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Philosophers have yet to provide a systematic analysis of the relationship between historical science and model-based science. In this paper I argue that prototypical model-based sciences exhibit features understood to be central to historical science. Philosophers of science have argued that historical scientists are distinctly concerned with inference to the best explanation, that explanations in historical science tend to increase in complexity over time, and that the explanations take the form of narratives. Using general circulation models in climate science as a reference, I illustrate how simulation models in model-based science share these features exhibited by historical science. That model based sciences share these features raises important philosophical questions about how we should understand prototypical types of scientific enquiry, including the relationship between experimental science, historical science, and model-based science. I conclude by exploring several options for how to accommodate the noted similarities within a more general taxonomy of the sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers of science have paid close attention to climate simulations as means of projecting the severity and effects of climate change, but have neglected the full diversity of methods in climate science. This paper shows the philosophical richness of another method in climate science: the practice of using paleoclimate analogues to inform our climate projections. First, I argue that the use of paleoclimate analogues can offer important insights to philosophers of the historical sciences. Rather than using the present as a guide to the past, as is common in the historical sciences, paleoclimate analogues involve using the past as a guide to the future. I thereby distinguish different methods in the historical sciences and argue that these distinctions bear on debates over whether the historical sciences can produce generalizations or predictions. Second, I suggest that paleoclimate analogues might actually be considered a type of climate model, and, as such, their use expands on common characterizations of models to include those that are full-scale, naturally occurring, and non-manipulable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatologists have recently introduced a distinction between projections as scenario-based model results on the one hand and predictions on the other hand. The interpretation and usage of both terms is, however, not univocal. It is stated that the ambiguities of the interpretations may cause problems in the communication of climate science within the scientific community and to the public realm. This paper suggests an account of scenarios as props in games of make-belive. With this account, we explain the difference between projections that should be make-believed and other model results that should be believed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present two ways in which climate modelers use general circulation models for exploratory purposes. The complexity of Earth's climate system makes it difficult to predict precisely how lower-order climate dynamics will interact over time to drive higher-order dynamics. The same issues arise for complex models built to simulate climate behavior like the Community Earth Systems Model (CESM). I argue that as a result of system complexity, climate modelers use general circulation models to perform model dynamic exploration (MDE) and climate dynamic exploration (CDE). MDE and CDE help climate modelers to better understand the dynamic structure of the general circulation model system and the actual climate system, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the Art Gallery, artists were invited to be inspired by the convention center's public art collection, by the broader concept of public art today, through the lens of new media that creates learning through ingenuity and exploration. Examines that artists were encouraged to submit fusions of art and technology that contemplate what role public art projects and artists play in the shifting ecological, political, social and global-relations climates and reports that video installation explores ecological preservation and connectedness through the imperiled freshwater species in the Appalachian region.

