Climate change raises new, foundational challenges in science. It requires us to question what we know and how we know it. The subject is important for society, of course, but the science is young and history tells us that scientists can get things wrong before they get them right. So how can we judge what information is reliable and what is open to question?

During this event, David Stainforth will discuss the fundamental characteristics of climate change that make it a difficult issue to study: difficult for the physical sciences but also for the social sciences and policy. He will explain that knowledge of the “existence of the threat” has robust foundations but that understanding the details of that threat raises core challenges across multiple disciplines; challenges that are as deep and as fascinating as any in fundamental scientific enquiry. His talk will be a journey through the maths of complexity, the physics of climate, philosophical questions regarding the origins and robustness of knowledge, and the use of natural science in the economics and policy of climate change.

About the speaker

David Stainforth is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, and an Honorary Professor in the Physics Department at the University of Warwick. He carries out research on climate science and its relationship with climate economics and policy. He focuses particularly on uncertainty analysis and on how academic assessments can better support decision making in the context of climate change.