Saturday, February 09, 2008

Forecasting applied to Climate Change

Climate Change tends to get a lot of press lately and we tend to notice the weird weather events; however, just because there is more press and we've noticed more weird weather doesn't say much about our ability to predict temperature 5, 10 or 50 years in the future.

This is similar to me buying a new blue Honda a few years ago -- suddenly I noticed blue honda's everywhere. Did that mean that because I purchased a blue honda that everyone now had to buy one? Unfortunately not, just an example of confirmation bias in my thinking.

As Dr. Scott Armstrong (Prof. of Wharton) points out


"there are many scientists forecasting global climate change but he can't find any scientific forecasts of global climate change." Anyone have a scientific forecast of global climate change?

Dr. Armstrong is the owner of the excellent website http://www.forecastingprincipals.com and his new blog The Climate Bet . I'd also recommend his Forecasting Principals book.