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LTW4: Climate Change: Global Models and Hot Politics (LSE as a target for…
LTW4: Climate Change: Global Models and Hot Politics
LSE as a target for Climate Sceptics
Tol (UoSussex) alleges Grantham Institute has been taking his work:
He rejects 97% consensus - but he rejects it because he asked not just climate scientists, but others too AND took non-responses as skeptical
Cook et al showed the people he was asking didn't have the accreditation/expertise to have credible knowledge
CC is heavily politicised:
Daily Mail tried to do an 'exposé' on Grantham Institute
LSE quickly claimed the articles were false and the media didn't run with it
Tol claimed that Nicholas Stern took £30m of UK Gov funding and stole Tol's results
He explicitly accused Stern of malpractice
The situation highlights that we're a long way from the transparency that is needed - exemplifies the extraordinary state we're in with climate skepticism
Science and the Climate Regime
Agenda Setting
Climate research has a military background: In cold war era, US interested in post-nuclear attack impacts - major funding to look at how much carbon the oceans could absorb -
Revelle
helped set up international lab in Hawaii to do carbon cycle research
Early CC modelling then began in the 50s and 60s
This early discourse started to suggest there's a need for global action on CC - UNEP was one of the first transboundary scientific networks to emerge
UNEP watch out for environmental issues - they called a meeting in Austria --> advisory group on GHGs formed + Toronto conference in 1988
In the context of
Underdal's
model, there was high public saliency at the time
CC Pre-Negotiations - 1988-1990:
This formalised the Science-politics interaction with the creation of the
IPCC
Its an intergovernmental body that allows government representatives to review and accept its assessment work
Many high-calibre scientists were recruited to input into the working groups
Started BEFORE the UNFCCC
The governments tend to leave the IPCC to their work, but then when the summaries come out, they jump on certain elements of this to shape governance
Their FIRST report in 1990 significantly improved the state of knowledge on human-induced CC
The Working Group 1 was chaired by John Houghton and many other highly respected scientists, which really helped boost the impact of the report
Many attributed humans as the leading CC contributor following the report
But many thought also the the IPCC was making too many decisions in governance when that wasn't its job, hence the creation of the INC
The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (1990) was made, but they had a lot of issues meeting their governance goals due to
high problem malignancy
The EU declared themselves the leaders of the governance process, whilst the US lagged behind
CC Negotiations - 1991-1997:
So after 5 sessions of the INC meeting, they pushed through the adoption of the UNFCCC - the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (this is a
global treaty
155 states signed
Came into force in March 1994
Enough states had ratified to allow it to become legally binding
When negotiating, the UK worked hard to keep the US on board, but to do so had to change it from 'legally binding emissions limits' to 'general commitment to reduce emissions'
NOTE:
Convention
: A formal agreement between 2+ states - they are
open documents
meaning they can be ratified by additional member states (i.e. that weren't there from the start) -
negotiated under umbrella organisations
such as the UN - the convention is a 'guideline' or 'skeleton' or 'major heading' - it doesn't delve into the specific details, just aims to get general agreements
E.g. Vienna Convention: The convention doesn't cover targets/specific details - the Montreal Protocol
to
the Vienna Convention is what does this
In a convention, you want the maximum possible number of states to get involved and then once they're in, you gradually ramp up the number of binding actions in the hope that this 'easing in' mechanism will maximise long-term impact
Before you can have nations sign the convention, it must become
adopted
Treaty
: This is the
outcome of a convention
- it's an agreement that the negotiations in the convention lead to
Protocol
: An
additional legal mechanism
that adds to a convention or a treaty - can address any issue within the treaty or convention
Key difference: Convention
encourages
, whilst a protocol
commits
Ratification
: 1st you sign a convention (--> you're a 'signatory'), 2nd you ratify the convention (--> you're a 'States Party'); once you ratify, you're legally bound - beforehand you only oblige to meet the convention's aims
Ascension
: You're said to 'ascend' if you sign and ratify at the same time
Enter into Force
: A convention always has a minimum number of ratifications before it becomes active - i.e. even after the 1st country ratifies, they're not legally bound until it's active
UNFCCC
Introduction
Background to how the UNFCCC came about:
The INC produced the 'general' text of the Framework Convention in 1992
The INC produced this as a part of the Rio Earth Summit - the Rio Earth summit had 3 outputs (Climate change = UNFCCC, Biodiversity = CBD, Sustainable Development = UNCCD)
The product of the UNFCCC was the creation of the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord (essentially also a protocol)
Meets once a year every year to discuss where to go next
Objectives:
To stabilise GHG concentrations at a level that stops dangerous interference (Article 2)
NOTE: 'Dangerous' wasn't defined until years later
