Abstract

Since the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, the relationship between climate research, politics, and public awareness of climate change issues has reached a new level of global interlacing. During the last 20 years, decision-making processes and negotiations to address climate change have become highly dependent on scientific input. Policy-makers have increasingly sought legitimacy for their decisions through evidence-based frameworks. The increasing dependence on scientific knowledge has led to new accountability-related demands to assess how knowledge on climate change is actually generated and applied. In addition, issues of climate protection, especially through the reduction of emissions, have been politicized, and climate change mitigation and adaptation have been used as focal points during electoral campaigns. In general, concerns related to climate change and its sociopolitical, economic, and military dimensions have attracted a different kind of political attention compared to how climate change had been perceived in the 1960s and 1970s. Such dimensions have increasingly become the subject of political calculation, and less so of environmental concerns.