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Climate Change as Risk?

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Handbook of Risk Theory

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the types of uncertainties involved in climate modeling. It is shown that as regards climate change, unquantified uncertainties can neither be ignored in decision making nor be reduced to quantified ones by assigning subjective probabilities. This poses central problems as therefore the well-known elementary as well as probabilistic decision approaches are not applicable. While a maximized-utility approach has to presuppose probability estimates that are not at hand for climate predictions, the precautionary principle is not capable of adequately implementing questions of fairness between different nations or generations. Thus an adequate response to global warming must deal with an intricate interplay between epistemic and ethical considerations. The contribution argues that the epistemic problems involved in modeling the climate system are generic for modeling complex systems. Possible paths for future research to circumvene these problems are adumbrated.

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Acknowledgments

I am particularly grateful to my colleagues Steve Clarke, Peter Taylor, Nick Shackel, and Martin Peterson for constructive input on the issues discussed in this chapter and comments on (earlier versions of) this manuscript. I thank Kai Hennes for help in finalizing the manuscript. Parts of this chapter were published in Hillerbrand (2010, 2009).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Technology Center & Institute for Philosophy, RWTH Aachen University, Theaterplatz 14, D-52062, Aachen, Germany

    Prof. Dr. Dr. Rafaela Hillerbrand

Authors
  1. Prof. Dr. Dr. Rafaela Hillerbrand
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Correspondence to Rafaela Hillerbrand .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Sabine Roeser

  2. Philosophy Department, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Sabine Roeser

  3. Human Technology Center, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Rafaela Hillerbrand

  4. Department of Plant Physiology and Forest Genetics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

    Per Sandin

  5. Section for Philosophy and Ethics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Martin Peterson

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Hillerbrand, R. (2012). Climate Change as Risk?. In: Roeser, S., Hillerbrand, R., Sandin, P., Peterson, M. (eds) Handbook of Risk Theory. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1432-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1433-5

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