Is Judith Curry throwing Richard Muller under the bus in this newspaper article, as Anthony Watts chortles here? Or has Curry been played by the notorious David Rose, the author of the Mail piece? Either way, Watts, ever the dramatist, channels his inner Godfather with this faux exasperation:
I try to get away to work on my paper and the climate world explodes, pulling me back in.
Can the climate world please control itself, so Mr. Watts can get back to his serious work? As for the Mail article, Curry is reportedly accusing Muller, as Rose puts it, "of trying to mislead the public" with selective release of data from the BEST study. I'll leave it to Curry to explain which parts of her interview with Rose have been taken out of context or utterly misrepresented (if either is the case). She will likely feel compelled to respond (at her blog) to Rose's article, which crows:
Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious "˜Climategate' scandal two years ago.
I'd say a soap opera is what seems more certain. UPDATE: Curry has responded at Climate Etc: She writes:
I did not say that "the affair had to be compared to the notorious Climategate scandal two years ago," this is indirectly attributed to me. When asked specifically about the graph that apparently uses a 10 year running mean and ends in 2006, we discussed "hide the decline," but I honestly can't recall if Rose or I said it first. I agree that the way the data is presented in the graph "hides the decline." There is NO comparison of this situation to Climategate.