On Tim Lambert’s Deltoid blog, all about what’s wrong, or might be wrong, with Ian Plimer’s book Heaven and Earth.

Some of the critics seem not to have read the book at all. Most attack Professor Plimer personally – he’s an idiot, why would you bother with him, just read the science.

Many resort to the consensus argument – I don’t need to look through that stupid telescope, all the scientists say the Sun goes round the Earth.

Some pick on what may be errors in footnotes or minor arguments. You get claims like ‘I found two mistakes on two pages, so statistical analysis proves there’s a mistake on every page. And besides, it hasn’t sold as many copies as Andrew Bolt says it has. So there.’

You can almost imagine Mr Lambert poking his tongue out at the screen.

In any book of this length and complexity there are going to be mistakes. But none of the critics deal with the key issue of whether there is any correlation between human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases and changes in global climate.

Where they venture into climate science at all, their criticisms are quickly trounced.

Perhaps Mr Lambert and his chums could do with a brush-up on both courtesy and integrity in debate.

The desperation is telling.