Weaponizing Uncertainty: Climate Scientists Admit They Don’t Know—Then Demand You Obey Anyway
13 hours ago Charles Rotter
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01552-8It would be nearly impossible to fabricate a better fictional demonstration of motivated reasoning than the May 2025 Nature commentary titled “Hurricane risk in a changing climate — the role of uncertainty” by Adam Sobel and Kerry Emanuel. In fact, if one needed a primary source to study how scientific ambiguity can be massaged into policy certainty, this article would serve beautifully.
The authors begin by acknowledging the obvious:
“there’s also a lot that we don’t know”
about how climate change affects hurricanes. This initial concession gives the impression of intellectual humility. Yet what follows is a masterclass in rhetorical misdirection—a piece that deserves to be taught in schools, not for its science, but for its persuasive structure.
Rather than treating uncertainty as a reason for caution, Sobel and Emanuel treat it as a trigger for urgency. They write,
“In general, uncertainty increases risk”.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/27/weaponizing-uncertainty-climate-scientists-admit-they-dont-know-then-demand-you-obey-anyway/
