Rationality under uncertainty: why politics matters

Abstract

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (United Nations 1992), unlike the much broader definition of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), defines climate change as a policy and decision making issue only in terms of human activity having a 'dangerous' influence on climate. Thus, according to the UNFCCC, climate change can only be understood as a policy issue if it can be shown to be both human induced and dangerous, because the convention excludes natural climate change or variation as irrelevant. Making such a distinction, however, betrays an ongoing subscription to the linear, good science leads to good policy orthodoxy of the rationalist policy model by assuming that not only is the distinction between human and naturally caused climate change knowable on the basis of science, but also that the question of what constitutes 'dangerous climate change' can beresolved scientifically (Pielke 2005).