Uncertainty as Impetus for Climate Mitigation

Abstract:

For decades, the scientific community has called for actions to be taken to mitigate the adverse consequences of climate change. To date, those calls have found little substantial traction, and politicians and the general public are instead engaged in a debate about the causes and effects of climate change that bears little resemblance to the state of scientific knowledge. Uncertainty plays a pivotal role in that public debate, and arguments against mitigation are frequently couched in terms of uncertainty. We show that the rhetorical uses of scientific uncertainty in public debate by some actors (often with vested interests or political agendas) contrast with the mathematical result that greater uncertainty about the extent of warming is virtually always associated with an increased risk: The expected damage costs increase as a function of uncertainty about future warming. We suggest ways in which the actual implications of scientific uncertainty can be better communicated and how scientific uncertainty should be understood as an impetus, rather than a barrier, for climate mitigation.