Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The climate change dilemma: big science, the globalizing of climate and the loss of the human scale

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Regional Environmental Change Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper explores a crucial dilemma behind the failure of climate politics: the “dehumanization” of the concept of climate, i.e., the emergence of a predominance of global perspectives, conceptions, and knowledge of climate, which do not translate into local knowledge, experience, and political action. On the one hand, twentieth-century climate science improved understanding of global climate change tremendously. On the other hand, it focused on reductionist quantification and modeling and emphasis on large spatial and temporal scales. This research direction produced large- and global-scale knowledge and can aptly be described as knowledge from above. Climatology in its original Humboldtian conception, in contrast, focused on detailed local information. The human dimension—the support of human affairs—was at the core of it. This understanding of climatology involved priority of local-scale knowledge and can be regarded a version of knowledge from below, which still predominated in the first half of the twentieth century. In my paper, I will explore the question how the understanding of climate was “dehumanized” by globalizing research approaches and scientific conceptions through the twentieth century. Scientific and political interests pushed a globalizing agenda and produced a conceptual and discursive detachment of climate knowledge from human scales. The paper argues that it is important to understand the historical and ideological foundation of knowledge from above and its epistemic and social authority, if we aim at re-establishing recognition of knowledge from below and the lost links between both types of knowledge.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. All translations by the author.

References

  • Aspray W (1990) John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes H (2015) This changes everything review—Naomi Klein’s documentary on climate change doesn’t. The Guardian, 17 September 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/17/this-changes-everything-review-naomi-kleins-documentary-on-climate-change-doesnt. Accessed 16 Aug 2016

  • Barnett J, Christoff P, Rangan H, Sutherland E (2009) An inconvenient truth, review symposium 2006. Geogr Res 47:204–211. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-5871.2008.00560.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bergeron T (1930) Richtlinien einer dynamischen Klimatologie. Meteorol Z 47:246–262

    Google Scholar 

  • Bjerknes V (1904) Das Problem der Wettervorhersage, betrachtet vom Standpunkte der Mechanik und der Physik. Meteorol Z 21:1–7

    Google Scholar 

  • Bretherton FP (1985) Earth system science and remote sensing. Proc IEEE 71:1118–1127

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Callendar GS (1938) The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on climate. Q J Royal Meteorol Soc 64:223–240

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carey M (2010) In the shadow of melting glaciers: climate change and Andean society. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Coen DR (2010) Climate and circulation in imperial Austria. J Mod Hist 82:839–875. https://doi.org/10.1086/656078

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coen DR (2013) The earthquake observers: Disaster science from Lisbon to Richter. Chicago University Press, Chicago

  • Coen DR (2011) Imperial climatographies from Tyrol to Turkestan. Osiris 26(2011):45–65. https://doi.org/10.1086/661264

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coen DR (2016) Big is a thing of the past: climate change and methodology in the history of ideas. J Hist Ideas 77:305–321. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2016.0019

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edwards PN (2006) Meteorology as infrastructural globalism. Osiris 21:229–250. https://doi.org/10.1086/507143

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edwards PN (2010) A vast machine: computer models, climate data, and the politics of global warming. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Fleming JR (1998) Historical perspectives on climate change. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Fleming JR (2007) The callendar effect: the life and work of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964), The scientist who established the carbon dioxide theory of climate change. American Meteorological Society, Boston

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fleming JR (2014) Climate, change, history. Environ Hist 20:577–586. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734014X14091313617442

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flohn H (1936) Neue Wege in der Klimatologie, II: Angewandte Klimatologie. Zeitschr f Erdk 4:337–345

    Google Scholar 

  • Flohn H (1950) Neuen Anschauungen über die allgemeine Zirkulation der Atmosphäre und ihre klimatische Bedeutung. Erdkunde 4:141–162

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flohn H (1954) Witterung und Klima in Mitteleuropa, 2nd edn. S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart

    Google Scholar 

  • Flohn H (1992) Meteorologie im Übergang, Erfahrungen und Erinnerungen (1931-1991), Bonner Met Abh 40. Dümmler, Bonn

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedman RM (1989) Appropriating the Weather, Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern Meteorology. Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca

    Google Scholar 

  • Gramelsberger G (2009) Conceiving meteorology as the exact science of the atmosphere: Vilhelm Bjerknes’s paper of 1904 as a milestone. Meteorol Z 18:669–673. https://doi.org/10.1127/0941-2948/2009/0415

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grove RH (1995) Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Grove RH (1997) Ecology, climate and empire: colonialism and global environmental history, 1400-1940. The White Horse Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Grove RH, Adamson G (2018) El Niño in world history. Palgrave MacMillan, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Guillemot H (2017) How to develop climate models? The “gamble” of improving climate model parameterizations. In: Heymann M, Gramelsberger G, Mahony M (eds) Cultures of prediction in atmospheric and climate science: epistemic and cultural shifts in computer-based modeling and simulation. Routledge, New York, pp 120–136

