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An interesting observation from wattsupwiththat.com ClimateGate thread (which, as a software developer who has spent time looking at that file and the code, I totally agree with):

The debate about the contents of the HARRY_READ_ME.txt and the validity of the programming and modelling techniques is something only experts and argue over.
However, what the lay person only needs to know this about the programming (which they can verify for themselves from the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file), this file is a THREE YEAR journal of a CRU programmer describing everything he tried with the data and models in an attempt to REPRODUCE existing results CRU had published. Comments in the file make it clear that “HARRY” tried FOR THREE YEARS (2006-2009)to recreate CRU’s published results AND FAILED.
Do you all see the REAL significance of this because it is absolutely fatal to the credibility of anything CRU has produced.
What we have here is a documented THREE year effort by a CRU programmer, who had access to all the data, access to all the code, access to all the people who developed the code and the models and still HE could still NOT duplicate CRU’s OWN results. If he can’t it simply means the CRU’s results cannot be reproduced even by themselves and so there is no point anyone else even trying — CRU themselves have proven it’s a waste of time and so they themselves have proven their own results are plain rubbish. That means any “peer reviewed” document CRU produced along with any other papers that cited the CRU papers are based on data the CRU themselves can’t verify.
Besides, the absolutly sorry state of affairs in the data handling and software managment the HARRY_READ_ME.txt reveals, the utter and total mess of CRU data and software this document reveals is WHY CRU has not released its data and model software.
Given the CRU is one of the most, if not the most cited sources of climate data — upon which trillions of dollars of economic policy is being set, the importance of what the HARRY_READ_ME.txt file reveals becomes scary.
A very nice layman’s summary of some of the issues in the HARRY_READ_ME.txt can be found here
http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2009/11/data-horribilis-harryreadmetxt-file.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDevilsKitchen+%28The+Devil%27s+Kit

I’m no programmer but have worked around it long enough that one could easily see that there was no configuration control...changes over changes, no real baseline, no process control. In my uindustry, this wouldn’t have passed the most rudimentary of audits. The Harry read me file is damning. These people fully deserve the pitchfork and torch mob that is going to descend on them.

Very Good.

Pinging lots of folks....