These issues are widely discussed by David Tuckett in the context of "conviction narratives".
Leonard Smith and Nicholas Stern have a paper on the different kinds of uncertainty that is relevant here:
Smith, L.A. and Stern, N. (2011) 'Uncertainty in science and its role in climate policy', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, 369. DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2011.0149.
The relevance of what we know to what we do is an ongoing discussion! Please join in: