Modern research has produced computer climate models that are based largely on weather-prediction models. Climate models, however, include simulations of the ocean and land surface and other components of the climate system, as well as the atmosphere. Climate models are also allowed to run for a longer simulated time, several months or even years, instead of the few days needed to produce a weather forecast. This variation in time scales is one of the fundamental differences between climate and weather. Climate modeling is computer simulation of a high order. We can change a number in the computer program and make the Earth spin faster or backwards, we can turn off the Sun, we can make the seasons disappear, or we can change atmospheric carbon dioxide. Of course, we are doing all this with a make-believe or virtual Earth. Climate modeling by computer simulation is an exciting area of research. It can provide valuable insights into how the climate system works. However, the results are approximate solutions of the climate problem, not exact depictions.

Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, while useful for moving past the ecological limitations of the standard reading, is limited insofar as it focuses on individual actors—consumers, citizens, and politicians in particular. Kant’s ethical thought emphasizes individual humans rather than economic and political systems, and his teleological thought appears scientifically outdated. This chapter asks whether these aspects of Kant’s thought need revision. It begins by placing Kant in dialogue with Darwin and Marx, pursuing a critical discussion on the human species and political systems in the context of the Anthropocene. The Kantian reply, I suggest, encourages us to reconsider Kant’s philosophy of history and philosophical anthropology. Kant’s ideas are significant for the climate crisis insofar as they enjoin normative reflection on the human species globally and in the long term. I conclude with critical reflections on Kant’s racism and sexism as obstacles to reading Kant in the Anthropocene.

A feedback is something that happens in response to a prior cause, and which then itself makes a change in what caused it. It is the modification or control of a process or system by its results or effects. The challenge in making climate models realistic is largely that of understanding these feedback processes and incorporating them in models. As the air warms, does water vapor increase? To what extent? How much does that affect the warming? Do ice and snow melt? How rapidly? Does that change the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface and affect the warming? Does the ocean circulation change? In what ways? How does that affect climate? Do the clouds change? Are they more plentiful? Less plentiful? Higher? Lower? Darker? Lighter? How do they feed back to the climate? We need quantitative answers to all these questions. For example, we are not asking the qualitative question of whether clouds warm us or cool us. We know that they do both. Rather, we are asking the hard, quantitative question: Which of those two events is dominant, the cloud’s contribution to the greenhouse effect (warming) or the cloud’s contribution to reflecting away sunlight (cooling)?

This chapter first reproduces a fictional speech that I published in 2008, an election year for the Presidency of the United States. The candidates were Barack Obama and John McCain, both Senators at the time. In this imaginary speech, I expressed my thoughts on what the winner of the election might say about the steps he would take to give high priority to meeting the challenge of climate change. Climate change is not something the world can safely continue to procrastinate about. We cannot wait until coastal cities become abandoned before we start mitigating sea level rise. Waiting too long means doing too little and acting too late. There is a timescale built into the climate change issue by physics and chemistry, and the broad public has not yet fully realized the urgency of it. Climate change is fundamentally a moral and ethical problem, in my view. What do we who are alive today owe to the next generation, and to subsequent generations? We are literally creating the planet our children will live in. We must act energetically and wisely. Everything depends on what people and their governments do.

For many important aspects of weather forecasts, predictive skill has improved by about one day per decade in recent years. A seven-day forecast now, for example, is approximately as accurate as a three-day forecast was four decades ago. Thus, progress in improving forecasts during about four decades has resulted in extending the useful forecast range by about four days. This is a remarkable accomplishment. However, any error in specifying the initial conditions, and we know errors are inevitable, will make the forecast go wrong after a certain time. As for our current forecasting skill, we can predict weather for at least several days. For the largest-scale features – very large weather systems, highs and lows on continental scales – the limit is thought to be a few weeks. Recent progress in research has led to major advances in our understanding of climate. These advances have greatly increased the confidence of scientists in their ability to make skillful and useful forecasts of how the climate system will respond to increased amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

A document that nearly all countries are parties to is called the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This document was signed at the Earth Summit, a famous international event held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. The UNFCCC’s objective is “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [i.e., human-caused] interference with the climate system.” There have been many meetings called Conference of the Parties meetings, or COP meetings. Each COP meeting attracts thousands of attendees and lasts about 12 days. COP 13 was held in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007. I was there. Two months earlier, the world had learned that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was to be awarded equally between Al Gore, the American politician, and the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The outcome of the Bali meeting was deeply disappointing, but not surprising. Governments and businesses worldwide, and ultimately, humankind as a whole, will determine what actions will be taken. Climate science, however, is able to provide highly useful input to this policymaking process.