A story in the Sunday Telegraph revealed the lengths to which the scientific journals are going to suppress any challenge to the global warming myth. Last December, Science published a paper by Dr Naomi Oreskes which analysed almost 1,000 papers on global warming and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed theory, while none directly dissented from it.

Her paper immediately drew criticism from academics who knew of many papers which challenged the theory. Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University and an expert on natural catastrophes, conducted his own analysis of the 1000 documents and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly. The Telegraph reports:

‘Dr Peiser submitted his findings to Science in January, and was asked to edit his paper for publication - but has now been told that his results have been rejected on the grounds that the points he make had been "widely dispersed on the internet". Dr Peiser insists that he has kept his findings strictly confidential. "It is simply not true that they have appeared elsewhere already," he said.'

But this was not a rogue decision:

‘Dr Peiser is not the only academic to have had work turned down which criticises the findings of Dr Oreskes's study. Prof Dennis Bray, of the GKSS National Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, submitted results from an international study showing that fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believed that climate change is principally caused by human activity. As with Dr Peiser's study, Science refused to publish his rebuttal. Prof Bray told The Telegraph: "They said it didn't fit with what they were intending to publish."

'Prof Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama, a leading authority on satellite measurements of global temperatures, told The Telegraph: "It's pretty clear that the editorial board of Science is more interested in promoting papers that are pro-global warming. It's the news value that is most important. He said that after his own team produced research casting doubt on man-made global warming, they were no longer sent papers by Nature and Science for review - despite being acknowledged as world leaders in the field. As a result, says Prof Spencer, flawed research is finding its way into the leading journals, while attempts to get rebuttals published fail.’

Clearly, this whole thing is a mounting scientific scandal of the first magnitude. Yet such is the grip of this myth, it is still going by default. When will scientists of international repute and unimpeachable integrity publicly blow it out of the water?