To protect the climate system on the basis of equity and
common but differentiated responsibilities
(Article 3)
Legality:
NOT a legally binding convention
NO enforcement mechanisms in place
BUT it put in place a framework for creating
specific
international treaties (aka PROTOCOLS) that could set legally-binding limits
Resulting Protocols
Kyoto Protocol: was a
legally binding
protocol - required
developED
countries to reduce emissions by 5.2% on timeline ending between 2008-2012 - reduction commitments were modest - this meeting was also where there was a realisation to try and improve the sink capacity of GHG emissions, rather than just decrease emissions
Didn't come into force until Feb 2005
Paris Agreement
Key COP/CMP Meetings
Copenhagen (COP 15): Resulted in the Copenhagen Accord: Agreement to hold temperatures below 2C rise
Paris (COP 21): Resulted in the Paris Agreement (in force form November 2016) where parties agreed on the procedural mechanisms i.e. how they must report on their CC actions - not comprehensive enough to be labelled as a protocol - but in terms of politics, it's often better not to label something as a 'protocol'
Also the PA obliges parties to aim for 'well below' the 2C target
Emissions reductions were 'nationally determined'
EU demanded that emissions from aviation and shipping were excluded
The nationally determined agreements were
not
legally binding
Allow for developing countries to tailor their plans for specific adaptation and mitigation needs
Bonn (COP 23): Negotiated on how the Paris agreement will work post-2020
IPCC
AR5
- The Fifth Assessment Report published in 2013:
WG1 gave a summary for policymakers which introduced a 'likelihood' scale
This can be quite challenging for politicians who want absolute answers
E.g. 95-100% = extremely likely - is the closest to absolute consensus
Any science can be wrong, by nature, because of this inherent falsification possibility, it opened up gaps for sceptics who can then point out that the scientists promoting climate change mitigation agendas aren't certain of their science --> buying time for inaction
Integrated Framework:
The early IPCC was all about physical science, but has more recently tried to bring in social science
Opens up an increasing probability for politicisation of CC as the social science element is even more
pluralised
, with multiple paradigms existing
Working Groups:
WG1: Physical science stuff
WG2: Vulnerability and adaptation stuff
WG3: Mitigation
The last 2 groups are more focussed on the human system impacts and the influence of socio-economic development
It's only in recent times that the IPCC has attempted to be more inclusive of the Global South (link to Sustainability Science aims)
An example of why this is an issue is that CC has much more impact in the GS and less in the GN, therefore focussed on the mitigation strategies as the imminent threat the GS were feeling was absent, so they weren't as focussed on adaptation and vulnerability
Climategate
Occurred in 2009-2010
Claims were that the University of East Anglia climate scientists were manipulating data
Phil Jones: Said in an email he was using a 'trick' to 'hide the decline' of late 20th century temperatures
In reality, 'trick' was shorthand for 'smoothing out the data'
Led to major changes in the UEA - e.g. guidance given to academics on how to use emails and on transparency of data - changed the science-citizen interface
UEA wanted to put out all its data to be available to all to stop people think that they were hiding anything
Constructionist Take on IPCC
From a constructivist perspective, the IPCC is a partial success
IPCC, as a hybrid science-policy organisation, has to meet 2 sets of demands
Authority of knowledge claims of the IPCC haven't decreased despite strong public attention + uncertainties in the science
Issue (
Lidskog and Sundqvist, 2015)
: 'Scientific reductionism' is witnessed in how the IPCC has a linear, positivist model of communication of the science to policy - it believes it is taking science and presenting it to the policy world
Leaves little space for alternative types of SP knowledge e.g. civic epistemologies - LINKS the IPCC with Civic Science topics - the IPCC is attempting the linear model of science, and not doing much to advance the SS or CV arguments of how SP should be
My thoughts: Perhaps the best the IPCC can do in the current social climate is retain a more positivist agenda; if they were to try and join sustainability science, with the already significant amount of scepticism, they'd surely be pulled apart by claims that they were relying on 'completely unscientific' techniques - so to answer questions about whether it's an effective boundary organisation, perhaps it's not if we embrace the opinion that we should be moving forward with a sustainability science approach
His thoughts on my thoughts: the IPCC maintains an orthodox (positivist) approach on the science-policy interface, partly because it got attacked for several dubious claims in the Fourth Assessment Report which were in "grey literature" (e.g. a WWF report on accelerated glacial melt in the Himalayas); In the most recent, Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group II produced some intetesting material on vulnerability and human security which showed more of a sustainability science flavour but these findings were not taken up in the Summary for Policy-makers. The IPCC is an inter-governmental body and the great majority of state members understand climate science as positivist environmental science, even when extended to societal impacts and responses.
