Scientists question climate change consensus

Amid anger from its backbenchers, the Labour Government appears set on a course of levying new road tax levels for 'gas-guzzling cars'. At the same time a group of MPs are urging Gordon Brown to go ahead with a system of personal 'carbon credits' - a tax by any other name - as an effective way of forcing CO2 cuts.

But are these controversial new initiatives - and the ambitious EU-imposed carbon targets they are designed to meet - based on a lie?

Like so many other expensive green intiatives mooted here and elsewhere in the West, they are firmly rooted in the single premise that man-made CO2 emissions are scientifically proven to be the root of all climate evil.

And the most acceptable source of that scientific proof is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Run by the UN, its

last report in February 2007 - released 10 months before it shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore - made it quite clear that there was a consensus of 2,500 scientists across the globe who believe that mankind was responsible for greenhouse gas concentrations which in turn were very likely responsible for an increase in global temperatures.

The trouble is that alleged scientific consensus has never been in more disarray. Not that we in Britain would know much about the increasing dissent in the international science community on climate change, because the British mainstream news media declines to report it.

Ten days ago Dr Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) announced to a packed National Press Club in Washington DC that more than 31,000 scientists have now signed the so-called Oregon Petition rejecting the IPCC line on climate change.

Acutely aware that claims of a 'phoney list' would immediately be levelled at him, Dr