Judith Curry
It appears to me that you have captured and described the essence of the problems inherent with “consensus” in science and with the IPCC’s political consensus process.
As you point out, the logical progression: “consensus => harmony => acceptance => compromise” is alien to science itself, which is based on the progression: “skepticism => controversy => dissention => challenge”
The IPCC “consensus process” is a political, rather than a scientific, process, i.e. it dictates political consensus rather than scientific inquiry.
As you have written, it results in group-think and confirmation bias,.
As was demonstrated by Climategate, etc., it resulted in the exclusion and marginalization of dissenting scientific findings and viewpoints and fudging the data to make them fit the consensus.
It even failed to achieve a political action plan (at Copenhagen, Cancun, etc.) and it resulted in a basic mistrust in the overall public of IPCC and climate science in general.
You summarized this with:
In summary, the manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public’s trust in the IPCC and the consensus building process.
So much for the basic conflict between “science” and “consensus” and the failure of IPCC’s “consensus” process.
Now to your “ways forward”:
The two quotations, which you cite early on (Feynman and Dessai et al.), point the direction:
“Science is belief in the ignorance of experts”
“Science should be a tool for policy action rather than a tool for political advocacy”
You write:
The single most important thing that is needed with regards to the science – particularly in context of the IPCC assessment reports – is explicit reflection on uncertainties, ambiguities and areas of ignorance (both known and unknown unknowns) and more openness for dissent in the IPCC processes.
To me the most basic question this raises is whether or not IPCC has outlived its usefulness, as it is structured today.
My personal opinion is that this is the case. Things can only go downhill for the “consensus” position on CAGW and for climate science in general as long as IPCC continues to be the driving force. It has quite simply lost the public trust.
You state
it is important that scientists not to fall into the trap of acceding to inappropriate demands for certainty from decision makers.
In other words, climate science must return to the scientific bases which make it a science and away from a consensus process which make it simply politics as usual.
To do so, IPCC must either be totally restructured or terminated. The “consensus process” must be eliminated. This includes IPCC’s myopic fixation on human GHGs to the virtual exclusion of all the many other factors, which influence our planet’s climate, and its sweeping under the rug of all uncertainties, ambiguities and dissenting views.
I do not believe that even a total restructuring can achieve this, as long as IPCC has the brief it now has and reports to the political body, to which it now reports.
IOW, I truly believe that the only “way forward” to salvage climate science from its current malaise is to terminate IPCC and cancel the publication of the planned AR5 report (which will only be yet another continuation of the “consensus” approach).
It should be replaced with a small panel of scientists and engineers, with climate scientists representing differing opinions, including some supporters as well as rational skeptics of the “consensus” viewpoint, but no “advocates”. This should be a bottom up approach and these should not be chosen for political reasons or to fill “national quotas”.
The brief of the group should be to collect and summarize scientific papers related to our planet’s climate and the natural as well as anthropogenic causes for climate changes, much in the same general fashion as IPCC, but without the “consensus process” and the resulting myopic fixation on anthropogenic GHGs.
They should not be chosen by politicians or by venerable “scientific” institutions whose political leaderships have joined the “consensus”, but by someone who is both knowledgeable in the subject matter and not bound by any “consensus” viewpoint.
Who would fit this description?
You know the players much better than I do, but I would guess that on the top of the list of individuals who will choose the panel replacing IPCC should be:
Judith Curry
Roger Pielke Sr.
John Christy
Richard Best
Roy Spencer
Steven McIntyre
Raymond Pierrehumbert
Richard Lindzen
Ken Minschwaner
The fate of IPCC and its possible replacement is a topic you left open in your “way forward”, so I have added my comments. I realize that this is a “hot topic”, but I hope you will address it nevertheless.
While some of the details still need fleshing out (as you point out), the rest of your “way forward” makes sense to me, as I understand it:
- plan and implement local and regional actions to anticipate and adapt to extreme weather events
- encourage new technologies to expand energy access, particularly in those regions, which do not yet enjoy access to reliable, low-cost energy
- hold off with the implementation of any global mitigation schemes based on reducing human GHGs until remaining uncertainties in the scientific justification can be better clarified, cost/benefit analyses for each specific action can be made, other alternates can be considered and any unintended negative consequences can be fully evaluated
I would fully agree with your summarizing statement:
It is time to abandon the concept of consensus in favor of open debate of the arguments themselves and discussion of a broad range of policy options that include bottom up approaches to decreasing vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events and developing technologies to expand energy access.
Lots of luck with your paper.
Along with all the other denizens here (plus most of the individuals who have an interest in the ongoing debate surrounding AGW), I am looking forward to reading it.
Max
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