Here’s something from a talk at the California Institute of Technology on Jan. 17, 2003 that I believe is spot on:

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. . . .

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. . . .“

“Consensus is the business of politics“  – that’s exactly it. If the  scientific revolution counted for anything it was surely the idea that our theories and ideas should be tested against Nature and Reason – not by the whim or bias of some arbitrary social group. Before that revolution it was the Church that exercised social control over ideas. The post-modern advocates of a consensus epistemology are simply replacing that discredited system with a form of control based on an entrenched academia (which in turn can be “managed” by the ruling political class on whom the academics are dependent for funds).

Let’s hope Science can survive!

It seems to me that one of the by-products of the global warming debate has been the addition of the idea of consensus into the theory of science. Given that the global warming debate is about highly politicised science, perhaps it should come as no surprise that a concept fundamental to political progress (consensus) gets assumed to be at the heart of scientific progress.

(Of course “Consensus” is also one of those Orwellian newspeak feel-good words which modern politicians deploy because it seems to make its own argument).

The alternative view, as wonderfully expounded by Karl Popper for example, stresses the adversarial nature of science. On this view we should (insofar as we wish to think scientifically) never cease to challenge the consensus, to find refutations and look for critical tests. The best theories will be the ones still standing after exposure to the most powerful scepticism. Those who seek to shield their ideas from criticism by, for example, invoking a “closed shop” of men in white coats who alone are qualified to speak on the issue are being profoundly un-scientific. You see this attitude from latter-day warming-mongers like this:

• “You claim AGW is scientific fact because there is an overwhelming consensus. But what about scientist …..(insert name) who disagrees?” Ah, but he is in the wrong department/in the wrong field/ retired/has a great aunt whose third cousin believed in creationism (delete as appropriate)
• “But what about this scientist……. (insert name). He is an expert in the field!” Ah, but although he makes these claims, they have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal
• “But what about this scientist………(insert name)? His work is published in…. (insert peer-reviewed journal)!” Ah, but those are the wrong peers and this is the wrong journal!

A wonderful critique of “consensus” has just been published by John Kay. Here are some things he has to say:

“Consensus finds a way through conflicting opinions and interests. Consensus is achieved when the outcome of discussion leaves everyone feeling they have been given enough of what they want. The processes of proper science could hardly be more different. The accomplished politician is a negotiator, a conciliator, finding agreement where none seemed to exist. The accomplished scientist is an original, an extremist, disrupting established patterns of thought. Good science involves perpetual, open debate, in which every objection is aired and dissents are sharpened and clarified, not smoothed over.”

And: “We do not say that there is a consensus over the second law of thermodynamics, a consensus that Paris is south of London or that two and two are four. We say that these are the way things are.”

And: “Peer review is a valuable part of the apparatus of scholarship, but carries a danger of establishing self-referential clubs that promote each other’s work.”

And: “The notion of a monolithic “science”, meaning what scientists say, is pernicious and the notion of “scientific consensus” actively so. The route to knowledge is transparency in disagreement and openness in debate. The route to truth is the pluralist expression of conflicting views in which, often not as quickly as we might like, good ideas drive out bad. There is no room in this process for any notion of “scientific consensus”.

Wonderful!

http://johnkay.com/political/518.

John Kay is one of Britain’s leading economists

“I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.

To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change.

I guess I would ask which human beings – where and when – are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.” Michael Griffin

These comments are from a taped interview that was broadcast in the U.S. on Thursday May 31st 2007 on National Public Radio as reported here. A transcript is available here for $3.95.

Michael Griffin is the head of NASA

The Motion: “Global warming is not a crisis”

Prior to the debate the motion had only 30% support from the audience.

After the debate – 46% of the audience had been convinced that global warming was indeed not a crisis, while just 42 percent continued to believe it was a crisis.

For the orthodoxy there were some big hitters:

• Gavin Schmidt ~ a climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space. Gavin is chief guru-in-residence at realclimate.org (the prime resource for those seeking to stock up on anti-contrarian weaponry)
• Brenda Ekwurzel ~ works on the national climate program at the Union of Concerned Scientists
• Richard Somerville ~ University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Who could the so-called ‘contrarians’ field to match this fearsome firepower?

• Richard Lindzen ~ Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Philip Stott ~ Professor Emeritus of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
• Michael Crichton ~ MD Harvard Medical School & Postdoctoral Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. (Also a writer and filmmaker…)

If you favour an epistemology that respects argument & reason, then the result of this debate is interesting and thought-provoking. But of course not ultimately especially conclusive.

