Theories that can be easily tested should have a high degree of consensus among researchers. Those involving chaotic and less testable questions – climate change or economic growth, physiology or financial markets – ought to have a greater level of scientific disagreement. Yet this is hardly the case for climate science. In the Paradox of Consensus, we illustrate that the greater the level of consensus for certain classes of hypotheses (those that are difficult to test) the less truth we should assign to them.
Guest Essay By D. RYAN BRUMBERG and MATTHEW BRUMBERG
The moon is not made of cheese, the earth is not flat, and lightning may strike the same place twice. We believe these claims to be true, yet it is unlikely that most readers have personally confirmed each of them. Because it would be nigh impossible for anyone to verify all they take as true, most individuals arrive at their worldview by following the beliefs of others (often “experts”). While there can be good reason to accept an idea based on its popularity, this consensus heuristic must be used with care. There must be a sufficient number of others who did arrive (and continue to arrive) at the same conclusion through independent verification and testing. When this condition is not met, the results can be catastrophic (recall the Challenger disaster). Instead of independent observers arriving at the same conclusion, we risk an information cascade. This failing goes by many names—argumentum ad populum, groupthink, the “bandwagon effect”—but its function is the same: increasing numbers of people will buy into an idea simply because many others already believe it.
Consensus, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. The more easily testable and verifiable a theory, the less debate we would expect. There is little disagreement, for example, about the sum of one plus one or the average distance of the earth from the sun. But as a question becomes more complex and less testable, we would expect an increasing level of disagreement and a lessening of the consensus—think: the existence of god, the best band since the Beatles, or the grand unified theory of physics. On such topics, independent minds can—and should—differ.
We can use a simple formula to express how an idea’s popularity correlates with its verifiability. Let us introduce the K/C ratio—the ratio of “knowability,” a broad term loosely encapsulating how possible it is to reduce uncertainty about an idea’s correctness, to “consensus,” a measure of the idea’s popularity and general acceptance. Topics that are easily knowable (K ~ 1) should have a high degree of consensus (C ~ 1), whereas those that are impossible to verify (K ~ 0) should have a low degree of consensus (C ~ 0). When the ratio deviates too far from the perfect ratio of 1, either from too much consensus or too little, there is a mispricing of knowledge. Indeed, in cases of extreme deviations from the perfect ratio, additional support for a concept with such a lopsided K/C ratio increasingly subtracts from its potential veracity. This occurs because ideas exist not simply at a single temporal point, but rather evolve over the sweep of time. At the upper reaches of consensus, there is less updating of views to account for new information—so much so that supporters of the status quo tend to suppress new facts and hypothesis. Government agencies deny funding to ‘sham’ scientists, tenure boards dissuade young researchers from pursuing ‘the wrong’ track, and the establishment quashes heretical ideas.
Consider the belief that the sun, moon, and stars circle the earth—a reasonable initial proposition. Yet, as additional facts became available (Copernicus, Brahe, Galileo), the dogmatic believers of the consensus condemned these observations as heresy. A world with a less skewed K/C ratio (lower level of consensus given low knowability) would have advanced to the heliocentric model sooner. Given that we know not the evolutionary stage for any current theory, we arrive thus at the unexpected conclusion that when knowability is low, as the level of consensus increases (without a commensurate increase in knowability), there should be a decrease in the probability assigned to the truth of the matter. While not always clear why the K/C ratio can become highly skewed, one interpretation is that more than just the search for knowledge is at play.
To see how this works in practice, we turn to the evergreen topic of climate change. Notwithstanding the underlying ecological threat of climate change itself, the debate about how to confront human-caused global warming has spawned unprecedented financial, political, and social risks of its own. Entire industries face extinction as the world’s governments seek to impose trillions of dollars of taxes on carbon emissions. The New York Times’s Thomas Friedman approvingly writes that Australian politicians—not to mention public figures through the world—now risk “political suicide” if they deny climate change. But if carbon dioxide turns out not to be the boogey-man that climate scientists have made it out to be, tens of trillions will be wasted in unneeded remediation. Much of the world—billions of humans—will endure a severely diminished quality of life with nothing to show for it. The growth trajectory of the world in the twenty-first century may well depend more on the “truth” of climate change ex ante than ex post.
