# Please explain Climategate. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 3, 2009, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899 "2009-12-03T21:30:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/1 "2009-12-03T21:30:27Z")
I have been reading about this lately but I haven’t been having a lot of success cutting through the religion on both sides. Please explain what the implications are for the Global Warming debate. Pithy dismissals where you get to reiterate your party line’s stance are the opposite of what this thread is asking for. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/2 "2009-12-03T22:17:09Z")
Both sides have charged the other side with conspiracy. One of the best defenses against any charges of conspiracy is the lack of evidence for a conspiracy: Historically, no large conspiracy has been able to continue for a particularly significant amount of time without evidence leaking. Hence, if there was one, you would expect such evidence to be out there. The leaked emails may or may not constitute that evidence. Of course, on the other side, [there has already been such evidence for over a decade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil#Funding_of_global_warming_skeptics). And the leaked emails, from what I can tell, are hardly a slam dunk. They seem mostly to chronicle scientists’ glee in being able to act meanspirited towards anti-AGW morons. Which is, while unethical, hardly to be unexpected. In terms of actual effect, though, I imagine that this leak will worsen the situation for public belief in AGW. Most people will hear the accusations and assume that they are a slam dunk or they wouldn’t be in the newspaper. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/3 "2009-12-03T22:24:21Z")
In essence, some stolen e-mails have shown that certain prominent scientists have fudged data, tried to blackball their opponents, and have tried to hush up recent data that suggests global warming HASN’T been proceeding according to their predicted timetables. What are the implications? Well, it goes without saying that: 1. The yahoos of the Right will proclaim, "See? We TOLD you there was nothing to worry about, and the whole thing was manufactured by a bunch of lying, left wing scientists. 2. Liberals will insist that this changes nothing, that global warming is an established fact that only a few ignorant bozos deny, and that “Climategate” is a non-issue (the “real” issue is finding and prosecuting whoever stole those e-mails). Me?I think the scentists in question are a lot like Mark Furhmann. They have a good case and genuine evidence, but not enough for an open and shut case. So, they’ve resorted to trickery and bullying to bolster a case they truly believe in. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/4 "2009-12-03T22:26:11Z")
Scientists at the CRU probably did, in some cases, change the data in order to produce statistics and graphs that were more favorable towards interpretations of man-made global warming. [For example:](http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/01/the-scientific-tragedy-of-clim) > [@](#): > > Consider researcher Tom Wigley’s email describing his adjustments to mid-20th century global temperature data in order to lower an inconvenient warming “blip.” According to the global warming hypothesis, late 20th century man-made warming was supposed to be faster than earlier natural warming. But the data show rapid “natural” warming in the 1930s. Adjusting the 1940 temperature blip downward makes a better-looking trend line in support of the notion of rapidly accelerating man-made warming. Collecting and evaluating temperature data requires the exercise of scientific judgment, but Wigley’s emails suggest a convenient correction of 0.15 degree Celsius that fits the man-made global warming hypothesis. The adjustment may be reasonable—changes in instrumentation might need to be accounted for—but all raw data and the methodologies used to adjust them should be publicly available so others can check them to make sure. They also discussed ways to prevent articles that contradicted their viewpoint from being published, based not on the validity of the articles but rather for political reasons. It should be noted that there’s no evidence of any of this affecting more than a small amount of the data from CRU, which is in itself one of literally thousands of research groups around the world that have confirmed the existence of man-made global warming. A rational response would not require any serious re-evaluation of the scientific consensus that man-made global warming is occurring. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/5 "2009-12-03T22:33:38Z")
