the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 22 Feb 2023
The role of history in and for climate science – Social context and oral accounts
Abstract. The history of ideas is a key ingredient for understanding the knowledge generated and maintained by any science. In the case of western climate science this history is long has undergone various significant changes – beginning with climatic determinism, to physics of the atmosphere and oceans to a determinant of climate policies in recent times. These ideas went along with significant societal perceptions of climate, of ”us” and ”them”, and using climate change as a tool to govern people.
As a natural science field, also climate science invests relatively little on the history of ideas, forgetting significant past personalities as well as past falsified concepts. In order to keep history alive, to ”put people behind the science”, in option is to resort to the old method of ”oral history”, to interview contemporary personalities about what happened, but also how they, and their social milieu, perceived the dynamics and role of climate. To do so, the author has archived many interviews with both matured climate scientists at the end of their career, but also with younger scholars.
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RC1: 'Comment on hgss-2023-6', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Mar 2023
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://hgss.copernicus.org/preprints/hgss-2023-6/hgss-2023-6-RC1-supplement.pdf
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Hans von Storch, 01 May 2023
I appreciate your thoughtful comments and suggestions. Although I may not follow all of the advice given, I am grateful for the feedback.
The article's title, "the role of history in and for climate science: social context and oral accounts," has been criticized, but the author defends it as accurately reflecting the article's content. The author argues that history has a dual role in climate science, providing data on historical climate variations and explaining the history of ideas related to climate science. The reviewer's suggestion that no work of historians has influenced the author's work is unfounded and indicates a limited perspective.
The author acknowledges that discussing the present zeitgeist would be illuminating but would require more space than the article allows. However, this is dealt with this is dealt with in two books, namely the German “Der Mensch-Klima Komplex” and the English anthology “Science in Society” mentioned by the reviewer.
Regarding the work with Dennis Bray, summarizing its findings would require significant effort, so the author has taken the suggestion to compile an anthology with Bray. The article includes a list of their articles, condensed to aid readers' understanding.
The author acknowledges that Sec 3 could be condensed into a list but prefers the current presentation style.
Summarizing the book "Science and Society" would essentially entail repeating its introduction, so the author suggests that interested readers refer to the book directly. However, the author plans to reference the book in the revised version of the article.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-2023-6-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Hans von Storch, 01 May 2023
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RC2: 'Comment on hgss-2023-6', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Apr 2023
The key contribution of this article is a series of interviews with “eminent scientists”. The interviews are very interesting, and as a result I spent much time with this review. While the selection of the scientists interviewed is subjective, it certainly addresses a series of highly interesting scientists (I take it as “an ensemble of opportunity”). Due to the high quality of the interviews, I am strongly in favor of publication of this article.
Yet I feel uncomfortable to accepting this paper for publication in its current form. The main reason is that a substantial fraction of the text and of the conclusions appears detached from the interviews presented. In other words: the data (the interviews) does not fit the conclusions. This is particularly evident with section 2. Further details are provided below, see in particular points (5) to (7).
I hope that my major comments can be addressed before publication.
Major comments:(1) Some thinking is needed to ensure that the digital versions of the interviews will be preserved and remain accessible in the long term. Some of the interviews have previously been published in a book or journal (and then things are fine), but several of the interviews are only available through commercial services (Academia, ResearchGate). This is problematic. For instance, as I am not registered with Academia, I have been unable to download the respective pdf files. A solution needs to be sought for this problem. One option is that the interviews are made available (as far as they have not formally been published previously) as supplemental pdf files to the current article. This would ensure that the files remain alive in the long term. Likely there are also some copyright implications with this proposal (which would need to be sorted out).
(2) Many of the links provided in the paper do not properly work (are not clickable). This is a minor issue, but it should be addressed.
(3) Section 3.1 is entitled «The scientific legacy of Dennis Bray». The text discusses a total of 7 publications involving Dennis Bray. Out of these, 6 were co-authored by Hans von Storch, and one even as first author. In other words, the section celebrates the work of the author and not only that of Dennis Bray. This is a bit peculiar for a historical paper / historical journal. Likely the author did this without intent, but I hope that this problem can be solved during revisions.
