In A Consensus About Consensus, George H. Taylor, the State Climatologist for Oregon and past President of the American Association of State Climatologists, looks at scientific consensus:
That survey involved responses from 530 scientists worldwide. They were asked: ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?’ Only 9.4% strongly agreed, while 9.7% strongly disagreed. Another 19.3% were in general disagreement.But even if there actually were a consensus on this issue, it may very well be wrong. I often think about the lives of three scientists who found themselves by themselves, on the ‘wrong side of consensus.’ There have been many in the history of science, but I singled out Alfred Wegener (Continental Drift), Gilbert Walker (El Niño), and J. Harlan Bretz (Missoula Floods). None is well-known now among members of the public, and all of them were ridiculed, rejected, and marginalized by the ‘consensus’ scientists — and each of the three was later proven to be correct, and the consensus wrong. As a well-known writer once said, ‘if it’s consensus, it isn’t science — and if it’s science, it isn’t consensus.’