Attribution Science

So the question is can we prepare for the unknown....Well the best we can do is have smart people who can think on their feet in charge of response, and tentative plans of action in all possible scenarios, or general emergency type situations, a large pool of talent, like volunteers and local police and military personnel that can be drawn upon....Every situation like this is unique and requires a unique response....

... and how much of these events are just random confluences of special conditions that create these outliers in the data set? But that doesn't make for good hyperbole for those on a mission.

I think the activity is inappropriately named. Let's just call it climate research and leave "science" out of it.

Next, politicians will not do, or believe, anything that does not put money directly into their pockets.

Humanitarian workers, water managers and to a large extent, hospital administrators have no budget for proactive preparation for unknown future events.

Big oil, big pharmaceutical companies, Monsanto, fertilizer salesmen and the like have no desire to contribute to such a cause because they see no immediate payback on any investment they would make.

Our government won't even spend adequate money to keep our existing infrastructure from crumbling so I see no future in planning for the future.

Congress has become totally dysfunctional and will continue to be only a giant sucking sound as they descend further into the abyss of petty, self centered bickering.

Attribution Science = Attrition Science

The farce continues.

Since the science revolves around building predictive models to scare the poachies out of the uninformed, call it snake oil, ether, phlogistons, balderdash, malarkey or just plain BU*****IT.

Having observed the process from the inside, it appears a large part of the development of this science is to extract grant money for investigations of the always catastrophic results of the model and to guide lawmaking and regulation generation towards a specific political and resource allocation outcome.

40 years ago the models said UPCOMING ICE AGE, more recently HEAT DEATH and now just CHANGE. Where I live, it's the BIG ONE, even though some of the data says maybe not and the driving physical conditions don't support the predicted outcome. However, there is lots of grant money just waiting to fund the doomsayers.

P. T. Barnum nailed it - There's one born every minute. I'd add to that - they end up in politics.

but.........what if its true

It has been true before and it will be true again.

We just don't know when these will come to pass.

Predicting the future environment has been as successful as predicting the Rapture. You're right, things will happen eventually. The hokum comes in when the prediction comes in that it will happen on June 27, 2018 at 10am, so don't sleep in.

The sad part about this is that "legitimate" scientists have been adding arbitrary correction factors to past data on a regular basis to get the models to fail a little bit less until it gets to the point that the model has to be abandoned. Then a new model pops into place for whatever reason and continues to drive the political process and fish for further grants.