The spectrum of environmental policy challenges—from climate change to nuclear waste storage to coastal shoreline erosion—depend on sophisticated forecasting and modeling techniques. How sound and reliable are our environmental models? What are the inherent limits of environmental science when attempting to forecast the future under different policy regimes? Are there ways to improve environmental forecasting for policymaking purposes?

Daniel Botkin, a research professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Orrin Pilkey, the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Geology at Duke University, will discuss past performance in environmental modeling. J. Scott Armstrong, a forecasting expert and professor of marketing at the Wharton School, and Jim Manzi, CEO of Applied Predictive Technologies, will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of climate models. Stephen F. Hayward, AEI’s F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow, and Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar at AEI, will moderate.