This paper analyzes the physical, spiritual and cultural mechanisms of the national ventilation techniques in Chinese traditional microenvironment design and points out that traditional ventilation techniques not only include the physical technical means, but also are adept in comprehensively mobilizing other human sensory factors in addition to the sense of touch to create a place that is wholesome, comfortable and spiritually pleasing, thereby reaching a very high spiritual state in the end. This construction outlook uses "heaven and earth as buildings" and "houses as clothes" and the result derived from an environment outlook that features equality between man and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the mapping of disaster in digital prediction models. Concentrating on the imminent disaster of climate change, the author asks how global digital models can be expanded to incorporate a wild nature and wild data. This theme is considered through an examination of the 'nature' of disaster and its reportage, GISs and their extension into physical space, the language of climate change, and the role of digital machines in these experiments with climate. The author concludes with an examination of expanded forms of mapping to suggest possible reconfigurations of the terms of the disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest plantations or so-called carbon sinks have played a critical role in the climate change negotiations and constitute a central element in the scheme to limit atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations set out by the Kyoto Protocol. This paper examines dominant discursive framings of forest plantation projects in the climate regime. A central proposition is that these projects represent a microcosm of competing and overlapping discourses that are mirrored in debates of global environmental governance. While the win-win discourse of ecological modernization has legitimized the inclusion of sink projects in the Kyoto Protocol, a green governmentality discourse has provided the scientific rationale necessary to turn tropical tree-plantation projects operational on the emerging carbon market. A critical civic environmentalism discourse has contested forest sink projects depicting them as unjust and environmentally unsound strategies to mitigate climate change. The article examines the articulation and institutionalization of these discourses in the climate negotiation process as well as the wider implications for environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inserted in the field of art in dialogue with climate changes research and, particularly, the social impacts in contemporary society, this paper presents the contribution of performative researchers in this area of discussion. It also presents the actions and artistic intervention realized by Sensitive Territories project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Leslie Sharpe's sound and sculpture installation project "Beak Disorder," exhibited at Manizales, Columbia for Balance-Unbalance 2016. The work addresses how anthropogenic climate change may be affecting birds in the Pacific Northwest regions of Canada and the United States. "Beak Disorder" is a project that references an unexplained condition documented in birds in the Northwest of Canada and Alaska called "avian keratin disorder" where the bird's beak becomes distorted and elongated. The work includes a series of 3D printed distorted beaks as well as a sound piece and web component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) play a major role in the science and policy of climate change. Similarly to other widely used computational tools for addressing socially relevant problems, IAMs need to account for the key uncertainties characterizing processes and socio-economic responses. In the case of climate change, these are particularly complex given the very long-term nature of climate and the deep uncertainty characterizing technological and human systems. Here we draw from philosophical discussion of mathematical modeling of social problems and review the role of uncertainty in climate-economic modeling. In agreement with the literature, we highlight the crucial role of epistemic uncertainty in IAMs. We posit that the normative components of models, more than the physical and socio-techno-economic ones, are the most fraught by uncertainty and yet the least understood. We suggest a research agenda to explore uncertainties of evaluation frameworks, transcending the current implicit normativity of IAMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects the views Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on climate science and how humans were capable of disrupting planetary systems. Topics include significance of scientific research and its hard-won conclusions, with dismal findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and replace meticulous descriptions of global warming with captivating interpretations of global warming.

There is a long and continuing debate in the literature on corporate political power about whether businesses that advocate public-interest regulation do so for strategic political reasons or because they anticipate economic gains. Previous research on Big Oil's strategies in climate politics has largely converged on the first view, arguing that global majors feign support for moderate carbon pricing largely to prevent the adoption of more drastic and costly policies. In contrast, this article argues that Big Oil's growing stake in natural gas expansion is its economic motive for supporting favorably designed carbon pricing. The article finds that policy, technology, and energy market changes have paved the way for a shift toward natural gas and that a moderate carbon price, by triggering coal-to-gas switching, supports the realization of a gray transition in which "Big Gas" can expand its market share at the expense of coal and become a major bridge fuel next to renewables. Our findings underscore the importance of studying the competitive rivalry that underpins evolving industry demands for climate policy and regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, a growing body of academic literature has reflected on how and under which conditions experiments in global climate governance lead to broader changes in rules, norms, and practices helping to meet the challenge of climate change. Drawing on the assumptions of the scholarship on experimentalist governance architectures, this article analyzes the effectiveness of the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) as a comprehensive governance framework that enables the development and coordination of local policies for sustainable energy and climate through a range of joint instruments for recursive goal setting, monitoring, and benchmarking. Our findings illustrate the CoM's significant potential in terms of both general political uptake and policy output, which could make of this program, if appropriately fine-tuned, a successful governance experiment contributing to building a more effective global climate regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts related to climate change including "Introduction: The Comparative Politics of Climate Change," by Kathryn Harrison and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom, "The Road not Taken: Climate Change Policy in Canada and the United States," by Kathryn Harrison, and "Is Australia Faking it? The Kyoto Protocol and the Greenhouse Policy Change," by Kate Crowley.

