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Dealing with Uncertainty – From Climate Research to Integrated Assessment of Policy Options

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Climate Change and Policy

Abstract

‘Uncertainty’ has accompanied the debate on global warming since its onset. It started out as a shadow-like follower of alarming climate projections, nastily pointing to the limitations of climate science. Often enough it has served vested interest. But this very terminus also acted like a vaccination that successively immunised climate science against over-confidence in modelling results and helped climate scientists to distil the solidly established from the poorly known. Consequently, key statements by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report are given in uncertainty-acknowledging formulations. For the future, ‘uncertainty’ will provide a conceptual cornerstone when humankind may ask science for the systemic validity of potential societal solutions – validity, or even optimality, that is robust under uncertainty.

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Authors and Affiliations

    Authors
    1. Hermann Held
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    Correspondence to Hermann Held .

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    Editors and Affiliations

    1. Inst. Philosophie, FU Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 30, Berlin, 14195, Berlin, Germany

      Gabriele Gramelsberger

    2. MPI für Meteorologie, Bundesstr. 55, Hamburg, 20146, Germany

      Johann Feichter

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    Held, H. (2011). Dealing with Uncertainty – From Climate Research to Integrated Assessment of Policy Options. In: Gramelsberger, G., Feichter, J. (eds) Climate Change and Policy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17700-2_4

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