Uncertainty

Back in the 1960s when I worked on Apollo and wrote my first book, one thing we knew, was that the world was filled with uncertainty. Send a rocket to the moon, and no matter what you do, the uncertainties of the measurements must be continually accounted for. Burn the retro rockets at the wrong moment and one has problems.

One can estimate and project but one must include the uncertainty of one's model as well as ones measurements. The estimate is what we think now. So then try and project forward and the uncertainty starts to get larger.

So where am I going with this? Climate change. We have uncertainty in old measurements, uncertainty in models but as I try to scan the literature no one has ever included these in the results or projections. The line going forward is faultless, no error bands. Why?

Good question. Any engineer would or must include them. Scientists it seems almost deny their existence.