With climate change, as in many areas of scientific complexity, we can (and do) use models to understand the world. But models have their problems. This is particularly true when dealing with complex, non-linear systems with a multitude of recursive feedback loops, in which small variations produce massive shifts in the long-term outcome. Pioneered by the mathematicians Edward Lorenz and Benoit Mandelbrot, chaos theory helped explain the intractability of certain problems. Readers of pop science will be familiar with the term the “butterfly effect,” in which “the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set[s] off a tornado in Texas.” The earth’s climate is one such dynamic, chaotic system and it is within the whirling, turbulent vortex of unpredictability that the modern climate scientists must tread.
And boldly have they stepped into the breach. The scope of agreement achieved by the world’s climate scientists is breathtaking. To first approximation, around 97% agree that human activity, particularly carbon dioxide emissions, causes global warming. So impressed was the Norwegian Nobel Committee by the work of the Inter-governmental Committee on Climate Change and Al Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” that it awarded them the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. So many great minds cannot possibly be wrong, right?
Yet something nags us about this self-congratulatory consensus. Our intuition is that this narrow distribution of opinions yields a knowability to consensus ratio far removed from the perfect ratio of 1. To reach their conclusions, climate scientists have to (a) uncover the (historical) drivers of climate, (b) project the future path of these inputs and others that may arise, and (c) predict how recursive feedback loops interact over multi-decadal time horizons, all without being able to test their hypotheses against reality. When evaluating the causes of past climate shifts, for example, scientists cannot simply re-run history to test the impact of changing different variables. Similarly, although climate scientists can make testable hypotheses about the future, their short-term predictions have an embarrassing record (think post-Katrina predictions of a massive surge in US hurricanes or the failed attempts to forecast temperature changes for the 2000s), while the debate will be moot by the time we can test their long-term forecasts in the year 2100.
We would, therefore, expect this limit on empirical verifiability to birth widely divergent views on the path, causes, and consequences of earth’s future climate. In other arenas, only after a theory has been empirically verified has the scientific community coalesced around it. Even then, scientists continue to subject such theories to rigorous testing and debate. For example, consider the current state of theoretical physics: quantum physics, loop quantum gravity, string theory, super-symmetry, and M-theory, among others, all vie for acceptance. Albert Einstein’s general relativity itself did not begin to garner widespread support until four years after its publication, when Arthur Eddington verified its predictions during a 1919 solar eclipse. Even so, as illustrated by the rash of headlines in late 2011 announcing the (false) discovery of faster-than-light neutrinos, scientists continue to try to poke holes in Einstein’s theory.
Yet the expectation of a rich debate among scientists about climate change does not reconcile easily with the widely endorsed shibboleth that human activity will warm the globe dramatically and dangerously over the next one hundred years. As climate scientists are themselves fond of repeating, the vast majority have arrived at the exact same conclusions about both past warming and future trends. Any discussion that doubts the fundamental premises of climate change is dismissed by the mainstream media and climate scientists as pseudo-science conducted by quacks or ideologues. Thus, questions about observational biases in the location of temperature stations, changes in the earth’s albedo, the cooling effect of dust particles, shifting ocean cycles, fluctuating solar activity, correlation v. causation of historical warm periods and carbon dioxide, catastrophic model failure caused by chaotic interactions, and innumerable other theories—most of which are presumably wrong—are never properly mooted in the public debate.
In our view, the fact that so many scientists agree so closely about the earth’s warming is, itself, evidence of a lack of evidence for global warming. Does this mean that climate change is not happening? Not necessarily. But it does mean that we should be wary of the meretricious arguments mustered in its defense. When evaluating complex questions—from climate change to economic growth, physiology to financial markets—it is worse than naïve to judge the veracity of an idea merely from the strength of consensus. The condemnation of Galileo Galilei meant one man served a sentence of life imprisonment. His ecumenical accusers at least acknowledged a force greater than science drove their decision. The modern priests of climate change endanger the lives of billions as they wield their fallacy that consensus is truth.
