Why is climate change so difficult to understand?
The second lecture of a series entitled 'Climate Connections' was presented by Carl Wunsch, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physical Oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this talk, Prof Wunsch considers the perhaps unique problems faced by scientists and the public in understanding climate change. The problems include the very long times over which climate can and does change--far longer than human working lifetimes; the intuitive belief that the world is deterministic with randomness unimportant; the corresponding tendency to see patterns where none exist; the insistence by governments that scientists must tell them what will happen in the future; the liking of many scientists for the media limelight; the widespread confusion between weather and climate; the rise of 'sophisticated' computer models; Etc.
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