
Comments in ClimateGate source code: unambiguous smoking gun - asciilifeform
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/22/cru-emails-may-be-open-to-interpretation-but-commented-code-by-the-programmer-tells-the-real-story/
======
bokonist
I'm more in the skeptic camp, but I don't find the comments cited in this
article very suspect, especially without further context. The comments may
just be warning users not to use the function past 1960.

The most damning excepts from the leaked email are the following:

<http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024996.php> In this one, they
delete emails rather than respond to a FOIA request

<http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024995.php> In which they lie
to the NYTimes in response to a question of data cherry picking. They tell the
NYTimes that they looked into the criticisms and that the criticisms were
completely unfounded. But behind the scenes they were emailing each other that
they could not explain the results, and in fact, other scientists had found
the criticisms to be quite valid.

~~~
lionhearted
> I'm more in the skeptic camp, but I don't find the comments cited in this
> article very suspect, especially without further context.

It's another piece of circumstantial evidence. By itself, it wouldn't mean too
much. Considering everything else, it doesn't reflect well upon them.

You need to be very, very careful when normalizing or adjusting a complex
system, and you need to be extremely clear that you're adjusting and how
you're doing it.

A lot of normalizing/adjusting based on a certain factor is to make data fit a
predetermined conclusion. There's some that are generally accepted - like
adjusting for inflation - but even that can be done many different ways with
different goals to serve different agendas. Adjusting data without disclaiming
how you did it is a pretty big no-no and casts a lot of doubt on someone's
results.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I agree, but taking a code comment that says something is being adjusted does
not mean a lot. Any criticism would have to look at what is being adjusted and
how. You'd have to make a statistical argument based on the model.

I am a skeptic as well, but the way these emails and code comments are
analysed is entirely meaningless.

However, it goes to show how incredibly stupid it is for scientists to not be
as transparent as possible in the first place.

------
tumult
Is that really suspect? One comment (in two places) saying not to use some
function beyond 1960 because it will give divergent results?

The author of the post says something like, "see, these programmer people
leave comments in code to remind themselves later of what they really mean the
code does. Armed with this knowledge, we can read some comments and find out
what's really going on!"

No, dude, I'm a programmer and you can't just take random chunks of comments
from code and authoritatively state what you think they mean.

It's also hard to take seriously a blog plastered with ads for $49 "Make-your-
own-free-energy"-kits. The comments are a freak show of conspiracy theorists.

~~~
jeremyw
Well, the ad is via Google Adsense. Blame them. :)

------
zosi
This has been debunked over and over already. The predictions based on the
tree ring data in question are known to have diverged from actual, measured
temperatures from 1960 onward. They're known to be fairly accurate prior to
1960, to the best of our knowledge. This is a scientific thing - if you can
prove that tree rings were affected enough by non-temperature factors prior to
1960 to lead to inaccurate temperature predictions, you'd be making a huge
contribution to the field of dendrochronology.

~~~
nkurz
_They're known to be fairly accurate prior to 1960, to the best of our
knowledge. This is a scientific thing_

This sounds backwards. We calibrate against the instrumental record up to
1960, we know that there is increasing divergence post 1960, thus should we
presume we can have greater trust for the previous eras where we have no
instrumental record?

Wouldn't the onus be on explaining the divergence? I haven't seen anyone else
accepting a divergence while at the same time claiming that the previous
record is accurate. It seems more standard to downplay the divergence rather
than to accept it.

Could you reference some sources that discuss the divergence?

~~~
zosi
Absolutely. I'm not very good at finding information in scientific papers, but
here's the first few I found with Google. If those don't satisfy you, I'll see
what I can find when I get home from work.

[http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/trl/downloads/Publicati...](http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/trl/downloads/Publications/DAWilsJac.nrc.followup.pdf)
(PDF) is a paper that specifically addresses a lot of the concerns about
temperature prediction using tree rings. In particular, I'd like to quote the
following section as it pertains directly to your question:

"A number of tree-ring series indicate a divergence between tree growth and
temperature at some northern sites in recent decades (e.g. Briffa et al. 1995,
Jacoby and D'Arrigo 1995, Briffa et al. 1998, Vaganov et al. 1999, Barber et
al. 2000). Theories for the cause (s) of this observed divergence, which may
vary from site to site, include decreased temperature sensitivity due to
warmer temperatures, drought stress, increased winter snowmelt and ozone
effects. This divergence needs to be considered to avoid bias in
dendroclimatic reconstructions; however it is not present everywhere. For
example, temperature-sensitive elevational treeline sites in Mongolia and the
European Alps exhibit dramatic growth increases in recent decades (D'Arrigo et
al. 2001, Buntgen et al. 2005)."