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Dear GERAN,
“Janice, I think you meant to address “Gofer”. He’s the one that made the comment at 6:57. I’m “Geran”, and I’m innocent of all charges….” [Geran]
… and I AM SO SORRY. I was, indeed, responding to Gofer. Please forgive my carelessness. And, thank you for letting me know; eating humble pie (even just a bite or two) is good for the soul.
AHEM! Mr. Stendera. You are very kind and I appreciate your reassuring me about being “fat and ugly.” (chuckle) I do like you, but, FOR THE RECORD (there is SO much misunderstanding and potential for mistake on the internet …), I AM NOT HOOKING UP WITH ANYONE. Yes, I realize you were joking, but, some people’s ability to detect sarcasm is pretty poor. THUS, I wrote.
Take care, Stan Stendera. You make my world (and the world) a better place to be.
Re: Gallileo
My recollection of the issue (following Crispin) is that there was no observational evidence to support the heliocentric theory. After all, the geocentric and heliocentric theories produced the same predictions. The evidence that the Earth moved was obtainable only upon measurement of stellar parallax, and the accuracy required to do that wasn’t available until some time afterward.
dbstealey says:
May 1, 2013 at 2:08 am
Why thank you. I like you, too!
philjourdan says:
April 30, 2013 at 4:13 pm
The real danger comes when K/C approaches 0, and people start to act on the lack of knowledge. You do more damage when you do not know what you are doing, than doing nothing.
Truth, in a nutshell.
MtK
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think. No need to think, Just rely on the IPCC. They are looking out for me. I feel warm all over. Wait, warmth is bad.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
May 1, 2013 at 6:12 am “l they did was ask scientists what the truth of the matter was and the scientists of the time said Ptolemy settled this long ago and that these new ideas were poppycock. ”
Galileo “The father of Science” was “a mouthy Pratt” and the Catholic Church tolerated him. No
The Church turned “poppycock” into heresy and made galileo recant. Not the scientists.
One very interesting point from my own (questionable) observations is that, generally, the AGWist will not look at any site or opinion that is in contradiction to their belief (i.e. contrary to “the consensus”).
I like to consider myself a sceptic, and do read a lot of blogs along that line; however, I also want to know what the other viewpoint is, to try to understand their logic. To do this, I read AGWist blogs. Some views I find too unpleasant for excessive reading (such as Richard Black, with his blatant bias and subtle twisting of facts while he was with the BBC); others are quite laughable. One thing that I have noticed is that any comment contrary to their dearly-held views is beyond the pale, which, as many actually claim to be scientists, is rather odd. Most merely expunge the remark; however, some will leave the comment in, and let their faithful lay in with unpleasant, ad hom remarks, often to the point of encouraging self-harm and outright libel. None seem to want to engage in reasoned argument.
I am making it my mission to get myself banned from as many of these sites as possible. It is quite easy; with one (who has been well-roasted on WUWT), all I had to do was to point out that even the UKMO admitted that warming had stopped, and that the events of Hurricane Sandy are far from unique in that region. The only pity is that no-one can see my clever ripostes!
Matthew Brumberg says at 11:38:
“Provoter: We are aware that the 97% figure is badly biased…”
—————————————–
If I misinterpreted how you meant the statement of “The scope of agreement achieved by the world’s climate scientists is breathtaking. To first approximation, around 97% agree that human activity, particularly carbon dioxide emissions, causes global warming,” then I apologize for that. It sounded to me like you were giving the results of that pseudo survey the benefit of the doubt, and even that by itself is just a personal choice and certainly nothing for which you should be pillaried. What struck me was how you just threw that statement out there with not a qualifying comment in sight.
