I wonder if some of the scolds are starting to realize what they sound like when they hear each other.

All that scolding is just so counter-productive. It doesn't remotely accomplish what they think it accomplishes. When Sheryl Crow told you to use one square of toilet paper, did you even consider doing it or did you suddenly find yourself snickering internally about one square of toilet paper every time you heard a Sheryl Crow song?

Hi Jeffrey, long time.

Beats me. I've never thought that they were doing useful things, but figured that rationality was in short supply and that society would careen about drunkenly; as usual.

One theory is that corruption and incompetence make such people more attractive to one another, more trustworthy, since they wouldn't defect due to better arguments or new information; none of it was ever reasonable so that wasn't an issue.

If there is any hope of improvement my theory is that it will be an individual thing rather than a group move; that individuals will just get disgusted with themselves as they achieve so much less than they expect of themselves. They tire of their own nonsense.

It's a very small hope.

While I can hope they just get tired of their own nonsense, there are monetary and publicity-related reinforcements for these people that keep them spouting said nonsense. The CRU scientists couldn't have scored nearly as much funding for themselves had they not embraced activism and played down the uncertainties they admitted to each other in private. Those rewards, I'm sure, are signalling their brains that what they're doing is good. Ehrlich has never shut up and probably never will, despite being repeatedly proven wrong.

I'd also like to think that the public will start holding all the scolds up to their own standards. Two words: Jimmy Swaggart.

I did notice something interesting last night on the idiot box, Gary. The new Esurance commercial didn't mention one single thing related to the environment or being green as they have for the past year. Curious.

And ya gotta love this:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzA0MWFkNWMyZTA5YmU3ZTVlOGNhNmJkYjZiNWViZmU=

"It turns out that the 2035 prediction was a typo. The original paper on which the prediction was based had said the glaciers could be gone by 2350, but the IPCC guys read it as 2035 and Pachauri not only believed it, but when confronted with scientific evidence that even the 350 year prediction might be overblown, angrily defended the 25-year prediction as authoritative."

I've been paying some attention to that, expecting someone to do a definitive analysis of the issue that would give me a jump-off point for yet another experts-lack-expertise rant, or something more about why the whole idea of a meritocracy of very-smart-people or wise elders or whatever is laughable, or the foolishness of supposed intellectuals aligning themselves with concepts of centralization though the evidence is overwhelmingly that this is a poor organizing principle, which demonstrates that "intellectual" has little to do with intellect and even less to do with rationality. There's also a poor-experimental-design hook and a lack of quality in scientific efforts, especially things like their amateurish coding cobbled together for a one-off problem, their statistical incompetence, and the need for multi-disciplinary teams with heuristic diversity as well as skill diversity. Or something.

I think we have to overcome our fear (or embarrassment) of demoting someone back down to the level at which they were last competent.

Where are the competency tests for the highest positions in society? Pachauri's education/expertise lies in railroad engineering, not climate science. How'd he get to be head of the IPCC?

Speaking of certification... something as simple and mundane as the gas pump we all use has to be repeatedly checked and verified that it works exactly as it's supposed to, lest it cheat us out of a nickel's worth of gas, yet the climate models and modellers have never undergone a single verification procedure and they're the very basis for trillion-dollar policies made by bureaucrats everyday. WTF?

I see the difficulty and have some sympathy for their tasks. It starts off as a skunk works project with things slapped together by amateurs without industrial type quality controls or project management, but never gets the rewrites and gentrification that are required for such stinky stuff to become the basis for a growing edifice.

If you've ever ported some university ap or even just did a walk through on it you'll understand what I'm saying. There can be flashes of brilliance but also inconsistencies and general slovenliness. Their stuff isn't engineered. Everything is a prototype that never gets productized. It isn't just the implementation that is buggy, the ideas are never properly scrutinized either unless and until they are adopted by some enterprise that is liable for its performance.

They don't grok 6 sigma.

I had a similar experience as an advisor/volunteer for the solar bike and car team at the local junior college. I was a bicycle junkie at the time and a human-powered vehicle afficianado, riding 30-50 miles per day for years.

The school's solar car was somewhat bodged together and even had severe safety issues that had caused a bad crash racing in Australia. The bikes were all so badly out of tune, too. Riding as much as I did, I could feel the drag on my pedalling efficiency. Imagine what that did to the efficiency of a solar-powered motor assist. And once the batteries were drained, the cyclist would not only be fighting that inefficiency, but also carrying the dead weight of the batteries and motor.

The school had supplies and a decent number of corporate donors in the area. The equipment built by the school just had problems that were exactly as you describe the software above.

When competing in Australia, the team was up against cars that were built by corporate giants like Honda whose car was as slickly engineered as any solar car I've seen. The school's car, in contrast, seemed a model of something built by Soviet socialism. I'm not trying to insult them. The car was built by students and volunteers whenever they had time, many of which had little mechanical experience or experience with composites like I have.

What's interesting is that this was over 10 years ago and solar car/bike technology hasn't really gone much further in that time. Honda quit competing because they'd taken it as far as they could.

Said another way.

I have deep sympathy for the fellow who tried to reconcile the various poorly documented and conflicting data sets and buggy, unannotated code that the CRU has apparently depended on. And I can easily see how this happens. I've been on long-running projects, especially some years ago, where people start to lose track of which numbers came from where (and when), where the underlying raw data are stored, and the history of various assumptions and corrections that were made along the way. That much is normal human behavior. But this goes beyond that.

Actually, no, this is not normal human behavior, it is amateurism. There's a whole discipline dealing with this subject. Like the problems with statistical incompetence this is a matter of ignorance and lack of professionalism. No one should be surprised at the result since this is a well known problem. The incompetence of the researchers is matched by the incompetence of the administration.

These people need adult supervision.

"Actually, no, this is not normal human behavior, it is amateurism."

Nail on the head.