A recent scientific survey revealed that 69 per cent of Americans are of the view that it is ‘somewhat likely’ that scientists misrepresent data to support their credence. The figure for those who believe that falsifying of data by scientists is ‘very likely’ stood at 40 per cent.

Disagreement over the issue of global warming widened over the last few weeks, after a study by American space agency NASA was interpreted to mean that man is not responsible for global warming.

NASA said new evidence based on data gathered by the orbiting satellite Terra showed that computer software models, which were the basis for estimating man’s contribution to global warming, were wrong.

According to that claim, the projections overestimated the impact of man's actions on global warming and climate change.

Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell from the Huntsville-based University of Alabama said in the journal 'Remote Sensing' that there was a clear discrepancy between Terra’s measurements of the amount of emissions escaping the atmosphere and the results of computer models of climate.

Speaking on the topic, Spencer said, “There is a huge discrepancy between the [actual] data and the [computer-based] forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

The U. N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been warning that heat that does not escape Earth’s atmosphere, which causes global warming; but data from NASA’s satellite showed that the heat is escaping from Earth’s atmosphere.