Climate Models for Guiding Action: Adequacy, Inadequacy, and the Ethics of Downstream Model Use

As concern about climate change intensifies, there is increasing demand for ‘actionable’ information to help mitigate to effects of climate change through sustainable policy. As this demand has increased, so has the complexity and resolution of Earth System Models (ESMs) and Global Climate Models (GCMs), which play a central role in generating this information. However, the increased complexity and resolution of ESMs/GCMs does not guarantee that they will offer increased adequacy-for-purpose in applied domains. This talk will review numerous recent case studies that highlight specific research questions that ESMs/GCMs cannot reliably answer, due to features that these models possess as a result of their development history and what is described as the problem of “pseudo-detail”. These include case studies of modelling surface water availability in the Upper Colorado River Basin, regional changes to precipitation regimes surrounding the Great Lakes, and red tide patterns in the Gulf of Mexico. The inadequacy of ESMs/GCMs for certain applied purposes raises the risk of downstream harm, what philosophers of science and modelling have called ‘representational risk’. Strategies for managing representational risk include implementing both tailored and general strategies to better communicate models’ adequacies and inadequacies for different purposes and increasing awareness of the ethical significance of potential climate model misuses. In a review of literature from climate science and philosophy of modelling, this talk will establishe the adequacy of ESMs/GCMs for a range of applied purposes and underlines the connection between model inadequacy and emerging issues in the ethics of climate modelling.

Speaker: Eric winsberg, University of South Florida

Room: Hartley Conference Center