Software Verification Part Two

I have been emphasizing the difference between commercial and government software.

Commercial software goes through constant review. Mine gets reviewed 2-3 times a day by my boss.

Government software on the other hand has no quality control. Consider the Obamacare web site or the just announced USHCN software disaster.

The scientific method is at work on the USHCN temperature data set | Watts Up With That?

A bunch of scientists with no software training cranking out code, with the only review process being that the output confirms their biases. The error USHCN has uncovered is so blatant, that it obviously has never been through any kind of serious verification.

They were just happy to see a lot of warming, and it didn’t matter that global warming research, climate models, and US domestic policy in Washington were based on their graphs. It wasn’t worth spending two hours doing any verification.

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55 Responses to Software Verification Part Two

  1. geran says:

    The science was never with them.
    When the temps did not support their BS, they tried to adjust temps. (Climategate)
    When that didn’t work, they tried persecution.
    When that didn’t work they tried more recent “adjustments”.
    But, “someone” caught them.

    What will they try next?

    • Chad Bergen says:

      using combined “consensus” to try to marginalize the man who caught and exposed a huge part of the working scam, and spam it constantly until their cunning senses there’s not so much threat to Watts’ electric car dealership he runs from E-Bay.

    • Scott says:

      Hard drive loss the data..

  2. Stargazer says:

    “A bunch of scientists with no software training cranking out code, with the only review process being that the output confirms their biases.” Bingo! Even software ‘experts’ following strict development procedures make mistakes. Sometimes, big time fatal mistakes. That is why NASA created the Software Independent Verification and Validation facility in Fairmont, WV. They (and until I retired, me) did that for every manned and many critical unmanned missions that NASA has flown since the early 1990’s. You would be amazed at the defects we found. Many were mission killers. With regard to climate science, making multi-billion dollar policy decisions based on unvalidated models is obscene. People focus on the science. But even if (big if!) the science is correct, if the science is not correctly implemented in the software, the results will be garbage. You will never even know that unless the design and code have been validated. Nobody seems to be paying attention to this part of the problem.

  3. Ernest Bush says:

    Not quite on topic, but WUWT has posted an article apologizing (sort of) and giving you credit for finding real problems in the USHCN data. There is even some eating crow going on. The article title is : “The scientific method is at work on the USHCN temperature data set.” After reading the article I decided there is sarcasm at work in the title. There is a link to Judith Curry acknowledging that you were the first to point out the problems. Interesting day there.

    • Ernest Bush says:

      Just reread your article and saw you had the link.

      • geran says:

        In poker, bluffing is allowed. In science, bluffing is fraud. Watts tried his bluff, folded, and is now trying to claim he is onboard.

        At the site, WUWT, the word “fraud” is not allowed, go figure.

        • Chad Bergen says:

          My gosh geran you keep saying the precise symbol-for-symbol, word-for-word statements I would.

          Watts is one of those people who just make you ashamed to share dna with them.

    • Chad Bergen says:

      He’s no apologizing he’s claiming victory. He’s an unapologetic believer in the reality that Green House Gas Law has replaced Ideal Gas Law governing the calculation of the temperature of atmospheric air.

      Watts knows he has been caught but he is jamming his bets so he can move on to the selling books and doing tv talk circuits after his fellow eco-wackos finally “accept that they’ll appear onstage debating” him.

      He worked as neck breaker for a huge government scam. He’s a sociopath who dropped out of school.
      He liked weather so he became a TV weatherman and discovered the temperature sensor near the air conditioner and barbecue pit in Marysville, California, over by the railroad tracks across from the lake there. It’s at the fire station where he passed by on the way to his wife’s and out.

      He started the station review thing, and at first was an honest guy but he became so intoxicated by the concept of being ‘the man’ when his skeptical nature and media savvy ways taught him to simply admit it: he believed all, but a very small part of it.
      he lost his mind and views himself as a “leader of the people of the earth” in a grand revision of life on earth.

      Just weeks ago and heck THIS week he was and is fishing on posts for suggestions how he can “stay relevant” with offering to start an organization representing skeptics?

      Watts BELIEVES Hansen told the truth when he claimed the Ideal Gas Law with it’s ‘n’
      the Gas Constant ‘n’

      has been replaced by a strange new law called the Green House Gas Law whereby the Ideal Gas Law has been

      read what I say to you, guys – i.n.v.a.l.i.d.a.t.e.d. and no longer is true.

      He believes it was James Hansen and friends who discovered this which he has made it his mission to try to “discover” exactly

      “how much” etc.

      He’s a s.h.a.m.e.l.e.s.s. b.e.l.i.e.v.e.r. that r.e.a.l.l.y. has h.a.p.p.e.n.e.d. folks.

      He does not understand what it means when you tell him, “these models do not have the atmosphere obeying the Ideal Gas Law which prohibits what you are claiming ocurring.”

