How earth science has become a social science

Many major questions in earth science research today are not matters of the behavior of physical systems alone, but of the interaction of physical and social systems. Information and assumptions about human behavior, human institutions and infrastructures, and human reactions and responses, as well as consideration of social and monetary costs, play a role in climate prediction, hydrological research, and earthquake risk assessment. The incorporation of social factors into “physical” models by scientists with little or no training in the humanities or social sciences creates ground for concern as to how well such factors are represented, and thus how reliable the resulting knowledge claims might be. Yet science studies scholars have scarcely noticed this shift, let alone analyzed it, despite its potentially profound epistemic – and potentially social – consequences

Potential emissions of CO2 and methane from proved reserves of fossil fuels: An alternative analysis

AbstractScientists have argued that no more than 275GtC (IPCC, 2013) of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels of 746GtC can be produced in this century if the world is to restrict anthropogenic climate change to ≤2°C. This has raised concerns about the risk of these reserves becoming “stranded assets” and creating a dangerous “carbon bubble” with serious impacts on global financial markets, leading in turn to discussions of appropriate investor and consumer actions. However, previous studies have not always clearly distinguished between reserves and resources, nor differentiated reserves held by investor-owned and state-owned companies with the capital, infrastructure, and capacity to develop them in the short term from those held by nation-states that may or may not have such capacity. This paper analyzes the potential emissions of CO2 and methane from the proved reserves as reported by the world's largest producers of oil, natural gas, and coal. We focus on the seventy companies and eight government-run industries that produced 63% of the world’s fossil fuels from 1750 to 2010 (Heede, 2014), and have the technological and financial capacity to develop these reserves. While any reserve analysis is subject to uncertainty, we demonstrate that production of these reported reserves will result in emissions of 440GtC of carbon dioxide, or 160% of the remaining 275GtC carbon budget. Of the 440GtC total, the 42 investor-owned oil, gas, and coal companies hold reserves with potential emissions of 44GtC (16% of the remaining carbon budget, hereafter RCB), whereas the 28 state-owned entities possess reserves of 210GtC (76% of the RCB). This analysis suggests that what may be needed to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI) with the climate system differs when one considers the state-owned entities vs. the investor-owned entities. For the former, there is a profound risk involved simply in the prospect of their extracting their proved reserves. For the latter, the risk arises not so much from their relatively small proved reserves, but from their on-going exploration and development of new fossil fuel resources. For preventing DAI overall, effective action must include the state-owned companies, the investor-owned companies, and governments. However, given that the majority of the world's reserves are coal resources owned by governments with little capacity to extract them in the near term, we suggest that the more immediate urgency lies with the private sector, and that investor and consumer pressure should focus on phasing out these companies’ on-going exploration programs

Severe Weather Event Attribution: Why values won’t go away

We start by reviewing the complicated situation in methods of scientific attribution of climate change to extreme weather events. We emphasize the social values involved in using both so-called ``storyline'' and ordinary probabilistic or ``risk-based'' methods, noting that one important virtue claimed by the storyline approach is that it features a reduction in false negative results, which has much social and ethical merit, according to its advocates. This merit is critiqued by the probabilistic, risk-based, opponents, who claim the high ground; the usual probabilistic approach is claimed to be more objective and more ``scientific'', under the grounds that it reduces false positive error. We examine this mostly-implicit debate about error, which apparently mirrors the old Jeffrey-Rudner debate. We also argue that there is an overlooked component to the role of values in science: that of second-order inductive risk, and that it makes the relative role of values in the two methods different from what it first appears to be. In fact, neither method helps us to escape social values, and be more scientifically ``objective'' in the sense of being removed or detached from human values and interests. The probabilistic approach does not succeed in doing so, contrary to the claims of its proponents. This is important to understand, because neither method is, fundamentally, a successful strategy for climate scientists to avoid making value judgments

The pause in global warming:Turning a routine fluctuation into a problem for science

Abstract There has been much recent published research about a putative “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming. We show that there are frequent fluctuations in the rate of warming around a longer-term warming trend, and that there is no evidence that identifies the recent period as unique or particularly unusual. In confirmation, we show that the notion of a pause in warming is considered to be misleading in a blind expert test. Nonetheless, the most recent fluctuation about the longer-term trend has been regarded by many as an explanatory challenge that climate science must resolve. This departs from long-standing practice, insofar as scientists have long recognized that the climate fluctuates, that linear increases in CO2 do not produce linear trends in global warming, and that 15-yr (or shorter) periods are not diagnostic of long-term trends. We suggest that the repetition of the “warming has paused” message by contrarians was adopted by the scientific community in its problem-solving and answer-seeking role and has led to undue focus on, and mislabeling of, a recent fluctuation. We present an alternative framing that could have avoided inadvertently reinforcing a misleading claim.</jats:p

