Downside to knowing too much
I wonder if anyone has thought this one out:
Japan is planning ultra long-range 30-year weather forecasts that will predict typhoons, storms, blizzards, droughts and other inclement weather, an official said Tuesday.
The project, to start next year, will harness the powers of one of the world's fastest supercomputers and is an offshoot of ongoing research by the country's science ministry to map global warming trends for the next 300 years.
The machine tracks global sea temperatures, rainfall and crustal movement to predict natural disasters over the next centuries. As part of the project, Japan eyes forecasts for the entire planet for areas as small as 1.9 square miles.
But don't plan on locking in sunny weather for that planned family picnic in July 2036. These forecasts are only general trends.
"Just like the daily forecast, we can't give a percentage for how accurate they are," Otake said.
Imagine that after all this research and simulation work, the scientists declare that the 1.9 square miles around your house is going to get slammed by a typhoon five years from now (or within five years, or however their predictions are phrased). They aren't saying that you live in an area beset by typhoons -- you knew that already. But based on the current climactic conditions and within a five year window (presumably the closer the timeframe the higher the confidence in the prediction), the computer is predicting that a major typhoon will form and make landfall on your house.
Disaster will strike fives years ahead of schedule. How? Watch your property value plummet and the insurance companies cancel all coverage in the area.
Our lives are lived on the basis of not knowing the future. The more information we have of upcoming events, the more skewed our current behaviour becomes. Need an example? Scientists are predicting global warming. The reasons are murky (the "hockey stick" was recently ridiculed in a major scientific paper) but the effect today is extreme -- major political fighting over energy usage and emissions standards and population size and standard of living. No one really knows what effect, if any, all the things we're fighting about today will have on tomorrow, especially if the warming, if real, is a natural cycle. But our "knowledge" of what tomorrow will be (questionable knowledge at best) is twisting our behaviour today.
Whether it's global warming, or this weather prediction program, or your health (predictions based on genetic markers showing susceptibility to cancer and other diseases or chronic conditions you don't actually have, and may never have), we simply don't have the mental, social, and financial mechanisms in place to properly deal with foreknowledge.
I doubt we ever will. That's just a guess, by the way -- no one from the future told me that.
Technorati Tags: weather
Skew my story on Skewz.com
Rate political news for their bias, read related stories, and leave your own skewed commentary
Search for more opinions from Canadian bloggers on these related keywords
Sphere presents related news articles and blog posts
Sphere It!
Comments
What a pile! Weather can't be predicted much beyond 3 days. I guess the Nips need a SUPERCOMPUTER to remind them that the suns rises every morning...What we need is a supercomputer in Qannadda to track down all that missing $48.5 million that Gene Crouton has dummied up about...or maybe a supercomputer to track the sleeping somnabulists of the lousy RCMP....
Posted by: Feldwebel Wolfenstool at July 19, 2006 08:58 AM
Although I am a little reluctant to use the word "never", I agree with you FW.
I believe experts refer to Earth's climate as a "non-linear, chaotic system", which means that the system cannot be accurately modeled (take that IPCC members!)
The fact that no current computer model can accurately model climate during the past 50 years persuades me that this project is another Japanese governmnet make work scheme.
Posted by: at July 19, 2006 09:09 AM
What I find amazing is that in this day and age it is the people who stand up and say,'You can't predict the future.' who get labeled as crazy, flat earther's, deniers, etc.
Posted by: Moneybags4me at July 19, 2006 09:23 AM
I had thought that chaos theory had put paid to long-range weather forecasting.
Posted by: Dr.Dawg at July 19, 2006 09:31 AM
I've always thought so, too, Dr Dawg. The problem, as I understood it, was not having enough initial state information. The less accurate your knowledge of the present, the less reliable your prediction of the future. Perhaps a 1.9 square mile resolution of initial conditions results in a 30 year window of accuracy. Our 5-day forecasts might be based on simulations that use much coarser granularity (tens or over hundreds of square miles).
The article does not say if the 1.9 square mile granularity includes open ocean. In fact, the article does not say much at all technically, which is why I focused on the implications assuming a 30-year forecast could be made to work.
Posted by: Steve Janke at July 19, 2006 09:35 AM
Well Doc and Steve, remember back in the late '70's we were told by the Scientific community we definately are heading for another ice age?
So in less than 30 years we've switch from freezing our butts to baking our ba, um, backs.
Right. I guess the silver lining is I can keep an eye out for sales of R125 or SPF125 at HomeMart.
Wonder if the Japs factored in the Gozilla effect?(He's a direct cause of global warming ya know.)
Imagine the amount of methane that comes out of either end from that fella...
*peeuuuw*
Posted by: tomax7 at July 19, 2006 02:56 PM
 
|
|
