demanding “proof". Actually, science never
Citizens Climate Lobby
“proves” anything. Science uses mathematics but science deals with the real world. There will always be some uncertainty about something. However uncertainty must not
http://www.citizensclimatelobby.org/
The Author
imply inaction. We generally never demand "proof" before acting; otherwise we would never do anything. Indeed uncertainty implies risk. Risk management deals with un-
Jan Dash has a PhD in theoretical physics from UC Berkeley, and published over 50 papers in scientific jour nals. He was Directeur de Recherche at the Centre de Physique Théorique CNRS in Marseille, France. He is currently Visiting Research
certainty. After all, things can, and often do, turn out much worse than expected. Climate deniers minimize climate risk and in the same breath overemphasize uncertainty. The
Scholar at Fordham University and Adjunct Professor at the Courant Institute NYU. Jan is the UU-UNO Climate Initiative Chair and Managing Editor of their Climate Portal at
actual uncertainty is whether future climate impacts will be really bad or a disaster for civilization.
http://climate.uu-uno.org/. He is a Matchmaker for the Climate Science Rapid Response Team whose goal is to provide authoritative scientific answers to media
What about statistics and action? Technically, some attributions of climate impacts, to extreme weather for example, can only be statistically estimated. This does not mean the absence of danger and it does not
questions. Jan is the author of the popular “one-liner” responses to climate contrarian/ denier/faux-skeptic fallacies. He was the Editor of the Climate Statement Summary
mean we should not act. After all, negative effects of smoking are also statistically estimated, and we act against smoking. We can say more. Global warming increases the
and Recommendations to Governments of the UN Committee on Sustainable Development (Co-NGO, NY), delivered to leaders at the Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban Climate
probability for extreme weather generally for the simple reason that warming puts more energy into the weather system, making weather act like it’s on steroids.
Conferences. Relevant to the economic impacts of global warming, Jan has worked for 25 years in quantitative risk management at various financial institutions, and wrote a
References
book on the subject. UU-UNO Climate Portal www.climate.uu-uno.org
Note: The ideas expressed in this essay are those of the author, without implication of endorsement by any of the above institutions. I thank the many people who have helped me understand climate change and how to communicate the issues.
Skeptical Science http://www.skepticalscience.com/ argument.php
48