professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a member of the original UN-IPCC panel, was so appalled by what he perceived as the misuse of the review procedure - with groups of IPCC reviewers, many who were not scientists, only reviewing one or two chapters of the IPCC reports - he demanded his name be removed from the IPCC's list of reviewers.

Eventually, the UN administration complied, but only after Dr Michaels threatened legal action to force the removal of his name. All of which, yet again, went unreported in the UK news media.

Yet one science consensus appears to be uncontested: there has been no warming since 1998. The latest peer-reviewed research - in the May 1 edition of Nature - even suggests a cooling cycle may take over for the next 20 years.

Whatever we may personally believe about global warming, serious science-based pressure is building on the IPCC to admit its objectives are political not scientific. Sir John Houghton, first co-chair of the IPCC,

acknowledged as much when he stated: "Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen."

As the trickle of 'dissident' scientists becomes a stream, however, leading anti-alarmists, like S. Fred Singer, author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, are describing 2008 as the 'tipping point', the year when the real science argument swings their way.

If they are right, the UN and much of the Western news media will, alarmingly, be shown to have colluded in closing down an important debate, often by marginalising world-renowned scientists as 'cranks' and 'mavericks'.

Both the UN and the media may soon be forced to jettison entirely the myth of a climate science 'consensus'. If nothing else, the fast rising number of 'mavericks' demands it.