Pretty much all that is known with any confidence about climate change concerns its energetic and thermodynamic aspects. Atmospheric circulation, which also involves consideration of dynamics, is much more uncertain yet plays a critical role in climate change at the regional scale (e.g. jet streams, monsoons). How to approach this issue represents a major scientific challenge. It also represents a major challenge in communication, because the traditional paradigm for scientific communication about climate change — as exemplified in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports — is designed to emphasize what is known with confidence. In this talk I will suggest that this traditional paradigm is at the same time both overly conservative and overly confident, and discuss alternative approaches.