Professional suicide by a climatologist - "Wot an assh#le"

Professor Andrew Watson
from East Anglia University.
Uses argumentum ad hominem

Witness this vid clip example here of professional suicide on BBC TV's Newsnight on the 4th December 2009. With the simple phrase "Wot an assh#le", a professor Andrew Watson (pictured right, as he uttered the words), in one fell swoop:

• brought his own professional reputation into disrepute;
• brought the reputation of his academic institution into disrepute;
• destroyed his credibility and any presumption of his objectivity - by uttering an ad hominem which ironically in retrospect may have been more aptly describing himself rather than the person he was name-calling;
• risked bringing the already seriously tattered UN IPCC policy on "global warming" (of which he is a proponent) into further disrepute.
  

This was a fascinating piece of TV, and it looked like professional suicide.