It doesn’t matter how many people agree with you, it doesn’t matter if there’s some poll to back you up, it doesn’t matter how many subscribers you have on YouTube. The only thing that matters is whether you have a good argument.

Thus says the physicist Professor Sabine Hossenfelder in a recent podcast, in which she lambasts a paper written by a team of sociologists and philosophers who seem to have got it into their heads that science should be conducted as a popularity contest. Being the outspoken lady that she is, Hossenfelder wastes no time in putting them in their place. I like that. In fact, I am having a whale of a time until about halfway through the video when she says this:

That’s why the IPCC does NOT write their reports by a consensus mechanism. It’s not how science works. What they do, or at least try to do, is to go through all scientific claims and look at the evidence for them. Yes the IPCC process has problems, but at least it’s not consensus based.

The emphasis in the above quote is actually not mine; ‘NOT’ appears in the subtitles that accompany the podcast. It’s Hossenfelder’s way of showing how confident she is in the workings of the IPCC. Which is important, because if she were to be wrong, the condemnation she directed at those sociologists and philosophers for obsessing over scientific consensus would have to be levelled equally at the IPCC. If, as Hossenfelder correctly points out, science is not supposed to work by consensus, and if the IPCC did in fact write their reports by a ‘consensus mechanism’, then Hossenfelder would have to conclude that the IPCC is not doing science. But hey, that’s no problem, because Hossenfelder is one hundred percent sure that the IPCC is NOT ‘consensus based’.

Let’s put Hossenfelder’s confidence aside for one moment and look at what the IPCC itself says on this matter. Specifically, this is what IPCC Lead Authors Gary Yohe and Michael Oppenheimer said in a paper written way back in 2011 when discussing the IPCC’s approach to report writing:

Achieving consensus is, to be clear, one of the major objectives of IPCC activities. Paragraph 10 of the amended Procedures Guiding IPCC Work, for example, states that “In taking decisions, and approving, adopting and accepting reports, the Panel, its Working Groups and any Task Forces shall use all best endeavors to reach consensus”.

Whichever way you read the above, the inescapable conclusion is that, contrary to Professor Hossenfelder’s understanding, the IPCC is most emphatically consensus based. And just in case you needed any more persuading, there is also this from an IPCC guideline document on the consistent evaluation and communication of uncertainties:

Use the following dimensions to evaluate the validity of a finding: the type, amount, quality, and consistency of evidence (summary terms: ‘limited’, ‘medium’, or ‘robust’), and the degree of agreement (summary terms: ‘low’, ‘medium’, or ‘high’).

This time the emphasis is all mine; if it is okay for Hossenfelder to use capital letters then it must be fine for me to use bold. The only difference is that she was inadvertently emphasising her ignorance, whilst I am emphasising the facts.

But it gets worse. Not only is the IPCC very much consensus based, for years it tirelessly resisted proposed improvements that would at least have mitigated the worst impacts of its obsession with consensus. As Yohe and Oppenheimer explain:

Two proposals have been advanced repeatedly for beginning to address the problem of creating, defending and communicating consensus results as well as departures from the consensus. The degree to which IPCC, through its working group leadership structure, resisted these proposals during the AR4 process is unsettling, given that the scientific communities from which IPCC authors are drawn are supposed to think analytically about the world as a whole. Apparently, this dictum does not extend to reflexive consideration within the IPCC process as it performs its assessments.

Not only is the IPCC most definitely consensus based — in a way that Professor Hossenfelder would recognise as being unscientific — it has also failed in the past to abide by dictums of ‘reflexive consideration’ that would be considered the norm by any self-respecting scientific community. And that’s not just me saying that, it’s a pair of former IPCC Lead Authors who, I might add, are far from being climate change sceptics. But let’s be honest here. The real reason the consensus approach worries the likes of Yohe and Oppenheimer is not because it is unscientific. Their concern is that it fails to give sufficient weighting to the more extreme pessimists within the climate science community (no one is concerned about ignoring extreme optimists; they were removed from the system years ago).