      Watts has vilified every single skeptic of the grand Hansen “the laws of gas mechanics have been misunderstood until we have these computers telling us things, and they can calculate way more than we could before, it can’t be wrong,” alarm story to get money.

      Ask him. Go ask him if he understands that because of the Ideal Gas Law, Hansens’ and friends, non Ideal Gas Law obedient models will never work.

      HE the COLLEGE DROPOUT
      will tell YOU the WORKING SCIENTIST
      that YOU
      don’t UNDERSTAND
      the LAWS of GAS MECHANICS the way HE
      and
      CLIMATOLOGISTS do.

      And INSULT you for even dreaming he’s still an honest man.

      I dare any and every one who reads this to try.

      He can’t believe that some people have been running a scam but he can believe

      NASA didn’t properly understand gas mechanics
      the way James Hansen and Michael Mann do.

      But he believes you and every other respectable scientist whose names he helped smear deserved it because they crossed him.

      I never managed to let the moron publicly eviscerate me because my father’s a retired law enforcement guy who finished up working

      • Chad Bergen says:

        *for the IRS.

        • geran says:

          Wow, and I just thought he was a phony….

        • Chad Bergen says:

          My apology for the ‘claiming victory’ I realize all you guys didn’t grow up with politicians in the house.

          The way he has it arranged just instinctively – he’s a media guy he has a feel for what makes which public act how –

          he’s named the post and written the post in outright rebellion against the acceptance of the judgement of the working, real, scientific world, saying it was “worth it to be wrong to be in the presence of Gavin Schmidt.”

          He is mocking the laws of consequence for his having helped mislead the world by bragging, he’s eating with one of the head criminals, like the whole world is supposed to just go ‘wow, he got to eat dinner with a grant scammer he’s COOL NOW. It’s OFFICIAL he’s IMPORTANT.

          He’s a hick who dropped out of college, worked as a neck breaker for a massive scam, and defies anyone to make him act like he’s sorry for long. THAT is what I read.

          LoL then again I grew up with that “My friends are important people” thug thing walking around me, and my dad would talk to my mom about things, to me about things, so I know what it is and what it looks like when a thug keeps posturing up.

          Sorry for not being clear

      • R. Shearer says:

        Wikipedia gives a more favorable impression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts_(blogger)

      • Paul Clark says:

        Well said. My attitude is to stay neutral on topics I know not of. Watts & Echenbach however insist they know the Greenhouse Effect is real, and proceed to attack those who do not agree, while not understanding their arguments.

        Watts’ video “proving” the Greenhouse effect seems silly — the idea you can get extra energy from a mirror. The experiment is just an exercise in measuring the effect of restricting convection around a bulb. There’s no control for the effect of just putting a (non-reflective) board near the bulb.

        He blocked me on Twitter after calling me a slayer (which is an accurate description of me).

      • Robert Austin says:

        Chad Bergan, over the top bullshit. Watts made a mistake, he’s human. I have followed both Watt’s and Steven’s blogs for quite a few years and both have contributed immensely to challenging the mess that is the surface temperature record. Of the two, I hold Steven (Tony) in the higher regard as he has gone it more or less alone in his indomitable way. But egos happen. And Watts admitted to eating crow over the issue. Steven labored in the wilderness for years so lets hope this recognition draws attention to the significant body of work that he has created. He now has the attention of the great Curry. I think this incident will have a positive effect in the climate blogosphere with Steven (Tony) gaining credibility and stature. It couldn’t happen at a better tine with Steven (Tony) scheduled to speak at the Heartland event in Vegas.

    • I will respond to that later.

    • Eric Barnes says:

      IMO, 95% of the time academic = conceited moron.

    • Send Al to the Pole says:

      I went over to read that….. and I can’t believe the very first thing they do is run to NCDC …. to tell them about the “error”……error? When will the lights come on?

      This needs to go off like a BOMB in the media. Like the earth shaker it is. AGW is DEAD.
      (of course, it always was, but now it’s official)

      They should all be long past respecting these criminals.

  4. Eliza says:

    You might go down in history as the person who cracked AGW.LOL

  5. RossP says:

    It is interesting to skim through the comments on the WUWT thread —loaded with Nick Stokes and Steve Mosher. That tells me you have hit the jackpot SG. They must be part of the “rapid response” team for the topic !!!!

  6. jimash1 says:

    I for one have never doubted.
    Congrats on some kudos.
    Mosher was really hamming it up as “He that doth protest too much “.

  7. RossP says:

    I’m not a computer wiz , so what has surprised me with issue is that these others like Anthony Watts have not been able to see something that was so simple. SG does not do big long detailed posts –they are simple and to the point with very easy to understand graphs .
    Has AW’s ego got in the way at times ?

