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Unanswered Questions About Uncertainty, Information, and Investment Decisions

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Real Option Analysis and Climate Change

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Abstract

Books far too often come with answers only. They convey a warm feeling that everything is under control. This book is not in that tradition. Hopefully, it will inspire some to realize that the frontier of knowledge in ROA is only work in progress and at an early stage of progress. Unanswered questions are the prerequisites to change, progress, and even sometime scientific revolutions. This book is an invitation for those who think that ROA can make a difference to help making it go to the next level.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future. Niels Bohr (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/nielsbohr130288.html)

We cannot predict the future, but we can create it, Jim Collins (Collins, Jim, Hansen Morten, T., “Great by Choice,” www.harperscollins.com)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Leibniz was German, but he said that in French, which with Latin at the times were the language of Science. Translated in English: “I said more than once that we need a new kind of logic which would deal with different degrees of probabilities.” It does not sound as good as in French.

  2. 2.

    This translates as: If one cannot get thrushes, one has to eat blackbirds instead.

  3. 3.

    Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense 1975–1977 and 2001–2006.

  4. 4.

    https://blog.jim.com/global-warming/science-is-the-belief-in-the-ignorance-of-experts/

  5. 5.

    Virgin on the Rocks, La belle Ferronnière, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, and Saint John the Baptist (who seems to make an obscene gesture with his finger, http://merovingio.c2rmf.cnrs.fr/iipimage/showcase/StJohnTheBaptist/

  6. 6.

    http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait

  7. 7.

    http://www.cyberlipid.org/perox/oxid0011.htm

  8. 8.

    “Van Eyck was intensely interested in the effects of light: oil paint allowed him to depict it with great subtlety in this picture, notably on the gleaming brass chandelier,” http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait

  9. 9.

    “His wife is not pregnant, as is often thought, but holding up her full-skirted dress in the contemporary fashion. Arnolfini was a member of a merchant family from Lucca living in Bruges. The couple is shown in a well-appointed interior.” http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait

  10. 10.

    http://www.britannica.com/art/tempera-painting

  11. 11.

    http://www.artble.com/artists/sandro_botticelli/more_information/style_and_technique

  12. 12.

    http://www.uffizi.org/artworks/la-primavera-allegory-of-spring-by-sandro-botticelli/

  13. 13.

    http://www.uffizi.org/artworks/the-birth-of-venus-by-sandro-botticelli/

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Morel, B. (2020). Unanswered Questions About Uncertainty, Information, and Investment Decisions. In: Real Option Analysis and Climate Change. Springer Climate. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12061-0_8

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