The equilibrium between a healthy environment, the energy our society needs to maintain or improve this lifestyle, and the world's interconnected economies, could pass more quickly than expected from the current complex balance to an entirely new reality where human beings would need to be more creative than ever before to survive. The frequency and severity that certain weather and climate-related events are having around us is increasing, and the ability of human beings to modify our adjacent surroundings has turned into a power capable of altering the planet. Do the media arts have a role in all this? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on policy transfer has paid little attention to how policy-makers strategically employ learning from abroad as a resource to advance their domestic policy preferences and successfully implement a policy program. Addressing this research gap, we further develop the concept of "political learning," distinguishing three dimensions: "learning as an argumentative resource," "selective learning," and "learning about policy design." Empirically, we illustrate the relevance of political learning from abroad for the case of developing an emissions trading system in Australia. In particular, we show how government policy-makers in Australia used political learning from abroad to promote emissions trading in the context of a polarized domestic climate of adversarial ideas and competing interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobilizing climate finance for developing countries is crucial for achieving a fair and effective global climate regime. To date, developed countries retain wide discretion over their national contributions. We explore how different degrees of international coordination may influence the fairness of the global financing effort, and we present quantitative scenarios, for both the metrics used to distribute the collective effort among countries contributing funding, and the number of contributing countries. We find that an intermediate degree of coordination--combining nationally determined financing pledges with a robust international review mechanism--may reduce distortions in relative efforts as well as shortfalls in overall funding, while reflecting reasonable differences over what constitutes a fair share. A broader group of contributors may do little to improve adequacy or equity unless it can converge on credible measures of responsibility and capacity. Our analysis highlights the importance of building common understandings about effort sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces Pierre Bourdieu's notions of field, interest, and symbolic power into the study of global environmental politics, for the purpose of positioning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) within the international field of climate politics. Revisiting historical accounts of the IPCC's establishment, the article explores the IPCC's role in generating international interest in climate change and the field of forces and struggles that has emerged around the organization and its assessment activities as a result. The IPCC continues to hold a central position within the climate field because of its symbolic power to construct the meaning of climate change. This makes the organization, its assessment activities, and the knowledge it produces central objects of struggle within the climate field, and the forces that this contestation produces structure all aspects of the IPCC and its work. The article identifies how developing-country attitudes, climate skepticism, and bandwagoning impact the IPCC's place in climate politics and its assessments of the climate problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirically, a higher frequency of lightning strikes is associated with slower growth in labor productivity across the 48 contiguous U.S. states after 1990; before 1990, there is no correlation between growth and lightning. Other climate variables (e.g., temperature, rainfall, and tornadoes) do not conform to this pattern. A viable explanation is that lightning influences IT diffusion. By causing voltage spikes and dips, a higher frequency of ground strikes leads to damaged digital equipment and thus higher IT user costs. Accordingly, the flash density (strikes per square kilometer per year) should adversely affect the speed of IT diffusion. We find that lightning indeed seems to have slowed IT diffusion, conditional on standard controls. Hence, an increasing macroeconomic sensitivity to lightning may be due to the increasing importance of digital technologies for the growth process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the signs of civic, private, local and state public sector activities for climate protection in the U.S. These activities aimed at restricting greenhouse gas emissions as well as assess whether they amount to a social movement for climate protection. It is suggested that momentum is building federal inaction on mandatory emission reductions. There is a renowned increase in opposition activity over several years. However, it is unclear whether the movement reached the take off point of the American society's closeness to the tipping point. This could be attributed to the fact that the movement has not yet found a bridging frame in bringing sub-movements together. The Movement Action Plan (MAP) model is a useful tool in locating where a movement is in its evolution.

The article focuses on the significance of local administrative level in climate policy governance in Norway. It emphasizes on the local climate planning process devoted to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Climate change is considered to be global and local since their causes and the effects of climate change have global and local dimension. Study shows that the municipalities conducted the planning process in the country have come up with a strong output. The local administrative level was found to have strong influence on climate policy-making. It is expected that the local action will increase. It is also relevant to involve local government to legitimize and improve the efficiency of national climate policy initiatives.

The article focuses on the multilevel governance system of global climate change according to the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). CEC was evaluated as a potential site and limitations of regional climate governance in North America. Regional governance occurs between the national and local level, with transnational regions linking subregions across the national boundaries. The absence of common interests on climate change is considered to be a relevant obstacle in developing a coordinated response. The possibility of enhancing U.S. concern for climate change and reengaging the U.S. in multilateral climate governance is one of CEC's potential advantage.

