Climate Change
Out of context: Reply #54
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- georgesIII-1
The report says scientists need to spend more time figuring out what's going to change. For example, how will higher temperatures affect agriculture? And where and when? Matson says that's a moving target largely guided by how much fossil energy people will be using.
"There are a lot of uncertainties about the future," Matson said, "and the uncertainties are in large part because we don't know what people are going to do."
And what people do, Matson adds, may depend on how well scientists explain what they know. "We miscommunicate all the time," Matson says.
"For example, we use the term 'uncertainty' all the time in science; it represents a quantitative statement of how well we know something. But think of what uncertainty means for most people — it means we don't know."
The point of this report, she and its authors say, is to show that scientists do know that something must be done to keep the Earth's climate from heading into uncharted territory.