Transcript Presentation Title in Title Case

Communicating uncertainty about climate
change science
Bob Ward (Risk Management Solutions)
3 July 2007
SAFESPUR
Communication of Safety assessments/cases
TM
Bringing Science to the Art of Underwriting™
Climate change: implications for catastrophe risks
 Risk Management Solutions supplies expertise, products
and services to businesses and policy-makers for the
analysis and management of risks of natural and man-made
catastrophes (eg earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks)
 Climate change is affecting the frequency and intensity of
extreme weather events, and hence the risks of heatwaves,
droughts, flooding, storms (tropical and extra-tropical), etc
 Risks are changing so adds an additional element of
uncertainty to other elements of uncertainty (eg natural
climatic variability, policy options, etc)
TM
© 2007 Risk Management Solutions, Inc.
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Communicating uncertainty: challenges
 Need to be clear about desired outcome of communication
eg inform your audience, promote precautionary behaviour,
justify policy decisions, consult on options, etc
 Need to recognise factors affecting audience’s perceptions
of risk: not just statistics but also elements such as dread
 Experts sometimes worry that information about
uncertainty confuses the audience, might be perceived as
an indication of incompetence, undermines the promotion
of precautionary behaviour, etc
 But communicating uncertainty can help audience make
better informed decisions and build trust in sources of risk
information
TM
© 2007 Risk Management Solutions, Inc.
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Some pot-holes in communicating uncertainty to a
lay audience
 Using numerical and statistical data to give a false sense of
certainty ie to imply a falsely precise quantification of
uncertainty.
 Not explaining conflicts between different research results.
 Claiming that we know about, and can quantify, all of the
sources of uncertainty that exist, particularly in future
forecasts and predictions.
 Presenting particular policy choices as if they automatically
followed from the scientific evidence.
TM
© 2007 Risk Management Solutions, Inc.
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A fictional interview
 Scenario: A researcher (Professor Joe Bloggs) being
interviewed about his research by a journalist (Jim Hack)
 Your job is to spot cases where the researcher deals with
major uncertainties, and decide whether he does a good or
bad job of communicating them
 There are absolutely no points or prizes for pointing out
that the research is fictional!
 You will need to work in pairs: you will have three minutes
after the interview to agree your assessment
TM
© 2007 Risk Management Solutions, Inc.
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