I.e. he's saying that the fifth report shows more promise, but the focus is still heavily on the non-SS stuff, and as it's an inter-governmental body, all the state members involved see science in a positivist light
Constructionist Criticisms of Climate Modelling (
Hulme
)
There are issues with the global to regional downscaling of global atmospheric and ocean models
Reading looks at the PRECIS RCM (Regional Climate Model)
Software used by developing countries to allow climate data to be interpreted in region context - has been used in +100 countries
Hulme: Is a CC scientist who became interested in constructionism
He thus analysed how society has influenced his work
He came up with the following points about the PRECIS RCM:
The global or regional scaling of climate modelling is
uncritically exported/imported
- i.e. even the scales we use alter our perspectives on things - there's other scales of understanding what's going on in a country
The
focus is only on the physical properties
of GHGs; it thus sidelines social relations and vulnerabilities: it's thus a selective geography that may miss important things e.g. data on income, livelihoods, governance etc.
The model also
suppresses system variability
- it underestimates abrupt, non-linear responses
Use of the software creates political dependency on expert knowledge-making networks
It's up to government officials who get a hold of the data to interpret it - this opens up a
window for exploitation of knowledge
, as politicians may be able to read into the data what they want in order to serve personal interests
In class: Notes that the IPCC, can be seen to shape policy - e.g. from a constructionist POV, in the 60s and 70s, people were saying climate was all about the local - the IPCC presented data in such a way (e.g. temperature scales) that facilitated a much more global policy outlook (e.g. 2C temperature targets)
Conclusions
on the IPCC
Has served as an effective boundary organisation
It's been policy relevant but not policy-prescriptive
This may, however, lead to misleading 'mid-range' projections - i.e. policy action at the mid-term length to more fit into political cycles, not the long-term policy that we actually need
Looking at the uptake of the science, we'd classify it as a
level 2
on Underdal's framework - there's high public salience, and it's been listened to etc. - see framework slides for level 2 definition
The
political influence
of science has been facilitated by high public
salience
and an
improving state of knowledge
(growing international consensus is forming)
The influence has been constrained, however, by high problem malignancy and continuing scientific uncertainty in key areas - e.g. around radiative forcing, aerosols and water vapour
Therefore we see that the CC debate is also wrapped up in everyday life with the general population and that if we're to solve the issues, we'll need to account for this
IPCC as an example of the
Geopolitics-Science interface
IPCC politics example:
Wikileaks dumped 250,000 cables between US embassies and the US
Found a diplomatic cable that the US State Department had basically contacted its embassies saying implicitly that it did not want the Iranian nominee for the developing-country co-chair of the IPCC Working Group 2 to get the seat - highlighted that if that happened, their funding towards WG2 - they quit explicitly mention that they'd like the US nominee, Stanford's Chris Field to get a co-chair seat instead
This goes against the IPCC's public profile as an objective, scientific body
NOTE: Just because governments try and influence who gets the co-chair, it doesn't necessarily mean that the scientist will serve their aims like a drone - but it still gives skeptics plenty of fuel
Class:
Post-Normal Science (
Funtowicz and Ravetz
)
Emerging in response to policy issues of risk and the environment
They use the concepts of system uncertainties (how much uncertainty remains on the topic of interest) and decision stakes (i.e. what's at stake/how big are the consequences)
Around the axis origin, you have applied science
The next band out is 'professional consultancy'
The furthest out is 'post-normal' science
When decision stakes or uncertainty are high, traditional methodologies for scientific study are inappropriate
Post-normal science can provide a path to the democratisation of science, and also be a response to the current tendencies to post-modernity
PN Science is more reflective, less confident, more uncertain about the knowledge put forward - uses consensus-building to counter uncertainties
It encompasses the realisation that science is no longer purely autonomous from politics
'facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent' -
funtowicz and ravetz
There's a more accepted interactive relation between science and society
“We disagree about science because we have different understandings of the relationship of scientific evidence to other things: to what we may regards as ultimate “truth”, to the ways to which we relate uncertainty to risk, and to what we believe to be the legitimate role of knowledge in policy-making.” (Hulme 2010:106)
Hulme's
Uncertainties:
Incomplete understanding of how the climate systems works
Innate unpredictability of large, complex and chaotic systems such as the global atmosphere and the ocean
A third category [..] originates as a consequence of humans being part of the future being predicted
