Category Archives: Consensus

Re-evaluating the manufacture of the climate consensus

Posted on August 21, 2019 by | 137 comments

by Judith Curry

A new book by Oppenheimer, Oreskes et al. entitled ‘Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy‘ makes a case against consensus seeking in climate science assessments.

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137 Comments

Posted in Consensus

Gallery

Extremes

Posted on June 13, 2019 by

by Judith Curry Politics versus science in attributing extreme weather events to manmade global warming.

225 Comments

Hearing on the Biodiversity Report

Posted on May 22, 2019 by | 189 comments

by Judith Curry

The House Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife is holding a Hearing today on Responding to the Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

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189 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts, Consensus

National Climate Assessment: A crisis of epistemic overconfidence

Posted on January 2, 2019 by | 110 comments

by Judith Curry

“You can say I don’t believe in gravity. But if you step off the cliff you are going down. So we can say I don’t believe climate is changing, but it is based on science.” – Katherine Hayhoe, co-author of the 4th National Climate Assessment Report.

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110 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Uncertainty

Manufacturing consensus: the early history of the IPCC

Posted on January 3, 2018 by | 385 comments

by Judith Curry

Short summary: scientists sought political relevance and allowed policy makers to put a big thumb on the scale of the scientific assessment of the attribution of climate change.

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385 Comments

Posted in Attribution, Consensus, IPCC, Sociology of science

Consensus enforcers versus the Trump administration

Posted on June 24, 2017 by | 780 comments

by Judith Curry

Tough days on The Hill for the enforcers of the climate consensus.

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780 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Policy

The Republic of Science

Posted on May 30, 2016 by | 222 comments

by Judith Curry

The professional standards of science must impose a framework of discipline and at the same time encourage rebellion against it. – Michael Polanyi (1962)

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222 Comments

Posted in Consensus, History, Sociology of science

The paradox of the climate change consensus

Posted on April 17, 2016 by | 513 comments

by Judith Curry

In our view, the fact that so many scientists agree so closely about the [causes of the] earth’s warming is, itself, evidence of a lack of evidence for [human caused] global warming. – D. Ryan Brumberg and Matthew Brumberg

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513 Comments

Posted in Consensus

New AMS members survey on climate change

Posted on March 24, 2016 by | 349 comments

by Judith Curry

The American Meteorological Society has issued a draft report on the results from a survey of the views of their membership on climate change.

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349 Comments

Posted in Consensus

History and the limits of the climate consensus

Posted on January 22, 2016 by | 339 comments

by Judith Curry

Acknowledging the science of global warming does not require accepting that it is immune to criticism.

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339 Comments

Posted in Consensus, History

What is there a 97% consensus about?

Posted on December 20, 2015 by | 388 comments

by Frank Hobbs (franktoo)

At the Senate Hearing on “Dogma and Data”, dogma about the 97% consensus went unchallenged. Democratic Senators constantly recited the phrase “97% consensus”, but it is not clear whether they – or their Republican opponents – had the slightest idea what the phrase meant: 97% of what group support a consensus about exactly what?

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388 Comments

Posted in Consensus

Climate culture

Posted on November 20, 2015 by | 274 comments

by Andy West

A frequent topic at Climate Etc. is the ‘consensus.’ An argument is presented here that the climate consensus is as much about culture as it is about climate science.

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274 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Sociology of science

Adjudicating scientific disputes in climate science

Posted on October 29, 2015 by | 191 comments

by Judith Curry

The limits of judicial competence and the risk of taking sides

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191 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Policy

Adjudicating the future: silencing climate dissent via the courts

Posted on October 11, 2015 by | 142 comments

by Judith Curry

A British academic wants an international court to declare climate skeptics wrong, once and for all.

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142 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Policy

Structured expert judgment

Posted on October 7, 2015 by | 176 comments

by Judith Curry

Any attempt to impose agreement will “promote confusion between consensus and certainty”. The goal should be to quantify uncertainty, not to remove it from the decision process. –  Willy Aspinall

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176 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Uncertainty

The conceits of consensus

Posted on August 27, 2015 by | 501 comments

by Judith Curry

Critiques, the 3%, and is 47 the new 97?

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501 Comments

Posted in Consensus

Climate Change, Epistemic Trust, and Expert Trustworthiness

Posted on August 24, 2015 by | 602 comments

by Judith Curry

Among the best indirect indicators available to nonexperts is the overwhelming numbers of scientists testifying to anthropogenic climate change. Yet the evidential significance of such clear numbers turns substantially on our nonexpert assessment of these scientists’ trustworthiness. Absent trust, even without active distrust, the numbers’ evidential weight drops considerably. – Ben Almassi

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602 Comments

Posted in Consensus

Is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan legal? Lawyers and law professors disagree

Posted on July 7, 2015 by | 159 comments

by Judith Curry

We polled 130 environmental attorneys and law professors from around the country about the legality of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan. The results might surprise you. – Brian Potts and Abigail Barnes

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159 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Policy

A key admission regarding climate memes

Posted on July 3, 2015 by | 421 comments

by Andy West

Lewandowsky and Oreskes raise the prospect that via the agency of memes, the climate Consensus with its high certainty of danger, could be a socially generated artifact and not a scientific fact.

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421 Comments

Posted in Communication, Consensus, Sociology of science

Scientists speaking with one voice: panacea or pathology?

Posted on June 25, 2015 by | 435 comments

by Judith Curry

The authority of a scientific body is not undermined by questioning, but rather depends upon it – Beatty & Moore

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435 Comments

Posted in Consensus

Against ‘consensus’ messaging

Posted on June 17, 2015 by | 366 comments

by Judith Curry

A decades’ experience shows that “Consensus messaging” doesn’t work. – Dan Kahan

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366 Comments

Posted in Communication, Consensus

Ethics of climate expertise

Posted on April 30, 2015 by | 466 comments

by Judith Curry

If deference to the authoritative opinions of experts is essential to our rationality and knowledge, and if that deference unavoidably rests on trust, not only in the competence, but also in the epistemic and ethical characters of our experts–then it is high time that we get to work on the ethics of expertise. Indeed, it is past time. – John Hardwig

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466 Comments

Posted in Consensus, Ethics

Contradiction on emotional bias in the climate domain

Posted on April 24, 2015 by | 294 comments

by Andy West

Emotions and messaging about climate change.

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294 Comments

Posted in Communication, Consensus, Sociology of science

Climate psychology’s consensus bias

Posted on January 30, 2015 by | 505 comments

by Andy West

Climate psychologists have for years now puzzled over public inaction on climate change and also what makes skeptics tick (or sick), apparently making little progress on these issues.

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505 Comments

Posted in Consensus

Groups and herds: implications for the IPCC

Posted on November 25, 2014 by | 404 comments

by Judith Curry

Group failures often have disastrous consequences—not merely for businesses, nonprofits, and governments, but for all those affected by them. – Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie

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404 Comments

Posted in Consensus, IPCC, Sociology of science