DOCSLIB.ORG

Review Volume 27 (1) European Association for the Study of Science and Technology March 2008

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Review Volume 27 (1) European Association for the Study of Science and Technology March 2008 EASST Review Volume 27 (1) European Association for the Study of Science and Technology March 2008 EASST Review Volume 27 (2008) Number 1 Editor: Ann Rudinow Saetnan Norwegian Institute for Studies in Research of Deputy Editor: Richard Rogers Higher Education Tel:(+47) 73 59 17 86 (Saetnan) Science Museum, London (+31) 20 525 3352 (Rogers) University of Bielefeld email:[email protected] University of Edinburgh [email protected] University of Gothenburg Membership queries: University of Maastricht [email protected] University of Manchester EASST Review on the Web: University of Surrey http://www.easst.net University of Sussex University of York Contributing Editors: VTT Group for Technology Studies, Finland Andrew Jamison (University of Aalborg) Wellcome Trust Harald Rohracher (Graz) Paul Wouters (Virtual Knowledge Studio, EASST Review (ISSN 1384-5160) is published Royal Academy of Sciences, Netherlands) quarterly, in March, June, September and December. The Association's journal was called the Council of the European Association for the EASST Newsletter through 1994. Study of Science and Technology: Marc Audetat (University of Lausanne) Subscription: Individual membership fee: Conor Douglas, student member (University EUR 35 annual. Reduced two- and three-year of York) membership available. Students and citizens of East Christine Hine, President (University of European countries pay reduced rates on applicaton Surrey) ([email protected]) EUR 20. Library rate is EUR 35. Reiner Grundmann (Aston University) Please note that subscriptions can also be Erika Mattila (London School of Economics made through the EASST website. and Political Science) Jessica Mesman (University of Maastricht) Member benefits: Travel stipends for Ph.D. Tiago Moreira (Durham University) students, young scholars and researchers from Fred Steward (Brunel University) developing countries are available. Ragna Zeiss (Free University, Amsterdam) Reduced registration rates for EASST events Michael Lynch (President of the Society for apply. Social Studies of Science, ex-officio) EASST's Past Presidents: EASST's Institutional Members: Sally Wyatt, 2000-2004; Rob Hagendijk, Academy of Finland 1997-2000; Aant Elzinga, 1991-1997; Stuart Blume, CSISP/Sociology Dept, Goldsmiths College 1987-1991; John Ziman, 1983-1986;Peter Weingart, Ecole des Mines, Paris 1982. Europäische Akademie, Bad Neuenahr- Ahrweiler EASST Review's Past Editors: Institute for Policy and Practice, University Chunglin Kwa, 1991 – 2006; Arie Rip, 1982- of Newcastle 1991; Georg Kamphausen, 1982. Inter-University Research Center for Technology,Work and Culture, Graz cover illustration: “Monodisperse particles” James Martin Institute for Science and aka “Ugelstad spheres”. Source: NTNU/Dept. of Civilization, University of Oxford Chemical Engineering Linköping University 2 EASST Review Volume 27 (2008) Number 1 Maintaining Scientific Communities Editorial by Ann R. Sætnan EASST maintains the Review as a means of keep up with as (so far) sole moderator. One maintaining EASST as an academic community consequence of this decision is that there will be between conferences. But there are limits to how some time lag between signing up for forum well a modest journal can do that job. I can’t membership and being confirmed as a member and complain that the journal is hampered in this by a allowed to post on the forum. When you sign up, non-responsive readership. We get just enough and email is automatically sent to me. I check the contributions to fill the issues we’re scheduled to membership list and then confirm your forum produce. And just the types of contributions we’re membership. Until I have clicked the confirm intended to accommodate – book reviews, academic button, you will be able to read the forum but not event reviews, commentary about trends in the field, post there. presentations of recent dissertations, and As moderator, it will also be my duty to keep occasionally a research article. So far, I have hardly the forums on topic, tidily searchable, and civil. I had to make any efforts to recruit these pieces. No, request that, unlike most forums where members we don’t get many responses directed back through protect their anonymity behind an alias, members the Review. After all, with three or four issues a appear here as they do at annual meetings, wearing year, this is hardly the kind of fast-paced their full name on their tag. You may, however, communications medium that can maintain a tennis keep your email address hidden. This helps protect match-paced discussion. But I don’t doubt that the against spreading your address to spammers, while Review gets read, and hopefully authors who are forum members can still send you personal looking for responses from the readers hear back messages via the forum web site without using your from them directly. In other words, the Review is email address. I also request that you maintain a probably doing its job as well as a quarterly journal civil tone. The friendliness of EASST conferences is can be expected to do. The question then is, “Do we one of our most appealing features as a community. have to remain merely a quarterly journal?” Sure, we study fascinating topics. But new members I’d like to maintain