Presentation
Climate Scepticism:
C Sceptics are a product of a political culture in which decision-makers put an exceptionally high premium on science to resolve their political and ideological conflicts (i.e., once you use science as a political fighting tool, people stop believing it can be used or undertaken objectively)
But scepticism can be good - need it as science thrives in disagreement and can only function through questioning and challenge
A further reason people disagree on CC is that people naturally have different expectations of what science should tell us and how to view scientific knowledge
Indeed Hulme argues that 'it needs the oxygen of climate scepticism and disagreement to flourish (Hulme, 2009)
The paper by
Hampel
looks at how sceptics are claiming that perceived warming is only actually due to increased urbanisation around recording stations, resulting in warmer local conditions only
Presentation 2
Governance of Science and Role in Policymaking:
Scientific authority can be contested - who has the authority to interpret and present scientific findings? E.g. Leonardo DiCaprio's speech to the UN - why is he allowed there?
Should the IPCC be policy-neutral or policy-prescriptive?
Issue 1: Validity of consensus: Consensus doesn't mean that the knowledge put forward is actually the truth, or even that it's the closest to the truth - and also, consensus is obtained through compromise --> too conservative?
Issue 2: Legitimacy of Experts: Who gets nominated? Are they really independent and objective? E.g. IPCC co-chair of WG2 leak
Issue 3: Neutrality of advice: Is the IPCC's advice neutral? Can we expect scientists to remain objective?
What's the right way to apply the science?
Decisionist?
Technocratic?
Co-productionist?
Hampel
: Have climate sceptics taken the bait?
resistance against the government regulation of carbon-based lifestyles is tied to claims against the veracity of the scientific climate knowledge - i.e. people resist gov. regulation by claiming issues with the science of AGW
self-styled climate sceptics exploit the paradox of scientific authority,highlighting the 'placefulness' of a supposedly placeless climate science - sceptics pointing out that scientists have too much positioning in society for their outcomes to be considered unbiased
'For many climate deniers, thereis a belief that climate change is inextricably tied to aliberal political ideology that borders on socialism orcommunism', summarises Hoffman (2011, p. 19). - suggests that climate scepticism isn't just about the science, it's about trying to undermine people of perceived different ideologies
What Hampel looks at is: Do US weather stations measure the warming effect of land use changes around the stations that is the so-called urban heat island (UHI) effect, or a pure, and in this sense
placeless
, global temperature signal?
To bolster the
credibility
of their claims, pro UHI hypothesis, Watts and his allies
rely on openness and transparency
as popular contemporary social norms, and on internet media to amplify them
Hampel's perceived paradox of science is that scientists have to construct the science and yet also have to remain completely witness-only in order for the science to be considered true - basically impossible
the transcendence of place in the ontological sense and the denial of agency in the epistemological sense
Political opponents of those who want to use climate science to do things like impose carbon taxes are able to 'reveal' the inevitably situated and embodied practises of the scientific knowledge production process and use this as evidence of some kind of wrongdoing
The criticisers of the weather stations are often credentialed climatologists and meteorologists who are very aware of the difficulties of about unruly data and the many steps its takes to form asingle chronology out of millions of particulars - know about the myriad factors distorting the observationof a pure, placeless climate signal - but exploit the fact that the public doesn't know or expect this
Anthony Watts found that approximately 90 per cent of the examined 1000 stations of the US Historical Climatology Network(USHCN) had been 'compromised by encroachment of urbanity
This discrediting of scientist's results + climategate where scientists were shown to behave unethically, can be compared to the sceptics whose reproach is to go public and appear honest correctors --> easy to sow doubt into minds
To validate their knowledge claims, sceptics promise transparency and inclusivity. Anthony Watts, for example, mobilised hundreds of volunteers who inspected and rated the weather stations of the historical network. Not only would it have taken years for him alone to complete this task, the voluntary engagement of these so-called citizen scientists showcases public engagement as laudable ethos of post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). '
If war is too important to be left to the generals, science is too important to be left to the scientists
', the late novelist and sceptic Michael Crichton once postulated in a Congressional hearing on climate reconstruction (SCEPW 2005, 55). - Watts uses volunteers as a moral high ground
To validate his claims, Watts has
created his own community of witnesses on the internet
, which differs from the closed networks of the scientists' epistemic community.
