Professor Mike Hulme (UEA): How do Climate Models Gain and Exercise Authority?
Tuesday, 28 September 201017:30 - 19:00
Location: Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, Room 3, Mill Lane, Cambridge
Abstract
How Climate Models Gain and Exercise Authority
Mike Hulme (Professor of Climate Change, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia)
Climate models have become
central to the unfolding story of climate change. Climate models underpin the knowledge claims and risk
assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, activity which powerfully
shapes political narratives of climate change. Climate models are essential for the detection and
attribution of anthropogenic climate change; and they offer access to the
future by simulating the climatic consequences of the development pathways we
have chosen and are choosing. Climate
models have therefore acquired significant authority in the contemporary world:
they exercise power and influence over the academy, over policy debates, over the
human imagination. The question I
wish to answer in this lecture is ‘How do climate models gain and exercise this
authority?’ There are two inter-related
dimensions to this question which need examination: the source of climate models’
epistemic authority and the source of their social authority. Epistemic authority comes from models using
mathematical expressions of physical theory to represent reality. And yet climate models remain significant
abstractions and simplifications of reality. Climate models’ social authority resides in the interactions
between scientific practices and political interests which endow models with
the status of trustworthy ‘witnesses’.
To assist in this investigation, a four-fold typology of climate model
reliability will be developed: coding precision; statistical accuracy;
methodological quality; and social acceptability.
