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I’m a programmer for a small college. FORTRAN is not one of my languages but I can follow it. I’ve also been lurking in programming forums and blogs where they are talking about this.

From the programming side of this the most damning thing I’ve learned is that they are not using source control! Any professional programmer uses some kind of source control, whether its CVS, Subversion, Mercurial, Git or even god awful SourceSafe. Source control allows you to track each revision in a code file, knowing when changes were made, what changes were made in what lines of code and who made the changes. This allows you to figure out when bugs were introduced to the code, for example. But it also allows you to roll the code back to a prior state.

How do I know they don’t use it? Because in these files “Harry” the programmer complains about identically named files being differentiated by where they reside in the folder tree. And not knowing which version of a program a previous programmer used to achieve a certain output. Also he complains about a file that has a comment with one ‘Modified Date’ but that same file has a different modified date in its file properties. Suggesting that the file has been modified in an undocumented way.

As I read Harry’s comments I feel sorry for him. He’s inherited a giant clusterf*ck of an application with completely inadequate documentation. He’d rather start over from scratch than try to maintain that monstrosity (we’ve all been there!)

So how does not using source control affect the science? Because real science is repeatable. Someone else should be able to follow the same procedure and produce the same result. If you don’t keep an accurate record of all the revisions of your code this is impossible.

Super plusgood (though long)explanation of UK FOIA request and CRU here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/24/the-people-vs-the-cru-freedom-of-information-my-okole%E2%80%A6/

excerpt, “Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.

This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.”

Take care, all.

I back what you had to say. I do not have a degree in programing but after many years working at Bell Labs writing C code, creating huge databases with Informix SQL RDS tools, Unix system administration....blah blah I understand the ramifications of your comments.
All professional programmers use Source Code Control. They have no choice.
The more I am seeing the more I am convinced without a doubt we see within the CRU, IPCC and many other organizations nothing but a bunch of hackers. Non professionals at best, and at worse.......sorry for my poorly constructed French... royal assholes. And these are the types Al Gore would bow down to. And most likely zero would follow in the glint of an eye.

Don’t know if you’ve seen this comment (below) from “Harry” but he sure does sound incredibly frustrated, noting the “hopeless state of our databases.” I’m no programmer and I’ve just been browsing around a bit in the comments included in the HARRY_READ_ME files posted at the links below, but this statement of despair does seem to indict the whole project of trying to make any scientific use of this incoherent mess of badly recorded and often undocumented data (at another point “Harry” noted that he “hates” this project for the spaghetti mess that has been dumped in his lap):

“OH #### THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m
hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform
data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”

http://di2.nu/foia/HARRY_READ_ME-35t.html

http://di2.nu/foia/HARRY_READ_ME-0.html

I have a question. Scientist I'm not yet my interest is great especially in the field of physics. To the point, in these climate models of theirs, are they or have they ever taken into account the effects of the sun? Volcanic activity perhaps (past or present)
It would seem that common sense would dictate that you cannot have any real debate on weather without taking in some constants like the sun, it's changes and the effect it will have on temperatures.
Volcanoes on the other hand should have some temporary effect.
Am I wrong? If not then what might these effects be?
Thanks allot,
Angela

Yes, totally agree with lack of source control. Here are some other observations:

They are not using a database to store the climate data -- they are using file based output from one program as an input filter to others
The software model described in the powerpoint in the root directory of the archive is crude and amateurish in terms of weighting the data inputs, describing the data inputs, and depicting the data inputs
They are not using version control on their documentation as well as the aforementioned lack of source code version control
The choices of IDL and FORTRAN imply a lack of engineering capability to convert the project to more conventional language (e.g. C++ or preferably Java)

This is not going to "go away" no matter how much our lunatic administration and the complicity mainstream press attempts to ignore it.