How Not to Lie with Climate Change Data. A Realist Agenda

Jordan Fox, SUNY at Buffalo
Jonas Adams, SUNY at Buffalo
Patrick Greiner, Universiy of Washington

How do we know what we know about climate change and society? Through what empirics do we build our claims? Where does our empirical data come from, and how has it been collected? Drawing from journals including American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Social Problems since 2010 as well as Environmental Sociology since 2015, we catalog the empirical data employed in over 80 climate change oriented quantitative articles in order to help answer these questions. We not only identify common data sources, but investigate how these data were collected in the first place. We find that, in various ways, the data sociologists employ is most often created via means that demand a heaping dose of critically reflexivity. Furthermore, after a review of the language in the articles themselves, we find that despite clear questions regarding how precisely these data reflect the socio-environmental realities they attempt to describe, sociologists are rarely critical of these data sources. This leads us to an argument for a realist agenda.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 79. Comparative-Historical Environmental Sociology Part One: Empirics and Theory