Abstract

Within the scientific community, there is a wide consensus that in our days there is an anthropogenic climate change. Also, there is a consensus that decades ago there was no process of this kind. Consequently, at some point in time somebody must have discovered this specific climate change, and the community must have accepted this finding as a discovery. In this paper, I will discuss the discovery of the anthropogenic climate change from a philosophy of science perspective. I will argue, that it is on the one hand a very special kind of a scientific discovery, but on the other hand, as I will show, this process of discovery sheds light on other kinds of scientific discoveries in theory, experimental and other empirical settings, and computer Simulations.