scenario.txt
                           ------------

                  p1k3.com/2013/5/6/scenario.txt

Dave posed a question earlier tonight: What's actually the worst case
scenario for climate change?

I gave what I think was probably too simpleminded an answer: The worst
case scenario is systemic collapse within a couple of centuries, mass
die-offs, the human species extinct or reduced to stone-age levels of
tech and population.

There was some argument about this, especially after I said I give
humans maybe a 50/50 shot of still existing in 200 years.  People seem
to view that as pretty pessimistic, which of course it is.

So thinking about it, neither idea ("climate change might wipe us out"
and "we might get wiped out soon") is exactly the stuff of informed
professional analysis.  It's the half-baked opinion of some guy who
has read a handful of books and spent a bunch of time on the internet.
My friends know I'm given to sweeping statements and hyperbole.  (By
definition, they've been able to stomach remaining my friends through
all the sweeping statements.  It's a rare sort of fortitude and I
value it greatly.)

I'm not a person who knows what the worst case scenario for climate
change is.  I may not even be a person who's qualified to figure out
who DOES know that.

But that's not to say that these opinions don't constitute a form of
knowledge.  Here's sort of a working model of the historical moment:

  [best case | way unlikely]
   .
   Nothing happens.  The denialist / skeptic end of the spectrum
   is right, despite acting like a pack of assholes.  Ditto
   anti-environmentalism, my uncle who keeps pointing out that
   petroleum is biodegradable, and Republicans generally.
   .
   .
   There's some bad stuff happening but we fix it.
   .
   .
   Shit gets pretty ugly for a long time. [pretty likely]
   .
   .
   .
   .
   .
   .
   .
   All die. Oh, the embarrassment!
   .
  [worst case | unlikely-ish]

This probably isn't what a climatologist or a wildlife biologist or
even a serious, widely-read layperson with crossdisciplinary interests
and background in the sciences would tell you.  Not that it wouldn't
match factual claims, but that it's not even the same KIND of thing
those people would tell you.  It's a sketchy map of a territory
half-glimpsed through fog.

What occurred to me is just how many of my working assumptions and
schemas are no more rigorous than this.  Within a handful of very
narrow domains, I'm an expert.  Outside of those domains, nearly
everything in my understanding is of this kind.

In itself, that's a useful realization to have.  Because it's not
that this knowledge is useless.  On the contrary, it's probably the
only thing that permits me to function.  The trick isn't that
credible people won't form opinions of this kind; it's that they
will usually know (or at least be capable of discovering under
reflection) the continuum of their certainty.  You have to _start_
with some kind of model or you'll never arrive at one you can use
for anything.  And yet you have to hold most of your models lightly,
understand them as provisional, revise them without mercy, replace
them willingly, subject them to the scrutiny of the things you know
well - or you're doomed to something between trivial absurdity and
devastating ignorance.

-- bpb