The climate-change denier sites are alive with chortling over a promised new study that says: “Less than half of all published scientists endorse global warming theory.”

The survey, to be published in the small and contrarian journal Energy and Environment, claims to “debunk” an earlier study by University of California (San Diego) science historian Naomi Oreskes – a study that was published in the much more reputable journal Science.

No one could do a better job than Oreskes does here of dismissing the new survey. Even if author, Klaus-Martin Schulte, (a German endocrinologist with no background in climate science or science history) canproduce “32 (peer-reviewed) papers that reject the consensus outright,” the other errors and unfounded attacks that have already been reported suggest that his piece, like Benny Pieser’s before him, is an agenda-driven polemic that won’t stand up to serious scientific scrutiny.

But you have to hand it to the dissembling team led by people like Marc Morano for giving Schulte more public attention than he has ever before earned in his academic career. There are a host of “right” leaning blogs that claim to stand up for certainty – that object at every turn that the proof of anthropogenic climate change is not yet 100 per cent. Yet, whenever some limp piece of information arrives that challenges the overwhelming consensus or actual experts, these high-tone bloggers suddenly drop their standards and shout the querulous claims from the rooftops.

If it need be said again, this is not about science, it’s about politics. It’s about public relations, and a brand of public relations that gives the practice a bad name.