No Plan Survives Contact with the Enemy (v.2.1)

The saying, "No plan survives..." is attributed to Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, chief of staff of the Prussian Army.

He is regarded as one of the great strategists of the latter 1800s, and the creator of a new, more modern method of directing armies in the field.

Moltke's main thesis was that military strategy had to be understood as a system of options since only the beginning of a military operation was plannable. As a result, he considered the main task of military leaders to consist in the extensive preparation of all possible outcomes.

wikipedia

The "war" I am using this quote for, is the global warming conflict. Depending on which side one is on, that could mean: the campaign to persuade countries to act on climate change; the denialist machine's attempts to stall action; the technological hurdles of transitioning to alternative energy; and for the sake of completeness, those "integrally informed" people who are trying to deal with a politicised IPCC.

In these many contexts, I try to hold Helmuth's directive in mind: preparation for all possible outcomes.

Scenarios

What outcomes might we be faced with, in relation to climate change? I attempt a quick list (and I invite anyone passing by to post more lists of their own):

• global temperatures rise 6C by 2100
• global temperatures rise 2C by 2100
• industrialisation accelerates in the developing world
• industrialisation stalls
• global warming, having been renamed climate change, becomes global cooling
• climate change science changes
• global temperatures drop 2C by 2100
• global temperatures drop 12C by 2100
• war breaks out affecting most of the globe in 2025
• population growth continues
• population growth stalls, and by 2050 many countries face a demographic bomb
• global recession leads to all nations living on the poverty line
• the internet shuts down
• battery technology improves 10,000%
• rare metals for batteries run out
• environmentalist movement dies in 20 years, replaced by techno-warlordism
• environmentalism becomes the uniting global governance
• medically tested brain machine interfaces allow in 50 years everyone to safely transcend ego at a flick of a switch

At some point in that list, the scenarios became "implausible". The last one in particular was rather wild. But at which point does a scenario become outlandish? Is a 6C temperature rise beyond reason? What about 2C drop? Climate modellers discount models that cool, on the basis that they are, in their professional opinion, unrealistic. Nonetheless, when the climate has cooled in the past, this has been attributed to masking effects. Perhaps other masking effects will appear in future. Is this denialist wishful thinking? Perhaps. But those effects could occur. Perhaps climate change tips the balance towards cooling mechanisms instead -- the deep slumber of ice ages lasts longer than the relatively warm interglacials. Models may not expect this to be a realistic outcome, but then, scientists are often finding that things are worse than previously thought.

Let's really try to think outside the box. After all, so far there's nothing particularly surprising on the list. Let's try something wild and in combination:

• the Super Hadron Collider reveals unusual data, resulting in a new model of matter which discloses subtle energies and their inner workings and how they can be manipulated
• using medical nanotech, we infuse our biological bodies with molecular machines which give us a direct interface to suble phenomena, allowing us to manipulate matter (via its underlying life force) at will and at great distance.

Hm, well, ok, let's say that we do invent Midichlorians! Well, Hollywood shuts down. Everyone is just having so much fun zapping this and that. Earth becomes a fun park and lots of people die suddenly.

Sounds too outlandish? So does global theromonuclear war. We've been living with that spectre since the 50s. Perhaps we've forgotten that particular scenario??

Reality and Data

Returning to our theme from our quote. War, conflict, action -- our grand plan to save the world (we have to do something!) -- we devised a plan to prevent that catastrophic future of global warming. Now imagine a scenario where that future doesn't happen. Our plan did not survive contact with reality.

But then, we knew in 1862 that it wouldn't.... didn't we?

It occurs to me that planning for the future is an exercise which can't draw on much in the way of objective data, because the data, the future, doesn't exist yet. The right hand quadrants disappear -- they are not available for analysis.

Consequently, all that remains is the left hand quadrants, of subjective personal and cultural constructs. If you want to know what vmeme someone is operating from, perhaps ask them a question about the future?

Perhaps this is why the climate change problem has become so polarising. It is essentially a problem about the future. [1]

"Worse than previously thought" is a phrase we frequently see used in the science media. It is these occasional news updates which show the changing nature of understanding. That's the "change" in climate science. Those who believe the climate science, state that, "the science is always improving", as if to mean, "climate change will continue to become worse than previously thought. "Catastrophe is inevitable; we feel it in our bones." As new data rolls in, the picture will become worse. This is our prediction for future data. That data which, being in the future, doesn't exist yet. Curiously, these predictions are predictions about predictions.

There is a difference between science making predictions, and the science of predictions. The inescapable reality is that the future hasn't happened. That data is not available. So how does one take a scientific approach to predictions? This is not unlike our Prussian Chief of Staff, wondering how does one plan for a war, when the reality of that war will change?

I'd speculate the answer to this, is that it involves great complexity. But here is the rub: lower altitudes are less complex. 

How does purple predict the future?

How does amber predict the future?

How does orange predict the future?

How do you predict the future?

In the absence of objective data from the future, we are simply left with our immediate personal and cultural constructs in the present, as the only basis from which to "view" the future -- which is to say, construct the scenarios of the future. What is the altitude of our constructs? And what future scenarios does that altitude construct? 

An Old Insight About the Future

[1] The IPCC doesn't call their work a "prediction", they only call it a "scenario". Even within the assumptions that climate is the long term statistics of weather, we don't know if the stats will hold up in practice, a hundred years down the line. It is statistical because it is uncertainty. Ninety percent confidence is still a one in ten chance that you're totally wrong. Would you bet everything you own on a one in ten chance you'll lose it all? Furthermore, what if the estimate of uncertainty changes in the future? What if in 20 years, it becomes a two in ten chance of being wrong, once the climate has produced a few "surprises"?