In the Canadian tradition, it would be "unparliamentary" to accuse ClimateAudit's Steve McIntyre of purposefully misrepresenting climate science, but his latest attack on the so-called "hockey stick" suggests that McIntyre is a great deal more interested in scoring distorted debating points than in saying anything that is actually factually correct.

McIntyre, apparently a retired mining stock promoter, has enjoyed a certain degree of fame in the denier community since 2003, when he and an economist named Ross McKitrick launched an attack on a graph (inset) by the highly respected actual scientist, Michael Mann.

In response to the M&M attack, Mann published an amendment to his original work, giving deniers the world over the courage to say that the original graph had been "debunked." They then extrapolated to say that if there was an error in this single graph, that must mean that climate change wasn't happening or wasn't caused by humans - that the whole anthropogenic theory had collapsed in the math of a single published paper. Here is a recent and typically ridiculous example.

The panicky Professor Ian Plimer appears to have run from the field of intelligent debate in his latest duck-and-dodge fest with UK Guardian Columnist George Monbiot.

Plimer is the author of Heaven and Earth, a terrible hash of logical misdirection, plagiarism and mistakes which was shredded into fine bits by people like our favourite Australian, Tim Lambert at Deltoid blog.

After Monbiot joined the public lashing, Plimer protested and demanded that Monbiot engage with him in debate. Monbiot agreed, but only on condition that Plimer first respond in writing to a handful of questions about the accuracy and source of material in his book.

Plimer has been hiding out ever since.

Update: In the face of a challenge from UK Guardian columnist George Monbiot, Ian Plimer has agreed to answering a series of specific questions about his (highly questionable) new book - as a rn-up to a face-to-face debate with Monbiot. BProf. Plimer. I can't wait to read your answers. (And thanks Brian D for the tip.)

Denier darling Ian Plimer, author of the thoroughly debunked book, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - the Missing Science, has done a runner in the face of a challenge to participate in a climate change debate with UK Guardian columnist George Monbiot.

Plimer had originally challenged Monbiot to a face-to-face debate, and Monbiot declined. These are the sorts of publicity stunt that deniers are often keen to initiate because they can stand up and say any darn thing they please, putting at a real disadvantage a debating partner who is committed to telling the truth about science.

But Monbiot later reconsidered and said, sure, let's debate twice - once face to face and once on line, in a forum that allows for questions to be recorded and answers to be vetted by impartial third parties. That's when Plimer checked out.

DeSmog fans will likely know about Tim Lambert at Deltoid - a smart Australian scientist who does fabulous work debunking some of the ridiculous denier talking points. But he has recently been pointing to some contributors who are also raising the bar: Robert Grumbine (Penguindreams ) at MoreGrumbineScience, and Tamino, who plays the deniers for fools at Open Mind. (Hat tip to VJ).

These guys are adding significantly to the quality science debunking that we have come to expect from RealClimate, the kind of stuff that leaves the deniers sputtering because, well, it's all about science and they're, well, not.

Journalist and failed politician Christopher Walter (the self-celebrating Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley) has launched a blustering counter-attack on Dr. Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate, attempting to avenge Schmidt's impertinence for picking apart Monckton's amateur science submission to a newsletter of the American Physical Society.

I won't wade into the science: Drs. Schmidt and (Tim) Lambert (at Deltoid ) have done an admirable job of that already. But Monckton's tactics are evident even in the way he sets up his piece.

This story has history. In 2005, a former UK environmentalist named David Bellamy had a letter published in New Scientist magazine claiming that:

Indeed, if you take all the evidence that is rarely mentioned by the Kyotoists into consideration, 555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980."