The Intervention of Climate Science

Is climate science changing the Earth? We would normally want to answer no. A science merely represents and does not intervene. Representation comes first and may or may not be followed by intervention, because intervention is a choice. Intervention is what humans decide to do, or not to do, with the causal knowledge that science provides. In this chapter I draw on work from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and neighboring fields to challenge this conventional view. Using the example of climate science, I argue that climate science is best understood as a form of action that not only describes its object but also intervenes in it. It follows that climate science is best understood as a science of geoengineering.