Climaquiddick: The Code Stories

According to CBS News, CRU’s Fortran code contained programmer notes, including the following:

“Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU's Fortran code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!" and "APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION." Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: "Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend - so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!"

Only 5% of the data released is email; the rest is code. The code is examined by a real s/w engineer, with disastrous results:
They were unable to replicate their own outputs.

“I think there’s a good reason the CRU didn’t want to give their data to people trying to replicate their work.
“It’s in such a mess that they can’t replicate their own results.”

And,

“But put this in the context of what else we know from the CRU data dump:

1. They didn’t want to release their data or code, and they particularly weren’t interested in releasing any intermediate steps that would help someone else

2. They clearly have some history of massaging the data — hell, practically water-boarding the data — to get it to fit their other results. Results they can no longer even replicate on their own systems.

3. They had successfully managed to restrict peer review to what we might call the “RealClimate clique” — the small group of true believers they knew could be trusted to say the right things.

As a result, it looks like they found themselves trapped. They had the big research organizations, the big grants — and when they found themselves challenged, they discovered they’d built their conclusions on fine beach sand.

But the tide was coming in”.

I'd say more like a tsunami, while their feet are stuck in the muck and mire they made themselves....