    • What’s astonishing to me is that Zeke and others on his blog are still beating their anomaly/infilling dead horse.

      • Exactly. I asked repeatedly about the fucking about with raw data. No answer. Instead it is about the ‘correct’ way to calculate anomalies. Who cares?

        The global climate, to the extent there’s such a thing, cares two hoots about thousands of thermometer records. A handful of dozen well-maintained records spread out across the area in question should be good enough. On the other hand, as an interested layman, I do care about reporting synthetic data as real for the same temperature stations.

        This episode just leaves me disgusted. I had marginal trust in the abilities of some of these people concerned. It is clear some of them are full-blown incompetents who like to wallow in math. Why do these people claim the mantle of speaking for global warming skeptics?

    • Phil Jones says:

      One problem is that “Official” data is almost always manipulated data… whether it be temperature, sea level data… any Hoaxers can go to the NOAA site and make a chart showing warming.. nobody else has dug deeper into the data …

      NOAA is supposed to be an official organization of record, have credibility, integrity. . Etc… that’s why Steven ‘ s finds here are such a blow to the Hoaxers… Their lies are exposed….

  8. Phil Jones says:

    Steven… here’s a $10,000 donation for all your hard work… go get em!!

    https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-sprint-us&source=android-browser&q=physics+professor+10k+global+warming

    • That is complete crap. No one thinks that humans don’t influence the climate.

      Tell that guy to behave like an adult and come debate me.

    • markstoval says:

      My goodness. One of the head data manipulators showed up.

      What temp are you going to make 1930 this week Phil?

    • Phil,

      If you guys want to debate me, you are going to have to debate the actual me – not the fake straw man you created to marginalize me.

    • Tel says:

      The actual link is here…

      http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com.au/p/10000-global-warming-skeptic-challenge.html

      The exact phrase is “I will award $30,000 of my own money to anyone that can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring”

      Of course, since he is judging it himself, it’s unlikely he will ever pay. The best you can hope to do is send him something he either can’t answer or won’t answer, or his answer is extraordinarily lame so you can show your friends.

      I think it’s fair to ignore things like UHI because they are local and Keating specified global so we can throw out all local effects and only consider global ones.

      Someone asked him whether “man made” implies more than 50% attributable to humans, and Keating said he wouldn’t put an exact percentage on it, thus attempting to actually prove cause and effect down to less than 1% man made component it pretty darn difficult. That pretty much writes off any seriousness in this challenge.

      Perhaps a valid argument is that “the scientific method” always implies that we only make statements to the limit of our measurement accuracy. Since the amount of human influence at the global scale is swamped by natural variability (and we know this because we can check many historical examples of natural variability) the correct scientific conclusion is that we should regard the man made effect as insignificant.

      • B says:

        The last paragraph is a good one and indeed a simple and elegant method, but I just read some of the responses to entries on the 10K challenge blog. Those entering have to use the scientific method but the judge does not. He may make arguments by authority, use mainstream news sources as cites, etc and so on. Can’t win an AGW debate if arguments by authority are allowed because the highest authorities profit from man made global warming and thus support it. It’s like arguing the Copernican system of the solar system but the church’s view is correct because they are the authority and they get to cite all the folks that came up with the earth centric model as supporting authorities.

      • Jason Calley says:

        Yes, it is a sucker’s bet. He asks for “proof” — but science does not work by proof. Something may be disproved by a contradicting observation, but the best we can hope for in science is “true to our best available evidence.” “Proof” is for mathematics.

        Even worse, the person offering the bet says that he is the sole and final judge of whether he has lost the bet. This is a fair bet?

        Paraphrased, the bet is — “I will pay $10,000 to anyone who can convince me to both: a) publicly renounce my stated opinions and b) pay them $10,000.

        Sucker’s bet…

    • Robert Austin says:

      Chris Keating must know that there can be no scientific proof for his statement. Since I assume that he is a scientist, his challenge is dishonest and dishonorable. Additionally, as Steven implies, it invokes the straw man argument since rational skeptics acknowledge that man’s activities alter the Earth’s climate to some theoretical extent. So Phil, what kind of person are you in thrusting this overt crap at Steven?

      • Phil Jones says:

        It’s a good opportunity to bring a spotlight on data manipulation … as outlined here… get some visibility on the lies.

        Of course he won’t pay… I get that guys… but consider that by presenting Global Warming as a lie.. using facts and info presented here… If the underpinnings of the data are manipulated and CO2 sensitivity factor is really small … we’ll then the basis for today’s Climate Change models is false.. thus there’s no Global Warming and only an immeasurable amount of man made induced Climate Change.

        I say take on the challenge … bring the lies and stupidity of the hoaxers to light … shine the spotlight on this guy and make him defend it… he’s opened himself up..