the Review as a quarterly stay with us in preference to other equally journal. For now, I’d also like it to remain a journal fascinating conferences because we are so comprised of types of communications less likely to welcoming and have such constructive discussions, find a welcome home in journals focused on lively and critical but not offensive or mean- research articles. But why not, at the same time, add minded. So let’s keep it that way. faster-paced discussions by adding some Internet Eventually, spammers and hecklers will functionality? probably find their way onto the forum. It is my job After months of thought, preparation, and de- as moderator to delete such posts. Other on-line bugging – yet still begging your patience with any forums I know have an “alert button” on every post. bugs yet to be discovered – I am pleased to If you find a post offensive (“spam” or “flaming” or announce the official opening of EASST Review otherwise inappropriate), you click on the button Forums. Paid up EASST members are welcome to and a message is sent to the moderators. sign on and join in at: Unfortunately, the software we’re using as of now http://www1.svt.ntnu.no/forum/easst/ (free and open source software, by the way) does Many of you will be familiar with discussion not have an alarm button feature. Instead, you will forums on other topics, but this one will have a few have to email me. Let’s hope that is not often atypical characteristics. Others may not have necessary. I will also try to check the forums daily, participated in on-line forums before. So allow me skimming through new posts as part of that visit. to point out some of our new forums’ features: EASST Review Forums will consist of two EASST Review Forums will be limited to main sections. The first section will have threads EASST members, at least for now. Others may read, corresponding to the substantive pieces in EASST but only EASST members may post. Consider Review, issue by issue and article by article. Each active forum access a privilege of membership. such thread will have a “taster” paragraph from the With more tahn 600 members, we should published item and a URL link to the full text on the nevertheless be able to achieve a lively level of EASST web site. Similarly, readers of EASST discussions, at least as lively as I will be able to Review on line on the EASST web site will be able EASST Review Volume 27 (2008) Number 1 3 to click their way to the corresponding discussion open up EASST Virtual Café as a place for just such area at the forums. Come on over, explore, and add communications? As long as posts stay civil, your some comments. friendly moderator will leave them undisturbed … The second section is open for members to and maybe join in. start whatever threads they wish. Want to recruit In time, perhaps EASST Review Forums may reviewers for your latest book? Or want to announce develop into an on-line, open review journal. But yourself as a willing book reviewer? I’ve started a let’s just take it one step at a time. Going fully thread for book and reviewer “match-making”. reviewed would take a lot more planning and Want to develop a session topic for an upcoming organizing, including negotiations with the fields’ meeting? You can send out a mass-emailed call for existing journals to find ways of co-existing or even papers; you can contact colleagues you already collaborating. And it would take more than one know; and/or, you can start a thread on EASST unpaid, overworked, volunteer moderator. So for Review Forums. Or how about a student section now, let’s just see if EASST Review Forums can where members can raise issues about students’ successfully supplement the existing Review format working conditions and form cross-national student as our virtual meeting between meetings. alliances? Maybe we could start a Game Room Want to discuss the forum plans? Go to: thread and put the cover illustration guessing game http://www1.svt.ntnu.no/forum/easst/viewtopic.php in there (This issue I’ve revealed the name of the ?t=34 object on last issue’s cover, but a challenge remains: Meanwhile … expect another issue of EASST What can “monodisperse particles” be used for?). Review before Summer. We should be able to “Thread drifts” that wander off topic and become indlude glimpses of the August meeting program, simply sociable? They’re welcome too.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Nico Stehr Address
    CURRICULUM VITAE PERSONAL DATA Name: Nico Stehr Address: Karl Mannheim Professor for Cultural Studies Zeppelin University Am Seemooser Horn 20 D-88045 Friedrichshafen I Lake Constance Germany Telephone office (+) 49 7541 6009-1341 Fax Office (+) 49 7541 6009-1199 Tel priv. 49-7522-3773 Fax priv. 49-7522-914822 E-mail: [email protected] EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND 1962 Abitur: Pestalozzischule II, Bremerhaven, Germany 1962-1967 Universität zu Köln: Economics, Sociology, Law, Social Policy, Fiscal Theory and Policy 1967 Diplom-Volkswirt (sozialwissenschaftlicher Richtung) Universität zu Köln (Gesamtnote: Sehr gut) 1967 University of Oregon, USA: Graduate Study in Sociology 1970 Ph.D. (Sociology): University of Oregon CURRENT POSITION Karl Mannheim Professor for Cultural Studies, Zeppelin University, Germany (and) Fellow, Center for Advanced Cultural Studies, Essen, Germany TEACHING EXPERIENCE 2002-2003 Paul F. Lazarsfeld Professor, Human- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Wien, Austria 2001 Alcatel Professor, TH Darmstadt, Germany 2 1977-2000 Visiting Professorships: Universität Wien, Universität Zürich, Universität Konstanz, Universität Augsburg, Universität Duisburg. 1984-1985 Eric-Voegelin-Professor, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany 1979-1997 Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, The University of Alberta, Canada 1974-1979 Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, The University of Alberta 1970-1974 Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, The University of
