Event Detail
Wed Mar 6, 2013 234 Moses Hall 6–8 PM |
Working Group in the History and Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Science Eric Winsberg (University of South Florida) Climate model uncertainty and ambiguity aversion |
There has been a great deal of emphasis, in recent years, on developing methods for quantifying uncertainty in the predictions of global and regional climate models. Such an approach would allow a division of labor between those who discover the facts and those who decide what we should value. And it is in line with a famous defense of scientific objectivity due to Richard Jeffrey. I argue, however, that value neutral probabilities for climate model projections will be hard to come by in the foreseeable future. In this paper I consider a variety of alternative proposals for presenting what we know about the future from climate models. I suggest that any such proposal ought to take account of “ambiguity aversion.”