Public opinion better than expert opinion? I'll remember that next time I'm in for surgery or getting my car fixed!
And surely this sentence "Carter, as a geologist, is a climate scientist" contradicts itself. Carter is a geologist, NOT a climate scientist, or is the author claiming that all geologists are climate scientists?

The usual denier obfuscation and distraction tricks here.

Peers means real scientists not shills for the fossil fuel industry like geologists.
Carter, as a geologist, is NOT a climate scientist.

All good science is open to testing, refining and input of new discoveries. Deniers use this to say it is all rubbish because it keeps changing and painting this as a negative. All science needs to be ready to accept that it was wrong if and when new evidence is produced.
So far the deniers have fallen way short of producing anything credible in the way of evidence.
Indeed all the things the scientists warned of are starting to happen. More/longer heatwaves, more destructive storms, more variability and more records broken in day to day weather. More melting everywhere, unusual weather patterns, changing seasons, ocean acidification.

It is not the "warmists" who are ideologues it is the deniers who refuse point blank to see the evidence with their closed minded, macho, man is king attitude.

jeremy - look, the response to this point about consensus has been made many times, so if you want to repeat the consensus argument you should at least acknowledge it.

A consensus in and of itself on a scientific issue is meaningless. The key question is, can the scientists concerned point to a useful tracking record using the theory? So a consensus about a forecast of a position of a plant at a certain time, for which scientists can point to an established track record over centuries, is vastly different to a consensus about climate forecasting where the models have made no useful forecasts, over the short term at least.

Mathematical proofs are quite different again, as I understand it. You construct a logical proof and, assuming no one can find a flaw, its proved.. Much easier..

>>this is a book which rests on the thesis that the court of public opinion is actually better placed to ultimately tell who is right and who is wrong.<<

In 2009, a poll held by the United Kingdom's Engineering & Technology magazine found that 25% of those surveyed did not believe that men landed on the Moon.

In 2012, a Gallup poll in the U.S. found that 46% of those surveyed believed that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.

In 2013, a survey by the Australian Academy of Science found that just 59% of those surveyed knew that the Earth's orbit of the Sun takes a year. 27% of respondents thought that humans inhabited the Earth at the same time as dinosaurs.

When 2 in 5 people struggle with really, really simple astronomy then I have my doubts about the court of public opinion to properly evaluate complex scientific arguments.

Cheers,

Tony

< For those who say "peer review" in a learned journal is all that is required to make a paper true, this is a book which rests on the thesis that the court of public opinion is actually better placed to ultimately tell who is right and who is wrong. >

Well, what an amazing basic foundation on which to base the book!

I would say that as a result, it is fundamentally flawed right from the start!

Of course we shouldn’t take peer-reviewed studies as gospel, but they are a whole lot better founded than public opinion!

Public opinion is made up largely (almost entirely) of people who don’t have anywhere near the level of understanding as academics, scientists or other experts.

And as it concerns AGW, public opinion is highly swayed by the vested interests of big business, who talk down climate change and desperately want to continue with business as usual.

But ultimately, we shouldn’t be concentrating on climate change at all. We should be looking at peak oil, supply-demand balance for our energy resources, and how to achieve a sustainable future without suffering a huge crash event first.

This means implementing renewable energy to the best of our ability and addressing population growth, amongst other things.

If we concentrated on this ‘biggest picture’ outlook, we would be doing more to address climate change we would if we were to continue concentrating just on it alone.

The scale and significance of AGW should be moot. We should be doing just about exactly the same sorts of things regardless of whether the outlook is catastrophic, or the world is actually cooling, or anywhere in between.

Think sustainability, not AGW!

"For those who say "peer review" in a learned journal is all that is required to make a paper true, this is a book which rests on the thesis that the court of public opinion is actually better placed to ultimately tell who is right and who is wrong.

In fact we know that at least half that is published in peer reviewed journals is wrong, so for any public official to take them at face value without applying their own intellect to probing them is an act of complete negligence."

Wow!

I's akin to the anti-vaccination mob releasing a book amidst the plethora of material to the contrary.

I note the Murdoch press is having second thoughts about climate change.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/climate-change-moves-nemo-current-to-south/story-fnii5s3y-1226739924122

Ocean acidification...

http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/