is then followed by the following statement by Robert Kopp, a lead author of the study and a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. “The challenge is that for some of those processes, we understand the physics quite well – for example, how the ocean takes up heat and expands in response to that – and so can quantify and convey those risks. But other processes, particularly some of those acting on ice sheets, involve factors we don’t understand that well and that are difficult to put into quantitative terms, but might nonetheless be able to cause rapid sea-level rise.”
He goes on to state, “There’s quantifiable uncertainty, which can be measured and presented with a degree of confidence and then there’s ambiguity, a form of deep uncertainty that cannot be well represented quantitatively.”
The abstract of the study states, “Future sea-level change is characterized by both quantifiable and unquantifiable uncertainties. Effective communication of both types of uncertainty is a key challenge in translating sea-level science to inform long-term coastal planning.” I would think it would be very difficult to convey ambiguity, uncertainty, and a process technically unexplainable and this appears to be the predicament in this study. Furthermore, scientists are going to advise on long-term coastal planning, even though they do not understand or fully comprehend what is in point of fact happening with ocean levels.
Kopp then states, “But when conveying sea level uncertainties that have been and remain difficult to quantify, the language in the reports often has fallen short, either oversimplifying projections or conveying the information in a confusing manner, according to the analysis. Such language could lead policymakers to neglect the risks associated with possible high-end, sea-level outcomes.” While this certainly adds to the weakness and instability of alarmist projections, one can be assured that the general populace will never hear of climate change uncertainties. Politicians and the legacy media will ensure that everything is an absolute certainty.
Science has been studying the human body since ancient Greeks Hippocrates and Aristotle did so, well before the turn of the Common Era. Yet, many issues and matters remain fully unresolved or uncertain to this very day. Yet, the complex, intricate, and sophisticated earth is so understood that science assures us that anthropogenic climate change is an unconditional inevitability. Doubts abound.
