One "denier" discusses the state of making consensus on climate change:
In time, scientific controversies get resolved, often by the emergence of new kinds of evidence that no one originally imagined. Views that are maintained, to some degree, by a wall of artificial "consensus" die hard. That, of course, was one of the lessons of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which inaugurated the long vogue for the word "paradigm" to describe a broadly accepted theory. Kuhn's work has often served as a warrant for those who see science as a social project amenable to political manipulation rather than an intellectual endeavor with strict standards of evidence and built-in mechanisms for correcting mistakes.
Thus when the "anthropogenic global warming" (AGW) folks insist that they command a "consensus" of climate scientists, they fully understand that they are engaged in a political act. They intend to summon the social and political dynamics that will create a "consensus," by defining the skeptics as a disreputable minority that need not even be counted. It is a big gamble since a substantial number of the skeptics are themselves well-established and highly respected scientists, such as MIT's Richard Lindzen, Princeton's Will Happer, and Institute of Advanced Studies' Freeman Dyson. But conjuring a new "paradigm" out of highly ambiguous data run through simulation computer models is tricky business and isn't likely to produce a "consensus" all on its own. What's needed is the stamp of authority. And if that doesn't work, just keep stamping. Or stomping.
Interestingly enough, he discusses the consensus on Clovis first in the field of anthropolby that was not overturned until 1999. I recall a co-worker in 1991 who was a grad student in the archeology field who, with some annoyance, described a Clovis mafia that stamped out any evidence--and there was evidence that should not have been ignored--that there were pre-Clovis sites in the Americas to end that consensus. As a new man in the field, what was he to do? Risk career by defying the consensus? Or go along.
I moved on in work, so I don't know what he did. If he was smart, he'd have kept his head down to pay student debt and provide for his family. Attacking the consensus at the edges to chip away at it would have been the best he could do under the circumstances.
But the lesson was never lost on me. Evidence should matter. But even scientists are people with egos, interests outside their field of expertise that they promote using their credentials to promote, financial incentives, and the need to go with the herd that affect their judgments.
And after a decade and a half of flat global temperatures despite the predictions of models that purported to generate data of future climate and activists who drew dire conclusions from that so-called evidence, the evidence may yet lead to a tipping point where those who deny climate consensus is science will prevail.
Then, when the religious fanatics who believe evidence must be massaged to "save the planet" no longer have the weight of societal disapproval at their backs to malign those who want science, maybe we can actually discuss the science of how the climate continues to change, what role mankind has in it, what the effects might be, and what we can do to mitigate the changes that have gone on before we burned fossil fuels and will continue after we no longer burn them for our energy needs.