Honestly, I have no idea where Hossenfelder gets her ideas from regarding the workings of the IPCC. By saying “the IPCC process has problems” she would have you believe that she has some detailed knowledge. But in insisting that the IPCC is NOT consensus based, she betrays that her position hasn’t been informed by reading any of the IPCC documents that actually specify its processes! And this matters to me because Hossenfelder is one of many intelligent and influential scientists who comment approvingly on the scientific rigour of the IPCC, and hence perpetuate falsehoods that have the effect of giving climate change sceptics a very hard time. Even worse, they embolden the Millibands of this world in a way that the world could really do without.

Hossenfelder’s convenient ignorance regarding the IPCC is both disappointing and perplexing. It’s an ignorance that, no doubt, plays a part in her insistence that climate science sceptics are just anti-science deniers who use ‘sceptic’ to deceive both the public and themselves. But why she can’t recognise the overtly political purpose of the IPCC is a mystery to me. Is she really that naïve, or is there more than a little of her own self-deception going on here? And if it is the latter, is there any reason to assume that she is the only expert who suffers from this expedient but damaging blind spot?

32 Comments

  2. Sabine is fascinating. She sees through sciencey scams in a peculiar way. She busted the decades long Fusion energy scam in no uncertain terms. Yet for the gender scam she backed men competing against women. On climate she flat out believes in the perpetual motion dogma of climate catastrophe. No evidence can move her. That the IPCC is practicing consensus in lieu of science is apparently not meaningful to her. After watching/listening to her demonstrate her anti-scientific views for awhile I moved on.

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  3. Slowly, I quite agree. She is very smart but has a giant lacuna when it comes to climate alarmism. All her sceptical instincts seem to vanish when climate is her topic. I too could no longer watch. Because she disagreed with my worldview? No. Because, for reasons unknown, she was blind to obvious problems in climate science. In that way she was fatally undermining her USP.

    Regarding the IPCC, the interested reader might like to refer back to The Golden Toad’s Tale from a couple of years ago. In that post I showed that the IPCC lied about the demise of the golden toad. Why did it feel the need to do so? I do not know the answer to that, but I do know that having been proven wrong on the first area I looked at in detail, a matter I have a small amount of knowledge about, I am not inclined to believe that any part of it is untouched by this – what I think of as – scientific toxin.

    The IPCC needs to be retired. If the UN want a climate report, get one research group to do it – open tender, a different group each year. This bloated behemoth where carbon dioxide is the alpha and omega of the universe has got to go.

    Liked by 5 people

  4. I did comment on her piece though see no remnant of what I wrote on a search prompted by this post.

    I agreed her general thesis but expressed surprise how she quoted the IPCC process as an exemplar. I reminded her that the IPCC was set up with a confirmatory remit on one hypothesis (treated as a paradigm) and not a broad investigation of the pros and cons of the full gamut of possibilities. Its circumlocutions regarding “confidence” level is a far cry from the standard way of expressing the outcome of hypothesis testing, due of course to the fact that the hypothesis was taken as unquestionably true whatever the data said or didn’t say.

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  6. Jit: “...I showed that the IPCC lied.…..I do know that having been proven wrong on the first area I looked at in detail, a matter I have a small amount of knowledge about, I am not inclined to believe that any part of it is untouched by this – what I think of as – scientific toxin.”

    This is such a crucial point as it undermines confidence in the whole organisation, publication, whatever: “28-gate” at the BBC being a prime example.

    I came across an example recently which shook me. I was reading a book about the state of the world which set out to show how it’s often not as bad as it is portrayed: something positive, I thought. Then, early in the book, the author claimed that coal use for power generation “is now dying across the world”, supported by a graph of declining coal use in 8-9 western countries. There was no mention of China or India.