    [Show full text]
  • The Hartwell Paper a New Direction for Climate Policy After the Crash of 2009
    The Hartwell Paper A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009 Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire, where the co-authors conceived this paper, 2-4 February 2010 May 2010 22th April 2010 THE HARTWELL PAPER: FINAL TEXT EMBARGOED UNTIL 11 MAY 2010 0600 BST The co-authors Professor Gwyn Prins, Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events, London School of Economics & Political Science, England Isabel Galiana, Department of Economics & GEC3, McGill University, Canada Professor Christopher Green, Department of Economics, McGill University, Canada Dr Reiner Grundmann, School of Languages & Social Sciences, Aston University, England Professor Mike Hulme, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, England Professor Atte Korhola, Department of Environmental Sciences/ Division of Environmental Change and Policy, University of Helsinki, Finland Professor Frank Laird, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, USA Ted Nordhaus, The Breakthrough Institute, Oakland, California, USA Professor Roger Pielke Jnr, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, USA Professor Steve Rayner, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford, England Professor Daniel Sarewitz, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Arizona State University, USA Michael Shellenberger, The Breakthrough Institute, Oakland, California, USA Professor Nico Stehr, Karl Mannheim Chair for Cultural Studies, Zeppelin University, Germany Hiroyuki Tezuka , General Manager, Climate
    [Show full text]
  • The Creation of Global Imaginaries: the Antarctic Ozone Hole and the Isoline Tradition in the Atmospheric Sciences Sebastian Grevsmühl
    The Creation of Global Imaginaries: The Antarctic Ozone Hole and the Isoline Tradition in the Atmospheric Sciences Sebastian Grevsmühl To cite this version: Sebastian Grevsmühl. The Creation of Global Imaginaries: The Antarctic Ozone Hole and the Isoline Tradition in the Atmospheric Sciences. Birgit Schneider, Thomas Nocke. Image Politics of Climate Change, Transcript, pp.29-53, 2014, 978-3-8376-2610-0. hal-01519392 HAL Id: hal-01519392 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01519392 Submitted on 7 May 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike| 4.0 International License The Creation of Global Imaginaries: The Antarctic Ozone Hole and the Isoline Tradition in the Atmospheric Sciences (in: Birgit Schneider and Thomas Nocke (eds.), Image Politics of Climate Change, Bielefeld, Transcript, 2014, p.29-53). Sebastian Vincent Grevsmühl Abstract This historical essay retraces from the perspective of visual and material culture how ways of analyzing and visualizing atmospheric
    [Show full text]
  • The Power of Scientific Knowledge: from Research to Public Policy Reiner Grundmann and Nico Stehr Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-02272-0 - The Power of Scientific Knowledge: From Research to Public Policy Reiner Grundmann and Nico Stehr Frontmatter More information The Power of Scientific Knowledge It is often said that knowledge is power, but more often than not rel- evant knowledge is not used when political decisions are made. This book examines how political decisions relate to scientific knowl- edge, and what factors determine the success of scientific research in influencing policy. The authors take a comparative and historical perspective and refer to well-known theoretical frameworks, but the focus of the book is on three case studies: the discourse of racism, Keynesianism, and climate change. These cases cover a number of countries, and different time periods. In all three the authors see a close link between “knowledge producers” and political decision- makers, but show that the effectiveness of the policies varies dramati- cally. This book will be of interest to scientists, decision-makers, and scholars alike. PROFESSOR REINER GRUNDMANN is Chair of Science and Technology Studies at Nottingham University. He has published in journals such as New Left Review, British Journal of Sociology, Current Sociology, Journal of Classical Sociology, Science, Technology & Human Values, and Environmental Politics. His book publications include Marxism and Ecology (1991) and Transnational Environmental Policy: Reconstructing Ozone (2001). PROFESSOR NICO STEHR is Karl Mannheim Professor of Cultural Studies at the Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany, and director of the European Centre for Sustainability Research at his university. His recent publications include Who Owns Knowledge: Knowledge and the Law with Bernd Weiler (2008), Knowledge and Democracy (2008), Society: Critical Concepts in Sociology with Reiner Grundmann, (2008), Climate and Society with Hans von Storch (2010), and Experts: The Knowledge and Power of Expertise with Reiner Grundmann (2011).