[http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/trl/downloads/Publicati...](http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/fac/trl/downloads/Publications/%20cook2004.pdf)
(PDF) is an earlier paper referenced in the above that also discusses the
problem.

<http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Loehle_Divergence_CC.pdf> (PDF) is a paper by
someone that's more skeptical, it goes into a fair bit of detail about the
possible causes, mostly to argue against them.

Of course, we're getting a bit away from the actual topic. We know about the
post-1960ish divergence. We know that it's a good idea to exclude that data
from any kind of analysis, which isn't a problem because we have accurate
modern measurements from that period to use instead. There may be other
periods of inaccuracy - but if there are, they haven't been discovered, and
there is a substantial amount of overlap between these reconstructions and our
actual instrumental record during the calibration period. In other words, it's
the best reconstruction we have at the moment, and like any scientific theory,
it's subject to change if better evidence were to come along. Unfortunately,
the skeptics seem to be more interested in politicizing the debate rather than
finding that better evidence themselves.

None of this really changes what the comment says, which was basically "Don't
use this to plot past 1960, because we know that part needs corrections". I
don't see an issue with that. The wording could be better, but it's a useful
note to have, to make sure that the data isn't misused. I don't think it would
be necessary to say "Oh yeah, the rest is just a theory, it could be wrong
too" - everyone who was supposed to have access to the source knew that. It
comes with the territory. The problem is when internal stuff is leaked and
that territory changes - a random person reads that comment, completely misses
the tentative scientific context and thinks that the programmer is asserting
the absolute correctness of everything he doesn't single out as wrong.

Edited to add in a (PDF) tag that I forgot.

~~~
nkurz
I appreciate it. The first link is coming up 404, but I'll check the other
two. I think I'm superficially familiar with both, but I haven't actually read
them in their entirety. Will do if I have time.

 _there is a substantial amount of overlap between these reconstructions and
our actual instrumental record during the calibration period_

From memory, I don't think this is quite the right conclusion. Rather, the
instrumental record is used to calibrate the reconstruction, so the overlap
approaches 100%. Worse, the accusations are that the correlation is even
better because any trees not matching the temperature record have been
eliminated as non-performing! I don't think either of these papers shows
accuracy of reconstruction on an out-of-sample set for which there exists an
outside measurement. I'll recheck, though.

 _None of this really changes what the comment says, which was basically
"Don't use this to plot past 1960, because we know that part needs
corrections"._

I don't disagree here. In the absence of some overriding context, that seems
like a valid reading of the comment.

~~~
zosi
Hmm, it looks like the first link got eaten by HN's linkerator due to the %27
(single quote) in the URL. Sorry about that, try
<http://preview.tinyurl.com/ydb8h28>.

As for the calibration period, you're right, there are definitely some issues
there, and that's a problem with the entire temperature reconstruction
approach. We only have reliable instrumental records back to the middle of the
19th century, so it's hard to test any kind of reconstruction on a large
scale.

Personally, I don't put much faith in the reconstructions themselves - I just
think that it's important for people to understand the context around these
experiments, since there's so much blatantly false information going around.
It's hard enough for those of us who _aren't_ climatologists to keep up with
the information without people screaming bloody murder over a few lines of
comments that they don't even understand.

------
youngian
Please. This is not a "smoking gun." It's another comment that looks bad to
the layman, but may well be legitimate science. I don't know because I'm not a
climate scientist. And _you don't know because you're not a climate
scientist._

~~~
thras
You know, 20 years ago, the place of "climate scientists" in the scientific
hierarchy was (justifiably) about the same as the placement of dentists in the
medical hierarchy.

The physics behind global warming makes a lot of sense. The warming models
aren't pure physics, however, and require feedback effects. Now, are the
models right about 6 degrees of warming in the next century? I don't have a
clue _because the historical climate reconstructions are so shitily done._ I
have no idea if the temperature anomaly over the last 30 years exceeds
historical bounds for standard deviation. I have no idea what the magnitude of
the Medieval Warm Period was.

This is an important question. A trillion dollar question. We need to throw
the hopped-up climate scientists out, fools who were lucky to be in the field
when it became important, and get some real intelligence working on this
problem. Cause this ain't it.

~~~
pyre
I think the real problem is the people that want to use this as a 'smoking
gun' to prove that they were 'right all along' that Global Warming is some
sort of conspiracy to harm the auto industry by a bunch of 'hippy liberals'
and that 'American industry' should keep on pouring out the pollution (of any
kind) as long as it's able to make money because that's the 'American Way'
that we use out 'American Ingenuity.'

~~~
lionhearted
Please re-read your comment and stop and reflect. You're using buzzwords
rather than trying to get the scope of the argument - it's like your mind is
already made up. If your mind is already made up, then you won't be open to
various truth and evidence.

