Joe Romm at Climate Progress does a wonderful job here of deconstructing the insensible blathering of AccuWeather long-range forecaster Joe Bastardi, a man who dismisses climate change as "this red herring of an issue."

Amid his ravings, Bastardi complains that "many of the high circles out there with alphabet soup in front of their names" consider him "stupid," a contention that Romm generously refutes, saying:

"For the record, I don’t think he's stupid.  Stupid people rarely rise to a position of influence necessary to cause as much damage as Bastardi does."

Romm is right about so much, it seems churlish to argue with him on so trivial a point. But read Romm's post and ask yourself: If Bastardi doesn't suffer from terminal stupidity, what other pathology could explain his twisted position on climate science?

James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, offers this as a reason for scientists to decline public debates about climate change:

... public discussion of global warming is befogged by contrarians, whose opinions are given a megaphone by special interests that benefit by keeping the public confused. Some of the contrarians were once scientists, but now they behave, at least on the topic of global warming, as lawyers defending a client. Their aim is to present a case as effectively as possible, citing only evidence that supports their client, and making the story appear as favorable as possible to their client. The best, the most articulate, are sought out by special interests, and even by much of the media, because the media likes to have “balance” in its coverage of most topics – and especially this topic because special interests have influence on the media.
The barrage of e-mails that I have received from the public highlights another aspect of the global warming story: it is now very political. The people sending these messages are not generally scientists, even though in many cases they parrot “scientific” statements of contrarians. In their opinion these matters should be discussed in you-tube “debates” between scientists and contrarians. My guess is that scientists may not fare very well in such a format.

I've been watching AccuWeather.com for a while now, and they have just unleashed a very strange new front for the global warming denier movement.

AccuWeather's very professionally done video blog section, "Headline Earth," is touting itself as providing "an unbias look at the global warming debate." And to prove how unbias they really are, they provide none other than Pat Michaels as their featured interview.

And who will they be airing on their next episode? None other than Dr. Fred Singer.