Comment in response to Roger Pielke Jr. accusing Realclimate of becoming 'pathologically politicised':

If I may have a go at articulating why I think you're wrong? First-off, let me see if I've got your argument correct. You say Realclimate have politicised the science, and this is shown because they attack anyone who questions that the science of climate change is certain, like Sen. Inhofe, Fox News etc.

First point: there is probably scientific illiteracy right across the political spectrum - but the truth is, it tends to be right-leaning thinkers who question climate science. If you're interested, I've written about how this affectively hides most left-of-centre scientific illiteracy from climate arguments.

This means that one can imply Realclimate as 'taking a political position' by default. But I think you muddy the picture then: this most emphatically does not mean Realclimate writers are politicizing science. By your reasoning, the only way Realclimate could become politically neutral would be to "even themselves out" by arguing with left-of-centre climate skeptics. Obviously, that's ridiculous: Realclimate cannot be held responsible for who decides to question the science, and it's certainly false to assign them to a political position "by default" in the way you seem to be doing.

Second: the uncertainty meme is a huge problem. You may have picked up on all the recent noise about scientists as lords of certainty in the UK: a picture has been painted of scientists as authoritarian figures, using a mythical scientific certainty to impose their will on the world. I think it's entirely reasonable of Realclimate and others to point out - this utterly misrepresents the science. I cannot imagine that people making these claims have actually - for example - read the IPCC's uncertainty guidance notes.

You'll have seen Realclimate's last post on uncertainty too - I won't attempt to restate all the great points made there. What I'd love to read from you is a more detailed piece on exactly how you think climate scientists are treating uncertainty incorrectly. I can't help but conclude that, as Brad Delong points out, most skeptics appear to have forgotten "uncertainty has two tails." Certainly, there's no scientific contradiction between understanding the range of uncertainties whilst still claiming we know enough to act. In citing that press call, you seem to be saying this is problematic?

I also note your choice of Copenhagen read - James Scott's Seeing like a State. This book is kind of my PhD bible. I wonder what connections you see between Scott's / Hayek's radical uncertainty thesis ("everything is just too complex for state political action to succeed") and scientific uncertainty? For me, they're two very different animals. One could be 99% certain that climate change posed a dire threat to humanity, and still be 100% skeptical about political action having a hope of solving the problem. Interestingly, this isn't a position one comes across very often.