    [Show full text]
  • Squire Law Library Accessions List December 2016
    Squire Law Library Accessions List December 2016 CG.French.11 Oxford-Hachette French dictionary: French-English, English-French = Le grand dictionnaire Hachette-Oxford franç ais-anglais, anglais-franç ais / edited by Marie-Hé lè ne Corré ard, Valerie Grundy. Fourth edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780198614227 CG.Spanish.5 Oxford Spanish dictionary: Spanish-English, English-Spanish / chief editors Beatriz Galimberti Jarman, Roy Russell. Fourth edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780199543403 CR.22.H.44 IAM patent litigation 250. London: IAM magazine, 2011- CR.22.J.71 Training contract & pupillage handbook: the essential law careers guide. 2017. London: Globe Business Media Group, [2016?] ISBN: 9781909416956 CR.22.K.8 Widdifield, Charles Howard, 1859-1937. Words and terms judicially defined / by His Honour Judge Widdifield. Toronto: Carswell, 1914. ISBN: 0665802188 CR.22.S.46 Chambers associate: the student's guide to law firms. 2016-2017 / editor: Antony Cooke. London: Chambers and Partners Publishing, [2016] ISBN: 9780855146368 E.43.1 Theodosiani libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondianis et leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes... Berlin: Weidmann, 1905. F.c.62.94 United States. Argument of the United States delivered to the tribunal of arbitration at Geneva, June 15, 1872. London: Printed by Harrison and Sons, [1872] F.ec.9.L.1 Lauterpacht, Hersch, 1897-1960. Function of law in the international community / by H. Lauterpacht. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1966. F.nh.9.M.95 Murray, Daragh. Practitioners' guide to human rights law in armed conflict / Daragh Murray, consultant editors: Dapo Akande [and four others]. First edition. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016.
    [Show full text]
  • Science, Politics and International Environmental Policy
    Book Review Essay Science, Politics and International EnvironmentalJudithBook Review A. Layzer Essay Policy • Judith A. Layzer Edward A. Parson. 2002. Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science, Strategy, and Negotia- tion in the Shaping of a Global Environmental Regime. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiner Grundmann. 2001. Transnational Environmental Policy: Reconstructing Ozone. London: Routledge. In 1987, 30 nations signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, a historic international agreement to reduce chloroºuoro- carbons (CFCs), halons, and other ozone-depletingsubstances. The controversy that ultimately yielded this agreement dates back to the mid-1960s, when scien- tists began to suspect that pollutants from several kinds of human activities were depletingthe stratospheric ozone layer, which protects life on earth by screening out damaging, high-energy ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Though very little was known about the likely impacts of ozone loss, experts worried about effects on human health and ecosystems. In 1974, Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina identiªed CFCs as the most serious threat to stratospheric ozone, and shortly thereafter a small number of countries includingthe US decided unilaterally to restrict the use of those chemicals as propellants in aerosol spray cans. It was obvious, however, that the problem of ozone depletion was global and that an international solution was needed. Serious efforts to reach an international agreement to protect the strato- spheric ozone layer got underway in the late 1970s but for nearly a decade ended repeatedly in deadlock. This is hardly surprising: regulation of common pool resources at the international level is dauntingbecause any singledefector Global Environmental Politics 2:3, August 2002 © 2002 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 118 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152638002320310554 by guest on 30 September 2021 Judith A.
