re: #77 Walter L. Newton

And I have been reading the document file from a CRU programmer named “Harry,” and this file contains notes of his work trying to recreate results from different CRU data.

I am a programmer, I can understand another’s programmers notes on what he’s working on.

It seems that CRU’s whole data management, change control, version control and programing methods is a mishmash of techniques and processes, with no standards.

That’s why scientist should not be trying to data the work of programmers and information technology regimens. When I worked at the National Renewable Energy Lab, that was part of my job, to help the scientist follow standards on how data is collected, stored, controlled, verified etc. All that stuff that it is evident that CRU was NOT DOING.

This is not a pro or anti AGW stance on my part, I am only talking about data collection and data analysts methods, and so far I see a big problem on how it has been handled at CRU.

You go. It will help if you read as much as possible before plunging into the nitty gritty of data processing. You will need to know, for example, that there are two “constants” for temperature change with altitude. When you ascend in an airplane, the temperature generally drops by X degrees per thousand feet. When you ascend a slope, it’s Y, and Y is less than X. There may be adjustments for humidity, whether it’s a mountain or a general rise in the lay of the land, and so forth. Taking into account everything vital from climate science, to go along with your own expertise in data, will be a big job. Let’s say you do good work.

Getting it taken seriously will then be a challenge. Outsiders with good work find themselves in the same pool with cranks and babes-in-the-woods, and the general tendency among veteran researchers in a field is to blow them all off. Ramanujan had the good fortune to send his letter to somebody in England (Hardy) who could discern the good stuff from the dross. We know of instances in the other direction where good work was only vindicated retrospectively.