Nadejście Wieku Półcienia

Historyk z przyszłości, żyjący w Drugiej Chińskiej Republice Ludowej przywołuje wydarzenia Okresu Półcienia (1988–2093), które doprowadziły do Wielkiego Upadku i Masowej Migracji (2073–2093). Zastanawia się on, dlaczego przedstawiciele tzw. Cywilizacji Zachodniej w XX oraz na początku XXI wieku zignorowali solidną wiedzę naukową na temat zmiany klimatycznej, dopuszczając do katastrofalnych zdarzeń, które przesądziły o ich upadku. Jak doszło do tego, że samooszukiwanie zakorzenione w ideologicznym zafiksowaniu na idei rzekomo „wolnego” rynku obezwładniło najpotężniejsze narody świata w obliczu tragedii destabilizacji klimatu?This article describes the coming of the Penumbral Period, and the fall of Western civilization. Historians view 1988 as the start of the Penumbral Period, when world scientific and political leaders created a new, hybrid scientific-governmental organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to communicate relevant science, and form the foundation for international governance to protect the planet and its inhabitants. But critics claimed that the scientific uncertainties were too great to justify the expense, and the inconvenience of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change denial spread widely by the end of the millennium. The year 2009 is viewed as the “last best chance” for the Western world to save itself, as leaders met in Copenhagen, Denmark, to try to agree on a binding, international law to prevent disruptive climate change. However, in 2023, the leaders still refused to accept that what lay behind the increasing destructiveness of disasters was the burning of fossil fuels

Severe Weather Event Attribution: Why values won’t go away

We start by reviewing the complicated situation in methods of scientific attribution of climate change to extreme weather events. We emphasize the social values involved in using both so-called ``storyline'' and ordinary probabilistic or ``risk-based'' methods, noting that one important virtue claimed by the storyline approach is that it features a reduction in false negative results, which has much social and ethical merit, according to its advocates. This merit is critiqued by the probabilistic, risk-based, opponents, who claim the high ground; the usual probabilistic approach is claimed to be more objective and more ``scientific'', under the grounds that it reduces false positive error. We examine this mostly-implicit debate about error, which apparently mirrors the old Jeffrey-Rudner debate. We also argue that there is an overlooked component to the role of values in science: that of second-order inductive risk, and that it makes the relative role of values in the two methods different from what it first appears to be. In fact, neither method helps us to escape social values, and be more scientifically ``objective'' in the sense of being removed or detached from human values and interests. The probabilistic approach does not succeed in doing so, contrary to the claims of its proponents. This is important to understand, because neither method is, fundamentally, a successful strategy for climate scientists to avoid making value judgments

On the definition and identifiability of the alleged “hiatus” in global warming

Recent public debate and the scientific literature have frequently cited a “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming. Yet, multiple sources of evidence show that climate change continues unabated, raising questions about the status of the “hiatus”. To examine whether the notion of a “hiatus” is justified by the available data, we first document that there are multiple definitions of the “hiatus” in the literature, with its presumed onset spanning a decade. For each of these definitions we compare the associated temperature trend against trends of equivalent length in the entire record of modern global warming. The analysis shows that the “hiatus” trends are encompassed within the overall distribution of observed trends. We next assess the magnitude and significance of all possible trends up to 25 years duration looking backwards from each year over the past 30 years. At every year during the past 30 years, the immediately preceding warming trend was always significant when 17 years (or more) were included in the calculation, alleged “hiatus” periods notwithstanding. If current definitions of the “pause” used in the literature are applied to the historical record, then the climate system “paused” for more than 1/3 of the period during which temperatures rose 0.6 K

Influence and seepage:An evidence-resistant minority can affect public opinion and scientific belief formation

Some well-established scientific findings may be rejected by vocal minorities because the evidence is in conflict with political views or economic interests. For example, the tobacco industry denied the medical consensus on the harms of smoking for decades, and the clear evidence about human-caused climate change is currently being rejected by many politicians and think tanks that oppose regulatory action. We present an agent-based model of the processes by which denial of climate change can occur, how opinions that run counter to the evidence can affect the scientific community, and how denial can alter the public discourse. The model involves an ensemble of Bayesian agents, representing the scientific community, that are presented with the emerging historical evidence of climate change and that also communicate the evidence to each other. Over time, the scientific community comes to agreement that the climate is changing. When a minority of agents is introduced that is resistant to the evidence, but that enter into the scientific discussion, the simulated scientific community still acquires firm knowledge but consensus formation is delayed. When both types of agents are communicating with the general public, the public remains ambivalent about the reality of climate change. The model captures essential aspects of the actual evolution of scientific and public opinion during the last 4 decades

Why fossil fuel producer subsidies matter

Around the globe, governments have pledged to remove support for coal, oil and gas, noting that such fossil fuel subsidies “undermine efforts to deal with climate change” by keeping greenhouse gas emissions higher than they otherwise would be. Jewell et al. used results of integrated assessment models to infer that eliminating subsidies would yield “limited emission reductions…except in energy-exporting regions”, and described the emission reduction benefits as “small”. This characterization is potentially misleading, and here we use a simple, sector-specific model to show how the emission reductions from producer subsidy reform could be more material than Jewell et al. suggest. Fossil fuel producer subsidies delay a low-carbon transition in ways both material and political, and they deserve greater attention and transparency in global modelling analyses, as well as in policy-making