You'll recall that an earlier killer blow involved all of the mid-troposphere, not just the tropics, but when the systemic errors in the satellite data were identified it went quiet until a residual tropical tropospheric anomaly was "detected". By the same crowd of usual suspects, with the same claque cheering them on.
The deathknell of AGW has sounded far too often to be taken seriously anymore.
Not an anology I'd have chosen. That's a good analogy for, say, Ken Starr's Whitewater investigation of Bill Clinton, which came down to Clinton lying about a hand-job in the Oval Office (ergo, he lied about everything else). But there are some similarities, particularly in the way that a failing argument depends on an ever-tightening focus on minutiae.
There's a parallel often displayed on the battlefield, when a losing general insulates himself from the big disastrous picture by micro-managing a battery or regiment they've convinced themselves is critical. Everything's falling apart around them, but they don't want to hear about it. They are in a mental state where such information is simply unacceptable.
Piggy has described it as the drinking-straw view of a picture. Details focussed on here and there, but heaven forbid they look at the whole picture because they are, at heart, terrified by what they might see.
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