Dissertation Research: Culture, Science, and Uncertainty: Conflicting Positions on Climate Change

论文研究：文化、科学和不确定性：关于气候变化的冲突立场

• 批准号: 9423458
• 负责人: George Marcus
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: William Marsh Rice University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1995
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1995-03-01 至 1998-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9423458&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Culture; Science; Uncertainty

This ethnographic dissertation research will advance understanding of how climate change is constructed and discussed as a problem. It will yield insight into the competing scientific approaches, claims and social behaviors influencing the scientific and social debates, and help to provide a framework to help policy-makers interpret differing scientific positions. The research will analyze the extrascientific dimensions of the scientific debate about human-caused climate change. Its aim is to place differences in expert positions regarding the likelihood and severity of this change into their social, cultural, and political contexts. The central question is: in what ways do scientific theories and discussions on climate change reflect differences in predispositions related to cultural, social, and professional backgrounds, affiliations, values, and belief-systems. The focus is on climate modelers and their models; research subjects include modelers and scientists in related fields in the geosciences involved in the debate. Research methods include standard interview and archival research, and participant observation. The dissertation will analyze scientific theories and judgments for their divergent assumptions and approaches to scientific uncertainty. Competing positions on climate change and climate modeling will be compared and placed into social perspective through inquiry into scientists' professional backgrounds; their characterizations of the current debate on climate change, its development, and the issues it involves; and the ways in which they explain their own positions on climate change and their scientific approach to studying it in contrast with competing positions and approaches.

这项民族志论文研究将提高人们对气候变化的构建和讨论方式的理解。 它将洞悉影响科学和社会辩论的竞争性科学方法，主张和社会行为，并有助于提供一个框架来帮助决策者解释不同的科学立场。 该研究将分析有关人为引起的气候变化的科学辩论的外部方面。 其目的是将这种变化的可能性和严重性的专家立场上的差异置于其社会，文化和政治环境中。 中心问题是：关于气候变化的科学理论和讨论如何以何种方式反映出与文化，社会和专业背景，隶属关系，价值观和信仰系统有关的倾向的差异。 重点是气候建模者及其模型。研究对象包括辩论中涉及的地球科学的相关领域的建模者和科学家。 研究方法包括标准访谈和档案研究以及参与者观察。 论文将分析科学理论和判断，以实现其不同的假设和科学不确定性的方法。 将比较有关气候变化和气候建模的竞争立场，并通过调查科学家的专业背景来比较社会观点；他们对当前关于气候变化，其发展及其涉及的问题的辩论的特征；以及他们解释自己对气候变化的立场以及与竞争位置和方法相反的科学方法的方式。