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamblin JD (2013) Arming mother nature: the birth of catastrophic environmentalism. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen JE, Johnson D, Lacis A, Lebedoff S, Lee P, Rind D, Russell G (1981) Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science 213(4511):957–966. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.213.4511.957

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Harper KC (2008) Weather by the numbers. The genesis of modern meteorology. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hellmann G (1897) Meteorologische Karten. A. Asher & Co., Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  • Heymann M (2009) Klimakonstruktionen. Von der klassischen Klimatologie zur Klimaforschung. NTM, J Hist Sci Tech Med 17:171–197. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00048-009-0336-3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heymann M (2010a) The evolution of climate ideas and knowledge. WIREs Clim Change 1:581–597. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heymann M (2010b) Understanding and misunderstanding computer simulation: the case of atmospheric and climate science—an introduction. Stud Hist Phil Mod Phys 41:193–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsb.2010.08.001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heymann M (2012) Constructing evidence and trust: how did climate scientists’ confidence in their models and simulations emerge? In: Hastrup K, Skrydstrup M (eds) The social life of climate change models: anticipating nature. Routledge, New York, pp 203–224

    Google Scholar 

  • Heymann M, Hundebøl NR (2017) From heuristic to predictive: making climate models political instruments. In: Heymann M, Gramelsberger G, Mahony M (eds) Cultures of prediction in atmospheric and climate science: epistemic and cultural shifts in computer-based modeling and simulation. Routledge, New York, pp 100–119

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Heymann M, Gramelsberger G, Mahony M (2017) Key characteristics of cultures of prediction. In: Heymann M, Gramelsberger G, Mahony M (eds) Cultures of prediction in atmospheric and climate science: epistemic and cultural shifts in computer-based modeling and simulation. Routledge, New York, pp 18–41

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Holm P, Goodsite ME, Cloetingh S, Agnoletti M, Moldan B, Lang DJ, Leemans R, Moeller JO, Buendí MP, Pohl W, Scholz RW, Sors A, Vanheusden B, Yusoff K, Zondervan R (2012) Collaboration between the natural, social and human sciences in global change research. Environ Sci Pol 28:25–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2012.11.010

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hulme M (2008) Geographical work at the boundaries of climate change. Trans Inst Brit Geogr NS 35:5–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2007.00289.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hulme M (2010) Problems with making and governing global kinds of knowledge. Glob Environ Chang 20:558–564. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.07.005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hulme M (2016) Weathered: cultures of climate. Sage Publications, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobson HK, Price M (1990) A framework for research on the human dimensions of global environmental change. ISSC/UNESCO, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Jasanoff S (2010) A new climate for society. Theory Cult Soc 27:233–253. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409361497

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jasanoff S, Martello ML (eds) (2004) Earthly politics: local and global in environmental governance. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Jouzel J, Masson-Delmotte V, Cattani O, Dreyfus G, Falourd S, Hoffmann G, Minster B, Nouet J, Barnola JM, Chappellaz J, Fischer H, Gallet JC, Johnsen S, Leuenberger M, Loulergue L, Luethi D, Oerter H, Parrenin F, Raisbeck G, Raynaud D, Schilt A, Schwander J, Selmo E, Souchez R, Spahni R, Stauffer B, Steffensen JP, Stenni B, Stocker TF, Tison JL, Werner M, Wolff EW (2007) Orbital and millennial Antarctic climate variability over the past 800,000 years. Science 317(5839):793–796. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1141038

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Khrgian AK (1970) Meteorology, a historical survey, 2nd edn. Keter Press, Jerusalem (Russian original 1959)

    Google Scholar 

  • Knobloch E (2007) Alexander von Humboldt—the explorer and the scientist. Centaurus 49:3–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0498.2007.00058.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Köppen W (1884) Die Wärmezonen der Erde, nach der Dauer der heissen, gemässigten und kalten Zeit und nach der Wirkung der Wärme auf die organische Welt betrachtet. Meteorol Z 1:215–226

    Google Scholar 

  • Köppen WP (1895) Die gegenwärtige Lage und die neueren Fortschritte der Klimatologie. Geogr Z 1:613–628

    Google Scholar 

  • Köppen WP (1936) Das geographische System der Klimate. In: Köppen W, Geiger R (eds) Handbuch der Klimatologie, vol Bd. I. Gebr Borntröger, Berlin, pp C1–C44

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehmann PN (2015) Whither climatology? Brückner’s climate oscillations, data debates, and dynamic climatology. Hist Metall 7:49–70

