For years, Canada's most famous climate denier —- a national broadcaster, columnist and author -— has railed against science.
He's positioned himself as a kind of noble dissident, one of but a few remaining voices of "reason" questioning the motives of the more than 450 lead-author scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Now he's inched further out on his already cracking and splintering limb with a column that equates climate activists such as Al Gore with crazed zealots. The occasion is the release of Canadian Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's new green-economy platform, which the parliamentarian calls "the most significant investment in clean energy jobs this country has ever seen."
To support his case that this sort of patently irresponsible talk could lead the nation into hemp-nutter land, Murphy turns to an error-riddled but widely-circulated October report written by Paul Hudson, a BBC weatherman with no scientific credentials or expertise.
Hudson's report regurgitates the same old arguments that fossil-fuel-industry front groups have been feeding us for years in an effort to sustain the illusion that the jury is still out on global warming.
Clearly, Murphy is grasping at straws. "This is, or may be, the church of global warming's Galileo moment -- when observation of what is happening trumps the gloomy choir of consensus," he writes.
I almost feel bad for the guy.
Here we have a man who has quite literally yammered himself into a corner. As the nation and the world finally begin to grapple with the reality of our situation and the hard work and new opportunities that lie ahead, Murphy has left himself no dignified exit strategy.
And so, like a cornered raccoon, he resorts to officious spitting and hissing about climate zealots, heresies, and piety.
Like his past work along these lines, the prose is all very arch and clever. But isn't it ironic that to challenge science, Murphy resorts to painting its advocates as tar-and-brimstone-spiting preachers ruling over a zombie-eyed flock?
The truth is, it is not the climate scientists and green-economy advocates like Gore and now Ignatieff who are the blinkered fanatics screaming from the pulpit.
It is the extreme free-market libertarians, like Rex Murphy.
James Hoggan is a 35 year veteran in public relations and the author of the new book Climate Cover Up that will be released this week US-wide.