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Climategate

blogs.telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Climategate

#11

Post by mixmax »

gjm11 wrote: post #5
mixmax wrote: post #2

The real scandal is more subtle, and much more serious. There is evidence from some of the leaked e-mails and source code that the main climate model is, in the words of an unnamed developer called Ian, useless: I am seriously worried that our flagship gridded data product is produced by Delaunay triangulation - apparently linear as well. As far as I can see, this renders the station counts totally meaningless. It al…

Er, no, he doesn't say that the main climate model is useless, or that "it's rubbish and doesn't work". He doesn't say anything even slightly like that. The particular thing he's saying is "meaningless" is a figure that has basically nothing to do with actual climate simulation. Clearly he's not impressed with the quality of the code. Fair enough. There's a lot of very poor code around doing important things. It look…

My point was that it seems like the model might be flawed, or at least is poorly written and/or documented. As you say, this Ian guy is clearly not impressed with the code. This qoute describes it rather well:

Ulp! I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can't get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections - to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more. So what the hell can I do about all these duplicate stations?...

The problem I see is not something as dire as a conspiracy, but the fact that this is the foundation of the western worlds policy on global warming and climate change. I think we all know how hard a model like that must be to write and maintain, and it seems like there's a good chance it doesn't give reliable results.

I would say that it is a huge problem that multibillion dollar decisions are based on a model that may or may not be accurate, and that maybe we should start the discussion on climate change by putting more money into actually finding out where we stand by creating good peer-reviewed models with open data. As it stands now it seems like we might be flying blind.

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear.

Re: Climategate

#12

Post by thaumaturgy »

Alright HN, this is getting embarrassing.

Should I soon expect to see articles arguing for the "final nail in the coffin" of evolution because of gaps in the fossil record?

Re: Climategate

#13

Post by barry-cotter »

catweasel wrote: post #6
jswinghammer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that this information isn't offered on articles describing emissions caps that are being agreed to in advance of these upcoming talks on climate change. I'd imagine that from now on other climate research departments will keep a tighter lid on their internal communications at any rate. I never really thought I'd miss Bush but at least he was smart enough to not take the global warming stuff seriously…

We're not in a depression, we're in a recession.. and it was the lack of regulation that caused it not abundance.

Extremely debatable. Better regulation would have prevented the housing crash but the regulation Americans got (with bipartsian support!) had the effect of making borrowing to buy a house ever easier, thus inflating prices, leading to a crash when it became obvious there were no greater fools left.

Re: Climategate

#15

Post by catweasel »

1gor wrote: post #9
catweasel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not in a depression, we're in a recession.. and it was the lack of regulation that caused it not abundance.

it was the lack of regulation that caused it That's a debatable point. The Fed's interest rate reductions in early 2000s have caused recent credit/real estate bubble. If you listen to the Austrian School economists you would hear that without regulation (central banks) the market would set the price of money (interest rates) more efficiently. We would have more frequent booms and busts but of much much lesser magnitu…

It wasn't a housing bubble that caused the GFC, if that was all it was it would have been contained to real estate. What brought down so many large institutions was the toxic debt and dodgy dealings they had accumulated, this was allowed to happen due to deregulation. Particularly, the introduction of the gramm-leach-billey act deregulating banking, insurance and securities into one finances industry... and very specifically the exemption of swap agreements from SEC regulation (ie toxic debt). At least that's my opinion and the opinion of some very respected economists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act#Criticis...

Further evidence is the current calling, from all quarters, for tighter regulation of the finances industry to avoid another GFC not less.

Re: Climategate

#16

Post by Estragon »

barry-cotter wrote: post #13
catweasel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not in a depression, we're in a recession.. and it was the lack of regulation that caused it not abundance.

Extremely debatable. Better regulation would have prevented the housing crash but the regulation Americans got (with bipartsian support!) had the effect of making borrowing to buy a house ever easier, thus inflating prices, leading to a crash when it became obvious there were no greater fools left.

Yeah, it wasn't lack of regulation, exactly. It was corruption.

Re: Climategate

#17

Post by catweasel »

barry-cotter wrote: post #13
catweasel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not in a depression, we're in a recession.. and it was the lack of regulation that caused it not abundance.

Extremely debatable. Better regulation would have prevented the housing crash but the regulation Americans got (with bipartsian support!) had the effect of making borrowing to buy a house ever easier, thus inflating prices, leading to a crash when it became obvious there were no greater fools left.

Which specific pieces of regulation made borrowing easier? An interesting wiki on the subject is the GFC timeline- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_crisis_impact_timeline

There's mention there of a political goal ... "of increasing minority home owners by at least 5.5 million by 2010 through billions of dollars in tax credits" ... which is not the same as regulation.

The timeline does attribute removal of regulation for the financial sector .. and also the exclusion from regulation for credit default swaps, which is pretty much the reason Bear Sterns, AIG, Lehman Bros et all went under. They stuffed themselves to the gills with toxic debt, which is fine while everything is going swimmingly, but when the housing bubble bursts it becomes more than just a burst bubble... which is all it would have been if the finance sector had been properly regulated.

Re: Climategate

#18

Post by 1gor »

catweasel wrote: post #15
1gor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was the lack of regulation that caused it That's a debatable point. The Fed's interest rate reductions in early 2000s have caused recent credit/real estate bubble. If you listen to the Austrian School economists you would hear that without regulation (central banks) the market would set the price of money (interest rates) more efficiently. We would have more frequent booms and busts but of much much lesser magnitu…

It wasn't a housing bubble that caused the GFC, if that was all it was it would have been contained to real estate. What brought down so many large institutions was the toxic debt and dodgy dealings they had accumulated, this was allowed to happen due to deregulation. Particularly, the introduction of the gramm-leach-billey act deregulating banking, insurance and securities into one finances industry... and very spec…

Artificially low rates would force anyone to seek yields at any costs, so portfolios were stuffed with all sort of junk, so your 'contained to real estate' point is not correct.

I would also argue that banks accumulated toxic assets because theey believed that they would be bailed out (moral hazard argument), which is the direct consequence of regulation.

'Too big to fail' idea has been around for quite long, one can start from LTCM more than 10 years ago, and it of course existed before that.

Fraudulent behavour is common to free market economies, but normally market participants develop mechanisms to filter out scammers (for instance J P Morgan used to say that nobody could become client of his bank without an introduction). It is when the government takes over controlling responsibility and then fails to deliver (Madoff) we have massive problems.

Re: Climategate

#19

Post by robotrout »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #12

Alright HN, this is getting embarrassing. Should I soon expect to see articles arguing for the "final nail in the coffin" of evolution because of gaps in the fossil record?

Of course I disagree that any reasonable person would equate AGW and evolution, as you have done. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, that's as harsh as I'll be today.

I think your main point is that you feel there are too many threads on this subject.

On this issue, I almost agree with you. However, this is a watershed event, so perhaps it really does deserve more posts than the release of a new iphone app.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Re: Climategate

#20

Post by yummyfajitas »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #12

Alright HN, this is getting embarrassing. Should I soon expect to see articles arguing for the "final nail in the coffin" of evolution because of gaps in the fossil record?

This isn't just gaps. This is an outright conspiracy to present a certain case and make sure no opposing view is heard.

If we had such a conspiracy in the field of evolutionary biology, then yes, I'd be rethinking how seriously we should take the theory of evolution. Fortunately, biologists are a lot more open with their data than climate scientists.

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