Abstract
The paper addresses the evaluation of climate models and gives an overview of epistemic uncertainties in climate modeling; the uncertainties concern the data situation as well as the causal behavior of the climate system. In order to achieve reasonable results nonetheless, multimodel ensemble studies are employed in which diverse models simulate the future climate under different emission scenarios. The models jointly deliver a robust range of climate prognoses due to a broad plurality of theories, techniques, and methods in climate research; the range reliably indicates the future development of the global climate. Nevertheless, the uncertainties are widely used by skeptics to challenge the IPCC’s prognoses. Such skeptical allegations can well be distinguished from points of fruitful epistemological criticism: in spite of the enduring range of prognoses, the epistemic uncertainties should not play a role in finding agreements on climate change mitigation.
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Notes
In paleoclimatological modeling where climate proxies play a decisive role the situation is similar. Such paleo data are obtained from tree rings and ice cores. Here, reconstruction is independent of models as raw data are extracted from samples, analyzed by chemical and physical procedures and calibrated on the basis of present measurements.
The behavior of aerosols, for example, is successfully explored in laboratory experiments in which different layers of the Earth’s atmosphere can be artificially generated (cf. KIT 2012).
I am very grateful to Elisabeth Lloyd for explaining this to me in detail.
Lloyd names this “complex empiricism”; in contrast, “direct empiricists” assume in a Popperian sense that any raw data gotten from measurements directly represent the “real world” and can be, thus, used in the modeling process. Using specific series of selected raw data in fact allowed a group of skeptics to deny the well-confirmed outcomes of the current climate models built by Santer and colleagues. For more details see Lloyd (2012).
An improvement of data regarding the local concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could be achieved only by enhanced control measurements. This, of course, requires investments, which would be worthwhile, though, not least in terms of emission policy as “the investment would not be great compared to the economic cost of failed regulation” (Nisbet and Weiss 2010, 1242).
Cf. IPCC organization on http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.shtml#.UIvjr2c9anA. Accessed 3 December 2012.
Lloyd (ibid.) further suggests to rather focus on “the models’ fundamental strengths” by exploring “the relationships between evidence and climate models”. Global climate models then “appear to be much better supported than previously considered”. This also concerns the models’ outcomes that appear much better supported, too, when the theoretical, methodological, and social plurality that is cultivated in climate research is taken into account.
Sarewitz (2004, in particular on 392 and in n30) also represents the debate between climate researchers and climate skeptics as if it was a debate between ecologists and environmentalists on the one side and economists on the other. While it is true that there is a high percentage of economists among the skeptics, the climate researchers’ community is much more heterogeneously structured and includes physicists and geologists, meteorologists and oceanographists. Most scientists who work in these research fields are to a large extent not politically motivated but they do in fact basic research. And this makes the controversy about global warming even stranger because politically motivated skeptics impute scientists to be politically motivated just because the outcomes of their research have political consequences.
Due to this view, Pielke (2009) deplores for example realclimate.org, a weblog that is run by a group of renowned international climate scientists as e.g. Stefan Rahmstorf (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) and Michael Mann (Penn State University). Pielke criticizes that here the debate on climate change which in his view is exclusively a political debate is treated as if it were a scientific one. The scientists, he says, act as stealth issue advocates because they take a political stand without making this explicit; instead, they claim that the blog solely focuses on scientific issues and doesn’t aim to support any political or economic position. However, Pielke objects, the scientists do in fact support a specific position, namely by claiming scientific consensus: according to Pielke this blog’s only purpose is to attack climate skeptics such as George Will, Senator James Inhofe, Michael Crichton, McIntyre and McKitrick, Fox News, and Myron Ebell. I do not consider Pielke’s argumentation convincing as it seems not plausible that there is no scientific consensus in the scientific community. Obviously, there is scientific consensus on many basic climate issues and in particular on anthropogenic global warming and its impacts (sea level rise, glacier melting, local floodings and droughts), and the weblog’s focus is indeed on these facts exclusively, and even discusses scientific uncertainties in the recent state of research. This of course affects political interests as the issues in discussion unavoidably concern political interests, namely those represented by people or institutions such as George Will, Senator James Inhofe, Michael Crichton, McIntyre and McKitrick, Fox News, and Myron Ebell. However, this doesn’t make the issues as such political.
Sarewitz gave special mention to Bjørn Lomborg as a skeptic with a scientific background, which he hasn't, as has been made plain particularly by Fog (2012).
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Gregor Betz, Christian Dieckhoff, Stefan Gärtner, Philip Kitcher, Maria Kronfeldner, Bertolt Lampe, Rebecca Mertens, and Gerhard Sardemann for their valuable comments. Additional thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for this journal who offered thorough and supportive criticism, and to those who gave feedback when an early version of this paper was presented at the Models and Simulations 5 conference in Helsinki and at the Philosophy Department of Bielefeld University. And very special thanks go to Elisabeth Lloyd who helped me to refine the final version when I had got lost at some crucial points.
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Leuschner, A. Uncertainties, Plurality, and Robustness in Climate Research and Modeling: On the Reliability of Climate Prognoses. J Gen Philos Sci 46, 367–381 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-015-9304-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-015-9304-x