Climate-change lore and its implications for climate science: Post-science deliberations?
- Under a Creative Commons license
Open Access
Highlights
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- 3 competing sources of knowledge used in developing regional climate adaptation strategies.
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- 3 competing sources of knowledge: science; traditional/local, climate-change lore.
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- Use of each has implications for the design of the knowledge–policy interface.
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- Science – truth to power; local knowledge – post-normal science; lore – post-science deliberation.
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- The transition indicates a diminishing role for climate science in regional policy considerations.
Abstract
Using
of the results of survey questionnaires distributed to climate
scientists who focus on the German Baltic coast, regional political
decision makers on the German Baltic coast and weather observations from
the same region, this paper assesses the existence of developing
climate-change lore and the implications for the role of climate science
in the science–policy interface. The Oxford Dictionary (1993) provides
one definition of lore as ‘A doctrine, a precept; a creed, a religion.’
This is the definition adopted for this paper. The paper concludes that
the discrepancies among weather observations, scientific assessments and
decision makers’ perceptions suggest that climate-change lore exists,
or is coming into existence. The paper then discusses the implications
for the science–policy interface and suggests that given current
trajectories, science could come to play a secondary role to
climate-change lore in regional political decision making concerning
climate change. To the truth-to-power model of the science–policy
interface and the tenets of post-normal science, three additional
possibly evolving science–policy configurations (as pertaining to the
climate change issue) are offered.
Keywords
- Climate change;
- Lore;
- Policy;
- Post-normal science;
- Post-science deliberation