    So I went digging and, as I already knew, the truth is dramatically different. I used the “Our world in data” website. The real kicker was that the book’s author is the research manager of said site and has co-authored a couple of papers on coal consumption, etc. which directly refute the book’s claim. As well as making me highly suspicious of other aspects of the book, it made me wonder about the reliability of that website. Does it really use genuine data or might it be selective, to suit an agenda?

    I did finish the book – “Not the End of the World” by Hannah Ritchie, and found it did give a fair picture on some points, as far as I could judge. However it could have gone much further in many areas – but then it may not have been published.

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  7. Jit,

    All her sceptical instincts seem to vanish when climate is her topic.

    It’s actually worse than that. She purports to be distrustful of all scientists, including climate scientists. But when it comes to the latter, her scepticism is simply that they cannot be trusted to tell us just how bad things are. Apparently, they are scared of a backlash from a public who might accuse them of being alarmist if they told the whole truth. Not only is this fanciful, it rather goes against her assertion that the IPCC is only interested in reporting the evidence as it is. When it comes to all matters climate, her views are a complete mess.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. MikeH, IIRC about a year ago Net Zero Watch wrote a letter to Our World In Data to complain about some of the latter’s figures. Was the complaint about the “falling” cost of offshore wind turbines? Nor can I recall whether NZW received a reply.

    Anyway, I am always wary of claims where one part of the Establishment supports another part of the Establishment, especially in all matters climate/energy related. Regards, John C.

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  10. John C: interesting that NZW found reason to challenge them. It really is becoming a problem of who to trust – or distrust the least! Of course, control of the data opens the door to all kinds of misbehaviour.

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  12. I think Sabine might just be engaging in climate partisanship. I don’t think she’s immune to confirmation bias. It takes some effort to get to the details of what sceptics have uncovered, especially if it’s not what you want to find out. If you look at her prodigious output of videos on a wide variety of topics, it’s not unreasonable to think she might be spread a little thin.

    Of course, I also think she might be engaging in marketing. When you get as big as Sabine Hossenfelder, you can take contrary positions on various topics, but climate is not just any topic. It’s too big to ignore and the scientific establishment is overwhelmingly wedded to one side of this polarizing issue. Why the use of the word “denier”? I think it may be calculated to hold on to a major part of her audience while bringing challenging (even if tepid) questions. Where’s the risk in using the word? She’s probably attracted more sceptic eyeballs with it.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. The world at large knows nothing about the IPCC body text, only the Summary for Policymakers. This summary is hammered out line by line in a giant meeting of a. the IPCC scientists plus b. the government reps of each of the ca 196 member states of the UN. Debate on each line continues until there is consensus hence these final meetings go on for multiple days and nights. Finally, in the event that the govt reps disagree with the science reps, the governmental version prevails. This means that the Summary (SPM) might wind up saying that 2+2 = 5 when the body text of the report says 4.

    Liked by 3 people

  15. Mike D,

    I accept everything you say regarding Sabine, and the reasons why she may not be expected to understand everything that goes on in the IPCC. Nevertheless, I still take exception to her withering dismissal of those amongst us who actually do have an understanding, basically because we put in the effort to do so.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. I’ve wondered about this, but have come to the conclusion that those people who want to make a living from a YouTube channel tend not to do things that will upset the Google censors.

    Liked by 2 people

  17. Sabine is back on the climate change case again, but I’m afraid she just underlines how incoherent her thinking is when it comes to how climate science works:

    Firstly, she repeats her concern that climate scientists are making a grave mistake by discounting the most extreme predictions:

    I have misgivings about the way that climate scientists have been making their predictions. A few years ago, they had literally thrown out the models that predicted the steepest warming trend by finding some argument for why the most alarming predictions can’t possibly be true.

