Rostøl, Hanna Træland

In his seminal work \textit{Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime} Bruno Latour develops an extensive framework for defining the relationship between humanity, nature, and whatever other entities that belong on this Earth. Latour's theory involves many unconvential components, and has thus also been the source of much debate. In this article, I will defend Latour's position against a set of criticisms put forward by Philippe Stamenkovic, explicitly dealing with his views on climate science. Responding to these criticisms, I will show that in fact, in line with Latour's conception, climate science and climate scientists gain their credibility and establish facts in virtue of their highly social and institutional networks, in which their data and models are developed and distributed. Furthermore, a separation of climate science from political and subjective values like Stamenkovic proposes is not only unachievable; values are also an undeniable part of the climate scientific practice. To achieve this, I will look at some concrete examples of the climate scientific practice, which in his discussion is something Stamenkovic seems to forget to do. In light of this, Stamenkovic's arguments fail to provide a compelling reason to reject Latour's theory

Networks of data and models: A defense of Latour's epistemology as applied to climate science

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Roskilde Universitet