Non-epistemic values pervade climate modelling, as is now well documented and widely discussed in the philosophy of climate science. Recently, Parker and Winsberg have drawn attention to what can be termed "epistemic inequality": this is the risk that climate models might more accurately represent the future climates of the geographical regions prioritised by the values of the modellers. In this paper, we promote value management as a way of overcoming epistemic inequality. We argue that value management can be seriously considered as soon as the value-free ideal and inductive risk arguments commonly used to frame the discussions of value influence in climate science are replaced by alternative social accounts of objectivity. We consider objectivity in Longino's sense as well as strong objectivity in Harding's sense to be relevant options here, because they offer concrete proposals that can guide scientific practice in evaluating and designing so-called multi-model ensembles and, in fine, improve their capacity to quantify and express uncertainty in climate projections.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.06.004 | DOI Listing |
Chaos
January 2025
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Leipzig, D-04081 Leipzig, Germany.
We consider a dynamical system undergoing a saddle-node bifurcation with an explicitly time-dependent parameter p(t). The combined dynamics can be considered a dynamical system where p is a slowly evolving parameter. Here, we investigate settings where the parameter features an overshoot.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
February 2025
Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom.
The preference for simple explanations, known as the parsimony principle, has long guided the development of scientific theories, hypotheses, and models. Yet recent years have seen a number of successes in employing highly complex models for scientific inquiry (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
February 2025
Department of Earth System Sciences, Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability, University of Hamburg, Hamburg 20146, Germany.
As an essential micronutrient, phosphorus plays a key role in oceanic biogeochemistry, with its cycling intimately connected to the global carbon cycle and climate change. Authigenic carbonate fluorapatite (CFA) has been suggested to represent a significant phosphorus sink in the deep ocean, but its formation mechanisms in oceanic low-productivity settings remain poorly constrained. Applying X-ray absorption near edge structure, transmission electron microscopy, and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer analyses, we report a unique mineral assemblage where CFA crystals coat phillipsite in abyssal sediments of the East Mariana Basin and the Philippine Sea.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLOS Glob Public Health
January 2025
Center for Global Health Science and Security, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, United States of America.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) was an important public source of information - not only about the pandemic, but also thousands of other potential health emergencies. Here, we examine the 242 reports published in the WHO Disease Outbreak News (DON) during the first four years of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020 to 2023), and document the diseases and regions that were reported. We find that multinational epidemics of diseases like Ebola virus and MERS-CoV continue to dominate the DON.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
January 2025
Real-time Syndromic Surveillance Team, Field Services, Health Protection Operations, UK Health Security Agency, Birmingham, United Kingdom.
During winter months, there is increased pressure on health care systems in temperature climates due to seasonal increases in respiratory illnesses. Providing real-time short-term forecasts of the demand for health care services helps managers plan their services. During the Winter of 2022-23 we piloted a new forecasting pipeline, using existing surveillance indicators which are sensitive to increases in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
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