    But Sabine, isn’t finding an objective argument what climate scientists do so well? Isn’t that what you like about them? It seems not when the argument doesn’t suit her:

    Of course, they say this argument is just sound science. But I’m afraid they just want to get rid of bad news as much as everyone else.

    Presumably, the ‘they say’ is an allusion to the fact that this was a consensus view – the thing that she says climate scientists don’t indulge in. I do wish she would make up her mind. Also, further on she says:

    But climate scientists are increasingly confused about what’s going on. This was well illustrated by a show of hands at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington in December.

    Wasn’t it Hossenfelder who said, “It doesn’t matter how many people agree with you, it doesn’t matter if there’s some poll to back you up…”? Suddenly, a show of hands is a reliable thing!

    Liked by 4 people

  18. Hossenfelder pretends to be a rigorous scientist and honest communicator of science and data but she is spinning a ‘climate crisis’ narrative on the warmth in 2023/24 by suggesting that the lack of low level cloud cover – which, without doubt now, is the proximate cause of the acceleration in global mean surface temperature starting June 2023 – is a scary feedback of GHG warming. This is utter nonsense. What she doesn’t tell you is that since 2000, declining low level cloud cover accounts for virtually all the observed warming. So the 24 year trend has been caused by increasing short wave solar radiation penetrating to the surface, not more long wave infra red radiation being trapped near the surface. The CERES data proves that. The observed trend therefore is not a feedback of GHG warming, it is a result of a mechanism entirely distinct from GHG warming. That trend accelerated markedly in 2023, again caused by another sudden drop in low level cloud cover. If that was a non-linear feedback to the warming which preceded 2023, then decreasing cloud cover was a consequence of . . . . decreasing cloud cover! This seems unlikely; Nature doesn’t work like that, feedbacks tend to be self-limiting. Far more likely is that decreasing low level cloud cover in 2000-2022 was caused by multi-annual/multidecadal internal variability and the acceleration in 2023 was caused by something else . . . . like a volcano in 2022 causing changes in global circulation and regional cloud cover.

    Why didn’t Hossenfelder talk about these alternative and rather more plausible explanations for the 2023 warming acceleration? IMO, she is a fraud, a stooge, or simply a lot less smart and informed than many people think she is.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Is it just a coincidence that while idly browsing Youtube the other evening, the algorithms pushed at me a Sabine Hossenfelder video in which she says she’s worried about northern Europe becoming much colder because of the potential collapse of the AMOC, and a very short period later the BBC offers us this?

    “Could the UK actually get colder with global warming?”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn938ze4yyeo

    I can’t help wondering if last year’s lousy summer, the not exactly warm winter and the general failure of the UK’s weather to follow the climate crisis narrative hasn’t led the alarmists to decide that we can more effectively be scared into compliance by threats of cold rather than of heat.

    Liked by 4 people

  22. Mark,

    I believe you may very well be correct. Your suspicion is entirely justified given what the government’s behavioural scientists have set out as the best strategy for gaining public acceptance. It’s all about exploiting the availability heuristic.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. It could also be a direct response to the fact that just two weeks ago, a paper was published which pours cold water on the AMOC collapse scare story and which was fairly well publicised by the media.

    https://search.brave.com/search?q=new+study+shows+AMOC+has+been+stable+over+the+past+60+years&source=desktop&summary=1&conversation=212c051df8b3849f08411e

    The BBC appear to have made the decision that they are going to deny real data and promote scare-mongering baseless conjecture instead, and yes, this may be the climate alarmist propaganda machine starting to hedge its bets on possible cooling ahead, especially for the North Atlantic.

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  24. Jaime – if this is the paper – New study finds that critical ocean current has not declined in the last 60 years – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution referred to, not sure It’s “real data”. Partial quote

    “The authors derived this AMOC proxy with the CMIP models, then applied it to observational data. The best data for surface heat fluxes over the North Atlantic come from reanalysis products that incorporate direct observations into a model, similar to the way weather forecasts work. The study authors focused on two reanalysis data sets that extend back to the late 1950s to reconstruct the AMOC.

