Philosophy and Climate Science

摘要

Climate change is a ubiquitous topic these days. Temperature records and extreme weather events frequently make the news. And in the spring of 2019, millions of youth activists organized protests all over the world to demand more ambitious climate policy. Often, these calls for climate action were accompanied by the demand that policy-makers listen to the scientists. Indeed, climate science is a highly policy-relevant research area (which, of course, does not imply that 'listening to the scientists' is sufficient to justify policy decisions, see Evensen, 2019). If we, as a society, want to base our decisions about the climate on the best available scientific knowledge, we need to understand not only what scientists tell us, but also how they arrive at their conclusions and what reasons we have to trust them. This is where philosophy of climate science enters the stage, and this is why Eric Winsberg's book Philosophy and Climate Science is such a timely piece.