On the other hand if you hold to an epistemology that offers no better than ‘knowledge by authority‘ you will see the debate as quite insignificant and indeed ill-advised: only the “priesthood” should make up the audience, and presumably only certain “approved priests” should be permitted to conduct the argument in any case. Attitudes such as this can be found on show at the inquest that followed the debate held at realclimate.org here as in this kind of comment:

“Our experience and that of all the scientists we know is that public debates with sceptics or denialists are not useful at all“

By “useful” one supposes this contributor means: “convenient to our authority“.

Or take this counsel against public debate:

“You’re guaranteed a hostile audience and a rhetorical ambush of some sort, your mere presence legitimates the proceedings, and they can always count it as a win with some justification afterward“

I would have thought that advocates of sound scientific theories (Boyle’s law, Archimedes’ Principle, Relativity) have no fear of public debate. On the contrary how could a public airing be other than entirely welcome and quite “un-threatening“?

So why plead a “special case” for AGW (anthropogenic global warming)?

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I have a transcript of the debate in PDF (255KB) here.

“Global warming is a myth”

“Other top-tier politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice”

“Environmentalism as a meta-physical ideology and as a world view has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or the climate itself”

“…as a scientifically inclined man, I know how to read science articles about these questions, e.g. about ice in Antarctica. I don’t have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. The papers I have read simply don’t lead to the conclusions we may see in the media”

“…environmentalism is a new incarnation of contemporary leftism”

(These quotes are from from Luboš Motl’s blog)

It seems that Václav Klaus is planning a book soon and one chapter will be reserved for expressing his scepticism over climate change.

Go for it Václav!

“Even though the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated. It is high time to re-consider the trend of global climate changes”

Multi-scale analysis of global temperature changes and trend of a drop in temperature in the next 20 years, Lin Zhen-Shan and Sun Xian, The School of Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, P. R. China, Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, July 2006

But there are plenty of scientists who don’t follow the supposed party line. One such is Habibullo Abdusamatov, the head of the space research laboratory at the St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo Observatory.

In an interview with the Russian News & Information Agency Dr Abdusamatov stated:

“Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy – almost throughout the last century – growth in its intensity. It is no secret that when they go up, temperatures in the world’s oceans trigger the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations” [Jan 15 2007]

The point is not so much that he is right (though of course he may be). Rather it gives the lie to the idea that the men in white coats are of one mind on this (apart from a few big-oil-financed lackeys!)

Of course fanatical warmers are prone to respond to this kind of counter-example by saying “ah, when we say consensus we don’t mean by that that you can’t find academics with top qualifications in mathematics, physics, or whatever who disagree with us. Rather we mean that if you look at a select list of peer-reviewed journals, then you will find consensus. Oh, and by the way, we’ll tell you which are the ‘good’ journals in which to look for the consensus“

I think this is a key battle line in the debate. The concept of “peer-reviewed consensus” is being put forward as lying at the heart of the methodology of science. It is essential for the warmers’ case that that are able to hold the line on this.

But can “peer-reviewed consensus” carry the weight that the warmers want to put on it?

]]> http://www.globalosophy.com/archives/17/feed 0 http://www.globalosophy.com/archives/12 http://www.globalosophy.com/archives/12#comments Mon, 30 Oct 2006 08:38:55 +0000 Pali Gap http://www.globalosophy.com/archives/12 …and in the red corner we have a young ambitious British politician – Environment Secretary David Miliband:

“I think that the scientific debate has now closed on global warming, and the popular debate is closing as well” (Miliband on Sky News television).

And in the blue corner Richard Lindzen – Arthur P Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (bit of a weight mismatch eh?):

“Yes, there does appear to be warming, but the amount is hardly certain or indisputable. And the amount found does not appear that alarming. The alarm, I would suppose, comes from the notoriously inadequate climate models…for those who enthuse over the regulatory state, the possibility of regulating breathing must be like a dream come true. Under the circumstances, perhaps we should be suspicious of the dishonourable tradition of establishing the alleged truth of global warming by constant repetition, while ignoring reality” (Sunday Telegraph Oct 29 2006).

Continuing his disingenuous political posturing Miliband went on to harangue the United States as a “major emitter” like China and India that needs to get on board.

Get on board what?

Friends Of The Earth report that new Government energy figures show that under Miliband’s Labour government UK Carbon dioxide emissions rose in the first half of 2006, and are now at their highest level since Labour came to power.

And what of the European Union? No small “carbon footprint” there!

I see Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas is saying that CO2 emission plans he has received from 17 EU countries show that they are preparing to release some 15% more greenhouse gases in 2008-2012 than they did in 2005-2007.

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