The Poker Player’s Guide to Climate Change

[existentialist]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-seaver/the-poker-players-guide-_b_23935.html

Nick Seaver

The Poker Player’s Guide to Climate Change


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In other words, no news - not to the scientific community, anyway. Needless to say, Sen. Inhofe (OK-R) and his cabal have tried to spin this study as proof that global warming is a "hoax."

There are plenty of reasons why Inhofe's claim is absurd and this whole issue is a red herring. RealClimate does a terrific job of explaining why, much of which the press has picked up (NYT, WSJ, the Huffington Post. But there's an important point that coverage seems to have missed: this study is basically a reminder of uncertainty (i.e. the band around the line) and, as our inner poker player knows, when stakes are high (i.e. the whole planet), uncertainty isn't our friend, it's our enemy. The pre-1850 band extends up - and down. When more data comes in, the comparison's as likely to make our situation look worse as it is better.

So is uncertainty an excuse for inaction, as Inhofe would argue? Let's see ... You're driving up a mountain with the cliff's edge ten feet to the right, drifting towards the edge. Scenario 1: it's daytime. Scenario 2: it's dark and foggy, the edge may be 20 feet away - or inches. How, Senator Inhofe, is Scenario 2 an argument to keep drifting to the right?


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Innocuous case of glass half-full versus half-empty? Not when the glass is a red herring and the real issue is a cliff's edge. Regalado should know better than to take a sip while the car keeps drifting, for a bunch of reasons. Not the least of which is that anyone writing for a financial journal should think in terms of uncertainty vs. size of the stakes. If he doesn't think that way, I'd love to get him across a poker table. But I sure wouldn't want him chauffeuring me up a mountain on a foggy night.