Krauss in nature geoscience

Werner Krauss had the comment Rooted in society in Nature Geoscience 3, 513 - 514 (2010) doi:10.1038/ngeo927 - unfortunately the internet-access goes with a fee ... but many institutions will have arranged for a free access for its staff. Werner summarizes his article like this:

The starting point of this commentary is the recent crisis in climate policy, which indeed is a triple crisis: one of climate science after climate gate; one of climate politics after Copenhagen, and one of the relations between climate science and climate politics. I call this an epistemological crisis. Until recently, the propagation of anthropogenic climate change on the basis of science has been a success story which culminated in the Nobel Prize for the IPCC and for Al Gore. As a consequence of the linear model of 'the science' informing politics and the doom-or-salvation rhetoric, the discourse on anthropogenic climate change does not match anymore the reality of the climate people experience and live in. Instead, climate turned into something that can be controlled or even saved, just like the whales. Seen from this somehow surreal perspective, the current crisis indeed indicates the necessity of an epistemological change. The challenge now is to localize and root climate change on a regional and local level, to make it part of the web of meanings and networks which characterize the spaces people inhabit. Thus, the recent crisis of climate science and policy can open doors to new ideas, to more realism and pragmatism.

I get the impression that the climate discourse is slowly recovering from the crisis at the turn of 2009/2010, that the discussion is getting more reasonable and civilized, while the shrill tones of alarmism and claims about a bix hoax begin to diminish.Werner Krauss' piece is a fine example of this new attitude and view point. -- Hans von Storch

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