Who’s your expert? The difference between peer review and rhetoric

by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg/The Conversation/June 16, 2011
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CLEARING UP THE CLIMATE DEBATE: Director of the Global Change Institute, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg submits some climate “sceptics” to peer-review and finds them wanting.


Peer review is the basis of modern scientific endeavour. It underpins research and validates findings, theories and data.


Submitting scientists' claims to peer review is a straightforward way to assess their credibility.
The Climate Commission was established by the Australian government to help build consensus around climate change.

Enter an alternative group of experts.


Writing in Quadrant Online Bob Carter, David Evans, Stewart Franks and Bill Kininmonth stated, “The scientific advice contained within The Critical Decade is an inadequate, flawed and misleading basis on which to set national policy.”


Carter and his colleagues dispute the major findings and assert that “independent scientists are confident overall that there is no evidence of global warming” or unusual “sea-level rise”.
According to them “there is nothing unusual about the behaviour of mountain glaciers, Arctic sea ice or the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets.”


You would be forgiven for concluding that firm action on carbon dioxide might not be warranted if the experts can’t agree.

But is there really so much scientific dispute over the facts of climate change?

Read more about this story at The Conversation