"Censoring debate on Global Warming"?

If you think scientists of global warming are unanimous that global warming is real and that it is caused by humans, you should check out this article by Robert Mathews in the Telegraph:

Leading scientific journals 'are censoring debate on global warming'
By Robert Matthews (Filed: 01/05/2005)

Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming...

A separate team of climate scientists, which was regularly used by Science and the journal Nature to review papers on the progress of global warming, said it was dropped after attempting to publish its own research which raised doubts over the issue.

The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.

The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.

Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change...

However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.

They...decided to conduct...analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly...

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.

So, who to beleive? I don't know, but if the above is accurate then we do have something to be concerned about: political bias in the scientific community, including among prominent publishers, may be skewing both research and publication. That can have major impact on state and federal law-making- and it could cost us all a bundle.