Ethics of the scientist qua policy advisor: inductive risk, uncertainty, and catastrophe in climate economics.
This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) of the economic effects of climate change, and how climate economists acting as policy advisors ought to represent the uncertain possibility of catastrophe. Some climate economists, especially Martin Weitzman, have a...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 196; no. 8; pp. 3123 - 3139 |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Aug2019
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=137558414&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 137558414 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2019 vid: 196 iid: 8 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 137558414 10.1007/s11229-017-1617-3 ppf: 3123 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 535KB tig: atl: Ethics of the scientist qua policy advisor: inductive risk, uncertainty, and catastrophe in climate economics. aug: au: Frank, David M. affil: Department of Philosophy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA su: Scientists Uncertainty Climatology Ethical problems Consultants Climate change research sug: subj: Scientists Uncertainty Climatology Ethical problems Consultants Climate change research keyword: Catastrophic risk Climate change Economics Environmental ethics Inductive risk Research ethics ab: This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) of the economic effects of climate change, and how climate economists acting as policy advisors ought to represent the uncertain possibility of catastrophe. Some climate economists, especially Martin Weitzman, have argued for a precautionary approach where avoiding catastrophe should structure climate economists' welfare analysis. This paper details ethical arguments that justify this approach, showing how Weitzman's "fat tail" probabilities of climate catastrophe pose ethical problems for widely used IAMs. The main claim is that economists who ignore or downplay catastrophic risks in their representations of uncertainty likely fall afoul of ethical constraints on scientists acting as policy advisors. Such scientists have duties to honestly articulate uncertainties and manage (some) inductive risks, or the risks of being wrong in different ways. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2019. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2019 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|