    [Show full text]
  • Marx's Ecology and the Left
    Marx’s Ecology and the Left monthlyreview.org/2016/06/01/marxs-ecology-and-the-left/ by Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster Topics: Ecology , History , Marxist Ecology , Political Economy Places: Global John Bellamy Foster is the editor of Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. His most recent book, coauthored with Paul Burkett, is Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique (Brill, 2016). Brett Clark is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Utah and the author, with Stefano B. Longo and Rebecca Clausen, of The Tragedy of the Commodity (Rutgers University Press, 2015). This article is a substantially revised version of “Marx’s Universal Metabolism of Nature and the Frankfurt School: Dialectical Contradictions and Critical Syntheses,” in James S. Ormrod, ed., Changing Our Environment, Changing Ourselves (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 101–35. One of the lasting contributions of the Frankfurt School of social theorists, represented especially by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s 1944 Dialectic of Enlightenment, was the development of a philosophical critique of the domination of nature. Critical theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt were deeply influenced by the early writings of Karl Marx. Yet their critique of the Enlightenment exploitation of nature was eventually extended to a critique of Marx himself as an Enlightenment figure, especially in relation to his mature work in Capital. This position was expressed most notably in the work of Horkheimer and Adorno’s student, Alfred Schmidt, author of The Concept of Nature in Marx. Due largely to Schmidt’s book, the notion of Marx’s anti- ecological perspective became deeply rooted in Western Marxism.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Warren Pearce, Reiner Grundmann, Mike Hulme, Sujatha Raman, Eleanor Hadley Kershaw &
    1 Warren Pearce, Reiner Grundmann, Mike Hulme, Sujatha Raman, Eleanor Hadley Kershaw & 2 Judith Tsouvalis 3 Beyond counting climate consensus 4 ABSTRACT: 5 Several studies have been using quantified consensus within climate science as an argument to 6 foster climate policy. Recent efforts to communicate such scientific consensus attained a high 7 public profile but it is doubtful if they can be regarded successful. We argue that repeated efforts to 8 shore up the scientific consensus on minimalist claims such as ‘humans cause global warming’ are 9 distractions from more urgent matters of knowledge, values, policy framing and public 10 engagement. Such efforts to force policy progress through communicating scientific consensus 11 misunderstand the relationship between scientific knowledge, publics and policymakers. More 12 important is to focus on genuinely controversial issues within climate policy debates where 13 expertise might play a facilitating role. Mobilising expertise in policy debates calls for judgment, 14 context and attention to diversity, rather than deferring to formal quantifications of narrowly 15 scientific claims. 16 17 INTRODUCTION 18 Quantification of consensus within climate science continues to occupy a central role in public 19 discussions of climate change, with a particular focus on the level of agreement regarding the 20 anthropogenic contribution to global temperature rise. Since 2004, a series of papers have addressed 21 this issue (Oreskes, 2004; Anderegg et al., 2010; Cook et al., 2013; Verheggen et al., 2014). One of 22 these (Cook et al., 2013) (C13) has gained particular prominence with the claim that 97.1% of those 23 papers expressing a position on anthropogenic global warming either explicitly states or implies that 24 humans cause warming.
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Expertise in Governance Processes
    The role of expertise in governance processes Reiner Grundmann 1. Introduction In this paper I want to examine two prominent cases of global governance in the light of recent developments in Science and Technology Studies (STS). Specifically reflecting on the role of expertise in decision making processes in the cases of ozone layer protection and climate change, I will try to develop some lessons that could be applied to other cases such as international forestry. All three cases have in common that they are posing the problem of international cooperation in the face of uncertainty. National interests and national sovereignty are as important as knowledge claims about a global common good (or common pool resources, cf. Ostrom, 1990.While the cases of ozone politics and climate change have been studied extensively by social scientists and led to several international treaties, forests have received little attention in comparison. It seems appropriate to relate some of the findings from the literature on global atmospheric commons to the case of forestry. I will do this by introducing influential models of conceiving knowledge and expertise in the process of political decision making (Section 2), then presenting the cases of ozone layer protection (Section 3) and climate change (Section 4). In section 5 I will draw some conclusions and then address the issue of forestry (Section 6). 2. Knowledge and politics Modern societies are increasingly dependent on knowledge. They are characterized by the development and dissemination of knowledge, by a multitude of knowledge sources and high levels of scientific literacy. The term Knowledge Society has been coined to describe them (Stehr, 1994).
