Project Details
Projekt
Climate Engineering Liability and Reliability: An Integrated Treatment (CELARIT)
Applicants
Professor Dr. Martin Carrier; Professor Timo Goeschl, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Alexander Proelß; Dr. Hauke Schmidt
Subject Area
Economic Theory
Public Law
Atmospheric Science
Practical Philosophy
Public Law
Atmospheric Science
Practical Philosophy
Term
from 2013 to 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 236770886
In light of the potentially catastrophic side-effects of Climate Engineering (CE), the existence of an international liability regime is generally considered to be a prerequisite for its internationally accepted deployment. However, two fundamental questions arise: First, whether a liability regime as a means of allocating and sharing the risks of likely damages is desirable and feasible; and secondly, how to deal with the fact that estimates of the climate effects of CE could only rely on numerical climate modeling, but not on experiential data. Although the topic of liability for CE-induced damages has recently attracted increasing attention, these questions have not yet been addressed in a comprehensive manner in literature. Also, it has not yet been answered how it is possible to arrive at judgments on robustness and reliability of competing models of the impacts of CE implementation, in particular when these may serve as evidence in court proceedings. Against this background, the core objective of CELARIT is the development of an integrated treatment of international liability issues and problems of model reliability and robustness. This treatment will build on three pillars: (1) the outputs of the predominantly disciplinary research in climate modelling, economics, philosophy, and law carried out under the precursor project CEIBRAL; (2) the outputs of the interdisciplinary integration of these perspectives during CEIBRAL; and (3) the most recent developments in the state of the art in climate and CE research and in the constituent disciplines. Jointly, these pillars support and inform the particular objective of the project, namely to tackle, across disciplines, the problem of using models as evidence in the context of liability for CE. The work conduced in this project will thus: (1) address the question how competing models can be assessed and compared by a court, and at what cost additional robustness and reliability come; (2) assess under what conditions a climate model may be considered as providing admissible and sufficient evidence in a CE liability trial; (3) examine how to determine damage in a setting where the counterfactual for computing harm (a world without CE and, perhaps, without climate change) cannot be observed, but is itself a product of a numerical model. Finally (4), the problem will be looked at within a broader context by analyzing how models can be used for guiding CE-related action in spite of their limited reliability, and how scientific policy advice can adequately deal with uncertainty and ignorance. The project reunites the participants of CEIBRAL. However, CELARIT takes an important step above and beyond CEIBRAL in that it undertakes a methodological reorientation towards an integrated treatment across disciplines: It includes a systematic investigation of the limitations and potentials that model uncertainty offers for governing CE implementation in a societally responsible fashion.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
