Is The Washington Post Reading Bob Murphy?

Yesterday, I linked to a scholarly-type piece by Robert Murphy on Climategate.

Today, WaPo is featuring on its front page a story on Climategate that has a decidedly Bob Murphy take on the story. It's more of a popular piece than Murphy's more wonky exposition, but the conclusions are the same. There are a lot more extreme views on Climategate from both sides, but Murphy and, now WaPo, tend to look at the leaked emails from a more objective view and put into perspective what they do mean, and what they don't. Here's WaPo:

It began with an anonymous Internet posting, and a link to a wonky set of e-mails and files. Stolen, apparently, from a research center in Britain, the files showed the leaders of climate-change science discussing flaws in their own data, and seemingly scheming to muzzle their critics.

Now it has mushroomed into what is being called "Climate-gate," a scandal that has done what many slide shows and public-service ads could not: focus public attention on the science of a warming planet.

Except now, much of that attention is focused on the science's flaws. Leaked just before international climate talks begin in Copenhagen -- the culmination of years of work by scientists to raise alarms about greenhouse-gas emissions -- the e-mails have cast those scientists in a political light and given new energy to others who think the issue of climate change is all overblown.

The e-mails don't say that: They don't provide proof that human-caused climate change is a lie or a swindle.

But they do raise hard questions.