Openness is contrasted with closure, transparency with secrecy
. It is relatively easy to see how the deconstruction of instrumental climate records becomes a credible scientific endeavour in front of a like-minded or generally sceptical audience
Lidskog and Sundqvist (2015)
IR scholars argue science shouldn't connect with policy until consensus is reached, if it wants to gain political influence
They argue, using IPCC as an example, that we need to focus on the more informal, contextual features of the SP-interface, rather than the institutional design, if we're to understand the dynamics of S-P interaction
IR: the more autonomous S is from P, the greater its influence
STS: what makes S important is political and messy - the more connected a scientific discipline, the better
Aims to understand the lack of progress the IPCC is having in international negotiations under the UNFCCC
in regime theory, science is understood as a resource that nation-states can use in their negotiations concerning international agreements and has no independent role relative to state interests
Haas, together with Casey Stevens, has analyzed more than thirty existing international environmental regimes that involve scientific bodies in order to determine what conditions enable scientific knowledge and epistemic communities to influence policy-making
maintenance and support of scientific bodies within multilateral environmental governance arrangements are necessary but not sufficient conditions for science to be able to speak truth to power
find that the design of the science–policy interplay is of vital importance; however, regimes vary widely in how this interplay is organised
Based on their evaluation, Haas and Stevens argue that to be influential, scientific knowledge should be separated from the policy process. First, scientific bodies should establish their own agendas. Committees that set their own agendas appear to be the most politically insulated, whereas ad hoc panels seem to be the most vulnerable to political interference. Second, individual state governments should not select the members of the scientific bodies; instead, experts should be nominated exclusively on the basis of scientific merits. If they are selected by intergovernmental organizations and on scientific grounds—i.e., on the basis of their reputation and authority as active researchers and not on their merits as policy advocates or science administrators—the legitimacy of the scientific body and the governance process will be increased. Third, scientific bodies should not be organized in an open-access fashion, in which all member countries are able to appoint representatives. A small expert group, nominated by intergovernmental organizations and geographically distributed across the member states, could better establish the proper degree of insulation between the scientific body and policymakers. In sum, Haas and Stevens argue that by separating the expert community from political involvement, science has the possibility to create knowledge that is credible and thereby able to influence policy. The more autonomous the science, the greater its potential influence
Consensus, and knowledge as to how that consensus was reached, are also necessary. They stress the importance of distinguishing between compromise and consensus
Unfortunately, political actors often attempt to mobilize science rapidly, which makes it difficult to achieve scientific consensus. In this way, consensus is related to autonomy. If scientific experts are not allowed to identify and formulate research questions independently, with some degree of autonomy from political processes, it is only possible to achieve scientific compromise
Haas and Stevens argue that as consensus should be achieved independently of politics/policy, it's then the role of an EC to act as a conveyor belt to transfer this knowledge to policy
In conclusion they say 'science must first develop truth and then speak to power'
According to this process, the problem with many current environmental regimes is that science becomes involved in policy-making too early (before consensus has been established), which fuels scientific controversies and restricts the possibility that science will be viewed as a legitimate and credible advocate for the environment. As a result, no social learning occurs, and states, unaffected by science, seek to advance their own material interests in international cooperation. Haas and Stevens mention climate change, biodiversity, and fisheries as examples of processes that have not granted autonomy to expert groups, thereby undermining science’s ability to speak truth to power.20 They devote particular attention to the IPCC, which they assess as an example of a failed attempt by science to influence policy.
