LAST weekend, delegates from 195 nations agreed an ambitious deal to tackle climate change. As our correspondent reported from the euphoric final session, there was âno pause, no hesitation, no time to even breatheâ â or register a last-minute objection â before the gavel was banged down.
As a declaration of intent, the agreement is impressive. But it is far too late: it would have been truly bold and timely 20 years ago. As a call to action, it is quixotic: its aspiration of a 1.5 °C cap on global warming seems almost totally unachievable (see âParis climate deal is agreed â but is it really good enough?â).
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Nonetheless, the deal is to be welcomed. It marks the worldâs acceptance that climate change, driven by humansâ greenhouse gas emissions, is about as close to a certainty as science can ever get â and that conclusion cannot be covered up or waved away.
Thatâs a lesson we could do with learning more broadly. The Paris deal marked a rare moment of geopolitical consensus in a year that has seen the world order thrown into turmoil. Efforts to make this upset go away have led in many places to hasty attempts to redraw the contracts between states and their citizens, including a raft of impractical proposals on everything from surveillance to migration.
There is more turmoil to come. This year, computers repeatedly proved they could learn and excel at tasks previously considered to be uniquely human (see âFrom Pluto fly-by to head transplants â the best stories of 2015â). That prompted warnings that we could become redundant â or even extinct. Will machines put all but an ultra-wealthy few out of work? Or is the real problem that supposedly revolutionary digital technologies seem to have left productivity largely untouched?
Other certainties fell by the wayside, too. The blockchain, the technology that underpins the digital currency Bitcoin, looks increasingly as though it could revolutionise aspects of society ranging from commerce to law, and certainly ownership â even as âsharing economyâ companies like AirBnB and Uber test the boundaries of civic authority and the limits of personal property.
At a personal level, we canât take anything for granted. On the positive side, we are on the cusp of making radical upgrades to our bodies, using everything from young blood to brain implants (see âBionic eye will send images direct to the brain to restore sightâ). Less clear-cut are nascent techniques like gene editing, or surgical procedures such a head transplants. While these undoubtedly offer medical benefits, they also challenge time-worn ideas about bodily integrity.
And on the negative side, last month brought the unwelcome news that bacteria are swapping genes that confer resistance to the âantibiotics of last resortâ. Our modern assumption that an infection is only rarely serious is on the verge of being overturned. As with climate change, the crisis in antibiotics has been looming for decades: and yet we have carried on dazedly dispensing them like medicinal sweets to humans and fattening treats to livestock. That may cost us dearly.
The world is full of complexity and confusion. We cannot simply wish that noise away: we make much of it ourselves. But we can cut through it too. Science, while it can only ever deliver probabilistic and partial answers, helps us find the signals amid the noise: to reduce the uncertainties of a world continually reshaped by nature and technology.
âScience reduces the uncertainties of a world continually reshaped by nature and technologyâ
And our experience with climate shows that we can harness it even when it comes to dealing with the most complicated and contentious of issues. We just need to get better at that. Fast.
(Image: YAY Media AS/Alamy Stock Photo)
This article appeared in print under the headline âUncertainty principlesâ