Most of the information we receive isn’t really new. Instead, it’s related to things we already know, which means that we have to update our beliefs based on the new information. It may not surprise you that not everyone is great about updating their beliefs. And a new study in Nature Climate Change reports that there’s a rather important group that seems to be bad at this process: climate negotiators.

There is some good news. While uncertainty about climate change is generally considered a challenge for setting policy, emphasizing the uncertainties helps negotiators bring their beliefs up to date with the current information.

Uncertainty means different things in different contexts. We may not be sure whether the planet will heat up by 2.7 degrees Celsius or 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, but it’s pretty likely to be around that range. There’s uncertainty there, both in terms of our own carbon emissions and in terms of the climate’s sensitivity to them, but it’s uncertainty within limits.