> [@](#): > > Please explain what the implications are for the Global Warming debate. My take on it is that it’s neither going to completely discredit AGW (as the ‘deniers’ claim) nor is it going to prove nothing (as the GW ‘faithful’ are saying), but settle out somewhere in the middle. What I HOPE it does is allow for more rational discussion, and less automatic dismissal of people who aren’t in lock step with the AGW theories current being touted. Even if it turns out that they are wrong, the attempt to completely shut down the debate is unscientific and makes my teeth itch. Science is all about debate, and I don’t think that ANY scientific question should ever be shut down, or any line of valid research shunned, no matter how un-promising it seems at the time. Some of the greatest discoveries have come about from scientists who went against what ‘everyone’ ‘knew’, and ended up taking things in entirely new directions. Look at Darwin and Einstein, for instance. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/6 "2009-12-03T23:01:22Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > It should be noted that there’s no evidence of any of this affecting more than a small amount of the data from CRU, which is in itself one of literally thousands of research groups around the world that have confirmed the existence of man-made global warming. A rational response would not require any serious re-evaluation of the scientific consensus that man-made global warming is occurring. Yes and no. Yes, there are other lines of research which show roughly similar effects. But there is a lot of correlation going on here. The way science works is that other papers build on the conclusions of previously peer-reviewed works. It’s certainly not clear to me how much of this material has ‘contaminated’ other findings. How many other papers based their original research on the background of data that came out of CRU? How many papers have been rejected in the peer-review process because their results differed from those derived by CRU’s published work? How many other models have been ‘tweaked’ to bring them into correspondence with CRU’s output? I would agree that this doesn’t invalidate AGW. But how much does it add to the uncertainty around the numbers? I think it’s reasonable for a non-partisan scientific review board to conduct a meta-survey of the literature looking for contamination caused by any bad data that has come out of CRU. That board should also re-examine papers that were rejected by journals that CRU and others were pressuring, perhaps setting up a new peer review process for those papers which appear to have some merit. That review may find that the CRU shenanigans are isolated and have little effect on the consensus, or it may find that certain findings have been unfairly excluded from the literature, or that many of the other foundational works in the AGW field based assumptions on data that is now in question. I really don’t know. It seems worthwhile to find out, given the stakes. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/7 "2009-12-03T23:23:01Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Scientists at the CRU probably did, in some cases, change the data in order to produce statistics and graphs that were more favorable towards interpretations of man-made global warming. [For example:](http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/01/the-scientific-tragedy-of-clim) Here’s the actual email: [http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1016&filename=1254108338.txt](http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1016&filename=1254108338.txt) To me it looks like people discussing data and how to work around inconsistencies of data and using what they know to solve those inconsistencies, rather than that they are killing data to match their expectation. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that you get just such a thing in any area of research, and that doing so is in fact part of the job description. I would recommend reading the actual emails rather than the editorial commentary of them. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/8 "2009-12-04T00:35:49Z")
Heh, generally I remain agnostic on the Global Warming debate because I don’t feel at all qualified to have an opinion either way, and also because it just feels premature to me to think we know everything about the intricacies of climate, particularly since our accurate data doesn’t even go back a century. But…get a juicy conspiracy, and I’m there dude. 😉 Thanks for all of the answers, I am getting a better sense of it. I think I avoided the debate for too long and left myself ignorant on the particulars. I’ve always felt like the Global Warming debate distracted from the practical concerns of pollution control on a localized level. ---
**Author:** ![matt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@matt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/9 "2009-12-04T01:12:03Z")
A good middle-ground commentary has been written by Judith Curry, who is certainly a [climate scientist](http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/) and [far from an AGW skeptic](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002157.html?hpid=opinionsbox1). An extract: “While the blogosphere has identified many emails that allegedly indicate malfeasance, clarifications especially from Gavin Schmidt have been very helpful in providing explanations and the appropriate context for these emails. However, even if the hacked emails from HADCRU end up to be much ado about nothing in the context of any actual misfeasance that impacts the climate data records, the damage to the public credibility of climate research is likely to be significant. In my opinion, there are two broader issues raised by these emails that are impeding the public credibility of climate research: lack of transparency in climate data, and “tribalism” in some segments of the climate research community that is impeding peer review and the assessment process.” Full comment here: > **[Curry: On the credibility of climate research](https://camirror.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/curry-on-the-credibility-of-climate-research/)** > > Judy Curry writes in as follows: Having been riveted for the last few days by posts in the blogosphere on the HADCRU hack and the increasing attention being given to this by the mainstream media, I… ---