It’s trivially true of course – and I would imagine you agree – that increased CO2 – manmade or otherwise – should cause some as-yet-unknown degree of warming. Therefore, it is trivially true that a lot of scientists agree with this statement. Of the manifold defects and dishonesties riddling the survey behind it, this is its most grating, that its conclusion is utterly devoid of significance and yet is used far, wide and incessantly as a gag to silence any attempt at reasoned argument. My point is that if you study that survey and then study the arguments regarding it made by people at sites like this, there is almost no way you could toss such a statement out there naked, as you did, without being painfully aware that your prose was, to be charitable, ill-suited to your audience.
I wouldn’t mention intelligent design to an audience of physicists without making clear that I felt the idea to be (as you now know I am wont to say) “goofy.” It’s a simple case of knowing my audience, and that’s really all I’m saying.
Hopefully you saw my earlier comment (to Barry at 10:39 am). If so, you already know I come in peace with respect to your post, which I enjoyed a lot … because I thought it was excellent.
Stan is another Phlogiston Phlogger Blogger whose Phiziks Phind Phlogiston Phairly Phrequently
but who, being stranded on earth, with phlogiston unbelieph,
is shackled by the fact that
all we have
is the technology to guide, land, and communicate with robots on other planets,
and out at the edge of the solar system.
We aren’t Phlogiston Phield Ephects certiphied in this inphernal world as of yet, because we’re not Phullie Phlogistonically, philosophically, phul-philled.
Phor instance we can phind phacts phar phrum inphrared spectra phreely – but we can’t phind the
Giant
Ever HotterColder
InPhraReD
Phreezing
Phlogiston
Generator
in the sky.
Except phor of course, Dark Phlogiston leaving it’s ugly phreezing phootprint in incidental phindings.
Some of our instruments show the Phlogiston is missing, going out – this is dark, inverted (also known as backerd) phlogistonological phlux phields.
but then when you check with the inphrared astronomy phield, they’re silent as a phreaking phield mouse.
When you check with every single phield of atmosferic energy that wouldn’t be able to hide the phlogiston –
like NOAA when they laid out sensors for fourteen years –
that doggone phlogiston gets tricky.
Phirst
it turns dark,
then you can’t phind it at all with your satellites.
Now that’s tricky, pholks.
All that phlogiston has to do, is turn into dark phlogiston, to hide phrum the satellites,
and then: *blip* you can do any kind of check you want.
—–
You can sit out a picnic cooler with water in it at night, when it’s a phew degrees above phreezing,
phacing the open top, up to the sky.
Now phlogiston is tricky-here’s how it goes: *WATCH CAREFULLY and PHOLLOW the PHLOGISTON*
if you turn the open face of a picnic cooler up to face the full onslaught of down welling phlogiston at night, under an open sky where there’s the most dark phlogiston radiating down,
it’ll make that water phlogistonically phreeze – because then, it’s cold or dark phlogiston. That’s so it can’t be seen by any satellites.
But if you sit that open faced cooler under say, a flat object – like a piece of glass, or plywood,
then since the dark (phreezing) phlogiston can’t GET to the water in the picnic cooler,
it will make the water in the cooler more dark-phlogiston (phreezing phlogiston) NEGATIVE ,
meaning the dark (undetectable) phlogiston, normally being being HotCold so it Phreezes,
not being able to get to the water in the insulated picnic cooler and Phreeze it Phlogistonically, by making it ColdHot,
is therefore allowing the water to stay dark phlogiston NEGATIVE:
hence, if you check it with a thermometer, it will be more warm (not dark phlogiston which radiates down, to phreeze things) or in other words, real phlogistonically POSITIVE.
This down welling phlogiston that makes things HotterColder, so they Phlogistonically Phreeze, while objects around, on cool nights are NOT
Dark (Phreezing) Phlogistonic Phield Effect affected,
is very tricky: and you have to be really pheeling phor an understanding of phlogistonic backerdisms,
to phathom the backerd HeatingColdingismalisticness, of phlogistonic inverse phorce phield ephects, outside;
or, as we say, in the Phield.
