Dialogues on climate change

Divided we stand

The physical science of climate change has established as fact that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have warmed our planet (IPCC, 2021). Widespread and rapid changes across the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, and biosphere have been detected that are unprecedented over decades to millennia, with many irreversible over long timescales. Adverse impacts on varied human systems and ecosystems have been observed, with the distribution of these impacts being such that the most vulnerable people and systems are those most affected (IPCC, 2021, 2022a). An increase in weather and climate extremes, including heatwaves, heavy precipitation, and droughts, has also been seen, with many projected to intensify under continued global warming. Large-scale discontinuities in the climate system, such as a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, have been identified that cannot be ruled out. And it has been determined that global surface temperature and its attendant risks will continue to grow unless at least net zero CO₂ emissions are reached alongside significant reductions in other greenhouse gas emissions.

The evidence for anthropogenic climate change is clear. And yet, scientific knowledge about it will always be incomplete, subject to uncertainties, critiqued and debated. Take, for example, the longstanding debate about equilibrium climate sensitivity – the steady state change in surface temperature in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ above preindustrial levels – which was recently reignited when it was argued that the IPCC had underestimated the variable and thereby understated climate change risks (Hansen et al., 2023). Or consider the divergent outcomes of models and techniques for attributing extreme weather events to human influence, and the low confidence in any emergent climate change signals for many weather-related climate impact drivers (IPCC, 2021). Or the ongoing exchanges surrounding the risk of tipping behaviour among candidate Earth system tipping elements (Wang et al., 2023). Debates are the norm for knowledge about climate change, not the exception. Indeed, they are an essential feature of good science.

Dialogues on climate change only proliferate when we begin to consider the myriad ways in which the issue is and could be affected by human dimensions such as discourses, values and beliefs, and socioeconomic developments. Think about the many competing framings of climate change, not only as a question of scientific knowledge and prediction, but also as one bound up with political conflict, social progress, religious belief, morality and ethics, national security, disasters, public health, economics, and more besides (Badullovich et al., 2020). Consider the widespread and deeply held disagreements about the perceived risks of climate change, which are known to be characterised and shaped by opposing cultural worldviews (Bellamy, 2023). Or the disputes around the use of different climate scenarios, a notable example being Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 which, despite relying on highly implausible emission pathways, has been used widely as a likely ‘business as usual’ outcome (Hausfather and Peters, 2020).

Nowhere is climate change more debated than in relation to how humans should respond to it. Mitigation efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to decreases in carbon intensity, and adaptation efforts to adjust to new climate realities are producing benefits and reducing climate risks (IPCC, 2022b). But significant gaps remain between global ambitions to mitigate and adapt on the one hand, and national ambitions – and actions – on the other hand. As such, the world is on track to miss the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the increase in global temperature to well below 2°C by a wide margin. What, if at all, should the relative roles of different climate solutions be in closing this gap, and who is responsible for enacting them? Does decarbonisation demand radical changes to people's lifestyles? Is nuclear power a necessary part of the energy transition? Are carbon markets the most effective way to reduce emissions? Should the focus of climate policy be on adaptation over mitigation? Is carbon dioxide removal a distraction? Is research into solar radiation modification justified?

Is climate change something that can be solved at all? Climate change is, after all, a ‘wicked problem’ – one with no definitive formulation of the diagnosis nor the prescription for solving it (Hulme, 2022). Is the problem of climate change a market failure that needs to be corrected through carbon pricing? Is it rooted in a system of capitalist overconsumption that must be overthrown? Is it a vehicle for advancing dangerous political ideologies? Is it an emergency that demands large-scale technological interventions to rapidly cool the planet? Is it about having too much CO₂ present in the atmosphere that needs to be removed? Is it the result of historical and structural inequalities that need to be levelled? None of these formulations of the climate change issue is entirely correct, and none of them is entirely wrong. Wicked problems such as climate change can never be conclusively solved. They can only be managed with varying degrees of success through temporary settlements between perspectives that last only until the problem resurfaces in a different guise.

