Raymond, climate

Carsten Agger agger at c.dk
Fri Dec 4 10:30:43 UTC 2009


On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 08:36 +0000, Sam Liddicott wrote:

> 
> I thank you for this; I don't intend to repeat my long time observations 
> on this forum; but I note that I did not propose a conspiracy, you did, 
> and for just long enough to knock it down. The choice is not between AGW 
> and John Tyndal & Stefan Boltzmann, and it is not constructive to 
> present it as such.
> 
> Your scientific points are not disputed but their application in the AGW 
> debate is.
> 
> However I think this debate is being carried out elsewhere by very 
> interested parties, I merely spoke up with Max to equal the numbers and 
> to defend Raymond so that it may not be said that he is making "a 
> complete and utter fool of himself" on this list without defence.

Just for the record, and nothing more: What makes me think Raymond is
making a fool of himself is not really related to the question of
whether global warming is a real phenomenon and anthropogenic or not.

Raymons takes a graphics file where a researcher has attempted a
numerical correction on his empirical data and thinks it's a smoking
gun.

As someone who used to work quite a lot with empirical data while doing
physics at the univerisity, I can testify that applying numerical
corrections to data in order to make sense of them is completely normal.
After you made sense of them, you try to figure out why the corrections
work (e.g., typically they describe some sort of systematic error).

In the case Raymond analyzes, the correction was commented out, so it
didn't make it in the final calculation. That's called "cruft". For me,
what Raymond analyzes is an IDL graphics file with cruft and a
self-describedly "artificial" ad hoc correction that was later
abandoned. That's not evidence of fraud, that's evidence of an empirical
scientist at work.

Raymond not knowing or pretending not to know this and yet presenting
his "findings" all cocky and with a lot of swagger does not strike me as
very intelligent. 

So with that stated for the record, I'll agree with Sam that there's
plenty of other places to discuss this and in the future I'll promise to
stick to free software related things on this list.

br
Carsten





More information about the Discussion mailing list