Thanks for responding - will check this out. I became involved in a number of climate change projects from a human rights perspective. Also spent 3 years helping  establish a UNESCO Chair in Community Sustainability here on our campus. Many of my more traditionally-oriented scientific colleagues considered my interest in cultural issues simply as 'social work' - hence my inquiry.

Bravo - will follow up on these resources. Am a sociologist by trade ;-)

On this side of the pond, (and as you're likely aware) Donald Brown at the Widener University School of Law is also doing some fascinating work on climate change as an issue of ethics.  Not exactly 'culture' per se, but certainly in the same 'not hard science' ballpark!

See: http://blogs.law.widener.edu/climate/

Thanks - been aware of Brown's work but not this project ;-)

Again, you're likely familiar with the work, but in case not...  from a Habermasian perspective, there is also:

Corfee-Morlot, J., M. Maslin, and J. Burgess. ‘Global Warming in the Public Sphere’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 365, no. 1860 (November 2007): 2741–76. doi:10.1098/rsta.2007.2084.

which contains an interesting analysis of  how, over time,  socially mediated pathways interact and intersect with scientific knowledge and how this impacts public understanding and policy debate on climate change.  You would be much better placed than I to judge to what extent 'socially mediated pathways' are a proxy for culture, but it seems a possible opening. 

There is also an interesting discussion of social learning and how the 'take-up' of expert knowledge is mediated both by cultural parameters and local experience.  This struck me as having a strong resonance with Claudia Pahl-Wostl's work on multi-level learning, adaptive capacity, the prospects for meaningful institutional change and the impediments.  

for what its worth...

Thanks again John for these esources. My sense is the next generation  to inherit these issues will see climate change and its effects very much as moral and ethical concerns, not solely as one of scientific evidence or lack thereof. I am old enough to recall my dad and grand-dad lighting up at the table in between courses and guffaw-ing that there's 'no evidence that smoking causes cancer'. Moreover, some of the first post-secondary classes I took in the early 80s still had folks smoking in the hallways and ashtrays in the classrooms. How very strange that all seems now as it while providing a fit metaphor for the denial of the present day.

I've been intrigued by the lack of traction on our side of the pond for German legal theorist Niklas Luhmann (he and Habermas are held in similar esteem I've been told) and his adoption of  'social autopoiesis' as a way to manage complexity of the types of social learning and communication that we have to interpret in this era . This systems theory - while a bit archaic and filled with jargon -  is transdisciplinary in that it accounts for systemic changes through perturbations between and among various forms of communication.  More later.

Dear Richard, at the "Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI)" in Essen, Germany, you'll find a very active group of scholars working on the very topic you're interested in. Their project is called "KlimaKultur" (the English translation would be "ClimateCulture"). Take a look at their website where you'll also find the contact data:

http://www.kulturwissenschaften.de/en/home/research_area-3.html

Ahh - thank you so much.