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Author: Pulkkinen, Karoliina Ă— End date: 2022 Ă— Start date: 2022 Ă— Type: Article Ă— WGL Institute: PIK Ă—

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    How do value-judgements enter model-based assessments of climate sensitivity?
    (Dordrecht [u.a.] : Springer, 2022) Undorf, Sabine; Pulkkinen, Karoliina; Wikman-Svahn, Per; Bender, Frida A.-M.
    Philosophers argue that many choices in science are influenced by values or have value-implications, ranging from the preference for some research method’s qualities to ethical estimation of the consequences of error. Based on the argument that awareness of values in the scientific process is a necessary first step to both avoid bias and attune science best to the needs of society, an analysis of the role of values in the physical climate science production process is provided. Model-based assessment of climate sensitivity is taken as an illustrative example; climate sensitivity is useful here because of its key role in climate science and relevance for policy, by having been the subject of several assessments over the past decades including a recent shift in assessment method, and because it enables insights that apply to numerous other aspects of climate science. It is found that value-judgements are relevant at every step of the model-based assessment process, with a differentiated role of non-epistemic values across the steps, impacting the assessment in various ways. Scrutiny of current philosophical norms for value-management highlights the need for those norms to be re-worked for broader applicability to climate science. Recent development in climate science turning away from direct use of models for climate sensitivity assessment also gives the opportunity to start investigating the role of values in alternative assessment methods, highlighting similarities and differences in terms of the role of values that encourage further study.
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    Values in climate modelling: testing the practical applicability of the Moral Imagination ideal
    (Heidelberg : Springer, 2022) Pulkkinen, Karoliina; Undorf, Sabine; Bender, Frida A.-M.
    There is much debate on how social values should influence scientific research. However, the question of practical applicability of philosophers’ normative proposals has received less attention. Here, we test the attainability of Matthew J. Brown’s (2020) Moral Imagination ideal (MI ideal), which aims to help scientists to make warranted value-judgements through reflecting on goals, options, values, and stakeholders of research. Here, the tools of the MI ideal are applied to a climate modelling setting, where researchers are developing aerosol-cloud interaction (ACI) parametrizations in an Earth System Model with the broader goal of improving climate sensitivity estimation. After the identification of minor obstacles to applying the MI ideal, we propose two ways to increase its applicability. First, its tools should be accompanied with more concrete guidance for identifying how social values enter more technical decisions in scientific research. Second, since research projects can have multiple goals, examining the alignment between broader societal aims of research and more technical goals should be part of the tools of the MI ideal.