Mind Games and Emissions Modelling

Psychics are rarely celebrated in scientific literature. Yet their bag of tricks—whether peering into the future or guessing the contents of a sealed envelope—offers a surprisingly instructive lesson in cognitive bias.

Many so-called mentalists are not mind-readers but masters of psychology. They rely on Barnum statements—vague claims that sound personal but apply to almost anyone. ("You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.”) When listeners interpret such statements as uniquely accurate, they are falling for the Forer effect. Add a dash of the rainbow ruse—offering contradictory traits in a single reading (“You’re decisive, but only when it really matters”)—and audiences begin to believe in the illusion of insight.

None of this is magic. It's bias, served with confidence.

Trick or Transition?

What does this have to do with climate strategy? Quite a lot. As organisations grapple with the challenge of transitioning to net-zero, the same cognitive traps exploited by psychics and “mind readers” can skew internal planning, distort emissions pathways, and lead to misplaced confidence in the wrong assumptions.

The frequency illusion, for instance, is when a new concept—say, "electrification of everything"—suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. This effect, powered by the availability heuristic, can make it seem more important or more imminent than it really is. Couple that with confirmation bias, and we begin cherry-picking future trends that reinforce our existing strategy.

These are not just academic curiosities. They shape the narratives we tell ourselves when developing climate transition plans. Executives may overestimate the certainty of grid decarbonisation, or underestimate the continued dependence on carbon-intensive inputs, based on what they’ve recently read or heard.

Worse still is the hindsight bias, which warps our memory of how decisions were made and what we thought was likely at the time. This can obscure the gap between intentions and outcomes, especially when emissions targets are missed. In retrospect, all outcomes appear inevitable—and all projections obvious.

Shotgunning and Strategy

Then there is the problem of shotgunning—the forecasting equivalent of firing a thousand predictions and later claiming victory on the few that hit the mark. It’s a favourite of Nostradamus enthusiasts and self-styled futurists. It is also, in the context of climate risk, strategically useless.

When companies produce transition plans filled with vague aspirations, loosely defined scenarios, and contradictory goals, they risk building castles on sand. If every possible future is on the table, then none of them can be prepared for in earnest.

This is the danger of postdiction—interpreting the present as if it were always obvious. It leads to complacency rather than clarity.

Why Modelling Matters

The antidote to all this cognitive sleight of hand is quantitative modelling. Not because it is perfect, but because it is principled. A well-constructed emissions projection demands that assumptions be made explicit, that pathways be internally consistent, and that trade-offs be visible.

This is especially vital in an environment filled with competing narratives—some rooted in genuine trends, others buoyed by recency, bias, or sheer optimism.

As we’ve noted in previous posts, quantitative projections differ from predictions. They do not offer certainty, nor pretend to. Instead, they offer a structured way to test strategic decisions, allowing firms to explore if-then logic under different future conditions.

Without such modelling, transition plans risk being driven by gut feel, echo chambers, or the corporate equivalent of cold reading. Like the audience of a stage psychic, we may leave convinced—but also misled.

Conclusion: From Crystal Balls to Code

The mind is a brilliant, biased machine. It is easily tricked, particularly when it wants to believe. In sustainability planning, this poses real danger. The transition to net-zero is too important to be guided by intuition, mental shortcuts or narrative convenience.

Quantitative projections, grounded in transparent assumptions and updated as the world changes, help organisations escape the pitfalls of post-hoc rationalisation and self-confirming narratives. They impose discipline on the planning process—and accountability on those who make the plans.

Mind readers may get away with vagueness. Businesses cannot afford to.