PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

11. FORECASTING DESTINY
States, received the most publicity and produced the strongest emotional
response. Could all this publicity have contributed to putting reactor
operators around the country in a precarious psychological condition?
The next three accidents came in such close succession that they deviated
from the natural curve (see Figure 11.3). In the latter 1980s the
sinister curve had flattened. Unlike the early 1980s, when we had seen
five major incidents in three years, in the late 1980s we saw only one in
five years.
Ten Years Later
There have been no major nuclear accidents in the 1990s.
One may attribute it to improved reactor operation and safety,
which would be evidence for maturity in an otherwise precautious
technology. But also to a decrease of the media’s
preoccupation with the nuclear menace, partly due to the
appearance of new overshadowing concerns, such as global
warming, genetic engineering, and terrorism.
To recapitulate, we have seen in this section a variety of situations,
ranging from miners’ strikes and energy programs to the necessities of
war and nuclear accidents, in all of which events seemed to follow a
different course from the one set by the decision makers, be they in the
government, in the military, in technology, or in science. In the usual
perception, leaders are faced with multiple alternatives and have to
choose among them. If indeed they can choose, it means that there are
many paths along which events may proceed. But how many paths can
there be? Which ones will merely produce a short-term deviation from
what will later be recognized as a natural trend? Some time ago, J.
Weingart and N. Nakicenovic made a compilation of predictions for
solar energy and total energy demands according to different models. 7
They produced trajectories for seven different scenarios covering a
wide range of futures. The scenarios diverge, and by the year 2200
there is a factor of five between the most pessimistic and the most
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