It's been raining unseasonably in Saudi Arabia. Cause? Global warming. Kashmir has suffered its coldest winter in living memory. Cause? Global warming. The winter in Britain is extraordinarily dry. Cause? Global warming.

Are you getting sick of this article? Sorry, I can't help it. It's not my fault if any outbreak of extreme weather - or moderate weather if it comes to that - is put down to global warming. Global warming has replaced the Apostles' Creed as an article of faith. Believe it or you're damned.

Except of course it's all an elaborate fiction. The last few decades have been a little warmer. So what? In the middle of the 19th century Britain suffered a small ice age and in those days Charles Dickens recalls every winter seeing deep snow and the Thames frozen over.

In the 1950s - the years of my own boyhood - I can remember a string of snowy winters and the scientists then warned of a new ice age. In fact, the best scientific knowledge tells us we are overdue an ice age, as these glaciated periods are the most regular occurrences in the Earth's climate over the centuries.

We are always being browbeaten with the myth of global warming. What are the facts? The temperature has risen these last 25 years. But it fell in the 25 years before that. Many scientists believe that global warming, even if it exists, is a result of increased solar radiation rather than carbon emissions from nasty capitalist countries.

It is also a fact that restrictions on the production of greenhouse gases alleged to be the main cause of global warming will adversely affect the economies of developing countries. And if the money to be spent implementing the Kyoto anti-global-warming procedures were spent on constructive policies to help the Third World, then the total world environment would benefit both in the near future and long term

So why is the global warming scare being so ruthlessly broadcast? For three reasons, mainly. First, the mass media loves a scare story, the more apocalyptic the better. It's like a grand version of all those tabloid tales of "flesh-eating bugs" and the regular notifications that the Earth is about to be demolished by an asteroid.

Secondly, the story of global warming is a propaganda tool, a useful lie in the mouths of those with a political agenda - the anti-globalisation fanatics. Thirdly, the myth of global warming has been so hyped by the UN as a stick with which to beat the US, that there is a lot of money for "research" which will help them "prove" the myth as fact.

It is a form of arrogance to believe that the puny activities of mankind can have such extreme effects as the global warming fanatics claim. The truth is that the climate is forever changing. If there is any regularity to be observed in recent millennia, it is the occurrence of frequent ice ages punctuated by interludes of a more temperate kind.

Besides, the same scientists who warn of global warming tell us that in AD 900 Greenland was warm enough for the cultivation of vineyards. I suppose that was because Erik the Viking and his merry men were driving everywhere in Trabants.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.