Beyond counting climate consensus (original) (raw)
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Public Affairs Quarterly, 2017
Several empirical studies purportedly demonstrate the existence of a scientific consensus on climate change. Such studies have been pursued as a response to concerns that private industries and think tanks have "manufactured" public doubt and derailed regulatory policies. While there is overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming, studies aiming to empirically establish the existence of consensus rely on several problematic assumptions about the nature of consensus and the role of consensus in policy making. Even more worrisome, reinforcing such assumptions in public may actually undermine, rather than increase, trust in climate science.
This article considers public usurpation of the technical sphere a problematic implication of Goodnight (1982). I argue that in order to protect the roles of the public and technical sphere from duplicitous contestation, interlocutors in the public sphere should apply unique standards to evaluate the authenticity and worth of technical claims advanced in the public sphere. I suggest that the public use three standards to evaluate technical claims under scrutiny. In order for technical claims to be legitimized for public use, the following conditions should be met: (1) Scientific communities should be in consensus. Consensus should guide policy. (2) Scientific communities should not produce research contaminated with motives other than doing the best science. (3) Scientific communities should not be corrupt in conduct. There should not be credible allegations of misconduct against the dominant scientific approach. If the technical claims under scrutiny meet these three standards, then the claims should have presumption in the public sphere and public advocates should consider their use for policymaking. Global warming is a unique example where the claims of the international scientific community have met all three standards, yet skeptics in the public sphere still have argumentative presumption in the debate.
Recalculating climate change consensus: The question of position and rhetoric
Journal of Cleaner Production
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic climate change and its communication have become a controversial research subject in recent years. This paper utilized a reference list from a climate skeptic report and a previously published quantitative method of consensus research to revisit the theoretical and methodological questions. Beyond rating the abstracts according to their position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), this study classified the strategic in-text functions of the references. Results not only showed the biased character of the literature set, but also revealed a remarkable AGW endorsement level among journal articles that took a position concerning AGW. However, this paper does not argue for modified consensus numbers, but instead emphasizes the role of 'no position' abstracts and the role of rhetoric. Our quantitative results provided evidence that abstract rating is a suboptimal way to measure consensus. Rhetoric is far more important than it appears at first glance. It is important at the level of scientists, who prefer neutral language, and at the level of readers such as report editors, who encounter and re-interpret the texts. Hence, disagreement appears to stem from the disparate understanding and rhetorically supported interpretation of the research results. Neutral abstracts and papers seem to provide more room for interpretation.
JCOM, 2019
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proceeds on the assumption that scientific consensus is a tool for successful climate communication. While 'speaking with one voice' has contributed to the Panel's success in putting climate change on the public and political agenda, the consensus policy is also contested, as our literature analysis (n=106) demonstrates. The arguments identified thereby inform a survey of climate scientists (n=138), who are the ones responsible for realising the policy. The data indicate moderate support for the consensus policy but significantly more in traditional climate sciences than in social sciences, life-and geosciences. Abstract Environmental communication; Science and policy-making Keywords https://doi.
(Still) Disagreeing About Climate Change: What Way Forward?
Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 2015
Why does climate change continue to be a forceful idea which divides people? What does this tell us about science, about culture and about the future? Despite disagreement, how might the idea of climate change nevertheless be used creatively? In this essay I develop my investigation of these questions using four lines of argument. First, the future risks associated with human-caused climate change are severely underdetermined by science. Scientific predictions of future climates are poorly constrained; even more so the consequences of such climates for evolving human socio-technological and natural ecosystems. Second, I argue that to act politically in the world people have to pass judgements on the facts of science; facts do not speak for themselves. Third, because these judgements are different, the strategic goals of policy interventions developed in response to risks associated with future climate change are inevitably multiple and conflicting. Finally, reconciling and achieving diverse goals requires political contestation. ‘Moving forward’ on climate change then becomes a task of investing in the discursive and procedural pre-conditions for an agonistic politics to work constructively, to enable ways of implementing policies when people disagree.
Climate science can't be trumped: a look at how to translate empirical data into political action
Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University, 2019
Although over 97 % of scientists are in agreement regarding the occurrence, cause and consequences of climate change, studies have found that less than 50 % of Americans believe that climate change is caused by human activities and that Americans remain greatly divided regarding the causes, urgency and solutions to the climate crisis. The gravity of the situation only appears to be growing as recent reports have shown that climate change denial is not limited to the United States and that other global citizens also appear to be confused regarding the legitimacy of climate change science data. The prevalence of confusion highlights the dire need for better educational programs and grassroots actions by the scientific and academic communities. However, the path from 'data' to citizen action is hardly a direct one, and thus the engagement of the climate science community (ENGOs and other boundary organizations, academia, governments) in education will not be simply one of 'getting the word out'. That community will need to grapple with the complex socio-epstemic space that lies between scientific knowledge production and citizens' participatory engagement with climate change policies. This paper outlines some aspects of that complexity and suggests ways how certain types of knowledge dissemination as such, which lead to increased scientific literacy, can contribute to increased citizen action.
Environmental Communication
That climate change has been accelerated by human activity is supported by a near-universal consensus of climate scientists. In this paper, we review many of the studies that have been done on the impact of communicating the scientific consensus to the general public. We discuss ongoing debates about these studies, but more importantly, we highlight complementary areas that we believe should define future research. We emphasize how a focus on processing motivations, context, and message variations may help resolve some of the debates about when scientific consensus messaging works. We then discuss ways to expand this research agenda by examining support for a broader range of outcomes across a wider range of populations, particularly those most vulnerable to the immediate impacts of climate change. Our goal is to provide a blueprint for expanding the work on climate change communication for scientific consensus messaging and beyond.
2015
Climate change policies present multiple quandaries to the field of public policy and science studies. Despite the prevalent scientific consensus, approaches demonstrate great heterogeneity. With one side advocating for the facticity of climate change and a pro-active stance, while the other argues about negative economic trade-offs, viewpoints diverge. Between controversy and risk, and consensus and trust, deliberations on how to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change remain polarized. This essay compares the politics and divergent styles of climate change policymaking adopted in the EU and US. It hypothesizes whether the EU’s technocratic system of governance, when compared to the US populist system, is more conducive to evidence-based scientific climate policies. Followed by an analysis of the drivers and deterrents of policy that set apart the approaches of each polity, it is concluded that notwithstanding the prominent scientific dimension of climate change, as a p...