Gaming the Future

How do scientists learn about the future?  We often see the words 'projections' and 'predictions' and models of various flavors in our daily digestions of news bits and feature stories.  Where do these come from and what do they mean?  How are they used and how should they be used?

 At CBI, we frequently use the term 'scenarios' to describe our efforts to understand the future of ecological systems.  This use of the word has its roots in military planning exercises of the '50s and '60s.  At that time, planners were trying to game various grim futures:  the Soviets use nukes, Vietnam falls, etc.  Our scenarios also often have dark connotations:  The planet warms by 13 degrees F; precipitation declines; run-away development fragments our remaining forests.

These scenarios are developed by different teams and often answer very different questions.  We often work with forest managers (e.g., from national forests) to develop narratives of change.   We jointly imagine a few different futures. 

An example would be, 'By the year 2100, climate change is producing much drier conditions.  Development in and around the forest has been unregulated and the area of Wildland Urban Interface has increased 40%.  What are the consequences?'  Such scenarios help managers imagine the future and plan accordingly. 

 Scenarios can also have a distinctly scientific bent.  They can be used to test assumptions and quantify our uncertainty.  For example, 'If deciduous trees are fertilized by excess CO2 in the atmosphere, but conifers are not, how will the landscape change?  What if they are both fertilized?'  In this context, scenarios begin to represent a replicated experimental design.  This is the strategy CBI used in the southern Sierra Fisher assessment .

Those are the two alternative uses of scenarios; most fall somewhere in between.  Once we design a scenario, it is typically fed into a simulation model.  The model must capture all of the processes outlined in the scenarios. 

Finally, results are produced.  The results of a scenario are never predictions.  They are potential alternatives futures, a series of what-if propositions.  We can

learn about the future; we can never know the future.  The future will be surprising!  It always is.  But there are surprises that can be avoided and mitigated with proper planning. We can game the future; just remember that the winners are those that maximize the learning potential, not those that predict correctly.  No one ever has and no one ever will.

- Rob Scheller