For this role-play participants were confronted with the question, whether uncertainty make it easier for people to ignore the risks of climate change?
Since the beginning it was established the importance and the great challenge that represents communicating adequately the risks and uncertainties surrounding Climate Change. For non-specialists risk and uncertainty may be just words perceived as bigger and frightening, but as it was pointed out this are not just words, it is a lack of understanding of this two concepts that leads to the often indiscriminate use of them by the public.
Uncertainty is defined as a state of incomplete knowledge that can result from a lack of information or from disagreement about what is known or even knowable whereas risk is often represented as the probability of occurrence of hazardous events or trends multiplied by the consequences if the events occurs.
It was stated since the beginnig, by the scientists, that the higher the uncertainties the higher the risks. This uncertainties may be related to greater skepticism as it is not easy to understand whether it is an important alarm or a false one and of course, it is something to be concerned of since it could lead to avoiding pro-activeness.
Througout the discussion it could be seen that there was still confusion among the groups generated from the misunderstanding of the two concepts and it was pointed out by the moderators who had to intervene.
Politicians recognize the risk of Climate Change but they cannot act fast as there is also risk involved in immediate actions. Investments are being made on renewable energy but the process is slow. For investors, Climate Change can affect businesses so it is necessary to know the risks so that they can know where and how much to invest.
As an overall it was said by the different groups that it is not easier to ignore the risks even if the uncertainties are big but it is necessary to have more transparency on the information given to the public. As it was stated “Looking into the future is always uncertain because we don’t know the decisions taken on the path” as an example of this, if look at the RCP scenarios from IPCC each of them have a window of decisions and the final path will depend on the policies implemented.