Martin Mahony

Climate change: What do we know about the IPCC?

This is the first of a series of three biennial reviews of research on the subject of climate change. This review is concerned with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): its origins and mandate; its disciplinary and geographical expertise; its governance and organizational learning; consensus and its representation of uncertainty; and its wider impact and influence on knowledge production, public discourse and policy development. The research that has been conducted on the IPCC as an institution has come mostly from science and technology studies scholars and a small number of critical social scientists. The IPCC’s influence on the construction, mobilization and consumption of climate change knowledge is considerable. The review therefore ends by encouraging geographers of science to turn their research and scholarship to understanding the roles played by the IPCC, and equivalent institutional processes of climate change knowledge assessment, in the contemporary world.

The predictive state: Science, territory and the future of the Indian climate

Acts of scientific calculation have long been considered central to the formation of the modern nation state, yet the transnational spaces of knowledge generation and political action associated with climate change seem to challenge territorial modes of political order. This article explores the changing geographies of climate prediction through a study of the ways in which climate change is rendered knowable at the national scale in India. The recent controversy surrounding an erroneous prediction of melting Himalayan glaciers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides a window onto the complex and, at times, antagonistic relationship between the Panel and Indian political and scientific communities. The Indian reaction to the error, made public in 2009, drew upon a national history of contestation around climate change science and corresponded with the establishment of a scientific assessment network, the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment, which has given the state a new platform on which to bring together knowledge about the future climate. I argue that the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment is indicative of the growing use of regional climate models within longer traditions of national territorial knowledge-making, allowing a rescaling of climate change according to local norms and practices of linking scientific knowledge to political action. I illustrate the complex co-production of the epistemic and the normative in climate politics, but also seek to show how co-productionist understandings of science and politics can function as strategic resources in the ongoing negotiation of social order. In this case, scientific rationalities and modes of environmental governance contribute to the contested epistemic construction of territory and the evolving spatiality of the modern nation state under a changing climate.

Epistemic geographies of climate change: science, space and politics

Anthropogenic climate change has been presented as the archetypal global problem, identified by the slow work of assembling a global knowledge infrastructure, and demanding a concertedly global political response. But this ‘global’ knowledge has distinctive geographies, shaped by histories of exploration and colonialism, by diverse epistemic and material cultures of knowledge-making, and by the often messy processes of linking scientific knowledge to decision-making within different polities. We suggest that understanding of the knowledge politics of climate change may benefit from engagement with literature on the geographies of science. We review work from across the social sciences which resonates with geographers’ interests in the spatialities of scientific knowledge, to build a picture of what we call the epistemic geographies of climate change. Moving from the field site and the computer model to the conference room and international political negotiations, we examine the spatialities of the interactional co-production of knowledge and social order. In so doing, we aim to proffer a new approach to the intersections of space, knowledge and power which can enrich geography’s engagements with the politics of a changing climate.

Modelling and the Nation: Institutionalising Climate Prediction in the UK, 1988-92

Abstract How climate models came to gain and exercise epistemic authority has been a key concern of recent climate change historiography. Using newly released archival materials and recently conducted interviews with key actors, we reconstruct negotiations between UK climate scientists and policymakers which led to the opening of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in 1990. We historicize earlier arguments about the unique institutional culture of the Hadley Centre, and link this culture to broader characteristics of UK regulatory practice and environmental politics. A product of a particular time and place, the Hadley Centre was shaped not just by scientific ambition, but by a Conservative governmental preference for ‘sound science’ and high evidential standards in environmental policymaking. Civil servants sought a prediction programme which would appeal to such sensibilities, with transient and regional climate simulation techniques seemingly offering both scientific prestige and persuasive power. Beyond the national level, we also offer new insights into the early role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an evolving international political context in the shaping of scientific practices and institutions.

Book Review: How Well Do Facts Travel? The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge

and observation skills; child psychologists’ interest in child development; educational theorists’ belief in constructivist, child-centered teaching; nature conservationists’ push to teach children to appreciate nature; teacher educators’ goal to make nature study achievable for teachers with limited training; and teachers’ need to prepare children for modern life. Kohlstedt revealingly suggests that southern schools, particularly those for African Americans, taught vocational skills such as gardening as part of nature study. Nature study may have served another significant purpose that Kohlstedt does not address. As school populations grew enormously in turn-of-the-century North America, teacher numbers could not keep up. An emphasis on activities such as outdoor trips, handling objects, drawing, and discussing could have been an effective crowd-control strategy to engage large classes of young children. This diversity of goals was answered with a diversity of methods, documented by the explosion of teachers’ guides, children’s books, and even a journal, Nature-Study Review. The diversity of nature itself, particularly each school’s local environment, required a diversity of sources and approaches. This lack of common goals and methods, Kohlstedt argues, ultimately led to nature study’s downfall in public schools. Diversity came to be seen as disunity, and scientists and educators called for a more structured and more scientific curriculum. Although the term fell out of favor, Kohlstedt highlights the many aspects of nature study that became incorporated into the new “elementary science.” Throughout her account, the key viewpoint that is missing, perhaps inevitably, is that of the children themselves. Kohlstedt’s impressive research reveals a complex, interwoven story of many disciplines, people, and texts. This contested communication circuit concerning what and how children should learn about nature offers a fascinating view into early twentieth-century North Americans’ goals for their future citizens, regarding science education, child development, vocational ability, nature conservation beliefs, and more.

Review of Howlett & Morgan (eds) 'How Well Do Facts Travel?'

and observation skills; child psychologists’ interest in child development; educational theorists’ belief in constructivist, child-centered teaching; nature conservationists’ push to teach children to appreciate nature; teacher educators’ goal to make nature study achievable for teachers with limited training; and teachers’ need to prepare children for modern life. Kohlstedt revealingly suggests that southern schools, particularly those for African Americans, taught vocational skills such as gardening as part of nature study. Nature study may have served another significant purpose that Kohlstedt does not address. As school populations grew enormously in turn-of-the-century North America, teacher numbers could not keep up. An emphasis on activities such as outdoor trips, handling objects, drawing, and discussing could have been an effective crowd-control strategy to engage large classes of young children. This diversity of goals was answered with a diversity of methods, documented by the explosion of teachers’ guides, children’s books, and even a journal, Nature-Study Review. The diversity of nature itself, particularly each school’s local environment, required a diversity of sources and approaches. This lack of common goals and methods, Kohlstedt argues, ultimately led to nature study’s downfall in public schools. Diversity came to be seen as disunity, and scientists and educators called for a more structured and more scientific curriculum. Although the term fell out of favor, Kohlstedt highlights the many aspects of nature study that became incorporated into the new “elementary science.” Throughout her account, the key viewpoint that is missing, perhaps inevitably, is that of the children themselves. Kohlstedt’s impressive research reveals a complex, interwoven story of many disciplines, people, and texts. This contested communication circuit concerning what and how children should learn about nature offers a fascinating view into early twentieth-century North Americans’ goals for their future citizens, regarding science education, child development, vocational ability, nature conservation beliefs, and more.