4 ms·

Excellent analysis. And seriously, would someone trying to hide something document it this carefully?

by Kliment 17y ago

gaius 17y ago
Well, sure. He wasn't trying to hide it from his colleagues; they were all in on it.
- olefoo 17y ago
  And those glaciers aren't shrinking, that's just the camera angles.
  - gaius 17y ago
    No-one's denying that the glacier's are shrinking. But if they've grown and shrunk naturally throughout history, that puts a markedly different spin on things. Same with the temperatures. The temperature went up a bit, then the "un-tricked" numbers show that it went down a bit. What does that tell you?
- henrikschroder 17y ago
  Three can keep a secret if two are dead. The biggest counter-argument to any sort of conspiracy is that it's really hard to keep a secret, so what would motivate such an effort? How would all potential whistleblowers be kept silent? What would these people gain from perpetuating a global warming scare? It really doesn't add up.
  - gaius 17y ago
    As evidenced by the fact that we're all poring over his code :-)
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    I hate to weigh in on this but two things come to mind: 1) There's a really long way from groupthink to accusations of something like faking the moon landing. I don't even think the word "conspiracy" is apt, although I agree that, according to the way it looks, "they were in on it". There are legion of examples of large organizations or movements colluding to control the message on some issue or another. It's a very common thing. Just throwing out "conspiracies are difficult" as a refutation isn't going to cut it in this particular case. 2) Science is especially vulnerable to groupthink and there is a great tendency for everybody to move in a herd, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out in what was probably one of the topten scientific books of the 20th Century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn - that doesn't mean that science is broken, or even that the larger issue of AGW is settled one way or another. Most likely what is happening is that nobody knows what climate is doing, yet simple allusions to black-body radiation and greenhouse gases has driven climate scientists to a point where the politics are way ahead of the science. That just means they need to be extremely prudent with their data and methods, and check all assumptions. Also, John's analysis is much ado about nothing, in my opinion. You can take a random piece of code off the source control system -- they were using a SCM, right? -- and make it say all kinds of things. Unless you run the data you're not even sure if you're looking at the right code. Might as well be reading poetry. Sorry John, as much as I love the hacker angle here, you're not going to get very far in a discussion about code if you can't run it. In technical terms it's nonsense -- it has no meaning.

Excellent analysis. And seriously, would someone trying to hide something document it this carefully?

by Kliment 17y ago

Excellent analysis. And seriously, would someone trying to hide something document it this carefully?

gaius 17y ago

Well, sure. He wasn't trying to hide it from his colleagues; they were all in on it.

olefoo 17y ago
And those glaciers aren't shrinking, that's just the camera angles.
- gaius 17y ago
  No-one's denying that the glacier's are shrinking. But if they've grown and shrunk naturally throughout history, that puts a markedly different spin on things. Same with the temperatures. The temperature went up a bit, then the "un-tricked" numbers show that it went down a bit. What does that tell you?
henrikschroder 17y ago
Three can keep a secret if two are dead. The biggest counter-argument to any sort of conspiracy is that it's really hard to keep a secret, so what would motivate such an effort? How would all potential whistleblowers be kept silent? What would these people gain from perpetuating a global warming scare? It really doesn't add up.
- gaius 17y ago
  As evidenced by the fact that we're all poring over his code :-)
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  I hate to weigh in on this but two things come to mind: 1) There's a really long way from groupthink to accusations of something like faking the moon landing. I don't even think the word "conspiracy" is apt, although I agree that, according to the way it looks, "they were in on it". There are legion of examples of large organizations or movements colluding to control the message on some issue or another. It's a very common thing. Just throwing out "conspiracies are difficult" as a refutation isn't going to cut it in this particular case. 2) Science is especially vulnerable to groupthink and there is a great tendency for everybody to move in a herd, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out in what was probably one of the topten scientific books of the 20th Century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn - that doesn't mean that science is broken, or even that the larger issue of AGW is settled one way or another. Most likely what is happening is that nobody knows what climate is doing, yet simple allusions to black-body radiation and greenhouse gases has driven climate scientists to a point where the politics are way ahead of the science. That just means they need to be extremely prudent with their data and methods, and check all assumptions. Also, John's analysis is much ado about nothing, in my opinion. You can take a random piece of code off the source control system -- they were using a SCM, right? -- and make it say all kinds of things. Unless you run the data you're not even sure if you're looking at the right code. Might as well be reading poetry. Sorry John, as much as I love the hacker angle here, you're not going to get very far in a discussion about code if you can't run it. In technical terms it's nonsense -- it has no meaning.