" … [My attempted corrections] will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad, but I really don’t think people care enough to fix ’em, and it’s the main reason the project is nearly a year late.”
Dr. Ian (Harry) Harris,
NOTE:
This report is based
on Harry's direct quotes,
and how other people
-- often computer experts --
interpreted the Harry
Read Me file in 2009.
Harry's frustrations at work,
are expressed in his own words,
never intended to be read
by anyone else.
His words are an indirect
way of judging the quality
of temperature data, and
one temperature database
that he worked on.
The honesty of his notes
is hard to judge, since no one
officially interviewed Harry.
But I really
liked the fact
that his notes were
meant to be private
-- they seem totally
uncensored.
Harry writes things
an employee might
be thinking, that would
be valuable for his
superiors to know,
but would never be
told to them.
(That also happened
in the large corporation
I worked for, for over
27 years -- it took
anonymous hard
copy (on paper)
questionnaires
to get that kind of
raw information
from engineers, and
even then, they very
rarely left a phone
number for followup
questions).
Harry's
"private" notes
were hacked,
meaning there was
absolutely no time
for him to delete words
he didn't want others
to read ("sanitize" them).
This Harry Read Me article
contains some of the same
quotes as my first article,
plus likely explanations
of what Harry's words
actually meant.
I've borrowed the
explanations from bloggers
who had analyzed the notes
back in 2009.
Mainly from people
who said they were
computer programmers.
CONCLUSION:
We have uncensored
documentation of a
three year effort by
a Climate Research
Unit (CRU) scientist /
computer programmer.
He had complete
access to all the data,
access to all the code,
access to all the people
who developed the code,
and access to the
climate models.
Yet after three
years of very
frustrating work,
he could not fix
one CRU database,
so that it would
merely duplicate
CRU’s previously
published global
climate numbers.
If Harry could not
do it, that means
CRU’s published
climate data cannot
be reproduced,
(even by themselves),
so there is no point
in anyone else trying !
Or taking their global
average surface
temperature seriously !
I would think a database
should be fixed BEFORE
global average temperatures
are calculated and reported,
but perhaps I'm too logical
for goobermint work ?
THE BIG PICTURE:
The Harry Read Me.txt
file is 274 pages of notes,
mainly computer code.
It describes efforts
of a climatologist /
computer programmer
at the Climatic Research
Unit (CRU), of the UK
University of East Anglia.
Harry was working on
a huge statistical database
(11,000 files)
of important climate data,
between 2006 and 2009.
Historical temperature
data are too important
to be left in the hands
of people who have
been so sloppy
with the collection
and management
of the data.
It appears Harry's task
was to "bend "data
until until they complied
with previously published
global climate numbers.
It's possible Harry
doesn't matter at all,
because historical
temperature data
get repeatedly
"adjusted" to create
more global warming
out of thin air.
What difference does
raw data quality make,
if there are repeated
and arbitrary
"adjustments"
almost always
increasing the rate
of global warming ?
"Inconvenient" data
are arbitrarily changed,
sometimes 50 to 100
years after the fact.
For one example:
The global cooling
from 1940 to 1975,
as CO2 levels rose
(rising CO2 should have
cause global warming),
convinced
a few scientists
in the mid-1970s
that a new ice age
was coming.
Today, if the
very same scientists
looked back at 1940
through 1975 data,
one dataset would show
NO warming, and others
had cut the previously
reported warming by
half to two thirds !
Reason:
Because government
bureaucrats can do
anything they want to do,
with temperature data,
to promote their coming
global warming "crisis".
And they definitely don't
want to show 35 years,
from 1940 through 1975,
with global cooling, while
CO2 levels increased --
that's an inconvenient
relationship of CO2 and
the global average
temperature.
SUMMARY:
HARRY_READ_ME.txt file
(700kB)
is a three year journal
of a programmer describing
everything he tried to do
with data, and models,
in an effort to reproduce
existing results CRU
had previously published.
Dr. Ian (Harry) Harris,
of the CRU,
had the specialty
of “dendrochronology”
( and data manipulation ! ).
Comments in his file
make it clear “Harry”
tried for three years
to recreate CRU’s
published results,
but he failed.
The hacked ClimateGate
emails confirmed what
we have known all along.
"Climate" scientists are
strongly biased to present
a "consistent" narrative of
a coming global warming
crisis, and will lie, mislead,
and generally cut corners
in an effort to better support
their computer model-based
global warming predictions.
No one wants
their predictions
to be wrong !
Historical climate data
appear to be a mess.
The coming climate
change crisis is
clearly not about
good science.
It's about more
money to spend,
and more power
for leftist politicians,
... and permanent
job security for
their government
bureaucrat
"scientists".
Politicians want
to remake (blow up)
the U.S. economy
with a Green New Deal,
lowering our
standard of living,
at great expense,
to "fix" the climate !
Their scary predictions
are based on historical
surface temperature data
of dubious quality, and a
never-changing
CO2 - temperature
theory from the 1970s,
that produces
ALWAYS WRONG,
predictions of the
future climate.
Are they insane ?
No, they'd love to have
more power to tell
everyone else how to
live their lives.
Leftists love to do that
... which they now justify
by (falsely) claiming
they are trying to save
the planet for the children
(a planet that already has
a great climate, and
doesn't need saving).