**Author:** ![Algher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/10 "2009-12-04T01:21:29Z")
Regarding journal pubs: I know that some journals will allow you to blackball certain reviewers. A friend of mine is in a theoretical fight with a researcher at another university. My friend has to request that this other researcher and anyone that has trained under that researcher be excluded when she submits articles. Before she did this, she would find that “reviewer 3” had the following nasty shit to say about your article, all focusing on one of the underlying theories. It was obvious who was doing it, and why. It was also getting in the way of science. Now - if you are an AGW skeptic researcher, how the hell can you ensure that your journal submissions will be read by someone with an open mind to your research, given the nature of these emails? And if you build too large of a blackball list, sooner or later the journals won’t bother with your submissions I would assume. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/11 "2009-12-04T02:01:38Z")
But how would they arrive at such a position of power, to enforce their views on the community at large? Might that not be a function of the consensus that has formed around the viability of the AGW science? For an orthodoxy to shut out criticism, it has to first be an orthodoxy, no? True enough, “scientific” articles that criticize elementary Darwinism are likely to get short shrift. Is that a conspiracy on the part of anti-religious agents, or does it reflect the solid effect of an arrived consensus? A consensus of persons, I remind, trained to use and revere skepticism, with mad math skills to boot. So who fooled them? ACORN? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/12 "2009-12-04T02:04:39Z")
The editorial from Nature regarding this subject: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7273/full/462545a.html) > [@](#): > > The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ‘smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe. > > This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails. > > First, Earth’s cryosphere is changing as one would expect in a warming climate. These changes include glacier retreat, thinning and areal reduction of Arctic sea ice, reductions in permafrost and accelerated loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Second, the global sea level is rising. The rise is caused in part by water pouring in from melting glaciers and ice sheets, but also by thermal expansion as the oceans warm. Third, decades of biological data on blooming dates and the like suggest that spring is arriving earlier each year. > > Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world’s voracious appetite for carbon is essential (see pages 568 and 570). > [@](#): > > Tricky business > > But for much crucial information the reality is very different. Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur meteorological services to improve researchers’ ease of access, governments should force them to do so. > > The stolen e-mails have prompted queries about whether Nature will investigate some of the researchers’ own papers. One e-mail talked of displaying the data using a ‘trick’ — slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique, but a word that denialists have used to accuse the researchers of fabricating their results. It is Nature’s policy to investigate such matters if there are substantive reasons for concern, but nothing we have seen so far in the e-mails qualifies. > > The UEA responded too slowly to the eruption of coverage in the media, but deserves credit for now being publicly supportive of the integrity of its scientists while also holding an independent investigation of its researchers’ compliance with Britain’s freedom of information requirements (see [http://go.nature.com/zRBXRP](http://go.nature.com/zRBXRP)). > > In the end, what the UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings — and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that undermine scientific values. Yet it is precisely in such circumstances that researchers should strive to act and communicate professionally, and make their data and methods available to others, lest they provide their worst critics with ammunition. After all, the pressures the UEA e-mailers experienced may be nothing compared with what will emerge as the United States debates a climate bill next year, and denialists use every means at their disposal to undermine trust in scientists and science. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/13 "2009-12-04T02:20:23Z")
