Fudge Factor Code... or not?

[andygates]

I love Deltoid. Here's their beautiful takedown of one of the so-called climategate drama points: the "very artificial!" computer code: Quote Mining Code. In a nutshell: the code was ugly but so is my appendix. It's vestigial crap that was never published, disk cruft that's been dug up and paraded around by the usual wingnut buffoons.

Every point of science has been taken apart now, clearly and easily. It was never going to be any other way.

(There remains the procedural matter of the alleged FOI stuff, but that's still in the air especially as no FOI request may actually have been made and the data may not have been FOI-able at all: again, shooting the shit is not conspiracy even if it's dumb shit).

Of course someone was bound to try to use this rubbish as leverage at Copenhagen. Who would that be? Who has vested interests in selling scads of fossil fuel? Why, Saudi Arabia of course. Follow the money.

Comments

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

Most interesting -- thanks for the pointer to Deltoid. And I believe that's Fortran, isn't it? Ugly be design.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I guess that's what old academics used eleven years ago!

What gets me is the way that the wingnuts seem to think that there is a keystone argument: some one thing that, if refuted, will bring everything down. There isn't such a thing; such a thing is actually pretty rare in science. What we've got is a web of observations and correlations and if you snip a few strands, the web still holds, and it's still stronger than anything concocted by the crank brigade.

You could say that the presence of warming is a keystone -- but there are many independent temperature models and they corroborate. Throw out the tree rings that are mentioned in this flap, and the lichens, sediments, glaciers and all the rest don't go anywhere.

The basics were nailed well over a decade ago. There is warming. There is extra CO2. The extra CO2 comes from fossil sources. All the rest is detail. Important detail, sure, but the core observations are as robust as anything: a warming trend coinciding with the Industrial Revolution; CO2 increase in line with the warming, and the smoking gun: radioisotope ratios that indicate that the extra CO2 came from ancient biological carbon.

Deltoid is snarkier than RC, but one blog cannot rule them all.

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who works at a school that does a lot of engineering and physical science, I can tell you that they still use Fortran. Or, they did the last time I looked.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

If it ain't broke...

[carldem.livejournal.com]

and here all the "experts" are telling the local population its deforestation and agriculture. If you believe the mags/papers then CO2 levels are caused by Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Do you wonder why there are doubters?

[estaratshirai.livejournal.com]

Oy. You. You post a lot about climate change. Go help my Dad. He wants posters and he keeps asking ME, and if I send somebody in my stead I'll feel absolved. vivanewmexico.com/blog I think. Might be a .org.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Heh. But could I tone down the anger for regular publication?

[estaratshirai.livejournal.com]

You're assuming he'd make you. He might not if you were very clever.