Values and Objectivity in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

ABSTRACT

The assessments issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aim to provide policy-makers with an objective source of information about the various causes of climate change, the projected consequences for the environment and human affairs, and the options for adaptation and mitigation. But what, in this context, is meant by ‘objective’? In practice, in an effort to address internal and external criticisms, the IPCC has regularly revised its methodological procedures; some of these procedures seem to meet the requirements of objectivity, at least as understood in a specific sense, but the relationship between objectivity and value-neutrality requires further investigation. The aim of this paper is to offer an appropriate philosophical account of objectivity, reconcilable with the fact that the IPCC is not value-free. I argue that Sandra Harding’s notion of strong objectivity is particularly well suited to this goal, and I examine the extent to which the current IPCC procedures match her account.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• strong objectivity; values in science; indigenous knowledge

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Francesca Merlin, Anna Leuschner, Vincent Israel-Jost, Carlo Martini and Maria Baghramanian as well as anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback on a previous version of this paper. I also thank the POND IV audience, in particular Stéphanie Ruphy and Boaz Miller, for their comments.

This work was supported by a “MOVE-IN Louvain” Incoming Post-doctoral Fellowship, cofunded by the Marie Curie Actions of the European Commission, and by the Swiss National Science Foundation project PP00P1_170460 “The Epistemology of Climate Change”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Other significant documents are also produced, such as the Summaries for Policy-Makers (SPMs).

2. The fact that the IPCC does not on its own produce new knowledge does not rule out that the IPCC may motivate and guide future research in climate science. The ARs are certainly very useful for pointing out shortcomings and lacunae in our knowledge of climate change, and thereby identifying the domains requiring more scientific investigation.

3. Miller (2015) also considers Longino’s procedural objectivity and Harding’s strong objectivity as possibly applying to the IPCC, but he reaches opposite conclusions. This is due, I believe, to the fact that we differ on what we see as the IPCC ARs’ main aim: the IPCC, I believe, does not aim for consensus on every subject matter, but rather endeavours to reflect the diversity of scientific perspectives and to address the reasons for possible disagreements.

4. That said, contextual values are not always non-epistemic. In particular, as Rolin makes clear (2015), moral and social values can play a legitimate role in scientists’ decisions to accept something as scientific knowledge.

5. In the context of these discussions, important questions that have been addressed are (i) whether values are legitimate for deciding which assumptions should be built into climate models and how; (ii) whether on the contrary they lead to ‘wishful thinking’ or to the tuning of decisions ‘based on what we wish the model would predict rather than decisions about what will make the model more accurate or accountable to the “way the world really is” (Brown 2013)’ (Intemann 2015, 221); and (iii) whether value influence can be entirely cancelled or avoided (Parker and Winsberg 2018).

6. This bias might arise in the first instance from the fact that the ARs of WGI are generally often treated as the core element of the IPCC’s output, and seen as providing the basis for the ARs of WGII and WGIII, which are more socio-economic.

7. John (2015) also argues that: (i) the way Betz frames the argument from inductive risk – also called the methodological critique – is mistaken; (ii) reporting hedged hypotheses is not a guarantee of being value-free since it is only done relative to some body of evidence, and yet the IPCC hardly takes into account grey literature; (iii) there is an alternative way of defending the idea that the IPCC is value-free, but then the IPCC reports would become so complicated that to render them useful to policy-makers would require ‘interpreters’ (9).

8. See also Leuschner (2016). She presents the history of the burning embers diagram since 2001, and demonstrates that the IPCC has consistently underestimated the risks of the five reasons for concern.

9. In particular, because the methodology in WGI is supposed to be based on best practice in the natural sciences, any reference to non-epistemic values would seem to require strong justification. WGII may be more lenient towards non-epistemic values since, clearly, they sometimes play a legitimate role in guiding the assessment of impacts, adaptation possibilities, and vulnerabilities related to climate change. The same is true for WGIII, whose aim is to assess the methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thus touching on technological as well as political and social feasibility concerns. That said, the different degrees to which non-epistemic values are tolerated across the three WGs should not entail any changes to the understanding and requirements of objectivity they all endorse. My assumption is that it is still possible to apply one view of objectivity across the three WGs’ reports. I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to make this point clear.

10. Decisions concerning which standpoints, knowledge, papers, etc. are relevant are to be made on a case-by-case basis, but depend partly on who are the stakeholders with respect to the given subject matters.

11. Wylie (2014, 2015) discusses the benefits of including indigenous knowledge in archaeology.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation Project [PP00P1_170460].

Notes on contributors

Julie Jebeile

Julie Jebeile is a Philosopher of Science with an initial background in physics. Her current research is about climate models and expertise.