> [@Algher](#): > > Regarding journal pubs: > > I know that some journals will allow you to blackball certain reviewers. A friend of mine is in a theoretical fight with a researcher at another university. My friend has to request that this other researcher and anyone that has trained under that researcher be excluded when she submits articles. Before she did this, she would find that “reviewer 3” had the following nasty shit to say about your article, all focusing on one of the underlying theories. It was obvious who was doing it, and why. It was also getting in the way of science. > > Now - if you are an AGW skeptic researcher, how the hell can you ensure that your journal submissions will be read by someone with an open mind to your research, given the nature of these emails? And if you build too large of a blackball list, sooner or later the journals won’t bother with your submissions I would assume. Well, one could look for evidence of the actual bias or unjustified actions to stop contrarian publications, but there is very little evidence for that, one anecdote does not make this bias a reality: > **[BBC News - Climate science: Sceptical about bias](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7092614.stm)** > > Is there any evidence that science is biased against the "sceptics"? > [@](#): > > Of all the accusations made by the vociferous community of climate sceptics, surely the most damaging is that science itself is biased against them. > > That was a view I put forward nearly a year ago now in another article for the BBC News website, and nothing has changed my mind since. > > The year seems to have brought no diminution of the accusations flying around the blogosphere. > > “The research itself is biased,” as one recent blog entry put it. > > “Scientists are quick to find what they’re looking for when it means getting more funding out of the government.” > > That particular posting gave no evidence to support its claim of bias. I have seen none that did, which made me wonder whether there was any evidence. > > Drought or deluge? > > In that earlier article, I invited skeptics to put their cards on the table, and send me documentation or other firm evidence of bias. > > For my part, I agreed to look into any concrete claims. > > Given the fury evidenced by skeptical commentators, I was expecting a deluge. > > I anticipated drowning in a torrent of accusations of research grants turned down, membership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) denied, scientific papers refused by journals, job applications refused, and invitations to speak at conferences drying up. > > I anticipated having to spend days, weeks, months even, sifting the wheat from the chaff, going backwards and forwards between journal editors, heads of department, conference organizers, funding bodies and the original plaintiffs. > > I envisaged major headaches materializing as I tried to sort out the chains of events, attempting to decipher whether claims had any validity, or were just part of the normal rough and tumble of a scientist’s life - especially in the context of scientific publishing, where the top journals only publish about 10% of the papers submitted to them. > > The reality was rather different. > > … > > The sum total of evidence obtained through this open invitation, then, is one first-hand claim of bias in scientific journals, not backed up by documentary evidence; and three second-hand claims, two well-known and one that the scientist in question does not consider evidence of anti-skeptic feeling. > > No-one said they had been refused a place on the IPCC, the central global body in climate change, or denied a job or turned down for promotion or sacked or refused access to a conference platform, or indeed anything else. > > If there is an anti-sceptic bias running through the institutions of science, it is evidently keeping itself well hidden. > > No consensus on IPCC’s bias > > Whether this exercise has conclusively disproved a bias is not for me to say - I am sure others will find plenty to say, doubtless in the courteous and gracious language that typifies climate discourse nowadays. > > But I will say this; if someone persistently claims to be a great football player, and yet fails to find the net when you put him in front of an open goal, you cannot do other than doubt his claim. > > Andres Millan, who wrote to me on the subject from Mexico, offered another explanation for why scientific journals, research grants, conference agendas and the IPCC itself are dominated by research that backs or assumes the reality of modern-day greenhouse warming. > > “Most global warming sceptics have no productive alternatives; they say it is a hoax, or that it will cause severe social problems, or that we should allocate resources elsewhere,” he wrote. > > "Scientifically, they have not put forward a compelling, rich, and variegated theory. > > "And until that happens, to expect the government, or any source of scientific funding, to give as much money, attention, or room within academic journals to the alternatives, seems completely misguided. That was the best show of bias before the hacked emails case, and even now I see that they have failed to find any evidence that what the biases mentioned in the emails were acted upon. So far the few examples found point to just wishful thinking. Reprehensible, but wishful nevertheless. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/14 "2009-12-04T08:23:21Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > I have been reading about this lately but I haven’t been having a lot of success cutting through the religion on both sides. > Please explain what the implications are for the Global Warming debate. > > Pithy dismissals where you get to reiterate your party line’s stance are the opposite of what this thread is asking for. The average person that has not picked a side will be looking hard and long at the folks who pushed kyoto and are pushing copenhagen. The best thing those scientists could have done at HadCru was simply admit incompetence with data handling, storage and admitting that their people are not socially adept. The fight that they lost, was to let the general public doubt their core comptency which was proving climate change, and generally sound a lot like politicians who have had their hands caught in the cookie jar. As to the implications, I can’t say. I’d probably wait until the next round of funding comes up to see if anything has really changed. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/15 "2009-12-04T12:46:39Z")
For me there is an underlying problem with the work at CRU, one I find deeply troubling. In addition to the leaked emails, the source code, and a long personal log by one of the software people has become available. This log makes very interesting, and disturbing reading. A number of people have begun to read though and discect the source code. And a lot of discussion of the personal log is also ongoing. This log is the Harry\_readme log. I spent some time reading the log, and read through some of the source code. I don’t share a lot of the more vitriolic feeling about the code or the state of play that some others do. I have been there and done that, and recognise a lot of the problems that beset the poor guy that was doing the work. But, none the less, there is a very real and significant problem. One that really seriously calls into question pretty much all the work that came out of CRU. There was absolutley no trace of even minimal scientific safeguards on the work done. The computer programs were not subject to even the most minimal software engineering controls, and the science was not subject to any sort of checks. The story of the log is of a programmer, over a period of three years trying to patch together a poorly documented, buggy and incomplete mess so that he could recreate the entire climate history that CRU had generated, and had, in an unexplained accident lost. Lost. This was done to a deadline that had to be met to allow the next version fo the data to be generated. Nowhere in any of the story is any suggestion of validation of the data models used. Ad-hoc numeric models are used to interpolate data, and often poor, ill understood, tools used to perform other data processing steps. Much data is syntheticly derived, and the whole system of dubious stability. Yet there is no trace of any analysis being done to validate any of the processing. In a number of places in the log, processing steps are done that I would regard as very dubious. The only justification for the use of some steps, or parameters used, being that they seem to create good looking data. I have worked with similar code, with similar provenance data, and feel a great deal of empathy for the poor guy in question. I have also seen how very easy it is to have things go wrong in subtle ways, yet ways that can totally ruin the validity of the results. Hard won experience tells me that this work has not been done well enough. From the programming point of view - stuff we would expect in any professional programming project - requirements, code reviews, regression testing, whitebox testsing, black box testing, acceptance testing, source code control. The reality? None of these. Worse, from the science point of view. Sensitivity analysis, validation with synthetic data sets, peer review of methodology. All missing. There remains the sneaking suspicion that the whole thing is sufficiently poorly executed, and ill conditioned that with the right choice of fiddle factors any result we wanted could have been created. In many ways I feel betrayed. Indeed I felt quite angry working my way though a lot of this. As a scientist, and someone who has had to teach people some of these issues for a living, I find the whole thing leaving a bad taste. These guys are supposed to be better than this. We trusted them to be better than this. But they weren’t. This isn’t going to go away, at least it shouldn’t be allowed to. All the carping about petty spats in the emails is missing the point. This was poor quality science. It was B grade academic messing about masquarading as A grade international quality work that the world could rely upon the integrity of. What it will do is call into question the quality of work from the remainder of the climate scientists involved. This is probably a healthy thing. The stir this has caused should be dirfected at ensuring a totally open scientific research effort. Hiding behind confidentiality agreements isn’t acceptable. The issue is one of global concern. Possibly the most important scientific issue of global concern we have. This has not been well managed, indeed it clearly has never been managed. And this isn’t acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/16 "2009-12-04T14:12:36Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > From the programming point of view - stuff we would expect in any professional programming project - requirements, code reviews, regression testing, whitebox testsing, black box testing, acceptance testing, source code control. The reality? None of these. Just being aware of the languages used in the science world, I never had any illusion that most or any of the coding done was going to be particularly good. Probably you could easily boost the output of most climate simulators by a few thousand times simply by rebuilding it all with a real programmer behind it. But overall it doesn’t worry me because that’s still the same standard by which all of our science is being done today. We’re sending ships to Mars based on it. And more importantly, there’s the output of several different climate simulators all coming to, more or less, similar results. The basic math for