Verantwortung unter der Bedingung von Unsicherheit – und was KlimawissenschaftlerInnen darunter verstehen

This paper discusses the question of what is understood by the term scientific responsibility. The contextual focus for this discussion is climate research and geo-engineering. As this discipline is associated with inherent uncertainties (e.g. climate modelling, estimating the impacts of technology), we hypothesize that these uncertainties will quite possibly necessitate a close reflection on and debate about scientific responsibility. Our discussion proceeds in three steps: the first is to clarify the meaning of scientific uncertainty in the specific context of climate research. The second step is to show what questions are left open when the term responsibility is considered within the context of knowledge boundaries in scientific-historical terms (i.e. who is responsible for whom/what, given which specific norms/values/regulations). This leads to the third step, in which interviews with project leaders working on the DFG (German Research Association) Priority Research Project 1689 ‚Climate Engineering - Risks, Challenges, Opportunities (2013–2019)’ are analyzed in order to determine how these open questions are decided on and, in the process, how both consensus and controversy arise among these researchers.