3Nature Bats Last
Glendower: “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
Hotspur: “Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?”
Shakespeare, Henry IV
3.1 Prediction Is Hard
When natural hazard forecasts fail badly, as for the Tohoku earthquake, the public is often surprised. The public image of science is people in white coats using complicated machines to measure something. They measure it, and then they know it.
Assessing natural hazards is very different. A natural hazard, like that of earthquakes, or the probability of an event like an earthquake, is not something scientists can measure or know precisely. We cannot talk usefully – except in general terms – about “the” earthquake hazard or “the” probability ...
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