Articles | Volume 30, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-30-31-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-30-31-2023
Brief communication
 | 
31 Jan 2023
Brief communication |  | 31 Jan 2023

Brief communication: Climate science as a social process – history, climatic determinism, Mertonian norms and post-normality

Hans von Storch

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Cited articles

Adolf, M. and Stehr, N.: Knowledge, Routledge Chapman & Hall, 2nd Edn., ISBN 9783958321458, 2016. a
Arrhenius, S.: On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground, Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 41, 237–276, 1896. a, b
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Boykoff, M. T. and Boykoff, J. M.: Climate change and journalistic norms: A case-study of US mass-media coverage, Geoforum, 38, 1190–1204, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.01.008, 2007. a
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Short summary
Climate science is, as all sciences, a social process and as such conditioned by the zeitgeist of the time. It has an old history and has attained different political significances. Today, it is the challenge of anthropogenic climate change – and societies want answers about how to deal with it. In earlier times, it was mostly the ideology of climate determinism which led people to construct superiority and eventually colonialism.