Climate scientists today enjoy an extraordinary epistemological privilege. They make claims about the global atmosphere that are simultaneously claims upon the totality of humanity. Summarized as average temperature targets, shrinking carbon budgets, and parts per million concentrations of greenhouse gases, these scientists’ findings and predictions are provocative. They invite us to identify and eliminate the root causes of atmospheric change that will soon rewrite the global geography of ecosystems, coastlines, ice sheets, and much else besides. Relatedly, they invite us to ask deep questions about how we should live on our one and only planet. But these scientists are not alone. In recent years their warnings about “dangerous climate change” have been folded into a set of much grander scientific pronouncements. Teams of environmental researchers across several disciplines have together sounded the alarm about the unprecedented scale, scope, and magnitude of the human impact on earth. Proclamations about the end of the Holocene (Steffen et al. 2011), the prospect of biophysical tipping points (Barnosky et al. 2012), and the imminent transgression of “planetary boundaries” (Rockström et al. 2009) all position anthropogenic climate

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全球变化研究与“人文学科”：迈向新时代

今天的气候科学家享有非凡的认识论特权。他们对全球大气提出要求，同时也对整个人类提出要求。总结为平均温度目标、减少的碳预算和百万分之温室气体浓度，这些科学家的发现和预测是具有启发性的。它们邀请我们确定并消除大气变化的根本原因，这些变化将很快改写生态系统、海岸线、冰盖和其他许多其他方面的全球地理。与此相关的是，他们邀请我们提出关于我们应该如何在我们唯一的星球上生活的深刻问题。但这些科学家并不孤单。近年来，他们关于“危险的气候变化”的警告已被合并为一系列更为宏大的科学声明。跨多个学科的环境研究人员团队就人类对地球的影响前所未有的规模、范围和程度发出了警报。关于全新世结束的公告（Steffen 等人，2011 年）、生物物理临界点的前景（Barnosky 等人，2012 年），以及“行星边界”的即将突破（Rockström 等人，2009 年）都将人为气候定位于