Dec 02 2009
Who Is HARRY_READ_ME?
One of the most famous people arising from the Climategate scandals is Harry the CRU programmer. His long tail of woe on how he tried to get the CRU code and data to produce something reliable is captured in over 270 pages of developer notes. I wonder if this poor chap will be caught up in the wrong way in this global battle. After all he went through, it seem horribly ironic he may be the key to what went on inside CRU and what happened with the data promoted around the world as a clear sign from nature that humanity was overheating the Earth.
I am very confident that there are intermediary or preliminary runs of the data which clearly show no significant warming over 75-87% world. In my analysis of the data I measured the highest pre 1960 temp peak and compared it with the highest temperature peak in the 2000’s. What I found was baffling given all the alarm bells being rung. It turns out 75% of the planet has not seen peak-to-peak changes greater than half a degree – less than the global crisis claimed by alarmists at CRU, IPCC, GISS and elsewhere.
What Harry seems to be struggling with his how to apply ‘corrections’ and ‘adjustments’ to the world wide temperature data, a process that requires numerous runs and uncountable intermediary products. His laments over this massaging will become legend:
– “But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that’s useless …” (Page 17)
– “It’s botch after botch after botch.” (18)
– “The biggest immediate problem was the loss of an hour’s edits to the program, when the network died … no explanation from anyone, I hope it’s not a return to last year’s troubles … This surely is the worst project I’ve ever attempted. Eeeek.” (31)
– “Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite.” (37)
– “… this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!” (45)
– “Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!” (47)
– “As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless.” (57)
– “COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993!” (71)
– “What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah — there is no ‘supposed,’ I can make it up. So I have : – )” (98)
– “You can’t imagine what this has cost me — to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a ‘Master’ database of dubious provenance …” (98)
– “So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option — to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations … In other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad …” (98-9)
He is one of the few people who would know what was raw data and when speculative statistical adjustments were applied. He holds the answer to humanity’s burning questions – is the planet in runaway warming or not.
I feel for the man.
Update: There are a lot of people who also know the answers, but their reputations and careers are now on the line pending how this all unfolds. I think I would believe the Harry’s over the PhD’s right now.
Update: Well Spotted!
You said:
“Could you or others debunk it scientifically?”
and I said:
“no need to. look at the raw data. it proves itself.
there have been many times, over time, that the earth was much hotter. ”
and from above, you said:
“In my analysis of the data I measured the highest pre 1960 temp peak and compared it with the highest temperature peak in the 2000’s. What I found was baffling given all the alarm bells being rung. It turns out 75% of the planet has not seen peak-to-peak changes greater than half a degree – less than the global crisis claimed by alarmists at CRU, IPCC, GISS and elsewhere.”
So I see you agree with me, actually I agree with you, you’ve done all the writing about it. Thankfully.
a footnote:
all these numbers we’ve been looking at only deal with about 1880 onward. Go back a look at the last several million years, you’ll see many peaks higher than anything in the last hundred years. and there weren’t any people around exhaling CO2 that would explain it. or burning coal either for that matter.
Let me give a link for my claim above:
here is a quote:
“At the start of the Eocene, the continents were close to where they are now, but the average annual temperature in arctic Canada and Siberia was a balmy 18° C (65° F). The dominant plants up there were palm trees and cycads.”
that was only about 33 million years ago.
but here’s the link:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/
Redteam – thanks for the link! I stand corrected 😉
Let’s start the “Harry Read Me’ Defense Fund. I can’t imagine what he faces from the egomaniacs now that their gravy train has been cut off and they face the type of ridicule they have been dishing out for the last decade, or more.
First of all, the person responsible for this leak should get the peace prize. The more time to reflect the more I would agree that this is the work of an insider who leaked this information and not a random hacker. The “context” of this information is too good to be just a know nothing outsider who hacked the computer system.
That said the word usage above is most disturbing:
“make it up” “meaningless” “false” “dubious” “nuclear option”
This man does need a defense fund.
Some of the information on the article linked to above is wrong.
For example, he prints the now discredited hocky stick graph
Fai Mao, true, but I referred to ‘raw data’ not ‘manipulated data’, you have to sort the two.
[…] sound code and ‘PhD level’ code here and here. The best insight into the mess is the HARRY_READ_ME file, which screams out for hundred’s of pages on how bad the CRU code and results […]