Arild Underdal's "law of the least ambitious program" is properly pessimistic about the prospects for cooperation in the international system where nations must give their consent to be bound by meaningful commitments. Those pessimistic expectations are now being revealed in the collective efforts to address the problem of climate change, notably through the Kyoto Protocol. Overcoming Underdal's law requires narrowing the numbers of countries that participate in key climate agreements and tailoring membership so that just the most important countries are engaged and there are strong incentives to avoid defection. At the same time, the effectiveness of cooperative efforts would gain from fuller use of nonbinding instruments, review procedures and high level conferences—-as were put to effective use in the North Sea cooperation, for example— in addition to legally binding international law through instruments such as the Kyoto Protocol. Sadly, most of the conventional wisdom runs the opposite direction, favoring binding treaties among large numbers of countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting learning among participants is a key function commonly attributed to international regimes. Such learning, however, cannot always be guaranteed, and regimes may sometimes descend into ossification. In contrast to a learning regime, an ossifying regime is one that is unable to process new information, facilitate the free-flow of new ideas, or foster understanding and trust among negotiators. Evidence from the recent history of the climate change regime suggests it is suffering from ossification. Dragging forces contributing to this include the institutionalization of the ?north/south divide,? complexity of the process, fragile conditions for effective communication, onerous decision-making rules, activities of obstructionists, absence of the US, and weak implementation. Pockets of learning on climate change are, however, still active, especially outside the regime itself. To reinvigorate the negotiations, meaningful progress is needed on domestic and regional implementation, including ensuring the success of the Protocol?s market mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews and examines the reasons for the persistence of the Kyoto Protocol. Impact of the Kyoto Protocol on the climate that outweighs the economic costs of implementation; Launch of the European Climate Change Program in 2000; Development of a pro-climate alliance across all decision-making levels of the European Union system.

Compares the different climate policy strategies of oil companies Shell Group and Exxon Mobil. Analysis of analytical models of corporate strategy; Amount of crude oil produced by both companies; Details on the environmental reputation of the companies; Discussion of societal demands for action on climate change.

We examine the structure of preferences for mitigating impacts of global climate change that will not occur during the lifetimes of most who are alive today. Because no market data exist for such distant markets, a statedpreference approach is used. The analysis is based on the random-parameters logit model, and the results indicate substantial heterogeneity in respondent preferences, that mean willingness to pay is a significant and increasing function of the scope of the impact, and, provocatively, that respondents have the same preferences over the two very different time horizons that we consider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emissions of carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels, which may contribute to long-term climate change, are projected through 2050 using reduced-form models estimated with national-level panel data for the period of 1950-1990. Using the same set of income and population growth assumptions as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we find that the IPCC's widely used emissions growth projections exhibit significant and substantial departures from the implications of historical experience. Our model employs a flexible form for income effects, along with fixed time and country effects, and we handle forecast uncertainty explicitly. We find clear evidence of an "inverse U" relation with a within-sample peak between carbon dioxide emissions (and energy use) per capita and per-capita income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses agricultural land price differentials and their relationship to potentially modifiable aspects of the climate. Economists and social scientists are facing some interesting but difficult problems due to the development of physical technology for modifying weather. In view of the rapid development of the physical capability for modifying weather, and the evidence of substantial inadvertent weather modification, attempts should be made to estimate empirically some of the economic and social effects of such activities. It is in this light that the study of the relationship between land prices and potentially modifiable aspects of weather is undertaken. Economic rent for agricultural land is by definition a surrogate for a number of economic and noneconomic factors. Empirical attempts at separating or partitioning this residual have been, in general, moderately successful. Isolation of the portion of land rent or land price which is related to potentially modifiable climatic variables may be of importance in suggesting the nature of the impact of such activity on the agricultural sector and thereby helpful in guiding policymakers to more enlightened decisions.

Climate Bubbles was a playful, participatory mass observation project on local climate. Bubble blowing games were devised to enable people across the city of Manchester to test air flow circulation and, by sharing the results online, enabled the Met Office to create a snapshot of the effect the Urban Heat Island has on wind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]