Climate

I’m reading the to-and-fro and what’s shocking from the AGW proponent camp is this fixation that “there is no conspiracy”. That’s not the point of what seems to be evident in the emails and source code. What seems to be the problem is that science was corrupted. Science requires openness to both the theories and the data. If new data comes to light that contradicts a given theory then the theory must be modified. Same holds for any given model. If data suddenly shows the model to be faulty, the model needs to be reworked. That’s just good science. A lot of the noise going back and forth can be resolved if both sides would just come the realization and agreement that what we need is a neutral body to simply store all the data, all the algorithms, all the models, etc. That way no one is ever going to be pestered with access to information requests and anyone who wishes to use the data and software can and if they feel there’s something worthy of publication it can be so presented.I do note some on both sides of the argument are already espousing a fully open structure. This is

Read more »

As a security guy I’ve been pinged by the news about the East Anglia hack, the one about the climate site that was hacked with a slew of emails, data, and code swiped. Whenever something like this happens people wonder if it can happen to their site. Of course, the answer is yes. But we don’t have the full context of the hack. Was it really a hack or was it an inside job? There’s a big difference. An inside job doesn’t necessarily require actually breaking into the system while a proper, outside hack does. Until we find out what actually transpired we won’t know if the systems were truly compromised or not. Unfortunately, if the hack was well executed it might be very difficult to tell if it was an inside job or an outside hack. Such is the problem with modern computer systems and the complexity that arises from their high interconnectedness. All that said, there is another issue: the data that was taken. Leaving aside the legality of whether or not the data should have been released publicly or not, either via this supposed breach or via an FOI, the fact is that it has raised the

Read more »

I feel for the folks in the US Midwest. This storm has dropped between 0.5cm to 2.5 cm of ice causing general havoc. We went through The Ice Storm of 1998 which is considered the worst ice storm in recent history — dumping 5-7 times as much ice as the Midwest is experiencing. Some folks were without power for weeks and the cleanup took months, if not years. You can still see the damage from that storm 10 years later! So, for the sake of Midwesterners suffering through their storm, I hope it abates soon. A beautiful natural disaster to be sure. But still an unpleasant one to live through.

Read more »