It's botch after botch after botch
Climategate Files: "Harry_Read_Me.txt" File Is a Must Read

I was watching Glenn Beck this afternoon, when I heard about this "Harry Read Me" file. I found this post at FloppingAces, which is a post of another post. That's how the internet works. But FloppingAces has it nicely laid out.

This file, 274 pages long, describes the efforts of a climatologist/programmer at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia to update a huge statistical database (11,000 files) of important climate data between 2006 and 2009. Here's a download of the entire file.

Here's a sample of the programmer's comments, part of his apparently unsuccessful efforts to update the database.

- “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)

- “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)

- “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)

This is from smalldeadanimals.com: Editor's note: for as much attention as the emails have received - and they are damning - it's the computer code that is revealing the real story behind the climate models. It includes corrupted and incomplete data, data manufacture and manipulation. programming failure, and program bias. The details are too lengthy and complex to include in this round-up post, but no commentary on this scandal is complete without a thorough examination of what is being uncovered in the CRU computer code files and documentation.

This is from devilskitchen: With the CRU emails having been examined, it seems that some people—mainly techies—are really starting to dig into the data files. These files are, as far as we can tell, temperature data, modelling results and other such useful files, i.e. these are the files produced and worked on by the CRU teams, as well as considerable amounts of information on—and code from—the actual computer modelling programmes themselves. In other words, these are the guts of CRU's actual computer models—the data, the code and the applications. And they are, by all accounts, a total bloody mess.