{"id":2169,"date":"2021-07-22T17:51:44","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T17:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2021-08-09T08:14:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T08:14:20","slug":"when-tackling-uncertainty-it-slaps-us-in-the-face-so-lets-better-make-friends-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/?p=2169","title":{"rendered":"When tackling uncertainty \u2013 it slaps us in the face. So let\u2019s better make friends with it."},"content":{"rendered":"

Climate science plays a key role when possible futures for the planet are explored. Scientific \u2018knowledge\u2019 about the future hence serves as an orientation mark for politicians and policymakers. This knowledge though is accompanied by uncertainties in several ways. First, science that has scenarios for different futures as output relies on modelling to a large extent. A key element of modelling is the reduction of a complex system to some pre-determined key components and processes. This procedure necessarily leads to a result that is uncertain to some extent because most of the infinite processes that happen on Earth are ignored. In order to tackle these uncertainties, the models evolve by time and are made more complex, considering more and more processes and components. As a result, climate models can be seen as a synthesis of scientific knowledge of different disciplines. The attempt to make them more precise means adding further knowledge. In contrast, any study, any thought, or method that is used to expand current knowledge involves follow-up questions, further fields of study and as a consequence \u2013 further non-knowledge and additional uncertainties. This yields the paradox of enhancing uncertainty when one actually tries to tackle it. That is why the terms of tackling <\/em>or reducing <\/em>uncertainty are misleading because they presume that uncertainty is something that can actually be narrowed down to a minimum or even to zero. So, if uncertainty is something that cannot be erased, scientists and politicians should focus on the assessment<\/u> of uncertainty, always aware of it as something that is inherent with the production of scientific knowledge.<\/p>\n

A second essential part of uncertainty when modelling scenarios for our future is the uncertainty to predict human creativity and technological progress. Physical and biogeochemical processes that are considered in climate models are often well understood and it is for instance quite well possible to tell what happens to the pH-value of the ocean when the atmospheric CO2<\/sub>-concentration changes. Estimating knowledge that does not exist today and knowledge gaps that future generations will have seems to be something impossible and illustrates well why it is uncertain what will happen on our planet in the next decades and centuries.<\/p>\n

How could this additional knowledge (for example about Negative Emission Technologies) that we do not have be worked in today when making decisions that are even more relevant for future generations than for ourselves? It is surely a massive challenge to take on.<\/p>\n

The future is uncertain and will always remain uncertain. We try our best to predict future scenarios by estimating them with probabilities. But maybe we are already at a point where we cannot increase the probability of occurrence any further because with every try to do so, we produce further uncertainty which could eventually dampen out the effect of the additional knowledge we have gained. Since we now know that uncertainty is something we cannot erase, I want to conclude this post with a reason why uncertainty is something that should not be erased even if it was possible. Imagine, we could advance science that far that uncertainty is something that does not exist anymore. Our world would then be 100% predictable and only follow causal chains. This also means: no room for humans to create their world and to design their lives and their future.<\/p>\n

Since this is in my opinion the essential of what we live for I hereby want to apologize to uncertainty for the negative connotation which we always assign to it: \u2018Uncertainty \u2013 thank you for your existence!\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Further reading and inspiration for this post was this book (in German)<\/u><\/p>\n

Janich, N., Rhein, L. (ed.) (2018): Unsicherheit als Herausforderung f\u00fcr die Wissenschaft Reflexionen aus Natur-, Sozial und Geisteswissenschaften.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate science plays a key role when possible futures for the planet are explored. Scientific \u2018knowledge\u2019 about the future hence serves as an orientation mark for politicians and policymakers. This knowledge though is accompanied by uncertainties in several ways. First, science that has scenarios for different futures as output relies on modelling to a largeContinue reading “When tackling uncertainty \u2013 it slaps us in the face. So let\u2019s better make friends with it.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students-blogs-2021"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2170,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions\/2170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}