A Quote by Martin Rees
I'm not a specialist in the science but I have followed it fairly closely and it seems to me that there is among the experts a clear consensus that potential climate change is something to worry about.
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Despite the international scientific community's consensus on climate change, a small number of critics continue to deny that climate change exists or that humans are causing it. Widely known as climate change "skeptics" or "deniers," these individuals are generally not climate scientists and do not debate the science with the climate scientists.
Despite widely differing perspectives and agendas, there seems to be a remarkable global consensus that has built up over a fairly short period of time that climate change and ecology is one of the truly defining issues for humanity.
Reporting the consensus about climate change ... is not synonymous with good science reporting. The BBC is at an important point. It has been narrow minded about climate change for many years and they have become at the very least a cliché and at worst lampooned as being predictable and biased by a public that doesn't believe them anymore.
Politicians and some of the scientists like to say that there's a consensus now on global warming or the science has been settled, but you have to ask them, what is there a consensus on? Because it really makes a difference. What are you talking about? The only consensus I`m aware of is that it's warmed in the last century. They completely ignore the fact that there's this thing called the Oregon petition that was signed by 19,000 professionals and scientists who don't agree with the idea that we are causing climate change.
Climate change - for so long an abstract concern for an academic few - is no longer so abstract. Even the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Programme reports 'clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.'
I think it's very important to invite and encourage people to talk about climate change who have a lay understanding. In general, there is a lot of confusion among climate activists about the role of science, that scientists should be social and political leaders of this movement.
The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
Science is really about individual experts reaching a consensus.
The scientific consensus is that climate change is real, urgent, and caused by humans. This science should be both supported and understood by anyone who hopes to lead NASA, one of our nation's top science agencies.
Where there is a confluence of interests among nations, as, for example the swine flu or polio, you can get well functioning international institutions like the World Health Organization. And you can act. Climate change is different, because the science remains hypothetical and the potential costs staggering.
It seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to our future generation.
Maybe the science is uncertain, maybe we don't have to worry about it. Climate change is the worst, but there's others.
The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
Climate change is real. Climate change is being substantially increased by humans and the carbon we put into the atmosphere. And it appears to be speeding up. If science has made any mistakes, science has been underestimating it.
I've always believed that you should stick as closely to the science as possible. And my biggest advice to reporters has been, if you're doing a climate story, talk to climate scientists. The best climate stories are done by the people who talk to climate scientists.
There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.
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