We hold dear a set a of beliefs that isn’t all that rational in the traditional economic sense but still holds a lot of sway over our daily actions.

Dan Kahneman shared a Nobel Prize “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty.” One such insight is that reducing the risk of a particular loss from 10 to 3% is perceived as not nearly so valuable as reducing it from 3 to 0%. Never mind that the risk reduction from 10 to 3 is more than twice as large.

Zero strikes a chord in more ways than one. Everyone craves certainty.

Sadly, “solving” global warming is out. All we can truly do at this point is hope to reduce the risk of the worst consequences. Scientists cannot, in good faith, provide reassurance that any foreseeable policy will avoid disaster with certainty.

There’s no good answer other than to hope for enlightened leadership trying to bridge the gap. It should be a lot easier for one such enlightened leader to understand that “10 to 3″ does, in fact, beat “3 to 0″ than to try to convince the millions that their intuition and their craving for certainty is “wrong.”