Philosophy of Climate Science has become a relevant research field within the philosophy of science in recent years. Potential research questions are:
Epistemic and methodological questions
- What is the epistemic significance of understanding in and for climate science?
- What are the epistemic strengths and limitations of climate modelling?
- How can research yielding different outputs like predictions, understanding, and explanations fruitfully inform each other, what are their epistemic strengths, what their limits?
- What different epistemic goals, (like accuracy, empirical adequacy, predictive success, explanatory power, fruitfulness) can climate research have? How may these goals interact?
Ethics and Climate Justice meet Climate Science
- Which responsibilities does climate science have as an informant to society at large and marginalized communities specifically?
- Which responsibilities does climate science have regarding environmental outcomes for future generations and the natural world?
- Which responsibilities does climate science have to cooperate with and learn from local (especially indigenous) communities’ insights into local effects of climate change?
Values in Climate Science
- What epistemic obligations (in, e.g., choice of evidential standards, research topics, research method, data collection, various choices in modelling) follow from ethical obligations climate science has vis-à-vis humanity and the planet?
- What lessons can be drawn from feminist, non-western, and specifically indigenous philosophies of science to understanding the epistemic-ethical challenges climate science and scientists face?
- To what extend, and in which ways, is epistemic trustworthiness of climate science dependent on its responsiveness to matters of climate justice?
Communicating Climate Science
- How can Climate Science ward itself against “merchants of doubt”?
- What challenges arise for communicating facts about global warming given different forms of uncertainties (specifically in climate modelling) affecting research in climate science?
- What challenges exist for climate science in establishing a relationship of trust vis-à-vis a global public beyond the usual undermining attempts by “merchants of doubt”?
People
- Katharina Bernhard (Philosophy)
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Derek Ball (Philosophy)
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Andrea Burke (Earth & Environmental Sciences)
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Michael Byrne (Earth & Environmental Sciences)
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Miguel de la Cal Moreno (Philosophy)
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Alex Douglas (Philosophy)
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Graeme MacGilchrist (Earth & Environmental Sciences)
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James Rae (Earth & Environmental Sciences)
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Mara van der Lugt (Philosophy)