Insights from STS field:
In contrast to regime theory and the epistemic community approach, STS scholars understand science and policy as intertwined
science–policy relationship is thus characterized as a process of coproduction
Coproduction thus means that uncertain or contested science can grow stronger in a conducive policy context, and a weak policy context can become stronger through the support of science
The coproduction thesis is similar to what Bruno Latour calls processes of hybridization, as opposed to processes of purification
Processes of purification view the institutions of science and policy as separate and distinct, with clear boundaries between the two. Processes of hybridization demonstrate the interdependency and blurred boundaries of science and policy. The co-production theory asserts that processes of separating science from policy, which are frequently undertaken in modern societies, always begin from a place of coproduced hybrids
Behind a publicly presented separation between science and policy, a multiplicity of collaborations and connections among actors, activities, and spheres can be observed. Thus, science that appears detached from policy is not the whole story; rather it is a representation that conceals deeper and more fundamental processes of hybridization, that is, coproduction.
IPCC:
According to Haas and Stevens, it has failed in its task
The IPCC is designed in a manner that enables government control over individual scientists, who are afforded limited opportunities to influence the agenda of climate change negotiations
Although the IPCC relies on extensive peer reviews of its assessment reports, it is governments that formulate the research agenda, appoint scientists, and approve the reports. The scientific representatives overwhelmingly come from the global North, which limits the scope and legitimacy of the panel.
For these reasons, Haas and Stevens find that the IPCC is designed to keep science on a tight leash, rather than meaningfully influence policy
When issues are highly politicized and involve high stakes—as in the case of climate change—it is difficult for science to inform policy
according to Haas and Stevens, certain international conventions have been more successful in this respect, such as those regulating pollution in the Mediterranean region (Program for the Assessment and Control of Pollution in the Mediterranean Region—or MED POL—1975), air pollution (Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, 1979), and the depletion of stratospheric ozone (Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, 1985)
they enabled the creation of autonomous scientific bodies able to develop consensual knowledge that has helped foster consensus in various policy fields.
Haas and Stevens argue that the IPCC’s expert work is an obvious example of a low degree of autonomy.
Haas and Stevens consider the clearest sign of a low (or nonexistent) degree of autonomy in expert work to be when politicians and bureaucrats representing national governments decide the agenda and select the experts, something they find evidence
In contrast to Haas and Stevens’ view, STS sees the work of the IPCC as a partial success in terms of creating a shared scientific understanding of the climate issue.
It has succeeded in taking on the role of a privileged speaker for what climate change is and implies—no other scientific or non-scientific institution has similar authority when it comes to defining the very meaning of climate change.
The IPCC’s role in world politics has also affected other expert bodies and global assessments, and has served as a role model for the configuration and development of other expert organs. This is most evident in the newly established Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service (IPBES, established in 2012), which explicitly states that its establishment and design were strongly inspired by the IPCC
Moreover, despite strong public attention to the uncertainties in climate science, the authority of science and the IPCC has not decreased
But...
Indeed, at present there are no international agreements that have led to extensive reductions of greenhouse gases. Haas and Stevens argue that this failure is because science and policy are not sufficiently separated. They assert that the knowledge presented by the IPCC is of insufficient quality and does not surprise policy actors, as nothing is presented that they did not request.
STS approach: In this sense, science and policy are coproduced: science involves not only a diagnosis of climate change but also an understanding of society. Thus, what is staged as a scientific activity—a global scientific assessment—also implies a specific perspective on how society operates.
STS studies have demonstrated that environmental science is most trusted when it relates to shared normative and cultural understandings of the world
current framing of climate change has, however, been developed with little public input and has precluded alternative ways of understanding the issue
The meaning that IPCC scientists have given to the understanding of climate change—in the form of science-based definitive statements about carbon emissions and the disastrous risks associated with them—is not false, but it is only one of many possible understandings
The fundamental problem is therefore not that the IPCC has failed to establish consensus or kept science sufficiently separate from policy-making. Instead, the problem is that science has not been connected to what individuals and other stakeholders consider important, meaningful, and manageable
has been further exacerbated by the IPCC’s adoption of a linear model of speaking truth to policy, which has resulted in politically relevant questions [End Page 13] framed in an abstract and nonpolitical manner
With its focus on achieving consensus through expert assessment, the IPCC has denied the plurality and uncertainty of science and thereby also limited the possibility to discuss alternative policy approaches
The IPCC has been excessively focused on establishing scientific consensus, thereby subjecting the complex issue of climate change to scientific reductionism and alienating policy actors and publics
The existence of different civic epistemologies further complicates the argument that the IPCC’s problems are caused by its lack of detachment from society; it is primarily connected to a rather small segment of society, and the meaning it assigns to climate change resonates poorly with broader social and cultural understandings of what matters