The only insane people
are those who sit back
quietly, and let this
science fraud continue !
This climate science blog,
since 2014, is my attempt
to NOT sit back.
Doing so would allow
leftist politicians to seize
more and more power,
using their wild guess,
always wrong, scary
climate predictions
(science fraud)
to virtue signal.
Our U.S. government
is already too powerful.
DETAILS:
The consensus
in 2009 was that
Harry was handed
a mess to sort out,
so his comments
are reveal
a lot about
the state of the
CRU's HadCrut
temperature data.
CRU temperature data
are supposed to be the
gold standard, yet earlier
paper records are “missing”,
and the computer records
are not high quality.
The READ ME file
is a personal diary
of Harry's frustrations,
that doesn't inspire
any confidence in
CRU data publications.
The computer
coding, along with
the programmer's
apparently
unsuccessful
efforts to
complete the project,
involve data that are
the foundation of
climate alarmism.
The database
included the
temperature data
from hundreds of
weather stations
around the world,
precipitation
measurements
from 1901 to 2006,
sun / cloud computer
simulations, etc.
The CRU at East Anglia
University had been
considered by many
as the world's leading
climate research agency.
The CRU claimed
to have the world's
largest temperature
dataset.
CRU data were
incorporated into
the United Nations
Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate
Change's 2007
report.
The 2007 IPCC report
is what the U.S.
Environmental
Protection Agency
acknowledged
'relied on most heavily'
when concluding
that carbon dioxide
emissions were
a pollutant that
endangered public
health, and should
be regulated.
The programmer's quotes
included here, are only
a fraction of what he wrote.
What a "Harry
Read Me"
comment
REALLY meant
can only be
interpreted
by others.
But we do know
Harry was not happy
with the quality of the CRU
climate data, and the quality
of the database used to store
and manipulate the numbers.
Even if source raw data
had been "perfect",
the quality of the database
could cause serious problems,
such as:
-- Making individual
raw data numbers
impossible to track,
and verify,
arbitrarily "adjusting"
raw numbers,
filling in missing data
with inaccurate guesses,
and combining numbers
in a way that produces
an inaccurate global
average temperature.
QUOTES:
Here are some
of the most
popular quotes
-- many included
in my first
"Harry" article,
but without the
page numbers:
- "But what are all those monthly files? DON'T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that's useless ..." (Page 17)
- "It's botch after botch after botch." (18)
- "The biggest immediate problem was the loss of an hour's edits to the program, when the network died ... no explanation from anyone, I hope it's not a return to last year's troubles ... This surely is the worst project I've ever attempted. Eeeek." (31)
- "Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite." (37)
- "... this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!" (45)
- "Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!" (47)
- "As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless." (57)
- "COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn't open until 1993!" (71)
- "What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah -- there is no 'supposed,' I can make it up. So I have : - )" (98)
- "You can't imagine what this has cost me -- to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a 'Master' database of dubious provenance ..." (98)
- "So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option -- to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations ... In other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad ..." (98-9)
- "OH F--- 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." (241).
- "This whole project is SUCH A MESS ..." (266)
Ian "Harry" Harris appeared
to be creating a different data set
of temperature readings,
that excluded Alpha values
-- eliminating data
that posed a problem
for the "consensus"
global warming narrative.
Ian "Harry" Harris claimed
Dr. Tim Osborne was using
the wrong temperature values,
when he was performing
comparisons with temperature
anomaly values.
Harry was able to get
the precipitation results
to comply with Dr. Tim
Osborne's program,
but only after replacing
questionable numbers
with a default filler value
of "-9999".
Harry indicated
that he and Tim
still had results
that differed by 5% !
Precipitation / temperature
data file dates were altered,
but new data were not actually
entered on the modified dates.
The final version of the
precipitation files, that were
compiled by Dr. Tim Osborne,
could not have been using
the latest precipitation
database (Harry said so).
The synthetic (made up)
cloud precipitation values
were missing from 1996-2000,
after having been lost by
someone named "Mark".
Not able to find
a good database
with precipitation values
(because everything
was undocumented),
Harry decided that
he would just pick one
he thought would be
good enough to compile
precipitation results,
into a standard
grid model.
There had been 6,003
missing precipitation /
temperature values,
out of a possible
15,942 readings,
that were never
recovered.
There were over 200
weather stations with
a temperature reading
of '0' for their grid cells,
from 1901-1996
(mainly in North Africa
and the west coast
of South America).
Synthetic (made up)
data were invented
to "infill" early years
for large regions
with few, if any,
weather stations.
That was often done
to "extend" the record
for regions where the
for number of weather
stations had increased
over the years, until
the coverage was
finally satisfactory.
I've focused here
mainly on land surface
temperature data.
Ocean temperature
data quality is
much worse!
And oceans account for
71% of Earth's surface !
The problems are
Insufficient coverage,
arbitrary "adjustments".
and five or six changes
in ocean temperature
measurement methodologies.
Not once in my 22 years
of climate science
reading have I ever come
across a logical comparison
of ALL the different ocean
measurement methodologies
used in the past 140 years,
tested at the same time,
at the same location
in the ocean !
The goal would be to determine
if changes in measurement
methodologies artificially
created ocean warming,
or cooling.
In real science,
you would want
to know that.
But government
climate "science"
does not care --
and that's the mark
of junk science !