~~~
ewjordan
Parent is just quoting buzzwords, but I can't say that he's altogether wrong:
the reason this is a story has nothing to do with science, or any desire to
find the truth. It's a clash where each side has already decided that it's
_Right_ based almost exclusively on political lines in the sand. Hacker News
is pretty much one of the only places on the net where a significant
proportion of posters have not already decided the issue for sure.

For my part, and I am educated in the sciences (though not environmental ones,
to the extent they can be considered "science"), I have no freaking idea what
the true state of affairs is, and I doubt that anyone has much valid knowledge
in this area. I don't trust any of the data that I see because a) historical
inference is really, really difficult, and I'm very unimpressed by how it's
been done, and b) there's so much incentive on each side to mangle the data to
fit the conclusion. I don't have any faith in the environmental researchers to
fairly report what the data tells them, but I'm just as skeptical about the
bias of people arguing against them, aligned as they tend to be with the
idiots and organizations that fight so hard against evolution.

Just to be clear, I _absolutely_ believe that there are valid theoretical
reasons to consider the possibility of (human caused) global warming; the
models are more than enough to show that it's a real possibility. It's only
the claim that it's already been observed (and that it's significant,
reversible, etc.) that I'm skeptical about.

However, I think that strategically speaking, the environmentalism movement's
increased focus on global warming is a big mistake because it gives anti-
environmentalists a fixed target to nibble away at, and they're doing a pretty
good job of causing doubt. Wasn't it obvious enough that spewing pollutants
into the air is bad? Why not focus on that, like everyone used to? Instead,
the environmentalists have taken on the burden of _proving_ that global
warming is man-made, catastrophic, and reversible; until then, the burden was
on the anti-environmentalists to _prove_ that it was safe to pollute as much
as they wanted, which was pretty much an impossible task.

I worry that far more important environmental concerns than carbon output are
being ignored because of the excessive focus on global warming, and this shift
in attention could be truly catastrophic.

~~~
youngian
Very well said. I commented elsewhere that the politicization is also likely
the reason for the scientists doing dubious things in the first place - having
their life's work under constant attack by reactionary nutjobs probably left
them feeling a bit cornered, and so they made the mistake of viewing all
criticism as nutjob criticism.

It's true that we've become obsessively focused on global warming as of late,
although I would place at least as much blame on the media for that. In the
past couple years, though, some groups have been doing a better job of saying
"BTW clean energy will also create jobs and improve our national security."
The WE campaign is one such example.

------
gaika
That's nothing compared to the comments that show up in "HARRY_READ_ME.txt":
[http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=118625&#...</a>

~~~
jordanb
That excerpt reads to me as written by a frustrated programmer who was given a
dataset that was poorly designed and lacks sufficient documentation.

I've been in that situation before, as has anyone who's had to work with real-
world data.

This hack episode seems really scary to me. Getting angry at the computer,
your suppliers, et cetra is all part of the development process --- as is
writing angry comments and internal emails. It's a much less disruptive way to
vent the frustration that comes with the job than punching your monitor.[1]

I've not seen anything anybody's posted that doesn't happen at every
development organization in the world. I really feel for those guys and the
firestorm they must be in now. And to be frank. I hope the criminals who broke
into their computers are captured and prosecuted.

[1] The nicest thing about the old CRTs is that they could take a good smack
or two.

~~~
bliving
You're referring to the dataset that is the basis of enormous de-
industrialization projects. Is it too much to ask to have it properly designed
with sufficient documentation?

~A Jedi hand wave~

"These are not the smoking guns your are looking for."

~~~
abstractbill
"enormous de-industrialization projects"

Honest question: What projects are you referring to?

~~~
bliving
I apologize if I've distracted anyone with the "industrial" reference. I'm
much more interested in the science behind the climate change [insert synonym
for industry here]. I am very sorry that any industrial effects are more
interesting the the quality-of-science issues. But here we are discussing
industry...

It's my understanding ( and please correct me if I'm wrong ) that the dataset
in question is one of the core underpinnings of the findings of the UN's IPCC.
And I'm not up-to-date on the policy implications in your country, unless you
live in Canada. But in chilly Canada, I see our local carbon-tax lobby use the
global warming meme in their effort to impose heavy taxes on our industrial
base. Hence, the "de-industrialization" angle.

I'm concerned that this might involve more power-grabbing than scientific
concern for our future. Hence the interest in properly designed and documented
datasets.

