The Nitpicker

The climate contrarian nitpicker can at a first encounter and at a superficial level seem to have an intelligent point of view.

This may scare off the objective reader who lacks sufficient knowledge on the subject or who has not realized the techniques employed by the nitpicker. This may all be encouraging to the nitpicker who interprets this lack of response as a sign of their higher level of intellect or knowledge.

The nitpicker incorporates a bit of cherry-picking:-

A good cherry-picker will make their own boundaries, time scales, which laws to apply and when, when they want their data adjusted and when they dont. Having this total freedom they can then get any data to show their pre-conceived conclusions.

However the nitpicker is usually employing two characteristics of denial:- 
That is cherry-picking with the intent of presenting impossible expectations.

http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/eurpub/19/1/2.full.pdf

Climate scientists have built up a coherent explanation of climate and causes for climate change that covers many lines of evidence. There are overall basic ideas that explains the main changes that we see. There are however many nuances, details and complications due to many factors such as natural variations  that are harder to explain that experts slowly come to a better understanding as science progresses.

The deluded nitpicker by passes the basics and jumps to details that are not only less relevant due to their smaller impact but may hopefully be impossible to explain or is hoping that the reader or listener won’t have enough knowledge to answer. The nitpicker does not want progress; the reverse is their intention and hoping to impress is an added bonus.

However follow the nitpicker’s statements and you will generally see that they do not understand the basics and have no coherent point of view. Inconsistency and half truths are not of concern since the np contributes largely by imposing unrealistic demands on those engaging with them; demands that they will not have to apply to themselves as no coherent explanation on their behalf is attempted.

This contrarian generally undervalues the objective learner over whom they have an unfair advantage since unlike the objective learner they do not have need for a coherent point of view.  The objective learner spends time on developing a consistent framework while this contrarian demands attention from the experts as they seek out finer and finer details, without really having any desire to learn from their previous nitpick.