Inference Towards the Best Explanation: Reflections on the Issue of Climate Change

Abstract

Science is an organized enterprise of inquiry which tries to tie together multiple strands of evidence to craft coherent explanations for disparate patterns in the natural world. Philosophers call this enterprise “inference towards the best explanation”. Such inferences at times depend upon detailed quantitative models, but at times one can rely upon the confluence of multiple strands of qualitative evidence. Humans are having unquestionable influences upon many aspects of the earth system at present, on land, in freshwater systems, and indeed the ocean, including devastating impacts on biodiversity. There are many patterns in the world at present – shrinking glaciers, shifting seasonal patterns in species’ life histories, and altered spatial distributions – which point to the signal of climate change, independent of the details of quantitative climate models. Yet, there are many other factors at play, often confounding clear assessment of the specific role of climate change in observed changes in the world. A deeper synoptic understanding of the drivers and impacts of climate change would be incredibly valuable and is urgently needed, even if in the end (though this seems increasingly unlikely) anthropogenic drivers were not the main factor underlying observed climate change.

Keywords:

• Inference to the best explanation
• multicausal explanations
• climate change
• range shifts

Acknowledgements

I thank Mike Barfield for help in preparing the figures. When crafting this essay, I at times felt like one of the wanderers in a painting by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, seen as a silhouette on a coastal cliff, staring out across a limitless and at times turbulent sea – in this case, the vast expanse of knowledge, intellectual striving, and indeed controversy, that is encompassed by global change research. I would like to thank the many authors of the many papers and books I cite, who have helped me to start to navigate across this sea. I also in particular thank my wife Lynne, Joel Brown, John Faaborg, Maurio Pelto, Richard Primack, Sam Scheiner, Mike Rosenzweig, and Christer Nilsson for very useful correspondence and conversations, and the University of Florida Foundation for support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.