A speech delivered to an obscure audience, then recycled as text, by a professor who perhaps cannot tell the difference between weather and climate, comes to its clunky end with a citation of a legal disclaimer. But perhaps it is subtle satire.

From now on, I shall be anticipating a written legal disclaimer at the end of every weather report on every TV channel.

Something along the lines of "It is not our fault if it rains on your parade" will do well enough for me.

The good news is that esteemed and learned author of this clever piece cannot possibly be suffering from presenile dementia.

Smoking doesn't cause cancer either does it?

I became a global warming sceptic quite some time ago so I find this article reassuring. However I can listen to other scientists who support AGW and also find their arguments compelling. What I really need are "debates" where groups of opposing scientists square off in public debates.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. The earth is cooling. Climate deniers refuse to face reality

He says (quote)
NASA also reported in 2011 "Global sea level this summer is a quarter inch lower (~6mm) than last summer"

A half-competent scientist would know to cite his sources, or at least cite a version of his paper which gives sources. A half-honest scientist would give rather more of the story than Ollier does.

In fact http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/SeaLevelChange3.html seems to be the place to go for the truth of this matter, according to NASA.

I've learnt that the less nuanced the statement the higher should be the analytical 'DEFCON' setting (the defence readiness condition not the computer convention).

So I was disappointed to see the assertion, "Warming has ceased! In a press release of April 2, 2012, it was announced that: New UK Met Office global temperature data show that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years…"

Certainly not – despite the implication – in any UK Met office press release I could find.

I did find, 'Hemispheric and large-scale land surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2010' from 23rd of Mar 2012:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem4/CRUTEM4_accepted.pdf
and
'An updated analysis of global and hemispheric temperature changes: new measurement data' from 11th of May 2012:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/HadCRUT4_accepted.pdf

But I couldn't find anything that confirmed the assertion. Maybe I misunderstood the first 25~50 pages before we got to the graphs in either document?

Then there was, "Satellite data show global temperature is essentially unchanged in 30 years."

No satellite data I could find showed this – but I suppose it depends upon the scientific exactitude of Prof Ollier's use of the word 'essentially'.

We'll all be in a better position to know over the next 30 years – but in the meantime I'll keep reading…