Predicting Our Climate Future: What We Know, What We Don't Know, And What We Can't Know

"The books I recommended are in two or three blocks. The first two are both about science and technology, in their broadest sense. Predicting Our Climate Future is a wonderful book because it doesn’t try to make it all very simple, but it does make it understandable. Stainforth addresses lots of issues in the book, but a central issue is, ‘This is fundamentally uncertain. If you want certainty—if you want to know exactly how much climate change is going to be, what’s going to happen to the weather, whether it’s going to be wetter next winter—you can’t have that.’ We are condemned to a world of uncertainty but, as he says very clearly in the book, this is a one-shot bet. It’s not as if you can say, ‘Let’s try this out and see if it works, and in 2050 we’ll try something else.’ Nor can we say, ‘Well, we’re not sure how much climate change is going to be, so let’s wait and see.’ You have to make a stab. He makes observations about the uncertainty, about the fact that the world we’re going into is not going to be like the world in the past. It’s not just about extrapolation and induction going into the future. He spells all this out, but then demonstrates very clearly that these are reasons why we should get on with the problem and address it, rather than pretending it’s all some predictable, planned outcome that we can just work out, scientists will tick the box, and off we go. I think it’s very sobering for those who are certain about everything, and it’s also very clear about the reasons why, in this world of uncertainty, we should act."