Climate extremes as serious possibilities

Lam, Vincent (17 September 2021). Climate extremes as serious possibilities (Unpublished). In: The 8th Biennial Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Turin. 15-18 Septermber 2021.

Official URL: https://epsa21.net/

An alternative possibilistic perspective has been suggested in order to avoid the deficiencies of the probabilistic approach in climate modelling. But this possibilistic perspective raises the epistemological question of the identification and justification of serious possibilities in the climate context. This paper aims to show how recent work in climate science (and in particular in the subfield of extreme event attribution) can help to address this ‘possibilistic challenge’. More specifically, we investigate to what extent the sort of qualitative (and causal) understanding at play within the storyline approach (typically relying on thermodynamical considerations) can help to ground serious possibilities in the climate context. The storyline approach developed in climate science can actually itself be naturally understood within the possibilistic framework discussed in philosophy; the link between the two needs to be carefully articulated though.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Speech)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Philosophy

UniBE Contributor:

Lam, Vincent Minh Duc

Subjects:

100 Philosophy

Funders:

[4] Swiss National Science Foundation

Projects:

[UNSPECIFIED] The Epistemology of Climate Change

Language:

English

Submitter:

Vincent Minh Duc Lam

Date Deposited:

17 Feb 2022 09:16

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 16:06

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/165130

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