With the advent of social media, debates on climate change have only become more polarised over time (Falkenberg et al., 2022). People with whom others disagree are often divisively vilified as ‘contrarians’, ‘alarmists’, ‘deniers’, ‘doomists’, ‘delayers’, ‘zealots’, ‘heretics’, and more, without due consideration of the substance of their arguments. Take, for instance, the (mis)characterisation of technology development, social justice concerns, individual responsibility, and many other climate change talking points as ‘discourses of climate delay’. While such discourses could indeed be employed to delay climate action, they falsely give the impression that the contexts in which such things are voiced are not relevant (Pflieger and De Pryck, 2023). It should go without saying that people can support new technologies, appeal to social justice, and question the role of individuals for reasons other than wanting to delay action on climate change. If we are to have more constructive dialogues on climate change then we must begin by dispensing with such oversimplifications and seek to genuinely understand one another. In the words of the American post-apocalyptic television series Fallout: ‘everyone wants to save the world; they just disagree on how’ (2024).

The dialogues model

The aim of Dialogues on Climate Change is to provide a platform that facilitates open and productive scholarly dialogues across such divides. Dialogues is a unique open peer commentary publishing model from Sage, which was launched with Dialogues in Human Geography in 2011 and is being applied to a growing number of knowledge arenas. Alongside original research articles, Dialogues journals publish a number of commentaries that critique and debate the articles, as well as an author's reply to the commentaries. The idea is that a particular article acts as a catalyst for dialogue on a particular set of claims, observations, and/or explanations.

Each issue of Dialogues on Climate Change publishes two Article Forums, each divided into three parts. The first part consists of the primary Article (no more than 8000 words), which may take the form of original research articles, review articles, or essays. This is followed by a set of solicited Commentaries (no more than 2000 words each) and an Author(s) Response to the commentaries by the author(s) of the primary article (no more than 2000 words). The journal will also publish Further Engagements consisting of commentaries by readers of the journal in response to Article Forums published in previous issues (no more than 2000 words per commentary). Again, the authors of the primary article will be given the opportunity to respond (no more than 2000 words).

Dialogues on Climate Change is committed to fostering rigorous critical thinking on the full range of climate change topics, including debates within and between the natural and social sciences and the humanities on the physical and social causes and effects of – and responses to – climate change. Climate change is a wicked problem that cannot be fully understood from any single disciplinary perspective, and as such the journal welcomes contributions from across the disciplinary spectrum, including, but not limited to, climatology, physical and human geography, meteorology, psychology, Earth system science, economics, environmental science, science and technology studies, history, engineering, political science, sociology, ecology, and philosophy. The journal is interdisciplinary in that it organises and puts into conversation knowledge from different disciplines within a single publishing project, and as appropriate, within individual Article Forums. Individual contributions may also be interdisciplinary by integrating concepts, methods, and/or insights from different disciplines into a coherent whole in order to better understand this complex phenomenon.

Changing the (dialogic) climate

Humans are changing the climate. The scientific evidence for this fact leaves little room for debate. But climate change is nevertheless an issue that generates significant academic and wider societal debate. We debate about the many aspects of climate science that are incomplete or uncertain, we debate about the many ways in which it is and could be affected by human dimensions, and we debate about the many ways in which humans could – or should – respond to it. Disagreements are an inevitable part of thinking about this wicked problem, and indeed should be encouraged in the interests of good science and scholarship and, ultimately, for the benefit of an open democracy. And yet, with perspectives on climate change becoming more polarised, debates can often descend into vilification, oversimplifications, and division. There is a critical need for more constructive dialogues.

Dialogues on Climate Change is a new journal that seeks to facilitate these constructive dialogues with a unique open peer commentary publishing model. It will foster rigorous critical thinking on all climate change topics by bringing different perspectives within and between disciplines into productive conversations with one another. In doing so, it seeks to advance our shared understanding of climate change science and scholarship and inspire more effective climate action. We look forward to hearing from you, the readers, about this exciting undertaking, and about your ideas for Article Forums which will help us in our goal of generating better dialogues on climate change.