This post describes two papers that discuss different aspects of climate science, policy and politics. I don’t agree with everything argued in them, but they are thoughtful pieces of scholarship that challenge us to think. They are both worth a look.


In the journal Science Technology & Human Values Reiner Grundman has an interesting paper that makes the compelling argument that scientific consensus is neither necessary for sufficient for political action on climate change. He argues that the absence of a consensus did not limit progress on the ozone issue and the presence of a consensus has not forced progress on the climate issue. Instead, he argues the importance of political leadership. Here is the abstract:

Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 31, No. 1, 73-101 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0162243905280024
© 2006 SAGE Publications

Ozone and Climate: Scientific Consensus and Leadership
Reiner Grundmann

Aston University

This article compares the cases of ozone layer protection and climate change. In both cases, scientific expertise has played a comparatively important role in the policy process. The author argues that against conventional assumptions, scientific consensus is not necessary to achieve ambitious political goals. However, the architects of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operated under such assumptions. The author argues that this is problematic both from a theoretical viewpoint and from empirical evidence. Contrary to conventional assumptions, ambitious political regulations in the ozone case were agreed under scientific uncertainty, whereas the negotiations on climate change were much more modest albeit based on a large scientific consensus. On the basis of a media analysis, the author shows that the creation of a climate of expectation plus pressure from leader countries is crucial for success.

A second paper is by our Myanna Lashen also the journal Science technology & Human Values (here in PDF), and grapples with the contradictory impulse for more democratic decision making and the practical reality of the role of information limits and political power that shapes the ability of the public to weigh competing knowledge claims. She argues,

this study demonstrates that exposure to countervailing opinions does not necessarily result in a more informed, participatory, and critically aware citizenry, a necessary basis for legitimate policy making in policy arenas in which only probabilistic knowledge is possible. This study of U.S. climate politics highlights problematic aspects of how governments, international bodies, and political and vested interest groups have chosen to deploy science. It shows that these actors deploy science and the “symbols of science” (Toumey 1996) in ways that constrain public debate and critical, balanced understanding of the strengths and limitations of scientific knowledge.

Here is Lahsen’s conclusion,

As shown by countless social studies of science, science is intimately and inextricably interlinked with politics, and no transcendent definitions exist by which to distinguish true science from “pseudoscience.” Even peer-reviewed science produced by means of the scientific method of hypothesis, experimentation, and falsification is liable to error. But it is nevertheless a particularly rigorous basis for the production of knowledge, and it can and should enjoy greater consideration relative to claims that not only are produced by less rigorous methods but also are paid by, and designed to benefit, financial and political elites over the general good. As responsible citizens, we must learn how to recognize the difference and to define the general good by means of truly participatory processes.

Like all of her work, this piece is complex and rich in detail, and challenges you to think about the complexities and inconsistencies present in the real world of human action.