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To the Editor—In a recent Commentary, Beck and Mahony1 argue that the development of low-emission scenarios has political implications that go beyond making neutral expert assessments. Beck and Mahony suggest that scenario builders need to anticipate the political impacts of the scenarios, which pose “great challenges to conventional ideas of scientific neutrality” 1. We agree with the authors that the way in which scenarios are developed for use in climate science and policy should be revisited, but we believe that scenario builders should rather be more scientific and strive for more neutrality, and that improved methods for scenario development can help to achieve these aims.

Methodological advances made within the futures studies community during the last decade have been largely ignored by the climate change research community, including methods such as cross-impact balance2, scenario diversity …