You couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s always those filthy sceptics, flat-earthers, deniers. Here we are, just ordinary climate scientists going about our daily lives, fudging data, deleting emails when we get FOI requests, and threatening journals that dare to publish papers that challenge the consensus, and you nasty mean sceptics somehow find that objectionable. If only we could just get on with our skulduggery without your annoying interference:

CSIRO scientists say they are coming under political attack as part of an orchestrated campaign by climate change sceptics.

A delegation of scientists is in Canberra this week to push for bipartisan political support for open debate and diversity in government science. [Open debate? That’ll be the day – Ed]

CSIRO Staff Association president Michael Borgas says scientific integrity is under threat. [Yes, it certainly is, but not from the sceptics, it’s from the climate scientists who have forgotten what being a scientist is all about – Ed]

“It’s a very large concern both internal but in particular externally,” he said.

“Now we’re seeing some quite unprecedented attacks on the integrity of science in the CSIRO, that was in senate estimates recently.”

Dr Borgas says scientists need more support from management.

“We frankly think that the management does make matters worse by appearing to gag comment and exert too much control of the scientists,” he said.

“But we can see that they are attempting to manage the risk that they see from these attacks which are coming from the outside.”