Climate’s Troubling Unknown Unknowns

Donald Rumsfeld famously popularized the term “unknown unknowns” in a 2002 news briefing when describing the challenges of linking Iraq to weapons of mass destruction. Troublingly, climate change may also be strewn with such unknowns, and they pose daunting tests for how we face the future.

Dirty air blanketing the New York skyline at sunset.

One is choosing among policy alternatives. Should we minimize tomorrow’s risks now by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or save money today and spend it on adapting to the effects of planetary warming once threats emerge more fully, like rising seas or prolonged droughts? The policy debate increasingly tilts toward adaptation.

But we can’t adapt to perils from unknown unknowns. In such cases, adaptation will largely fail; only mitigation will be effective.

Read the opinion piece from The New York Times by William B. Gail - “Climate’s Troubling Unknown Unknowns.”