This week’s column, in which I play the national security card (sub/ad req):

These are the same folks responsible for maintaining our nuclear deterrent. They are thinking this way because the language of risk and uncertainty is familiar to people in the national security community, and it is their job to think about and help us prepare for bad things that might hurt our nation.

Theirs is a world in which thinking about “high-consequence, low-probability” events, things such as accidental nuclear explosions or potential enemies bent on our destruction, is a way of life.

And it is a world that is increasingly taking climate change seriously, not because of what we know about it, but rather because of what we don’t.