Dissertation Research: Culture, Science, and Uncertainty: Conflicting Positions on Climate Change

这个民族志论文研究将促进气候变化是如何构建和讨论作为一个问题的理解。 它将深入了解影响科学和社会辩论的相互竞争的科学方法、主张和社会行为，并有助于提供一个框架，帮助政策制定者解释不同的科学立场。 这项研究将分析关于人为气候变化的科学辩论的超科学层面。 其目的是将专家立场的差异，关于这种变化的可能性和严重性，纳入他们的社会，文化和政治背景。 核心问题是：关于气候变化的科学理论和讨论如何反映与文化、社会和专业背景、从属关系、价值观和信仰体系有关的倾向差异。 重点是气候建模者及其模型;研究对象包括参与辩论的地球科学相关领域的建模者和科学家。 研究方法包括标准访谈和档案研究，以及参与观察。 本文将分析科学理论和判断的不同假设和方法的科学不确定性。 气候变化和气候模拟的竞争立场将通过调查科学家的专业背景进行比较，并将其置于社会视角;他们对当前气候变化辩论的描述，其发展及其涉及的问题;以及他们解释自己对气候变化的立场的方式，以及他们与竞争立场和方法相比的科学方法。

This ethnographic dissertation research will advance understanding of how climate change is constructed and discussed as a problem. It will yield insight into the competing scientific approaches, claims and social behaviors influencing the scientific and social debates, and help to provide a framework to help policy-makers interpret differing scientific positions. The research will analyze the extrascientific dimensions of the scientific debate about human-caused climate change. Its aim is to place differences in expert positions regarding the likelihood and severity of this change into their social, cultural, and political contexts. The central question is: in what ways do scientific theories and discussions on climate change reflect differences in predispositions related to cultural, social, and professional backgrounds, affiliations, values, and belief-systems. The focus is on climate modelers and their models; research subjects include modelers and scientists in related fields in the geosciences involved in the debate. Research methods include standard interview and archival research, and participant observation. The dissertation will analyze scientific theories and judgments for their divergent assumptions and approaches to scientific uncertainty. Competing positions on climate change and climate modeling will be compared and placed into social perspective through inquiry into scientists' professional backgrounds; their characterizations of the current debate on climate change, its development, and the issues it involves; and the ways in which they explain their own positions on climate change and their scientific approach to studying it in contrast with competing positions and approaches.