You sound like you don’t know many computer programmers

Good source control software for programming exists, and yet there are still plenty of people not using it, or managing to defeat the purpose of the system. It’s sadly true that many large projects do descend into chaos, even in the real world.

IanM

The process — and the resulting substance — are an entirely different kind of “science” than the hands-on, testable, repeatable, real-world applied science engineers are used to. I think this is part of the reason so many engineers are (perhaps rightly) astounded at the way climate science is carried out.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that climate science could be carried out any other way (after all, we’re talking about attempts to peer into the distant past and the distant future, rather than actual lab science), but it does mean that we should regard its results and conclusions with an appropriate amount of skepticism. In terms of certainty, accuracy, concreteness and so forth, so very much of climate science is not at all on the same footing as applied science and technology.

http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/meet-the-ipccs-youngest-lead-author/

Very junior people in their early 20′s without advanced degrees and have “worked for Greenpeace” as their only major qualification.

Donna lives in Steve’s neck of the woods in Fordville . . . maybe time to compare notes.

Wahl and Ammann (2006) also show that the impact on the amplitude of the final reconstruction is very small (~0.05°C …)

instead of the much more honest and open (though still inadequate)

it is unclear whether it [the MM criticisms] has a marked impact upon the final reconstruction

Then when this wording and process is challended the whole apparatus of IPCC (despite its code of conduct), UEA (despite its FOI policies), Royal Society (throwing Nullius in Verba out the window) and all the rest is deployed to maintain the deception.

After all, as Steve and everyone has said, the Hockey Stick has never been central to anthropogenic global warming theory. Why on earth did this strange group of people choose to close ranks to this degree? In software design we are taught to avoid a single point of failure at all costs. Why this absurd attempt to stand firm on something obviously flawed but otherwise so unimportant? (I know it had PR value in 2001 but really.) Who knows why. The select committee should give them a rocket. We’ll see what they manage.