It's the same sort of propaganda effort which fought against the recognition of the link between cigarettes and lung cancer. It's an interesting parallel, and

It's the same sort of propaganda effort which fought against the recognition of the link between cigarettes and lung cancer. It's an interesting parallel, and worth noting that it wasn't just a matter of paid shills. R. A. Fisher (about as a big a name as one can find in mainstream statistics) was a true believer (and pipe smoker), and argued to his death that there was no proof that smoking caused cancer. Chapter 5 of Judea Pearl's "Book of Why" is a look at this. Is McIntyre going to publish his objections? Unfortunately, probably not. He's blogging more rarely, and quite simply, he's getting old and doesn't feel he has the energy for it. He co-authored some earlier critical papers, and I think found it a really frustrating experience. I think you may underestimate the difficulty of publishing critical papers in the field as an outsider. Why does he refer to "Climategate" twice ... Doesn't he realize that that choice of term is politicized I don't think he's particularly aware of which terms are going to cause which reactions in people, and has more of a weakness for snark than I prefer. Since many of the people who would be turned off by the terminology have already written him off as a "denier" (a parallel but opposite signaling term) he might feel he doesn't have much to lose by writing for the audience he has. In this case, I think he refers to it because he and his blog were intimately involved in the scandal (as in, the story came out on his site, and he seems to have corresponded privately with the source), and thus for him it's a major time marker.