    [Show full text]
  • Post-Normal Climate Science
    Introduction: Post-Normal Climate Science Werner Krauss, Mike S. Schäfer, and Hans von Storch This special symposium grew out of a workshop held in Hamburg in 2011 (Krauss and von Storch 2012) and of a long-term interest in cli- mate research as post-normal science. A decade earlier, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch (1999) stated that the management of uncer- tainty and its extension into the political and social realm make cli- mate science a case for post-normal science. Interpreting a survey among German and American climate scientists, they suggested that scientific policy advice is the result of both scientific knowledge and normative judgment. This special volume demonstrates that this insight is still valid and of relevance, even though climate science has changed a great deal over the past decade. For example, consensus among climate scien- tists on the question of anthropogenic climate change has grown (Bray 2010), and climate science has matured as a discipline. It has broadened its empirical basis and elaborated its models (Heffernan 2010); and it has also expanded and welcomed colleagues from more disciplines that have developed an interest in climate, its develop- ments and their myriad causes and effects (Dryzek et al. 2011). More- over, climate science has achieved a more distinct status as a research field of its own both epistemologically and institutionally (Schützen- meister 2008). Nonetheless, not everything seems to be normal in cli- mate science; when we sent out the invitations for our workshop “Post-Normal Science: The Case of Climate Research,” we received a huge array of proposals covering epistemological, practical, and po- litical problems concerning scientific climate research.
    [Show full text]
  • Modifying the 2°C Target: Climate Policy Objectives in the Contested Terrain of Scientific Policy Advice, Political Preferences, and Rising Emissions
    SWP Research Paper Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs Oliver Geden Modifying the 2°C Target Climate Policy Objectives in the Contested Terrain of Scientific Policy Advice, Political Preferences, and Rising Emissions RP 5 June 2013 Berlin All rights reserved. © Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2013 SWP Research Papers are peer reviewed by senior researchers and the directing staff of the Institute. They express exclusively the per- sonal views of the author(s). SWP Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik German Institute for International and Security Affairs Ludwigkirchplatz 3­4 10719 Berlin Germany Phone +49 30 880 07-0 Fax +49 30 880 07-100 www.swp-berlin.org [email protected] ISSN 1863-1053 Translation by Deborah Anne Bowen (Updated English version of SWP-Studie 12/2012) The translation of this research paper was made possible through the generous support of the Siemens AG. Table of Contents 5 Problems and Recommendations 7 Status and Functions of the 2°C Target 7 The Establishment of the 2°C Target in Climate Policy 8 The Problem-Centered Approach— Formulating a Science-Based Target 11 The Carbon Budget Approach 13 Political vs. Scientific Logic 16 Climate Policy Objectives in the Political Process 19 Options for Target Modification 19 Contextual Factors 21 Deliberate Modification of Assumptions in Climate Economics 23 Overshoot: Benchmark instead of a Strict Upper Limit 25 Transition to a Less Stringent Global Target 26 Doing without an Exact Stabilization Target 28 Conclusion 30 List of Abbreviations Dr. Oliver Geden is a Senior Associate in SWP’s EU Integration Division Problems and Recommendations Modifying the 2°C Target: Climate Policy Objectives in the Contested Terrain of Scientific Policy Advice, Political Preferences, and Rising Emissions In the twenty years since the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted, progress in the area of international climate policy has been modest at best.
    [Show full text]
  • And Climate Change
    The Two Limits Debates: “Limits to Growth” and Climate Change Futures, 2010, Forthcoming Joshu Eastin, University of Washington‐Seattle Reiner Grundmann, Aston University, U.K. Aseem Prakash, University of Washington‐Seattle In this article we compare the current debate about global warming with the earlier discourse of Limits to Growth (LtG) of the 1970’s. We are especially interested in the similarities of and differences between the two cases and therefore compare the policy challenges and lessons to be drawn. While the two debates differ on important issues, they share a technocratic orientation to public policy, and susceptibility to similar pitfalls. In both debates alarming scenarios about future catastrophes play an important role. We suggest that climate change policy discourse needs to focus more closely on the social, economic, and political dimensions of climate change, as opposed to its excessive emphasis on emission reduction targets. We also argue that an excessive faith in the market mechanisms to supply global warming mitigation technologies is problematic. In this respect, we provide a reality check regarding the political implications of emission targets and timetables and suggest how policy issues can be moved forward. Introduction In a recent issue of Futures, Nordlund illustrates that futurist research thus far has had only modest impact on IPCC research and assessments [1]. We interpret this as a call to arms, because like Nordlund, we believe that Futurists should actively take part in “…ongoing projects dealing with our common future.” [1]. In addressing this call, we draw upon the research of prior futurist scholars, The Club of Rome, and their seminal work on the “Limits to Growth,” (henceforth LtG) to identify key challenges and opportunities in addressing the problem of climate change [2].
    [Show full text]