Readers will remember Nurse's infamous speech in Melbourne, in which he issued a fairly spectacular attack on Nigel Lawson:
We saw that, for example, in Britain with a politician, Nigel Lawson, who would go on the television and talk about the scientific case, and he was trained as a politician; you made whatever case you can to convince the audience. So he would choose two points and say, look, no warming is taking place, knowing that all the other points you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case, but he was just wanting to win that debate on television. And that is of course over-spilling political views into your science.
As Lawson pointed out in a subsequent letter Nurse's statement was entirely untrue:
So far as the latter is concerned, you claim that I “would choose two points and say ‘look, no warming’s taking place’, knowing that all the other points that you chose in the 20 years around it would not support his case”. That is a lie.
To the best of my knowledge Nurse has never provided any evidence to support his claim nor defended himself against the accusation of lying. People more cynical than I might therefore assume that he had conceded Lawson's point.
For this reason, I was much amused by Nurse's recent speech at the Parliamentary Links day earlier this week, during which he said:
...organisations that are bombastic, resorting to personal attacks and misrepresentation, are likely to be resorting to such tactics because they have lost the scientific argument, and so their scientific advice should also be treated with caution.
At last we can find something to agree on!
(And before anyone asks, yes I know that Nurse was actually just attacking GWPF again, but given that he has never provided any evidence of personal attacks either - apart from vague allusions to their being in the Nullius in Verba report somewhere - I don't think we should take him seriously.)