Andrew Watson, Royal Society Research Professor at the University of East Anglia – he of "arsehole" fame, has been given a guest slot in The Times to defend his beloved CRUddites."Climate change e-mails have been quoted totally out of context," his piece is headlined, with the strap ironically stating: "If this was a conspiracy, it wasn't a very successful one." It is ironic, of course, because the piece itself is part of the ongoing conspiracy – one in which the MSM seem to be happy to contribute.
Despite (or because of) his performance on Newsnight, Watson likes to describe himself and his CRUds as "We non-media-savvy scientists at the University of East Anglia". But he then demonstrates his grasp of the media by offering The Times a naked lie, which the paper happily imbibes.
The "hackers" he thus claims, have "picked choice phrases out of context ... And context is all: without it, these statements look awful." With the context, of course, they look even worse – but not by the time Watson has weaved his skein of lies.
Phil Jones and his "trick" to "hide the decline" is, therefore, perfectly innocuous. All Phil is doing is "talking about a line on a graph for the cover of a World Meteorological Organisation report, published in 2000." There! You see! What could be more harmless than that. He was working on a bit of graphic art, you silly people.
The fact that this "artwork" was to be used in the 2001 IPCC report, of course, is neither here nor there.
But never mind boys and girls. Climate sceptics would have us believe that the CRU data is invalid, and that the 20th-century warming is a construct entirely in the minds of a few scientists ... and all because of an e-mail about a bit of artwork.
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