Читать книгу Extreme Events and Climate Change - Группа авторов - Страница 15

Niels Bohr, one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics, used to say that it was the task of science to reduce deep truths to trivialities (Pais, 1991). When it comes to informing climate policy, however, the opposite might be a more useful dictum. A substantial component of current disagreement over the impacts associated with extreme weather events comes from a lack of clarity over what is meant by impacts of extreme weather events. This means that trivialities about natural hazards, such as that more intense hurricanes have the potential to induce more damage than do weaker hurricanes, are often taken as truths about impacts of climate change. But the truth is a much more complicated amalgam of weather hazard, policy, economics, community organization, and just plain luck. Understanding this truth will be easier if we clarify exactly what question interests us, what possible tools we have for exploring that question, and what challenges we face in applying those tools. This section discusses some of these issues.