    “Based on the results, the AMOC is more stable than we thought,” Vogt said. “This might mean that the AMOC isn’t as close to a tipping point as previously suggested.””

    Liked by 1 person

  25. dfhunter,

    Yes, what they did is use climate models to derive a proxy relationship between air sea heat fluxes in the north Atlantic and decadal AMOC variability. The coefficient of correlation was significantly better than a previous proxy (sea surface temperatures in the sub polar gyre) used to determine that AMOC had declined over the industrial period (Mann et al). Using observation-based reanalysis datasets (similar to weather observations), they reconstructed air sea heat fluxes going back to 1963 and discovered that (if the model derived proxy relationship is robust), then AMOC showed only decadal scale variability over that period, but no long term decline. So, the data used to test whether AMOC had declined was real (as real as observation-based reanalysis weather data for instance) but the proxy relationship was derived using climate models. The only direct measurements of AMOC variability come from RAPID – which has only been going since about 2005 – which shows very significant annual and interannual variability, but no emergent trend over the short time it has been collecting data.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. Sabine is unimpressed by World Weather Attribution’s claims about the LA wildfires in this video (thank you to Adrian for the alert).

    Liked by 2 people

  28. I see that Hossenfelder has now posted a follow-up video in which she brings the saga of the WWA ‘rapid attribution’ study up to date:

    Just to recap, her first video (see preceding comment) pointed out that the WWA paper (and accompanying press release) had made a number of bold statements regarding the impact of climate change on the LA wildfires that were actually unsupported by the study because its results were statistically insignificant. Somebody suggested that she had misread the paper and so she took her video down whilst she double-checked. After further investigation she concluded that her original analysis was correct and the video has now been restored. In fact, having looked into the paper more carefully, she now appreciates that the study was even worse than she at first thought, although she generously says of extreme weather event attribution in general, “I want to officially acknowledge the possibility that some of it isn’t crap”.

    Liked by 3 people

  29. John,

    “I want to officially acknowledge the possibility that some of it isn’t crap”

    Sabine really needs to critically examine a much larger sample of extreme weather attribution analyses from Otto and her colleagues – so she can more accurately quantify that possibility.

    Liked by 1 person

  30. Jaime,

    I got the impression that Sabine was alluding to a wider canon of work than that emanating from the WWA. That said, I’m sure that she would benefit from a more thorough review of the field, as indeed would we all. And whilst she is at it, she would benefit from taking a closer look at the workings of the IPCC, as I had implied in my article.

    You may be interested to know that her recent videos have rattled the cages over at ATTP. I won’t attempt to summarise the far-ranging criticism on display, other than to say there is nothing that you wouldn’t expect and even less that hits the mark.

    Liked by 2 people

  31. P.S. And it’s high time I put the record straight. In an earlier comment I said ‘When it comes to all matters climate, her views are a complete mess.” That comment was clearly far too sweeping, so I take it back.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Ever heard the parable of the blind men and the elephant? Sabine cops-out bigtime by ignoring the elephant in the room: GLOBAL MARXISM, which has for decades been hijacking climate science as a weapon against capitalism and its main pillar Big Oil.

    They do this by pushing the so-called greenhouse effect, which is based on fake physics but is startlingly easy to push over on scientists as well as non-scientists, and immediately supports all policy proposals to save us from Big Oil by expanding Marxism globally in stages.

    Too bad for them, I have a startlingly easy-to-understand killer disproof of the greenhouse effect which if it is understood by enough people will stop their big steal in its tracks amid many amusing flip-flops and self-pardons. Will Sabine even read it?

    Here’s two versions, either of which ends all honest scientific debate and changes everything for everybody.

    http://www.historyscoper.com/thereisnogreenhouseeffect.html

    http://www.historyscoper.com/isthegreenhouseeffectreal.html

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