In phact there’s no experiment you can do to phind it, except look at satellite grafs showing notches where the (dark) phlogiston is:
the absence of phorward phlogistonic phorce: implying of course that magically backerdized Phreezing Phlogiston’s phound phairly phrequently. is phullie backerdized so when it’s postive,
it’s infrared light,
but no infrared light detector can detect it, except in it’s dark form. By of course showing it’s not there.
This prevents man from committing Phlogiston Sin like he did with Carbon: which is what prompted the Phlogiston to go dark, in the first place.
Iph’n yew dont wont to believe, phlogiston caint ruhveel, it’s magical secrits, two yew.
Man has sinned too much against Gaia, to let the Phlogistonicallistic Phooling arownd, go on innie mor.
Heavy huh.
Yeah that’s what NASA and pretty much everybody who understands phlogiston says.
=====
Particularly when Stan W comes back,
I’m going to present him with the case of insulated containers of water out on cool nights, phully exposed to down phalling dark phlogiston – phreezing phlogiston,
and have HIM explain to us all about how,
if you put insulated open containers of water out at night, facing the phull phorce of phlogiston, it’s inphrared HotColdness makes water get Phlogistonically Phrozen,
as opposed to non Phreezing Phlogistonically irradiated, water nearby, which is of course, not being struck by Dark Phlogiston, thus not Phlogistonically Phrozen.
Wow. Dark Phreezing Phlogiston,
our infrared sensors can’t see it,
basically – we’re dephenseless against it.
We’ll tap Stan W about how to phace the phrequent phinding uph phlogistonological phreezing and phrightening – some would say – alarming phrequency –
with which our instruments phail to phind phlogiston phlux phields
even when they’re NOT dark phlogiston, but just regular old infrared.
Lighting up the night sky, as down welling (dark) phreezing phlogiston.
Phar out huh.
Maybe when Stan gets back he can bring some of his Trenberthian/Hansonian Phreezing Phlogistonically phathoming phD phriends and phinally phind the magic phreezing phlogistonic phields’ ephects.
phor the good of Gaia.
“jc says:
May 1, 2013 at 7:48 am
@ur momisugly Bill from Nevada
Enjoyed your posts.
There is nothing like the clarity that comes with intelligent contempt shown in scathingly humorous mockery whilst still effortlessly dealing with what is supposed to be of substance, and demonstrating it to be empty.
Not only effective, but realistic in approach to such a person, whose insinuation into discussion is bogus in its claim to sincerity, as shown by the nature of all his comments. An offence to intelligence to pretend otherwise.
To tell you something you already know, you will get nothing intelligent out of Stan W, both because of inability and disinclination. Furtive snippets then hiding is all this being is capable of.
I’m still waiting, from a previous thread, for him to state what benefits he gathers to himself, personally, from AGW being implemented as policy, and to give an estimate of how many dollars for each person dead.
Unlike many who see – rightly – that the presence of a being such as Stan W is calculated purely to confound intelligent discussion, I see it as having real virtues. The existence of such a thing, amongst many otherwise thoughtful and genuinely interested contributions, makes stark the threadbare “position” and low character of such proponents. That “Stan W” will be incapable of seeing this reinforces the point.”
Would this paradox of consensus also apply to the theory of evolution?
provoter,
The quote is odd. The author argues on the premise that there is a considerable consensus on AGW (they make the point that it is this fact that should make us cautious about accepting it). But you seem to be quoting to demonstrate here that they think the consensus on climate change is (like the examples) not so strong. Your argument appears to be at odds with the author’s premise.
Ryan Brumberg,
There are two problems I see immediately.
1) You have not specified what the consensus is about, and there are different degrees depending on the topic. The affects of clouds? Little consensus. The radiative properties of CO2? Strong consensus. For example. Anthropogenic CO2 will warm the Earth to some degree at the rate it is concentrating in the atmosphere? Strong consensus. Climate sensitivity? Less consensus.
