My first intro to Martin Lack was at Climate Audit a few days back. He seemed to be a new face with troll-like tendencies - early words showed discourtesy. However, in the best of CA style, people tried to answer him reasonably for a while.

I pointed him to CA's "favorite posts" since he seemed somewhat ignorant of the skeptics' side of the argument. He replied,

Thanks for the history lesson, Lucy. However, most independent observers/investigators have concluded that Michael Mann’s work has been validated by that which has followed it. Therefore, to continue to refuse to accept this finding (endorsed by the world’s most reputable scientific bodies) is to admit you are a conspiracy theorist. Sorry...

...All I am asking you to do is put your prejudice to one side and take a look out of the window … Whatever mistakes Mann et al have made are now irrelevant. Your scepticism is being overtaken by events...

Unwilling at this point to leave Martin with the last, and to me totally erroneous, word, I followed him to his blog, saw his dissertation subject that Foxgoose quoted, and thought, Another apologist for CAGW (I think he calls it ACD - anthropogenic climate disruption - now) who assumes one can bypass the science in order to understand and answer climate skeptics. Or rather, he assumes one can bypass the skeptics' version of the science and of their defence against the warmists' renderings of their position.

In a court of law, such muzzling and silencing of the defendants and their answers to prosecution would, of course, be impossible - except under tyranny.

Whatever, Martin Lack seems to show ignorance of our perspective, and unwillingness to examine it properly. I don't think he ever responded to my invite to read Steve McIntyre's Favorite Posts. So without examining our case that Michael Mann's science has NOT been vindicated, he simply assumes that orthodoxy is correct on this, without realizing the the orthodox "investigations" never consulted skeptics to hear and record their version, especially regarding the key questions that were not asked by the so-called investigations.

Probably nothing I've said is unknown to readers here. But I've put it all down, for the record, since it seems classic and makes a useful ref. point, perhaps for future rebuttals.

I posted at Martin's blog on what seemed like the first appropriate thread to see if he had looked at my presentation with material on extreme weather. His response was that I was disputing everything, therefore I was "simply not credible" to which I replied

I agree, it is not credible that I dispute everything. What I have done is to provide evidence for issue after issue.

Martin referred me to Weatherdem's blog for "a very level-headed look at why you cannot dispute that the Earth’s climate is changing" which as it seemed superficially reasonable and factual, I posted a note at WUWT Tips. Anthony responded with a link to Lack's blog on "Pythagoras"; Lack linked to the WUWT post about BEST where it seems that Lack had already tried Anthony's patience to the point of banning him.

So, there's a reasonably full record. Another apologist who assumes one can take orthodoxy's word for things, and totally bypass the skeptics' take on the science.

I regard Lack's POV as ultimately both unscientific and unprincipled (in the sense of contravening the rules for a proper court of law, that allows the defendant space to defend and to respond to prosecution) even though it may have arisen with the original intent of "saving the planet".

I was in his position myself once. But after examining the science itself, my eyes were opened.

The appeal to authority is sometimes used as a relatively precise debating tactic, sometimes as a more general excuse for not doing research, and sometimes for pure mental relaxation like a reading a cheap novel in a warm bubble bath.

When I read his dissertation subject it screamed eugenics to me. As everyone knows global warming and eugenics are pretty much joined at the hip... but most global warming nuts at least try to pretend to distance themselves from eugenics.

Martian Lack doesn't even try. After a brief survey of his blog you can see he's a raging eugenics believer... to the point of not even trying to hide it. Fourth story down is him drooling over the awesomeness that is paul elrich....

The guys a nutbag devoid of science, rational or logical thought and clearly enjoys these failings to the utmost of his abilities.

> When I read his dissertation subject

I'm afraid I wasn't able to finish the description, I got about two sentences in, realised it was a load of socio political bollocks. I am unable to make myself read it.

I'm certainly glad I didn't waste a year of my life (or however long it took) 'writing' that.

Nial.

Martin is merely trying to darw attention to his blog... and succeding,

he ventured onto Climate Etc a while back, spreading a few little untruths about, Prof LIndzen and a lecture at the House of Commons. (very active and annoying everyone)
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/27/lindzens-seminar-at-the-house-of-commons/#comments

Mark Brandon set him straight (Mark was there with me).
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/27/lindzens-seminar-at-the-house-of-commons/#comment-178892

"... You say in your original post “i was prevented from actually asking a question.”

Sorry – that’s just not true. "

If you read through the Climate Etc thread, Martin feels completely able to misrepresent people and have no shame about it when caught out, and then expects people to treat him 'reasonably' best to ignore. his blog is Alexa ranked in the & millions (28,000 hits in a year!), just him and a couple of convinced types chatting amongst themselves.

http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/be-strong-and-courageous/#comment-2036

As someone that mostly lurks both here and at Climate Audit (where the sums make my head hurt), a couple of points:

1 - Mr Lack had not done any homework whatsoever on Steve McIntyre's position or even the contents and purpose of the CA blog. He simply assumed SM was a conventional 'denier' (whatever that means) and tried to pick a fight on the normal warmist v denier talking points, complete with appeal to emotion (he got perilously close to the 'think of the children' plea).

2 - Mosh handed him his behind on the above point. Climate Audit has a far narrower scope than (for example) WUWT, and is a strongly technical / statistics-orientated site that has a good record in recent years of identifying and highlighting errors in the mainstream (Gergis, Steig's Antarctic paper, the buried weather station in Antarctica giving meaningless data, Mann 08/09 and the Tiljander proxy).

3 - I'm very disappointed to see someone who trained as a (fellow) geologist apparently so taken in with the strongest side of alarmism.

To Ian Blanchard

"(he got perilously close to the 'think of the children' plea)."

Having read a few pages of his website this doesn't surprise me at all. A lot of his writing seemed mostly based on the propaganda/talking points and very little based on any real research.

"3 - I'm very disappointed to see someone who trained as a (fellow) geologist apparently so taken in with the strongest side of alarmism."

I also find it interesting he was trained in geology as well. Most geologists tend to laugh reflexively at global warming. However I can speculate he may have not been able to get a job in his field due to a lack of logic, critical thinking skills, use of the scientific method among other things.

"Soft science" most of all anything to produces the proper message about global warming is a gravy train though... so its not unexpected that he can use his geology background to gain some cred to push for some of that propaganda money. Looking at some of the latest grant money where 100k is the low end for it... well as they say follow the money.