Hans von Storch – författare

This book offers an authoritative analysis of the state-of-the art in energy and climate research and policy. It starts by describing the current status of technologies that are expected to have an influence on the energy systems of the future. For an adequate evaluation, it presents the latest findings on the effects of energy supply and consumption as well as of the emissions on both the environment and people’s health. This is followed by an extensive discussion of the economic and social problems related to climate change, the need for energy transitions, and other issues that may require public investment and international agreements. The book reviews the problem of energy policy from a global perspective, providing readers with the technical, political, economic and ethical background needed to understand the current situation and work at better solutions for a sustainable, just and prospering world.

Since the foundation of the Max Planck Institute in 1975 with the now-Nobel laureate Klaus Hasselmann as founding director, the climate science in Hamburg has seen a remarkable boost. Various ideas were brought forward, implemented and tested. Many of them ignited interest in the global scientific community, thus adding significant momentum to the development of modern climate science.

The participants of the remarkable development since 1975 have come together to identify these concepts “born in Hamburg”. In an introductory chapter, the historical development, including other significant developments of climate science in the late 19th and early 20th century are addressed. 

The main part consists of chapters addressing the development of key innovative concepts. These are chosen to describe ideas which have been suggested by scientists while working in Hamburg and have been taken up by the international community in applications and advancements (such as the stochastic framing of dynamics and analysis, adding carbon cycles to climate models, multiple equilibria in climate models, anomaly coupling, downscaling, and constructed proxies). These ideas may not in all cases have been strictly new, or “firsts”, but they were the Hamburg publications which made the difference.

The book is mostly a book on scientific concepts and ideas, less so a general history of climate science in Hamburg.

Als die Autoren – über die Grenzen zweier Wissenschaftskulturen hinweg – Anfang der 90er Jahre begannen, über die wissenschaftliche und populäre Wahrnehmung und Konstruktion des Phänomens Klima, Klimawandel, Klimapolitik und die Auswirkungen des Klimas auf die Gesellschaft nachzudenken, stießen sie auf erheblichen Widerstand, insbesondere als sie über die dringende Notwendigkeit einer gesellschaftlichen Anpassung an den Klimawandel schrieben. Die Autoren sehen sich als Pioniere in diesem Politikfeld. Viele, wenn nicht die meisten Maßnahmen für den Klimaschutz und gegen die Klimafolgen erfordern die Innovationskraft aller Wissenschaften und der Technik. Die künftige Umsetzung wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse in der Klimapolitik ist Schlüssel des erfolgreichen Umgangs der Gesellschaft mit den Folgen des Klimawandels. Dies geschieht jedoch nicht automatisch. Die Umsetzung von Wissenschaft in die Gesellschaft unterliegt ökonomischen, politischen und kulturellen Zwängen, und kann insbesondere durch den Mehrwert interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit von Wissenschaftlern, wie sie in diesem Band praktiziert wird, erreicht werden.