Dana Nuccitelli isn't giving up and has penned a response to Andrew Neil's comprehensive rebuttal. This one doesn't look any better than the last. I haven't time to look at everything in the article, but here are a couple of points that stood out.
On climate sensitivity and the lack of global warming
Nuccitelli opens up by saying that estimates of climate sensitivity are "slightly" lower than previously. This of course is grossly misleading. The IPCC's central estimate of effective climate sensitivity (ECS) in AR4 was over 3°C. The new estimates are all coming in below 2°C. By my reckoning that's a reduction of getting on for 50%, so hardly "slightly". The reduction in the shorter-term transient climate response (TCR) is smaller, but of course because of the low discount rates that environmentalists argue for, most of the social cost of carbon comes from the much (much!) longer term, so ECS will have more impact. In terms of whether we decarbonise, therefore, the recent results cause a significant change in the economics.
However, on the subject of decarbonisation, Dana says this:
[Should governments] pause or slow down their efforts to decarbonize the economy, as Neil asks? The authors of these studies (e.g. Myles Allen, Piers Forster, and Alexander Otto) all seem to agree, the answer is no.
This is interesting, because Allen, Forster and Otto might be said to be authors of one of the papers concerned (or in Forster's case, two of them), but they are hardly the authors of "these studies". Those authors would be Aldrin et al, Lewis, van Hateren et al, Masters, Ring and Schlesinger etc. What is more, if you follow the links given by Nuccitelli, you will not find Allen, Forster and Otto offering any opinion on whether we should decarbonise or not. They are quoted on saying when the 2°C target might be breached if climate sensitivity is indeed lower. This is scientific question and therefore one in which their opinions are valid. As to the wisdom or otherwise of having that target - a question of economics and politics - they are, quite properly, completely silent.
So you can see what Nuccitelli has done - he has first pretended that the results are about TCR instead of ECS and has then pretended that a series of scientists has offered an opinion on the policy results.
He summarises thus:
...if these studies are right, it might take us an extra decade or so to reach global warming levels considered unacceptably dangerous.
This isn't true either. As others have noted the idea that at temperatures above 2°C we will meet catastrophe is of dubious scientific provenance. In reality the target has more to do with maintaining political momentum.
On the Cook et al. consensus paper
Neil had quoted Roy Spencer's observation that the consensus is so shallow as to be meaningless - Spencer agrees with the two propositions of the consensus statements: (a) that mankind affects the climate and (b) that the climate changes. I do too. Nuccitelli then performs a magnificent sleight of hand by diverting the discussion onto the precise way in which Spencer's papers were classified in the Cook et al paper. This is of course quite irrelevant to the question of whether he agrees with the two propositions.
Perhaps more interestingly, Nuccitelli claims that he and Cook have released all their data:
Since we made all of our data available to the public, you can see our ratings of Spencer's abstracts here.
This is strange because Richard Tol has been tweeting repeatedly that he is unable to get all of the Cook et al data. No doubt the truth will out.