The Newbies Guide to Climategate

Three days ago, who would have guessed that some computer geek's rambling complaints regarding data integrity would lead to "ClimateGate", the best present the Republican Party has received since "MonicaGate"?

How much of ClimateGate is spin and how much is substance? These days, opinions seem about as polarized as my Maui Jim sunglasses. To assist you in your efforts to find the truth regarding ClimateGate, we've created the new, patent-pending spin-o-meter. A spin-o-meter reading of one indicates the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth--straight from the horses mouth. A spin-o-meter reading of ten is anything coming out of Ann Coulter or Al Franken's mouth.

We fed three statements regarding ClimateGate and the Harry Readme File into the spin-o-meter and here are the results:

One: All of science has been undermined by ClimateGate.

Spin-o-meter level: 10

Science is dying! The sky is falling! No, science hasn't been undermined. Believe it or not, scientific scandals aren't as unusual as we'd like to think. Really, this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise-science can be considered the pursuit of knowledge and those doing the pursuing are human. They've inherited all of the same character flaws the rest of us have. You don't get funded for failure and academia, just like everyone else, is fighting for its share of the pie. Anyone who believes that "science" is infallible probably still believes the world is flat and eggs are bad for you (although I've lost track of that one-they may be bad for you again).

Two: Support for legislation combating climate change will disappear.

Spin-o-meter level: 5

This largely depends on how much you believe in global warming. If you firmly believe global warming is occurring then you most likely believe that support will eventually grow. However, a recent Gallup poll shows more people than ever (since 1998 which is technically before the turn of the century-doesn't that make you feel old) believe global warming is exaggerated. Certainly the release of the hacked CRU emails and the Harry Readme File will encourage this trend.

Three: The CRU data is completely valid and the hacked climate files are a non-issue.

Spin-o-meter level: 8

In a Bill-Clinton-worthy article, the Huffington Post attempts to explain away several of the more damaging emails by delving, in depth, into the finer nuances of scientific linguistics. Apparently, terms like "trick"and "beat the crap out of him" are commonly used by scientists to compliment one another on scientific breakthroughs. While the hacked emails will bring delight to conspiracy theorists' hearts, the most damaging information comes from the Harry Readme File which documents a programmer's attempts to perform data reduction on the underlying climate data used for much of CRU's research.

Since the vast majority of climate research is done using simulation and much of the data is pulled from disparate sensors in disparate locations, it's really not surprising that the data is less than perfect. Due to computational constraints, simulations often use simplifying assumptions. Between tweaking for performance and data reduction, a significant amount of ideology can often leak into the results and the programmer's log in the Harry Readme File indicates the possibility of significant ideology leakage. ClimateGate and the Harry Readme File will, hopefully, spark a useful debate regarding when simulated results and scientific consensus are truly sufficient to motivate legislation.

Hopefully our spin-o-meter has helped elucidate the issues surrounding ClimateGate and the Harry Readme File. Up next, the spin-o-meter takes on issues of much greater importance such as: is Oprah truly leaving television?