Title:
The Only Earth We Have: Counterfactual Reasoning and Climate Understanding
Abstract:
Addressing climate change necessitates an unprecedented level of scientific, public, and policy engagement and collaboration. There are reasons to think that the success of these efforts hinges on understanding of this phenomenon by all involved. But what does it take for all parties with a vested interest or role in the climate change dialogue to achieve understanding of climate change? My aim in this talk is to argue that understanding climate change, for scientists, policymakers, and the public alike, depends on a shared capacity: reasoning about non-actual states of the climate system (forcing-alternative, equilibrium-alternative, or decision-alternative) in order to secure a grip on the actual system that direct observation alone cannot provide. As Balaji et al. (2022, p. 7) put it, Earth “poses a key problem, in that there is only one instance of it, and one temporal trajectory of its state, that we can observe.” Counterfactual reasoning is what allows scientists, policymakers, and the public to work around this constraint, each in their own way.
Part of LMU Sustainability Week (https://www.lmu.de/en/about-lmu/lmugreen/get-involved/lmu-sustainability-week/)