Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
process had important and not altogether positive consequences for both
the science and politics of climate change. The politically negotiated
nature of the IPCC's consensus cut two ways. On one hand, participa-
tion in building consensus gave countries the political ownership over the
issue that Bert Bolin and his colleagues had identified as essential to any
long-term climate convention process. But on the other hand, for many
scientists, national-level politicians, and even some IPCC participants,
the overtly political nature the IPCC undermined the perceived “purity”
of its consensus assessment. As science and environment scholar Stephen
Bocking explains, “boundary organizations” like the IPCC are meant to
“internalize within themselves the ambiguous border between science and
politics, moderating the tendency of conflicting interests to dismantle the
scientific claims of their opponents . . . in effect stabilizing this border so
that scientific claims are better able to meet the criteria of both political
and scientific credibility.”
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But in practice, scientists and politicians on all sides of the issue under-
stood the negotiated nature of the IPCC process, and the consensus it
produced carried only limited credibility within either the scientific or the
political community. (The IPCC would later integrate peer review into its
structure to protect the institution's scientific credibility, to limited effect).
While opponents of action on climate change had recourse to lobbying
and direct participation in the international scientific consensus-making
process through the IPCC, once the IPCC released its assessment, skep-
tics from national governments and from the energy industry also had the
option to simply deny the credibility of the institution itself.
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In addition, though many in the media and the public perceived the
IPCC as a liberal organization making bold predictions on climate change
for the sake of promoting world government, the IPCC's consensus-
making process actually privileged a relatively conservative scientific posi-
tion.
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Scientific consensus requires scientists from a given field or fields
to agree on a credible range of ideas or results that represent the state of
knowledge on a given scientific problem. In an ideal world, groups of scien-
tists would discard high- and low-end outliers equally. In reality, however,
most scientists face a greater professional risk in overstating a case than in
understating it, especially when the results imply political action. The size
of the IPCC, the high stakes of the economic and political implications of
its reports, and the multitiered structure of its negotiations in the working
