Posted on 11/25/2009 1:03:51 PM PST by Smogger
One key difference is that people like us can now respond forcefully with the facts of this case. In the past the alarmists controlled all the data; that is no longer so. I think this release has severely damaged the AGW cause.
So if I can't give you New York Times stock prices for a week, I can't predict a general decline?
Uh, no.
My new tag line.
At least one ex-climate researcher at Cato Institute was complaining about the University of East Anglia’s lack of transparency long before the email story broke. Amazing.
What most people don’t realize is how cowed most college science/business profs are by the vocal anti-intellectual groups on campus (black and gender studies, etc.), and how they fear for their status. They know that the president, VPs, deans, and board of trustees are dominated by the leftwing culture, and that the path of least resistance is to keep quiet when lies are being told. This was illustrated in spades during the Duke Lacrosse hoax, as poster abb can remind us.
That being said, sometimes the evidence of fraud is too overwhelming for “collegiality” to suppress. Granted, schools are relying on funding from government and many other leftwing sources, and that has a very chilling effect. Yet, these revelations might stimulate a little spine. They are so blatant and outrageous.
But clearly they are no lovers of science.
This massive betrayal of the scientific method is deplorable and is a betrayal of the public, who now have every reason to be demand a figurative lynching of these bastards.
Make that gal.
Absolutely! They should be excoriated by the science community and prosecuted where ever appropriate. They are destroying public trust in science in a way that will last for decades.
“....where will a fraudulent Climate sciewntist GET another job that pays half a million bucks a year? DO YOU NOT CARE FOR THIER CHILDREN????
LOL, “H” NO!
Wondering if I should contort, and squeeze out something along the lines of a tear for the poor bastards.
I’m a programmer for a small college. FORTRAN is not one of my languages but I can follow it. I’ve also been lurking in programming forums and blogs where they are talking about this.
From the programming side of this the most damning thing I’ve learned is that they are not using source control! Any professional programmer uses some kind of source control, whether its CVS, Subversion, Mercurial, Git or even god awful SourceSafe. Source control allows you to track each revision in a code file, knowing when changes were made, what changes were made in what lines of code and who made the changes. This allows you to figure out when bugs were introduced to the code, for example. But it also allows you to roll the code back to a prior state.
How do I know they don’t use it? Because in these files “Harry” the programmer complains about identically named files being differentiated by where they reside in the folder tree. And not knowing which version of a program a previous programmer used to achieve a certain output. Also he complains about a file that has a comment with one ‘Modified Date’ but that same file has a different modified date in its file properties. Suggesting that the file has been modified in an undocumented way.
As I read Harry’s comments I feel sorry for him. He’s inherited a giant clusterf*ck of an application with completely inadequate documentation. He’d rather start over from scratch than try to maintain that monstrosity (we’ve all been there!)
So how does not using source control affect the science? Because real science is repeatable. Someone else should be able to follow the same procedure and produce the same result. If you don’t keep an accurate record of all the revisions of your code this is impossible.
re: “2,500”
If she is referring to the IPCC group I’ve heard it said by people I respect infinitely more than any of these Globull warming clowns that a large proportion of that group consists of govt. bureaucrats, “enviro studies” majors, and other people completely incapable of assessing the data and scientific issues, even had it been made honestly available. The IPCC has been far more a political/ideological “movement” than any scientific body.
Pardon me, ma’am.
Been known to step in more than one cowpie and embarass myself.
Welcome to FR anyway......... :-)
That does generate the desired headlines....
Juicy!
Uh, oh – raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the “official” one.
Yes, this article was one of the most satisfying I have read. Technical red meat, but still comprehensible to us mere mortals.
I look forward to more of the same as the code warriors dig deeper into the code and data.
bmp
Super plusgood (though long)explanation of UK FOIA request and CRU here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/24/the-people-vs-the-cru-freedom-of-information-my-okole%E2%80%A6/
excerpt, “Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.
This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.”
Take care, all.
You don’t need a computer model to do make that prediction.
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