(4) Lines 108-110: “There was a strong increase in agreeing that warming is real and not influenced by changing measuring and reporting practices. Also, the confidence has strongly grown that this change is due to ongoing anthropogenic causes. At the same time, however, the confidence in the climate modeling has hardly increased during 1995-2015.” After looking at the source (and the more detailed results presented by Bray 2017, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334574566, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14518.86085), I think that the last sentence is misleading. In the questionnaire the scientists had been asked: “How well do atmospheric models deal with (i) hydrodynamics, (ii) radiation, (iii) clouds, and (iv) precipitation” (each of these factors had to be addressed individually). Why have they not been asked about how well the models deal with temperature? Given that 20 years ago temperature was the main target of climate modeling, the questions posed to the scientists appear strange. Why asking for precipitation but not for temperature (both are the results of many complicated processes).
(5) Some text in the paper is not properly connected to the data. For instance, in the abstract (lines 3-4) one finds: “These ideas went along with significant societal perceptions of climate, of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and using climate change as a tool to govern people.” I don’t think that this has been touched in / derived from the paper, so the sentence should be removed.
(6) Similarly, I find section 2 to be weak and detached from the interviews. The section concludes with (lines 67-69): “It seems to me that reflecting on historical responses and perceptions can help to avoid repeating errors of the past, when discussing the present situation – namely to prematurely attributing causes to rare but possibly still natural events, and to inefficient decisions – while not to claim from such cases that the whole concept of anthropogenic climate change is a hoax.” I agree that one can learn a lot from the past, but I am nevertheless disappointed by this superficial conclusion (and most of section 2). Of course, there have been cases in the literature of prematurely attributing causes to extremes (and of prematurely excluding anthropogenic causes to extremes), but the conclusion is presented as if this was a generic problem, without providing any evidence. Even worse, the statement is rude with respect to at least one of the interviewed scientists, namely Geert Jan van Oldenborgh. He has been at the forefront of extreme event attribution (as discussed in the preface to his interview by Myles Allen), and he has done so thoroughly, carefully, and at the highest scientific standards. As Geert Jan had to leave this planet at a far too young age, he will unfortunately not be able to question this section in a comment. And therefore, I find the statement to be inappropriate.
(7) The above statement will appear – to most readers – as if the author does stop short of saying that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. Is this really what the author wants us to remember? In any case, such a conclusion would not be consistent with the opinions of the interviewed scientists. Although one of them is quoted with saying “sea level rise will be a picnic compared with the population explosion”, most of the interviewees discussed human contributions to climate change as a key challenge of today, and many of them spoke up in public about that during their careers.
Epilogue: This was a difficult review task. On the one hand, I have the highest respect for many of the scientific contributions of Hans von Storch and much appreciate the interviews. On the other hand, I wonder about the mixture between useful information and unsubstantiated claims.
Minor comments:Line 70: “This will lead to a more rational assessment of the risks and opportunities”. It is not clear what is meant with “This”.
Line 107: this should read “surveys from 1996 until 2015/16” rather than “until 1015/16”, or even better “until 2021”, the year of the last interview.
Line 145-146: the link should be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reimar_Lüst
Line 163: please cite link, I found it here: https://www.hereon.de/imperia/md/content/hzg/zentrale_einrichtungen/bibliothek/berichte/gkss_berichte_2007/gkss_2007_5.pdf
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-2023-6-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Hans von Storch, 01 May 2023
Thanks, reviewer 2, for your analysis and recommendations.
- this is not an issue a reviewer of the scientific merits of an article should care about. Books and journals are also commercial services 😊
- I need to double check that.
- Dennis Bray – indeed, it was Dennis’ work, which I supported. How would you deal with this? Of course, I am not distanced from his episode of climate science.
- I will try to improve the wording here, but why should I address the question “why not temp?`” in the overview. This WAS done in the analysis, and one could argue that hydrodynamics includes temperature, and the other three processes are parametrized and deserve special attention for that reason.
- The reviewer is right – I had simply forgotten to refer to climatic determinism in the article which is behind the “us/them” issue. Will be rectified.
- This claim is not necessarily directed towards scientific publications, such as van Oldenburghs (and my own) publications, but mostly dealing with public communication. A typical case is the NW European storminess, but also the Ahr flooding. We had an article in nature on that - and should likely emphasize this a bit more. Clarifications will be added.
- If the reviewer insists on misunderstanding deliberately what I am saying, I. cannot change that. However, he, or she, may recognize the fact that it was my group who was the first to implement the Hasselmann concept of detection and attribution some 25 years ago. Comment (7) is insulting and without base.
Minor: l 70: ok, L 107: interviews were done until 2021, and will be continued in 2023; surveys until 2016. L. 145+163: thanks
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-2023-6-AC2
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Hans von Storch, 01 May 2023
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