2) As you point out, you have not (cannot) quantify the ‘knowability’ of the issue, so a fundamental component of your thesis is based on supposition. This fatally undermines the analysis. It can only be speculative as a result. Can you conceive of a way in which you could constrain this value?
I think your supposition is flawed. Scientific theories with strong consensus and little opportunity to test (strong level of unknowability) can still have strong utility (quantum theory). Examples disprove your premise, so you would have to mathematically compute the probability that the premise holds and factor that in. An extraordinarily onerous task, I would think, if possible at all.
I commend you for submitting your thesis for peer-review. I’d be curious to read the reviewers comments. Post them here if the journal permits.
provoter,
While the topic is vaguely worded, the authors specifically cite the consensus of climate researchers on anthropogenic influences on global temperature. There have been at least *three polls that corroborate a 90 – 97% consensus of climate researchers for that topic. Can you offer a competing poll based purely on that demographic?
* http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Epdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
* http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
* http://results.visionprize.com/tagged/Human%20influence
(In the third poll, participants were asked to predict the percentage of views their colleagues would give. They underestimated the consensus on anthropogenically influenced climate change. Half of the respondants were climate researchers)
jc says:
May 1, 2013 at 8:21 am
———————————————–
JC,
as the collapse of the hoax gathers pace, the pseudo scientists will be hoping to escape in the confusion. I believe that it is critical for future generations that those involved be be exposed and their manipulations laid bare. It is not safe to just “move on”, the full story must be made public, otherwise it will just be repeated.
To do this the Internet can be used to look below the later layers of fellow travellers. In the science side of the story this means finding those who actively and knowingly conducted the first efforts to erase or sideline previous accepted science and lay the foundation for the hoax. There appear to be three main areas that require attention.
Anthony’s work has focused on the surface station record issue. The surface station records had to be manipulated to cool the past and warm the present. The warming around 1940 and the 1970s cool period also had to be erased to make the record match the CO2 claims. Finding all those who first started to do this is important. Tom Karls prints are in evidence from 1984.
Steve McIntyre has focused on the junk science proxy studies. These had to be manipulated to remove inconvenient features such as the LIA and MWP and to exaggerate recent temperatures. Previously understood historical temperature variations had to be removed as they showed the extent of natural variability. Periods warmer than today had to be removed as they showed that “strongly positive water vapour feed back “ was a myth. Dr. Mann is infamous, but who is hiding behind him?
Perhaps the most important area is the overturning of the previously accepted science of radiative gases in our atmosphere. Radiative gases are critical for tropospheric convective circulation and cooling. How did the idea that radiative gases cause warming take hold? Pierrehumbert is the first I can find proposing that initially radiative gases cause cooling but after a mystical typing point that they cause warming. This type of pseudo science appears to have been adopted so the role of radiative gases in convective circulation can be dismissed and simple two shell models used. Were there others before Pierrehumbert in 1995?
The surface of the AGW hoax is populated by useful idiots and fellow travellers deluded by groupthink. However those who laid the initial “scientific” foundation of AGW should not escape scrutiny.
@ur momisugly Bill from Nevada says:
May 1, 2013 at 6:00 pm
I don’t know that “Stan W” will be back on this thread. His methodology seems to be throw around brief statements and then when having exposed himself to the degree tolerable, he retreats and then disappears. He will likely re-appear elsewhere and run through the same process.
@ur momisugly Konrad says:
May 1, 2013 at 9:43 pm
I completely agree that it is imperative that those responsible are held fully to account. Not just because of the implications for future scientific, cultural and political practices – societal standards and capacities – but for reasons of justice. There are many who have been killed by this. And it has not been because of sincere intent, undone by misinterpretation or “mistakes”.
Not to have this fully exposed and those responsible held to account means in effect moral death. Which makes anything else immaterial.
Most definitely those who laid the “scientific” foundations for this cannot be exempted.
As you have said, the internet, by record and access to all, is the key. Its great to see people starting to attend to the real basis for this, which is not in any details of science but in the abandonment of science and the parallel exploitation of that by others seeking to impose their agendas.
