Thank you for this post. As a (nuclear) scientist it drives me crazy that people who are not part of the scientific publishing ecosystem purport to know how it works... and make claims like "intimidation" against publishing something against currently accepted theories.
Many... MANY... of the papers that go to journals these days are directly trying to refute accepted theories. Like you said, if you get it right you can become famous overnight. There is no shortage of people that are trying in every field (and definitely climate-related fields). However, the burden for these papers is that there must be factual, evidential, proof of what you are claiming.
Scientists _love_ to prove each other wrong! It's the way science works. That we haven't had any journal articles factually refuting human-caused warming in reputable journals is _proof_ itself that the current theory is correct. I can guarantee you that it's not for lack of submissions - it's just that those submissions don't withstand peer review due to not having evidence.
And anyone that thinks "peer review" means "I don't like what you're saying" does not know what they're talking about. Technical peer review is a very difficult thing to do, you have to have just as much evidence for what you are saying in your review. In fact, in my experience, I spend WAY more time writing negative reviews that positive reviews. A positive review will just get a few critiques and suggestions. A negative review turns into an entire treatise on the subject with many citations to back up my claims.
Peer review is not the wild west - and there are many stopgaps. If a reviewer doesn't properly justify their review the editor will toss it and find another reviewer.
Ok - I'm droning on now. It was just refreshing to see someone else on Slashdot that actually understand how science works!