Towards the end, there was one spot in particular that made me laugh. In response to:

Woman 1: So you say policy is the answer to global warming. But what do you suggest the average person do, to alleviate? Is there anything we can do, or…?

Muller replies (as you had noted in part, in your post):

[...] In the end – no. You can’t do anything [...] I can help clarify the issues, so that if there have been valid questions raised about global warming [...] science can almost be defined as that realm of knowledge over which everybody can agree. So let’s agree on the science, but we don’t do that by consensus, we don’t do this by vote. We do this by addressing the issues raised by other people, and when you’ve addressed those issues, I find myself remarkably capable of convincing sceptics that global warming is real. Then they say “Well okay, I always accepted that. The question is how much it’s caused by humans”. And you asked me earlier, how many people have we convinced. I can’t – anybody who says “Well we always accepted global warming, the question is how much is human” as a success, on my part. [emphasis added -hro]

This would strongly suggest that while he likes to boast about the multitude of “experts” with whom he’s spoken, he’s never spoken to any genuine skeptcs! Or if he has, he certainly has paid very little attention to what they’ve actually said. He may find himself “remarkably capable”, but I have my doubts about this (IMHO) somewhat over-confident self-assessment

What’s also interesting about this June 21 interview is that he makes no mention of his ludicrous claim (as expressed in his July 30 NYT OpEd and, IIRC, during his PBS cameo) that the BEST data (or at least his interpretation of it) shows that human generated CO2 is the primary culprit.

And I really have a problem with his self-serving “revisionism” about the timing of their submission of BEST papers and extended peer review:

Greg Dalton: You were criticised for putting out non-peer reviewed literature, by people saying “Hey –

Richard Muller: Despite the fact that that’s the longest tradition in science. People have done this – people used to call them “pre-prints”. And it was a tradition I was raised in, by Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez. You send your papers out and you get peer review before you even submit them to the journal. And this was what I learned was peer review. And now some people have decided “No, that’s not peer review. Now it’s only the journals who decide what’s peer review”.[emphasis added -hro]

What Muller failed to acknowledge is that during his first media blitz (circa Oct. 31, 2011) at least one of the papers BEST had submitted had already been reviewed and a “major revision requested” by at least one reviewer – knowing full well that the reviewer (Ross McKitrick) was in effect muzzled by the journal’s confidentiality requirements while he was given (or perhaps gave himself?!) free-rein to blather on to his heart’s content.

In short, I have a very difficult time trusting anything Muller says or writes (or to which he puts his name …during the PBS piece, the NYT piece was described as “their” OpEd, i.e. his and his daughter’s!) Which is why I’m still waiting for the real Richard Muller to please stand up!