Emerging climate change landscape II. The Balitc Sea

Here another report about an emerging climate change landscape, this time provided by natural sciences. Hans von Storch presents in an Interview with the Flensburger Tageblatt the BACC-II-Report (Second Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin). In a nutshell, this newspaper report based on an interview with Hans von Storch serves well to mark the contrast between a natural science and a geographic-ethnographic approach as presented in the previous post by Martin Mahoney.

Fieldnotes from an emerging climate change landscape

Foto by Martin Mahony

Localizing climate change means more than downscaling regional climate change from global climate models; it means figuring out how climate change becomes part and parcel of the landscapes we actually inhabit. How do people shape their environment in permanently changing atmospheric conditions? Recently, my British colleagues Martin Mahony and Helen Pallett joined us on a trip to my favorite field-site, the Hamburger Hallig. On their excellent blog 'The Topograph', Martin wrote a nice piece about this excursion; his fieldnotes illustrate the dynamics of this emerging energy landscape, with climate change as the most recent episode in a long history of interactions between people and their extreme environment.  While in Paris once more the future of the planet will be at stake, in Northern Friesland we can already identify some of the culturally specific ways how people actually deal with the challenge of a changing climate. Enjoy reading a geographer's take on the Wadden Sea landscape!

Wer nicht will deichen, der muss weichen: a fieldtrip in Nordfriesland by Martin Mahony

Give me a narrative and I will change the world

On March 10 The Guardian dedicated its Letters to the editor page nearly entirely to comments from readers about climate change. These were triggered by the paper’s divestment campaign and addressed various issues related to options for practical action about climate change, be they individual or on the level of public policy.

Beate Ratters Umfrage unter Hamburgern - 2015

 

Auch in 2015 hat Beate Ratter (Geographisches Institut Uni Hamburg und Institut für Küstenforschung, HZG) wieder FORSA Hamburger Bürger fragen lassen, wie sehr man sich Sorgen macht in Hamburg zum Thema Klimawandel. Es gibt keine großen Änderungen gegenüber den Vorjahren - tatsächlich zeigt die Sorge Auf- und Abwärtsbewegungen. Je länger die Reihe wird, um so deutlicher wird zu einen, dass diese Schwankungen um ein Niveau von etwas mehr als 50% (große oder sehr große Vedrohung") herum variieren, aber keinen auffälligen Trend über die Jahre zeigen, und zum anderen, dass ähnliche Fragen von Gallup in den USA dort ähnliche Wahrnehmungsveränderungen offenbaren.

Beate Ratter's Bericht "Risikobewusstsein der Hamburger Bürger für den Klimawandel 2015" kann von den Web-Seiten der HZG heruntergeladen werden.

Krista Sager: Vermittlungsprozesse zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik

Auf einem Symposium der Leopoldina in Halle am 15. und 16. Oktober hielt Krista Sager, die neben anderen Ämtern auch das der Hamburgischen Wissenschaftssenatorin innehatte, den folgenden Vortrag zum Verhältnis von Politik und Wissenschaft. (Einen ähnlichen Vortrag präsentierte sie zuvor schon auf einem Kolloquiuim im Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht.) Dieser Vortrag hat inzwischen eine schriftliche Form angenommen und wurde vomVeranstalter Leopoldina veröffentlicht. Mit Erlaubnis von Frau Sager wird ihr Text hier nachgedruckt, wobei wenige Sätze, die sich auf die Veranstaltung beziehen, herausgenommen wurden, um die Verständlichkeit zu berbessern.

Krista Sager: Vermittlungsprozesse zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik

Ich stehe hier als langjährige politische Praktikerin und das heißt, mich interessieren die politischen Herausforderungen, Gefahren und Erfolgsbedingungen, wenn zwei so unterschiedliche gesellschaftliche Teilsysteme wie Wissenschaft und Politik aufeinandertreffen. Denn hier begegnen sich zwei Partner, die ohne einander nicht können, es miteinander aber auch nicht leicht haben. Und meine These ist: Das liegt daran, dass die Wissenschaft wissenschaftlich ist und die Politik politisch.

The ivory tower

Some reactions to the result UK parliamentary elections have been to blame those ignorant Britons. It reminded me of the reactions to the article of Oliver Geden that is being discussed here. 

 

Perhaps, the inhabitants of the ivory tower should look from time to time out of the window, at the world outside. The hard facts.

Geden in nature

Oliver Geden has published the comment "Policy: Climate advisers must maintain integrity" in nature (7 May 2015, Vol. 521, 27-28). As it can freely be downloaded, I do not discuss it - it is easily determined that his position is very consistent with mine - but refer to the internet source: http://www.nature.com/news/policy-climate-advisers-must-maintain-integrity-1.17468

How 'Climate Skeptic' became a bad word

I have a new pre-publication paper which you can download here. It examines the changing use and meaning of the term ‘skeptic’ in the US elite press. Based on an analysis of the New York Times it appears that the meaning of the word skeptic changed from a synonym of legitimate criticism to an illegitimate form of dissent. Different forms of climate skepticism appear in different time periods. Over time an escalation in rhetorical armoury can be shown, which was associated with political events, such as the Kyoto Protocol and the partisan mobilization of science at Congressional hearings.

Are we all Ecomodernists now?

Two weeks ago a group co-ordinated by The Breakthrough Institute published the Ecomodernist Manifesto (EM). Among its 18 authors there are some who co-authored the Hartwell Paper which advocated a specific approach to climate policy, and which was featured several times here on this blog (yours truly being one of the Hartwell authors). The EM goes beyond climate policy, addressing the broader question of humanity’s place in nature, and history. There is a dedicated website for comments which has some very useful and thoughtful posts.

Mike Hulme dismisses divestment as "feel-good campaign"

Mike Hulme explains in The Guardian why "fossil fuel divestment is a misguided tactic". He lists diverse arguments: divestment is not a policy tool; it shifts focus on the 2 degree goal only and thus supports a naive narrative, and climate change is not only about fossil fuels but it is a wicked problem. Finally, there are the killer arguments "this does not work for India" and "this is feel good campaigning".  When reading this,  I got stuck with the argument of  "feel-good campaigning". What exactly is meant by this, and why is it used as a derogatory term?

Mike Hulme once mentions Vattenfall in his article, and this reminded me of an annual campaign here in Hamburg against Vattenfall: "Lesen ohne Atomstrom"  - "reading without nuclear energy, the renewable literatur festival". It is a high rank cultural event in its fourth or fifth year. It started as a counter-initiative to a campaign by Vattenfall that once had promoted literary events in Hamburg to improve its public image. Today, "Reading without nuclear energy" is an anti-nuclear, pro renewable energy and climate change campaign with considerable political influence; after a public vote last year, the Hamburg senate had to repurchase the power grid from Vattenfall.

Can you apply here Mike Hulme's arguments? (surprisingly, Vandana Shiva will represent India at this event). In my understanding, Mike Hulme's critique maybe does not fully cover the relevance of such a  "feel good" campaign. From an anthropological point of view, this is one of the many ways how climate change  and energy issues come to matter in public life. Events like "Lesen ohne Atomstrom" are part of emerging climate change cultures, where science-based knowledge is translated into vernaculars. Here, wicked problems like climate change, energy use, neoliberal politics, regionalization etc. are brought together and are negotiated, and I hesitate to judge this prematurely from a purely distanced science- and expert point of view. What Mike Hulme might disqualify as "purely symbolic" sometimes bears hidden political power. For example, Nina Hagen will recite Bertolt Brecht and thus provide a German "capitalism vs climate" moment that is both place-based and rooted in history.
(slightly changed 22.4.2015).