Climategate computer codes: it is clear what to do

Not only have the Saudis warned that "Climategate" - the hacked East Anglia University CRU emails story - will be a topic at Copenhagen, but also the "Harry Read Me.txt" is about to hit the mainstream media fan. Newsnight has got hold of it - go to 11 mins 45.

Pajamas Media, who seem to be sane, have the story. They have spoken to a programmer who had looked at what the guy in my blog below(let's call him Harry) was doing.

Apparently he was trying to organise data with a programme that was not fit for purpose. Newsnight have picked it up the story.

OK.

Here is what we have to do.

What we have to do is pull all the CRU work out of the equation. Not because they are necessarily wrong, but because they are under suspicion.

I am confident that the Spaghetti Graph, relieved of one or two strands however many emanate from CRU, will still show significant warming.

The CRU work may or may not stand up to review. That will have to wait. The vital action now is to get a revised, CRU-free Spaghetti Graph where people can see them.

[Update: 4 Dec 15:21

Hokay.

I have spent most of the morning trying to disentangle CRU from the graphs.
Only 3 of the 9 studies in the Spaghetti Graph are not heavily dependent on CRU data, because they were doing the instrumental data - that is, collecting all the readings from all over the world, tidying them up, and rendering them into usable form - which is the part of the graph, the black line, which shows the major uptick in recent times.

I am still waiting for a couple of other lines of enquiry, but not holding my breath.

What I still do not understand is that there are three datasets, one held by CRU, one by NASA, and one by NOAA. There must be modern temperature workouts from them. Where are they?

Anyway, it looks as if we cannot work around the problem of diminished public confidence by finding a CRU-free temperature graph. We will just have to slug it out, making the case that the dataset is sound as any huge dataset can ever be, that Price's "trick" was just a workaround, and that Trenberth's "travesty" was an expression of frustration at a particular problem he was working at in the upper atmosphere data.

Ah well. Worth a try.
[Update: I found another way to work around the EAU/CRU data doubt, here.]


Brilliant video of an interview about the hacked emails with George Monbiot here.