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehmann PN (2017) Losing the Field: Franz Thorbecke and (Post-)Colonial Climatology in Germany. Hist Metall 8:145–158

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis JM (1998) Clarifying the dynamics of the general circulation, Phillips’s 1956 experiment. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 79:39–60. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(1998)079<0039:CTDOTG>2.0.CO;2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone DN (1993) The geographical tradition: episodes in the history of a contested enterprise. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Livingstone DN (2002) Race, space and moral climatology: notes toward a genealogy. J Hist Geogr 28:159–180. https://doi.org/10.1006/jhge.2001.0397

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lynch P (2006) The emergence of numerical weather prediction, Richardson’s dream. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Mahony M (2016) For an empire of ‘all types of climate’: meteorology as an imperial science. J Hist Geogr 51:29–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2015.11.003

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mehta L, Srivastava S, Adam HN, Alankar, Bose S, Ghosh U, Kumar VV (2018) Climate change and uncertainty from “above” and “below”: perspectives from India. Reg Env Change. (under review)

  • Nebeker F (1995) Calculating the weather: meteorology in the 20th century. Academic Press, San Diego

    Google Scholar 

  • Palsson G, Szerszynski B, Sörlin S, Marks J, Avril B, Crumley C, Hackmann H, Holm P, Ingram J, Kirman A, Buendía MP, Weehuizen R (2012) Reconceptualizing the ‘Anthropos’ in the Anthropocene: integrating the social sciences and humanities in global environmental change research. Environ Sci Pol 28:3–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2012.11.004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Petterssen S (1950) Some aspects of the general circulation of the atmosphere. Cent Proc Roy Met Soc, p 120–155

  • Phillips N (1956) The general circulation of the atmosphere: a numerical Experiment. Quart J R Met Soc 82:123–164. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.49708235202

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Radcliffe SA, Watson EE, Simmons I, Fernández-Armesto F, Sluyter A (2010) Environmentalist thinking and/in geography. Progr Hum Geogr 34:98–116. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132509338749

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Randall D, Khairoutdinov M, Arakawa A, Grabowski W (2003) Breaking the cloud parameterization deadlock. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 84:1547–1564. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-84-11-1547

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rebetez M (1996) Public expectations as an element of human perception of climate change. Clim Chang 32:495–509. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00140358

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richardson LF (1922/2007) Weather prediction by numerical process. reprint of 1st ed 1922. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  • Rusnock AA (2002) Vital accounts: quantifying health and population in eighteenth-century England and France. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shackley S, Young P, Parkinson S, Wynne B (1998) Uncertainty, complexity and concepts of good science in climate change modeling: are GCMs the best tools? Clim Chang 38:159–205. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005310109968

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sörlin S (2012) Environmental humanities: why should biologists interested in the environment take the humanities seriously? BioScience 62:788–789. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2012.62.9.2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stern N (2006) The economics of climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Stern PC, Young OR, Druckman D (1992) Global environmental change: understanding the human dimensions. National Academy Press, Washington

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner BL, Kasperson RE, Meyer WB, Dow KM, Golding D, Kasperson JX, Mitchell RC, Ratick SJ (1990) Two types of global environmental change: definitional and spatial scale issues in their human dimensions. Glob Environ Chang 1:14–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • von Hann J (1908) Handbuch der Klimatologie, vol 1, 3rd edn. Engelhorn, Stuttgart

    Google Scholar 

  • von Humboldt A (1845) Kosmos. Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung, vol 1. Cottascher Verlag, Stuttgart

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Weart SR (2000) Interview with James Hansen, Center for History of Physics. American Institute of Physics, College Park, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/24309_1.html

  • Weart SR (2008) The discovery of global warming. Harvard University Press, Cambridge also at: https://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Weickmann L (1944) Witterungslehre zu Goethes Zeit und heute. Vortrag gehalten vor der Goethe-Gesellschaft im November 1942. Goethe-Gesellschaft, Leipzig

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilcock AA (1968) Köppen after fifty years. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 58(1):12–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • WMO (1979) Proceedings of the World Climate Conference: a conference of experts on climate and mankind, Geneva, 12–23 February 1979. WMO, Geneva

  • Worster D (1994) Nature’s economy: a history of ecological ideas. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Wynne B (2016) Reconciling top down and bottom up uncertainties in knowledge, with power and conflict of purpose or interest. Presentation at the Workshop Climate Change and Uncertainty from Above and Below, 27–28 January, New Delhi

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Science Studies, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 118, Building 1530, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Matthias Heymann

Authors
  1. Matthias Heymann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthias Heymann.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Heymann, M. The climate change dilemma: big science, the globalizing of climate and the loss of the human scale. Reg Environ Change 19, 1549–1560 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1373-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1373-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation