What do you think of this analysis of IPCC Climategate faked computer code?

Question

Understandable, even for the computer not so literate:

"Now, here is some actual proof that the CRU was deliberately tampering with their data."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/04/climategate-the-smoking-code/

Answer 1

Why aren't the 3 network CBS,NBC,ABC News outlets telling this story? Could it be they would like to see this atory go away? Our world has changed forever from one that was fair to the Obama spin zone. It's a pity.

Answer 2

I think we are going to need to see more of this. That is an unacceptable way of smoothing data in my book. I'm not up on modern computer code but this doesn't appear to be much different than the fortran I quit using about 30 years ago. I've never heard of interjecting a seemingly unrelated set of numbers into a data set while you were doing an interpolation. I'm also curious about the "interpol" function is it just a linear interpolation of the data?



This appears to be the same scheme used to generate the original hockey stick graph. Which I understand will generate a hockey stick shaped plot 9 out of 10 times if you use a random number generator to input the data.



I really like the climate gate denier answer to this. Rather than admitting that the "climate computer model" was written to generate a particular trend, we are supposed to believe the program made a bunch of calculations which were not used in any way to produce the output. If that's true what is the purpose of these calculations? Why have an error message printed if the array was off, since you aren't using the calculation to produce an output anyway? That explanation reeks of nonsense.



Tracking variable names through programs like this is not an easy matter. I would imagine that several of the variables are renamed many times throughout the program. I remember seeing a Wang basic program used for engineering calculations, which used the same name for several variables depending on which point in the program. (There was a limit on variable names) You just redefined it and proceeded on with the next calculation.

Answer 3

i like the information from the united kingdom. they have not have been given any reason to not tell the certainty in assessment to American Media! It grew to become into disproved approximately worldwide warming a 12 months in the past however the politicians have hushed it up. to sell their costly courses like going green LOL the international is at the instant cooling; electorates are a becoming style of reluctant to assist eco-rules optimum to extra oppressive regulation, bigger taxes and better application costs; the tide is popping against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic worldwide Warming concept. The so-observed as “sceptical” view is now additionally maximum folk view. regrettably, we’ve an prolonged, long thank you to bypass in the past the popular public temper (and medical reality) is meditated by way of our coverage makers. There are too many vested pursuits in AGW, with some distance too plenty to lose the two in terms of acceptance or funds, for this to end devoid of a bitter combat.

Answer 4

I know a little bit of code.



Semicolon means it is commented, it's been removed. The labeled fudge factor isn't used. Also, if you wanted to fudge your data, you wouldn't label it as such.



More than likely this programmer was playing with the data to see what would happen. If you actually bother to look at the graphs produced by this program, the fudge factor was not included.



In other words your website is being deliberately dishonest.

Answer 5

Wattsupwiththat is manufacturing doubt.



He talks about some code, makes a graph, and leads one to believe that this section of the code "fudges" and "deliberately tampers" with the hockey stick data.



So, why doesn't wattsupwiththat post more of the code, and only this little snippet? These following lines are also in the code:



;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow

;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20

;



This section graphs (plots) the code. But remember, this is IDL code, so lines that begin with ; (semicolons) are skipped. So, to make a long story short, this section of the code that wattsupwiththat is discussing was never used/graphed.



This wattsupwiththat post is talking about a fragment of some code that was never executed in a program and the program has never been shown to be used in any scientific literature. Pathetic!



I can think of 100 different reasons why someone would want to play with the numbers like this programmer did; and, they all involve "what if" questions. If someone wanted to manufacture data, then they wouldn't have named their manufactured data "fudge factor".

Answer 6

To be honest changing code isn't that difficult. Changing what matters is.



edit: Trevor would you like that written in binary? I hate to tell you and others that's what all code is written in. Can I change the values? Yes I can, but then its not universal and is restrictive to the programmers format. Your like Dana in many ways, simply ignoring the obvious.



edit: for the brain dead, hell who knows it might help? Anything that will help them get a grasp of reality. I just hope it makes them understand ...long shot I know. I knew this 30yrs ago, and it hasn't changed. If they only knew how hard it is to write a program we wouldn't be seeing all the "BS".



edit: Damn me!!! I would not down load that program unless you fully understand code. Sorry I'm a simpleton and I think everyone understands.

http://mytexttools.com/Binary-Code-Converter.html



Wow! Peg you now have non binary format for computers, you should be a very rich man by now. I'll invest in it just show us how.

edit: Peg IDL is the simple form of java script(basic stuff) did you have it enabled or updated within the last three years?



Peg you and few others are simply expressing ignorance. I don't know how to tell you, computers only run on one type of format. It's been that way for the last 40years, 0&1's arent going away anytime soon. But yeah anybody can create their own format. Ex:00=1, please tell me you understand.

Answer 7

In fact that does not prove that. Lots of people run numerical experiments on data for various reasons, showing one piece of code without knowing what the input and outputs were or how they were used proves nothing. Let me say that again, nothing. I have similar IDL code on my computer to run an experiment with reversed temperatures. I'm not going to use the output in a paper and claim that the temperatures really were reversed, I was just trying to find out how the results would change if they were. You guys don't even have good circumstantial evidence. You have nothing.



EDIT: Nice analysis Trevor. It's amazing what nonsense that deniers will latch onto and think they've disproved the works of thousands of scientists from all over the world. I don't know how many times I've heard deniers use the word "fraud" in the last week, with nothing at all to back it up.



EDIT for Rio: What are you talking about? Eventually things may get compiled or interpreted to binary, but so what? The program was written in IDL. And your link only shows how ASCII characters would get converted into binary--it has absolutely nothing to do with the binary code of interpreted or compiled instructions, so that is completely meaningless. For example, if I type in the IDL code "loadct" into your converter I'll get a binary representation of the ASCII letters but I won't get a binary representation of the machine code instruction that "loadct" represents. Your converter is completely worthless for interpreting the IDL code.



Another EDIT: Trevor, I understood you perfectly and agree with you, my comments were directed at the questioner, not at you.



Rio, I happily admit that on digital computers things are binary at the most basic level. So what? You're still missing the point that your ASCII to binary converter is only converting the letters to their binary representation and is NOT converting the IDL commands to their binary representation, which is not the same thing--so your converter is completely useless for finding out what program was doing at the binary level. It doesn't matter anyway, because the IDL code is already given. I, for one, understand IDL.

Answer 8

It turns out that the super-sophisticated computer models weren't re-writing the theoretical limits of predictive computer models.



Regarding the models:



Each parameter is only loosely quantified.



There are MANY parameters.

Answer 9

The hard cores on this site will just call it fake or dream up an explanation for it. So be prepared for an onslaught of disbelievers or deniers to attack you. The alarmists are now the deniers, now aint that special.

Answer 10

Lying skeptics is all that I would say to them.



How convenient that they have only included selected snippets of the code.



In all the fuss around the supposed smoking gun inside one of the source code files from the CRU Hack no one seems to be pointing something out... the so called fudge factor that is in the program isn't used.



Here's the full listing of osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro



;; Now prepare for plotting;loadct,39multi_plot,nrow=3,layout='caption'if !d.name eq 'X' then begin window,ysize=800 !p.font=-1endif else begin !p.font=0 device,/helvetica,/bold,font_size=18endelsedef_1color,20,color='red'def_1color,21,color='blue'def_1color,22,color='black';restore,'compbest_fixed1950.idlsave';plot,timey,comptemp(*,3),/nodata,$ /xstyle,xrange=[1881,1994],xtitle='Year',$ /ystyle,yrange=[-3,3],ytitle='Normalised anomalies',$; title='Northern Hemisphere temperatures, MXD and corrected MXD' title='Northern Hemisphere temperatures and MXD reconstruction';yyy=reform(comptemp(*,2));mknormal,yyy,timey,refperiod=[1881,1940]filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslowoplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=22yyy=reform(compmxd(*,2,1));mknormal,yyy,timey,refperiod=[1881,1940];; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!;yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$ 2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factorif n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!';yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey);;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslowoplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21;oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1;plot,[0,1],/nodata,xstyle=4,ystyle=4;legend,['Northern Hemisphere April-September instrumental temperature',$; 'Northern Hemisphere MXD',$; 'Northern Hemisphere MXD corrected for decline'],$; colors=[22,21,20],thick=[3,3,3],margin=0.6,spacing=1.5legend,['Northern Hemisphere April-September instrumental temperature',$ 'Northern Hemisphere MXD'],$ colors=[22,21],thick=[3,3],margin=0.6,spacing=1.5;end



This code is written in a language called IDL and IDL uses a semicolon for a comment. So any line beginning with ; is ignored. Here's the same code without those ignored lines:



loadct,39multi_plot,nrow=3,layout='caption'if !d.name eq 'X' then begin window,ysize=800 !p.font=-1endif else begin !p.font=0 device,/helvetica,/bold,font_size=18endelsedef_1color,20,color='red'def_1color,21,color='blue'def_1color,22,color='black'restore,'compbest_fixed1950.idlsave'plot,timey,comptemp(*,3),/nodata,$ /xstyle,xrange=[1881,1994],xtitle='Year',$ /ystyle,yrange=[-3,3],ytitle='Normalised anomalies',$ title='Northern Hemisphere temperatures and MXD reconstruction'yyy=reform(comptemp(*,2))filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslowoplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=22yyy=reform(compmxd(*,2,1))yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$ 2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslowoplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1plot,[0,1],/nodata,xstyle=4,ystyle=4legend,['Northern Hemisphere April-September instrumental temperature',$ 'Northern Hemisphere MXD'],$ colors=[22,21],thick=[3,3],margin=0.6,spacing=1.5end



The critical thing to look for is yearlyadj which is the magic value that everyone is so excited about. But guess what? It's never referenced in the rest of the program. So much for a smoking gun.



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -



EDIT: TO RIO



You're missing the point I'm making. The 'fudge' variable IS NOT part of the programme.

Answer 11

Pathetic, but it won't matter, there are plenty of politicians still ready to tax you for carbon and 'unclean' energy. I wish America would grow some balls again...

Answer 12

This is going to just keep dripping - like Chinese water torture (to Dana's crowd anyway).