It is about standards and their traducing. And that comes down to people. Acting alone or in concert. As such, these are what should be focused on from here on.
To identify the individuals, in “science” as well as elsewhere, who have come together to make this happen, and the way they have made this happen, requires detailed information of activities across all these areas, and the compilation of patterns of association and development.
Only them can it be properly understood, justice be done so far as is possible with such irretrievable consequences, and essential societal standards and structures be created.
Roger that, jc
=====
jc says:
May 1, 2013 at 10:55 pm
@ur momisugly Bill from Nevada says:
May 1, 2013 at 6:00 pm
I don’t know that “Stan W” will be back on this thread. His methodology seems to be throw around brief statements and then when having exposed himself to the degree tolerable, he retreats and then disappears. He will likely re-appear elsewhere and run through the same process.
I think that 80-90% (poll needed) of self-described climatologists would agree that “We Must / Should Act Now.” (E.g., sign the Kyoto Protocol.) That’s the bottom line. If they agree, they’re either implicitly accepting the science as settled and/or the potential threat as gigantic, which implies an acceptance of positive feedbacks.
Donna Laframboise has a post about the psychological roots of confidence at NoFrakkignConsensus discussing a “Nobel-winning work about self-delusion and flawed judgment” by psychologist Daniel Kahneman who has spent his life studying human judgment and decision-making and at 79 wrote the 2011 award-winning, best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/04/26/how-climate-scientists-think/
Some noteworthy excerpts:
“Facts that challenge such basic assumptions – and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem – are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them.”
“Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable.”
“…overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion.”
The book never mentions climate science but Donna nicely applies Kahneman’s observations to it.
The idea is broadly similar to the contrarian principle in stock market analysis. The near future (few months) direction of the stock market is an unknowable quantity. During deep bear markets, as the bottom (an unknowable quantity except in hindsight) approaches, the consensus approaches 1 – a broad consensus of deep pessimism. At this point, the contrarian goes long on the market.
You only have to look back to the 2003, 2008 and other stock market bottoms to see how deep, deep pessimism that had a broad consensus pointed to turning points. Of course, you can also get false bottoms, but this does not falsify the hypothesis – a false bottom has consensus of pessimism, but it merely has not reached its maximum strength.
The point is,there was overwhelming consensus that the stock market should be avoided/sold off, and the consensus was wrong.
Why not take stock of the surveys that have actually been done?
Eligibility was determined by the pollsters, not the participants. The poll questions are on the the science, not the policy.
And the polls’ parameters are a good match with Guest Blogger’s article’s.
Konrad says:
May 1, 2013 at 9:43 pm
jc says:
May 1, 2013 at 8:21 am
———————————————–
JC,
as the collapse of the hoax gathers pace, the pseudo scientists will be hoping to escape in the confusion. I believe that it is critical for future generations that those involved be be exposed and their manipulations laid bare. It is not safe to just “move on”, the full story must be made public, otherwise it will just be repeated.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I agree wholeheartedly with this. Those who have tried to foist their junk science on mankind should not be allowed to flee into anonymity. They have have taken money and repaid with damage. They should be identified and held accountable. Many of them are motivated by a twisted misanthropism disguised as a doomsday creed. Inscribe their names on a public monument for future generations to remember.
barry:
re your post at May 2, 2013 at 8:11 am.
You forgot the sarc tag. This was a severe error because people who do not know about those polls may have taken you seriously.
Richard
Jim Ryan says:
May 1, 2013 at 11:12 am
“So, as the consensus for CAGW drops from very high down to, say, 50%, its expected veracity will increase. And the more scientists change their minds and reject the theory, the more likely it is true, until about half of the scientific community believes it. Is that correct?”
Very cute, but no. Although not stated, the hypothesis is only relevant on the way up, as consensus mounts. On the way down, it does not apply because something has destroyed that belief system. Should be obvious really.
The article is confusing, as written. Consensus in the absence of testability is a strong indicator of social (including financial) factors dominating the group mind.