radiative heating of elements and the ocean, absorption of CO2 by forests, and wind/ocean currents being pushed along are all fairly straightforward concepts. The code is big and ugly more because it’s poorly written code that’s been modified and added to successively for 20 years than because it’s theoretically complex. But because it isn’t theoretically complex, even so, you should be able to tell when things are pretty wacky. I’ve seen plenty of ugly old, mutilated code that’s been further munged by intern hackers that, in spite of all odds, miraculously does exactly what it is supposed to do. I refuse to take on the task of working with such code at a coding level, and I fully expect it to crash and die if blown on too hard, but I’m still willing to admit that it works correctly just so long as you don’t blow on it too hard. The current state of all coding is scary. The fact that the world continues to turn every single day eases that fear to basic annoyance, and I live with it and don’t think about it. I just have to trust to the observation that against all odds, in the end, even horrible coders working on massively poor code just damned keep making stuff that gives the right answer. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/17 "2009-12-04T14:57:06Z")
> [@](#): > > even horrible coders working on massively poor code just damned keep making stuff that gives the right answer. I would have to disagree. I have seen exactly the opposite. Well conditioned problems can be quite robust to bad treatment, but other problems can easily produce plausible rubbish. It isn’t just the poor coding practices either. The underpinning science is a worry. That is why I talk of sensitivity analysis. Nowadays the vast majority of programers have never heard of numerical analysis as a subject area. Most would not know the meaning of _machine epsilon_. The trouble is, such programmers are not competant to code any numerical problem. But they don’t know enough to realise this. The guys that write the software for space missions run to a very very different standard. Their coding regimes make earthbound safety critical systems look sloppy. And even they get it wrong from time to time. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/18 "2009-12-04T14:58:49Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Some of the greatest discoveries have come about from scientists who went against what ‘everyone’ ‘knew’, and ended up taking things in entirely new directions. Look at Darwin and Einstein, for instance. Minor nitpick, totally off topic: Darwin didn’t go against what everyone ‘knew’: by the time Darwin got in the game, a lot of people, including a fair number of scientists of the day, already believed in evolution. But nobody before Darwin had a good theory explaining by what process or mechanism evolution took place. ---
**Author:** ![Sinaijon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Sinaijon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaijon)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/19 "2009-12-04T15:34:11Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I’ve seen plenty of ugly old, mutilated code that’s been further munged by intern hackers that, in spite of all odds, miraculously does exactly what it is supposed to do. That’s part of the problem. With ‘regular’ code, you know what the results should be, and use them to verify that the code is correct. You can’t do that with a climate model, because you don’t know what the results should be. But the climate scientists fell into a circular logic trap. They expected warming, then wrote a bunch of code to conform to their expectations, and then try to actually use that code as evidence that their expectations were right. But the fact that the code matched their expectations doesn’t mean it’s correct, unless they can verify their expectations via other means. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2009, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899/20 "2009-12-04T15:43:03Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > Nowhere in any of the story is any suggestion of validation of the data models used. You are falling for the say so of the ones benefiting with the theft of the emails. You are forgetting that informal communications among scientists and researchers would be the last place I would look for validations, when the context is missing you allow contrarians to control the discussion unfairly, and in the end one is supporting their unethical efforts. > **[RealClimate: The CRU hack: Context](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/)** > > RealClimate: CRU hack, "climategate" context, fudge factors, Kevin Trenberth travesty, Wigley, hide the decline, Mann's Nature trick, UEA emails, Climate Research, Soon and Baliunas, peer-review > [@](#): > > HARRY\_read\_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the documentation, metadata and databases associated with the legacy CRU TS 2.1 product, which is not the same as the HadCRUT data (see Mitchell and Jones, 2003 for details). The CSU TS 3.0 is available now (via ClimateExplorer for instance), and so presumably the database problems got fixed. Anyone who has ever worked on constructing a database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory and inconsistently formatted datasets will share his evident frustration with how tedious that can be. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-explain-climategate/519899.md?page=2)