Peer review is a consensus process No it's not. It's a critical process.
I must thank you guys for writing off a few days of my rapidly depleting life reading up on this. eeeK! (65 in a few hrs!)
I have already shown myself as a heretic on this matter but in the interests of fairness I found Al Gore's DVD (which has been in the house for some time) and watched it. To say it was superficial is an understatement. Four Corners would never have put it to air and 60 Minutes would have baulked until they saw the ratings in it.
The "hockey stick" graph was just about the start and end of the pretense of science, and that is flawed. The rest was just a politician doing what a politician does best: Anecdotes and PR.
After watching, I googled " 'hockey stick graph' +Gore" and found he has little support, but I did find another dozen or so reputable scientists who were clearly "skeptics". I'm sure they resented being accused of selling their soul to "big oil" and being grouped with the apologists of "big tobacco".
Good science does not denigrate skeptics. If you've done your research, they should be treated as those "yet to be convinced".
I found an interesting defamation case where Al Gore's re-election committee members had to make an unreserved apology to a respected scientist who they attacked. But that could be another post.
