A Climate Claim in Tatters

The evolution of Judith Curry, the outspoken Georgia Tech climate scientist, continues. Her emergence in the last few years as a persistent critic of the climate science community can be marked by distinct stages. At first, in the immediate aftermath of Climategate, Curry's critiques focused on "climate tribalism" and "transparency" issues. By April of 2010, she had expanded her criticism to include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggesting it was rife with "corruptions" due to bad practices and the behavior of individual scientists. Last December, her transformation from consensus-believing insider to dissenting outsider was cemented in a Scientific American profile, which called her a "climate heretic." All along, Curry has maintained that one of her goals is to help build bridges between the vociferous climate skeptic camp and the mainstream climate science community. But Curry's recent trajectory has some of the cooler heads wondering if she's become just another antagonist in the the fractious climate debate. This week she seems to have reinforced that belief with a post that accuses climate scientists of being "dishonest" in the way they presented data in an IPPC report. NASA's Gavin Schmidt quickly responded: