Centre for the Analysis of Time Series, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2011 Dec 13;369(1956):4818-41. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2011.0149.
Policy-making is usually about risk management. Thus, the handling of uncertainty in science is central to its support of sound policy-making. There is value in scientists engaging in a deep conversation with policy-makers and others, not merely 'delivering' results or analyses and then playing no further role. Communicating the policy relevance of different varieties of uncertainty, including imprecision, ambiguity, intractability and indeterminism, is an important part of this conversation. Uncertainty is handled better when scientists engage with policy-makers. Climate policy aims both to alter future risks (particularly via mitigation) and to take account of and respond to relevant remaining risks (via adaptation) in the complex causal chain that begins and ends with individuals. Policy-making profits from learning how to shift the distribution of risks towards less dangerous impacts, even if the probability of events remains uncertain. Immediate value lies not only in communicating how risks may change with time and how those risks may be changed by action, but also in projecting how our understanding of those risks may improve with time (via science) and how our ability to influence them may advance (via technology and policy design). Guidance on the most urgent places to gather information and realistic estimates of when to expect more informative answers is of immediate value, as are plausible estimates of the risk of delaying action. Risk assessment requires grappling with probability and ambiguity (uncertainty in the Knightian sense) and assessing the ethical, logical, philosophical and economic underpinnings of whether a target of '50 per cent chance of remaining under +2(°)C' is either 'right' or 'safe'. How do we better stimulate advances in the difficult analytical and philosophical questions while maintaining foundational scientific work advancing our understanding of the phenomena? And provide immediate help with decisions that must be made now?
政策制定通常涉及风险管理。因此，科学不确定性的处理是支持合理政策制定的核心。科学家与政策制定者和其他人进行深入对话具有价值，而不仅仅是“提供”结果或分析，然后不再发挥作用。沟通不同类型不确定性的政策相关性，包括不精确性、模糊性、难以处理性和不确定性，是这种对话的重要组成部分。当科学家与政策制定者互动时，不确定性会得到更好的处理。气候政策旨在通过缓解（特别是通过缓解）来改变未来的风险，并考虑和应对个人开始和结束的复杂因果链中相关的剩余风险（通过适应）。政策制定从学习如何将风险分布转移到危险较小的影响中获益，即使事件的概率仍然不确定。即时价值不仅在于沟通风险如何随时间变化以及这些风险如何通过行动改变，还在于预测我们对这些风险的理解如何随着时间的推移（通过科学）而提高，以及我们影响它们的能力如何随着时间的推移而提高（通过技术和政策设计）。关于最紧迫的信息收集地点的指导以及何时可以期望更有信息量的答案的现实估计，以及对延迟行动的风险的合理估计，都具有即时价值。风险评估需要应对概率和不确定性（Knightian 意义上的不确定性），并评估是否将“保持在+2(°)C 以下的概率为 50%”作为目标是“正确”还是“安全”的伦理、逻辑、哲学和经济基础。我们如何在保持基础性科学工作推进我们对现象的理解的同时，更好地激发对困难分析和哲学问题的进展？并为现在必须做出的决策提供即时帮助？
