7 ms·

The real scandal is more subtle, and much more serious. There is evidence from some of the leaked e-mails and source code that the main climate model is, in th

by mixmax 17y ago

The real scandal is more subtle, and much more serious. There is evidence from some of the leaked e-mails and source code that the main climate model is, in the words of an unnamed developer called Ian, useless: I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation - apparently linear as well. As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless. It also means that we cannot say exactly how the gridded data is arrived at from a statistical perspective - since we're using an off-the-shelf product that isn't documented sufficiently to say that. Why this wasn't coded up in Fortran I don't know - time pressures perhaps? Was too much effort expended on homogenisation, that there wasn't enough time to write a gridding procedure? Of course, it's too late for me to fix it too. Meh.[1] This is the climate model that is relied upon for public policy decisions in governments across the world. This is the model that will be used as the main arguing point for global warming in next months meeting of world leaders in Copenhagen to address the issue. This is basically the model that is responsible for political decisions that will relocate billions of dollars across the world. And at least one of the programmers thinks it's rubbish and doesn't work. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/entry5761180.shtml* http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/ent...

jswinghammer 17y ago
It's interesting that this information isn't offered on articles describing emissions caps that are being agreed to in advance of these upcoming talks on climate change. I'd imagine that from now on other climate research departments will keep a tighter lid on their internal communications at any rate. I never really thought I'd miss Bush but at least he was smart enough to not take the global warming stuff seriously to begin with. Even during the worst depression since the 30s Obama still wants more regulations. This is just amazing.
- catweasel 17y ago
  We're not in a depression, we're in a recession.. and it was the lack of regulation that caused it not abundance.
  - 1gor 17y ago
    it was the lack of regulation that caused it That's a debatable point. The Fed's interest rate reductions in early 2000s have caused recent credit/real estate bubble. If you listen to the Austrian School economists you would hear that without regulation (central banks) the market would set the price of money (interest rates) more efficiently. We would have more frequent booms and busts but of much much lesser magnitude. So it was politically motivated regulation that caused this recession/depression.
    - catweasel 17y ago
      It wasn't a housing bubble that caused the GFC, if that was all it was it would have been contained to real estate. What brought down so many large institutions was the toxic debt and dodgy dealings they had accumulated, this was allowed to happen due to deregulation. Particularly, the introduction of the gramm-leach-billey act deregulating banking, insurance and securities into one finances industry... and very specifically the exemption of swap agreements from SEC regulation (ie toxic debt). At least that's my opinion and the opinion of some very respected economists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act#Criticis... Further evidence is the current calling, from all quarters, for tighter regulation of the finances industry to avoid another GFC not less.
      - 1gor 17y ago
        Artificially low rates would force anyone to seek yields at any costs, so portfolios were stuffed with all sort of junk, so your 'contained to real estate' point is not correct. I would also argue that banks accumulated toxic assets because theey believed that they would be bailed out (moral hazard argument), which is the direct consequence of regulation. 'Too big to fail' idea has been around for quite long, one can start from LTCM more than 10 years ago, and it of course existed before that. Fraudulent behavour is common to free market economies, but normally market participants develop mechanisms to filter out scammers (for instance J P Morgan used to say that nobody could become client of his bank without an introduction). It is when the government takes over controlling responsibility and then fails to deliver (Madoff) we have massive problems.
gjm11 17y ago
Er, no, he doesn't say that the main climate model is useless, or that "it's rubbish and doesn't work". He doesn't say anything even slightly like that. The particular thing he's saying is "meaningless" is a figure that has basically nothing to do with actual climate simulation. Clearly he's not impressed with the quality of the code. Fair enough. There's a lot of very poor code around doing important things. It looks to me as if after all Ian's cleanups, he ends up with code that produces essentially the same as the pre-cleaned-up code, which suggests that the code-quality issues he found don't invalidate the actual calculations. Another thing that's notable: here we have a lengthy, ill-tempered diary of someone's attempt to wrestle with this big hairy codebase and the big hairy pile of ill-formed data (supplied from the outside world; this isn't all CRU's fault) that it processes, and in all his notes of what he's doing and his interactions with colleagues we don't see anything like "Ran the code again. It's weird -- it doesn't predict any substantial warming at all" or "Joe told me to change X and Y to make the figures look scarier" or "Wait, this bit here is obviously fudged". This despite a clear willingness to moan about his colleagues' work. In other words, this seems like it would be exactly the sort of place where you'd see evidence of conspiracy and dishonesty if there were any, and there is no such evidence there.
- 1gor 17y ago
  No, you are wrong. Read thee whole quote here http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/entry5761180.shtml* http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/ent... and observe that the programmer is convinced the whole database of reporting stations is bogus, and the model has been tweaked multiple times: "Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog." also "One thing that's unsettling is that many of the assigned WMo codes for Canadian stations do not return any hits with a web search. Usually the country's met office, or at least the Weather Underground, show up – but for these stations, nothing at all. Makes me wonder if these are long-discontinued, or were even invented somewhere other than Canada!" So much for 'scientific model supported by hard data'.
  - gjm11 17y ago

