I didn't particularly mean to isolate you ROC, I quoted you because it appeared in your first sentence that you didn't understand what peer review was. Peer review isn't a medium through which the general public can regulate the work of scientists. They general public aren't equipped to do so. The fact that scientists do this themselves as part of their method is not insignificant.
Scientists are debating the same things everyone else is on this particular subject 
If they can't agree, how do you expect us uneducated ones to agree
No they really aren't.
This system you are questioning (and of course you are right to do so), does its work with the upmost rigour and is by definition free from ulterior motive. Peer review, although only a component of the system, ensures that. Scientists do not understand everything nor are they expected to do so, otherwise they'd just be custodians of knowledge. Some of the problems are so complex the only way to make progress is to define the problem (which might in itself take several years - and this is already abstract and esoteric compared to what the general public thinks constitutes a problem) and then make suppositions, construct a model and then test those. And then they make another iteration. Debate and mistakes are an inherent part of the process.
Do not confuse this with them being 'wrong' in layman's terms and therefore we can dismiss everything they say and go on without changing a lifestyle with which many people obviously have a lot invested in.
Just for the record and I think it is important for someone to state this: the current models which include the activities of mankind since the Industrial Revolution fit the observable changes to the climate with a 95% certainty. That is the scientist's rating of their own validity.
There is no longer any debate in any circles of any worth which doubt this. Anyone here present can easily verify this. This is internationally accepted.
Sometimes people put too much faith in someone they think is smarter than they are.
So we have Faction A: a segment of the population who are gifted intellectually, who dedicate decades of their lives purely to the pursuit of understanding, without significant financial or other gain, that work in an international community transcending borders and political barriers, sometimes in multi-generation research programmes (this means some scientists spend their entire careers and lives and die before the conclusion of the research) who's primary motivation is to understand nature in a profound way for the benefit of humanity as a whole.
Then we have Faction B: capitalists, speculative investors, power-hungry psychotic individuals, large nationalistic institutions with budgets which rival those of small countries, also replete with clever people, who manipulate the thinking and activities of the human race as an entity (including starting wars & killing people) to further their own agendas.
And it is Faction A we should be distrustful of?
Please, think about it, just indulge me for 60 seconds of your life.
No, but since numerous scientists have published erroneous and downright falsified papers on the subject, I am going to take that as a compliment.
Then they aren't scientists.
Not a one. I have read numerous papers on the subject and I find anyone supporting man-made global climate change as highly suspect, especially when you trace the money back to who is funding these follies.
One patently obvious hole I think people like you have in your logic is you imply that scientists have an agenda to distort the truth for their own gain. Do you mean they gain funding for research? Do you know how long that lasts for when a hypothesis is disproven? Do you know how those budgets compare to a serious commercial advertising campaign for example?
I'm just curious how you rationalize this. Why? Why are the scientists saying these things? What is in it for them? What's their angle?