  9. JN says:

    This has been one of the most fascinating couple of days in the climate debate ever. Great work, Steve (Tony). You mentioned you had as many hits as there are residents in Wyoming. Hopefully by next week, you’ll have as many as there are residents in California.

  10. Eric Barnes says:

    Thanks Steve!

  11. Fred from Canuckistan says:

    Wonder if Mikey and Gav will mind sharing a cell with Phil?

    Better than with Bubba.

  12. clipe says:

    The real Phil Jones might be stupid. But not that stupid.

  13. northernont says:

    Dear God,,and to think the EPA used the conclusions of these manufactured temp datasets to help push their CO2 endangerment finding through the Supreme Court and ultimately onto US companies through more regulations.

    • Gail Combs says:

      That was the whole point. It is a giant scam to rape the peons.

      The name of the game is to “Break the Window” (Coal plants) so the public has to buy new ones before the old ones are worn out.

      It is actually an old scam in the Bureacracy/Regulation/Cronyism business. It is one of the reasons US farmers were on average LOOSING $14,000/year farming.*** Every time the milking parlor or chicken house or whatever got paid off the regs got changed and the perfectly good equipment no longer met regulation. Therefore the farmer had to borrow money again to put in the new equipment. This meant the farmer was always working for the lender and never himself.

      *** When that information got out during the ‘Farm Wars’ the USDA ‘solved the problem’ by including in the farmer’s ‘Income’ the yearly rental value of his home on the farm as $1000 plus per month.

      • B says:

        And there Gail we have what’s behind the housing prices, college tution, etc and so forth. Flood the systems with cheap money created from thin air to bid up prices and now everyone ends up becoming debt slaves if they don’t want to live without. The problem is we have a lot of idiots who buy based on monthly payments so it works. Prices get bid up. Spike the interest rates, foreclose, pick up the assets for pennies, centralize the real wealth.

        It’s not enough for them to have thousands or millions of times what they could ever imagine, everyone else must have nothing.

  14. Send Al to the Pole says:

    THIS was one of the things I was wondering about:

    “They are taking this seriously, they have to the as final data as currently presented for USHCN is clearly wrong. John Neilsen-Gammon sent me a cursory analysis for Texas USHCN stations, noting he found a number of stations that had “estimated” data in place of actual good data that NCDC has in hand, and appears in the RAW USHCN data file on their FTP site…”

    Absolutely BUSTED. FRAUD. LIARS. Why are they running to NCDC when they obviously are flat lying? They should call it what it is, just as you (Tony) have been doing here all along. They’re just going to provide those jerks with cover.

  15. QV says:

    The trouble is, when they say “the models prove it” a lot of ignorant people assume it must be true,

  16. Stephen Richards says:

    Stargazer says:

    June 28, 2014 at 10:26 pm

    With regard to climate science, making multi-billion dollar policy decisions based on unvalidated models is obscene

    Your are absolutely on the nail. OBSCENE. UKMO, NOAA, NASAGISS. You hear? OBSCENE !

  17. Stephen Richards says:

    QV says:

    June 29, 2014 at 8:32 am
    The trouble is, when they say “the models prove it” a lot of ignorant people assume it must be true,

    ALL ignorant people say it must be true. Oblarny, Bower, the EU included.

  18. Stephen Richards says:

    Robert Austin says:

    June 29, 2014 at 3:25 am

    You are right, Robert. I have donated un peu to AW because Ilike some of his work. At the beginning of the life of his site it was just like Steven’s. Independent, clear thinking. Then like mosher et al it brought him into contact with ‘famous’ people and his vision changed to wanting to be the ‘most read blog in the world’.

    I wrote a comment at his blog saying how unacceptable his actions were and the excuses he gave were just that. However, it is still a very good blog and very useful and it isn’t overtly pro-AGW.

    Stop slagging off our fellows travellers and take yo cue from Steven G and Steve Mc.

  19. Stephen Richards says:

    Gail Combs says:

    June 29, 2014 at 2:42 am
    That was the whole point. It is a giant scam to rape the peons.

    Don’t peons (should be pion) on many english sites. French origin ?

    • Gail Combs says:

      Urban Dictionary: peon
      http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=peon

      Urban Dictionary
      Someone with the lowest social standing, such that commoners may pee on them with impunity. social level below serfs, untouchables, and freshmen.

      According to Daniel Estulin the Bilderbergers call us the “Great Unwashed” so that definition seems about right.

  20. Stephen Richards says:

    Phil, why don’t you take the challenge if you think it’s viable. AND if you don’t take the challenge come back here and explain why.

    Put your effort where your BS is.

  21. SouthernLogic says:

    I have always wanted a real AUDIT of the climate data and programs used to make the predictions. By some big accounting firm. If the claims are true this should be welcome news as their results would pan out. Otherwise, the follow up audit would be to find how much money has been wasted on this junk science, and a basis for redirecting grant money to more productive areas.

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