But is there really so much scientific dispute over the facts of climate change?
One way to resolve this is to ask a simple question. If Carter and company hold different views to those expressed in the majority of the peer-reviewed, scientific literature, then have they submitted their ideas to independent and objective peer-review?
This is a critical process that sorts opinion and rhetoric from scientific knowledge and consensus.
If the answer is “yes”, there are legitimate grounds for concern over the report’s conclusion.
If the answer is “no”, the arguments against the Climate Commission’s report fall away as unsubstantiated opinion.
The Web of Science is maintained by Thomson Reuters and covers 10,000 journals across the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities.
You can search this database for papers by different authors within reputable, peer-reviewed journals.
I used the Web of Science to see if Carter, Evans, Franks and Kininmonth were legitimate experts in the areas in which they claim superior knowledge.
Given such strong opinions, you would expect that the four individuals would have published extensively in the peer-reviewed, scientific literature on subjects like climate change, oceanography, and atmospheric physics.
After all, if they have such strong opinions, then surely these ideas have been treated like all other valid scientific ideas?
The Climate Commission and its scientific advisory panel survive this type of scrutiny extremely well. For example, Climate Commissioner Professor Lesley Hughes has at least 39 peer-reviewed publications since 2000.
Many of these articles focus on the terrestrial ecosystems on climate change, an area for which Professor Hughes is internationally recognised.
Similar conclusions can be made for Professors Will Steffen, Matt England, David Karoly, Andrew Pitman and the others associated with the Climate Commission.
Searching for peer-reviewed articles by “R. M. Carter”, however, revealed plenty of peer-reviewed articles on unrelated topics within geology.
Only one paper turns up that could be remotely related to climate change.
This paper, however, was found to be seriously flawed by an internationally recognised group of Earth scientists.
This brings us back to zero for the number of credible papers published by Carter on climate change in the Web of Science.