Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970106072044.00860100@ilhawaii.net> Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 07:20:47 -1000 From: Jay Hanson <mailto:jhanson@ILHAWAII.NET> Subject: How do deal with uncertainty. To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
At 07:52 PM 1/5/97 -0500, Steve Eskow wrote:>Granted that in the realm of assessing the present and predicting the future
>there can be no guarantees or certainties, is your constructed reality the
>best guess of our condition and future that the community of those with the
>ability to study these matters has to offer? That is, do the knowledgeable
>scientists, for example, agree a)completely or b) predominantly with your
>constructed reality, or disagree, or is opinion divided?
You are too circumspect here, what exactly is your question?
>Another obvious question your constructed reality raises is this: if your
>analysis and predictions are our best guess about tomorrow, what ought we to
>do to insure the survival of the planet and its life?
I have an excellent paper on this very question:
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THE 4P APPROACH TO DEALING WITH SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY
by ROBERT COSTANZA and LAURA CORNWELL from ENVIRONMENT, Volume 34, Number 9, November, 1992
ROBERT COSTANZA is director of the Maryland International Institute for Ecological Economics and a professor at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies in Solomons, Maryland.
LAURA CORNWELL is a graduate research assistant at the institute and a policy analyst on the Regulatory Innovations Staff of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and are not to be taken as official policy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or of any other public or private entity. ...
It is necessary to differentiate between risk, which is an event with a known probability, and true uncertainty, which is an event with an unknown probability.
One often sees contradictory stories in the media from "reputable scientific sources" who claim, one day, that "Global warming will occur, and the results will be catastrophic unless something is done immediately," and, on another day, that "There is no direct evidence for global warming, and people should not waste money on something that may or may not happen." On yet another day, one hears that "Toxic chemical X causes cancer," followed on the next day by the statement that "Toxic chemical X occurs in too low a concentration in the environment to cause cancer." These seemingly contradictory statements from the scientific community send social decision making process into a tailspin, On the one hand, because scientists cannot agree on what is happening, should policymakers wait until better information is available before acting? On the other hand, if society fails to act, the situation may deteriorate rapidly and irreversibly. What are people to do in these all-too-common situations, and why has science failed to provide the certain and unbiased answers on which good policymaking depends? What is wrong with the link between science and policy, and how can it be improved? Is a different, nonregulatory approach needed for managing the environment?
[snip]
The entire "4P" paper is about 650 lines long and is located at http://csf.Colorado.EDU/authors/hanson/page33.htm or FTP or Gopher at csf.colorado.edu/environment/authors/Hanson.Jay as "4p.txt", or simply ask me and I will EMAIL it to you.
Jay