Coby Beck wrote:
> "william" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>
>>
>>James Annan wrote:
>>
>>>An interesting comment:
>>>
>>>
>
> http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-yohe0630.artjun30,0,7395459.sto
> ry
>
>>Clearly not that interesting :-)
>>
>>Anyway, yes indeed, if you are going to react to 1% events there will
>>be a lot of things to react to. I suspect that the 1% doctrine is more
>>an excuse to do things for little justification, and won't be extended
>>to inconvenient areas.
>
>
> Clearly. The list of one percent threats in the national security arena
> must be quite long, and easily extendable. So just pick however you want to
> preemptively attack based on all those other good reasons...
It's important to also realise that the 1% (or any other probability) is
fundamentally nothing more than a statement of someone's belief. Of
course, that belief can be more or less credible based on the evidence
available, but ultimately it contains a subjective element. So there is
little to stop people talking up the probabilities of things they want
to act on, and talking down the probabilities of others.
I think most scientists are rather poor at expressing this subjectivity
clearly, and climate science is no exception.
James
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