by mixmax 17y ago

jswinghammer 17y ago

It's interesting that this information isn't offered on articles describing emissions caps that are being agreed to in advance of these upcoming talks on climate change. I'd imagine that from now on other climate research departments will keep a tighter lid on their internal communications at any rate. I never really thought I'd miss Bush but at least he was smart enough to not take the global warming stuff seriously to begin with. Even during the worst depression since the 30s Obama still wants more regulations. This is just amazing.

catweasel 17y ago
We're not in a depression, we're in a recession.. and it was the lack of regulation that caused it not abundance.
- 1gor 17y ago
  it was the lack of regulation that caused it That's a debatable point. The Fed's interest rate reductions in early 2000s have caused recent credit/real estate bubble. If you listen to the Austrian School economists you would hear that without regulation (central banks) the market would set the price of money (interest rates) more efficiently. We would have more frequent booms and busts but of much much lesser magnitude. So it was politically motivated regulation that caused this recession/depression.
  - catweasel 17y ago
    It wasn't a housing bubble that caused the GFC, if that was all it was it would have been contained to real estate. What brought down so many large institutions was the toxic debt and dodgy dealings they had accumulated, this was allowed to happen due to deregulation. Particularly, the introduction of the gramm-leach-billey act deregulating banking, insurance and securities into one finances industry... and very specifically the exemption of swap agreements from SEC regulation (ie toxic debt). At least that's my opinion and the opinion of some very respected economists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act#Criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act#Criticis... Further evidence is the current calling, from all quarters, for tighter regulation of the finances industry to avoid another GFC not less.
    - 1gor 17y ago
      Artificially low rates would force anyone to seek yields at any costs, so portfolios were stuffed with all sort of junk, so your 'contained to real estate' point is not correct. I would also argue that banks accumulated toxic assets because theey believed that they would be bailed out (moral hazard argument), which is the direct consequence of regulation. 'Too big to fail' idea has been around for quite long, one can start from LTCM more than 10 years ago, and it of course existed before that. Fraudulent behavour is common to free market economies, but normally market participants develop mechanisms to filter out scammers (for instance J P Morgan used to say that nobody could become client of his bank without an introduction). It is when the government takes over controlling responsibility and then fails to deliver (Madoff) we have massive problems.

gjm11 17y ago

Er, no, he doesn't say that the main climate model is useless, or that "it's rubbish and doesn't work". He doesn't say anything even slightly like that. The particular thing he's saying is "meaningless" is a figure that has basically nothing to do with actual climate simulation. Clearly he's not impressed with the quality of the code. Fair enough. There's a lot of very poor code around doing important things. It looks to me as if after all Ian's cleanups, he ends up with code that produces essentially the same as the pre-cleaned-up code, which suggests that the code-quality issues he found don't invalidate the actual calculations. Another thing that's notable: here we have a lengthy, ill-tempered diary of someone's attempt to wrestle with this big hairy codebase and the big hairy pile of ill-formed data (supplied from the outside world; this isn't all CRU's fault) that it processes, and in all his notes of what he's doing and his interactions with colleagues we don't see anything like "Ran the code again. It's weird -- it doesn't predict any substantial warming at all" or "Joe told me to change X and Y to make the figures look scarier" or "Wait, this bit here is obviously fudged". This despite a clear willingness to moan about his colleagues' work. In other words, this seems like it would be exactly the sort of place where you'd see evidence of conspiracy and dishonesty if there were any, and there is no such evidence there.

1gor 17y ago
No, you are wrong. Read thee whole quote here http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/entry5761180.shtml* http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/ent... and observe that the programmer is convinced the whole database of reporting stations is bogus, and the model has been tweaked multiple times: "Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog." also "One thing that's unsettling is that many of the assigned WMo codes for Canadian stations do not return any hits with a web search. Usually the country's met office, or at least the Weather Underground, show up – but for these stations, nothing at all. Makes me wonder if these are long-discontinued, or were even invented somewhere other than Canada!" So much for 'scientific model supported by hard data'.
- gjm11 17y ago