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We are debating a paper that appeared in 1998, that's seven years ago. From the software found by McIntyre it appeared that Dr. Mann used Excel, Matlab and fortran, all three are still current. The demand is not for the libraries but for the code written by Mann himself. I have been able to succesfully recover thirty year old 9track tapes, stored in a tropical envronment. I also have been able to transcribe my own tape archive from 1987, created for my peer reviewed publication. If Dr. Mann needs any help, I'll be glad to assist. I have a proven track record of data recovery.

Hans- Thanks for this post. I generally agree, though I would note that Rep. Barton has no oversight repsonsibilities of the IPCC (in fact, I'm not sure who, if anyone, does). If he wants to get a response from the IPCC he should focus his attention on scientists/administrators in NOAA, which houses the CCSP and, currently, the TSU and leadership of WG1. In 2001, President Bush asked the NRC to covene a committee to pass judgment on the IPCC finding. Rep. Barton could similalry ask the NRC to conduct a study of either the substance of the HS and/or the institutional processes involved. There are any number of avenues open to Rep. Barton. I agree that focusing on individual scientists is a bad idea.

Echoing Hans Erren, the request is for source code - not compiled binary - mostly Fortran. The source code can be easily recompiled for any of the newer machines. The source code can be readily inspected and the methodology understood - very difficult with binary. Additionally, if the recompiled binary - most likely with a new compiler - does not produce the same results, that is a good indicator that something is seriously wrong.

The benefit of source code - regardless of whether it is running or not - is that it is a mathematically precise language that makes each step of a process clear. A description of an algorithm in English is invariably ambiguous. Furthermore, the oft-complained of space limitations in journals mean that a comprehensive account of the process involved can not be given in the article. Finally, steps that a researcher may deem unimportant could turn out to be critical to getting the result. Thus, even if a researcher was given unlimited space to describe their algorithm in English - it would still be inferior to source code describing exactly what was done.

For example, when inverting ill-conditioned matrices the exact computational approach used has a disproportionate effect on the result (e.g., how much precision is used to store the numbers). However, absent access to source code, an algorithm description would almost never make it clear that this was occurring (either that a step in the process involved an ill-conditioned matrix or that the inversion was affecting the results).

Response to:

"However, this documentation often can not take the form of keeping runnable old codes of the applied algorithms, simply because the software is no longer consistent with quickly replaced hardware." So we have to ask : Is this Mann's problem ? Has Mann told Von Storch this ? Or is this only a general possibility, not specific to Mann ?

-- This was a general statement, had nothing to do specifically with Prof. Mann. I was just wondering if I could comply if somebody would ask me for the code of a climate model we used in the mid 1990s. Aspects of vectorization, optimisation, parallelization of the code and the like change damatically over the years. It's not a matter of Excel and Fortran 77.

-- Description of algorithms - should be done in math, not in English, Chinese or Lower German.

On the Call for Independent Review

Quoting above: "The IPCC has failed to ensure that the assessment reports, which shall review the existing published knowledge and knowledge claims, should have been prepared by scientists not significantly involved in the research themselves."

So who shall we get to review? John Bolton, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, their assistants? That is likely who we would end up with if we take this argument far enough. Expert review can be flawed and maybe the IPCC failed as claimed above. However I am certatin that a general policy to exclude those who have contributed to science from its summarization will, in the long run, throw the baby out with the bath water.

One aspect of the hockey stick controversy that has been largely ignored so far is the disquiting allegation by Professor David Deming (University of Oklahoma) of a deliberate strategy "to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

In his paper (Journal of Scientific Exploration, v.19, no.2) he claims that, in 1995, "a major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."
(see preprint at: http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/StateFear-Deming.htm)

I think the time has come to reveal whether this serious allegation is credible, and if so, who this 'major' climate researcher was and who this call for action was addressed to.

Benny Peiser

The problem with Mann is that he not only acted as a scientist but also influenced public opinion in a great manner and insofar acted politically.

John Daly, found in his Article : The `Hockey Stick':
A New Low in Climate Science (2000)

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

the following activities of Mann, acc. to his web-Side : Mann M.E., Personal Website - http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mem6u

„Michael Mann
At the time he published his `Hockey Stick' paper, Michael Mann held an adjunct faculty position at the University of Massachusetts, in the Department of Geosciences. He received his PhD in 1998, and a year later was promoted to Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, in the Department of Environmental Sciences, at the age of 34.
He is now the Lead Author of the `Observed Climate Variability and Change' chapter of the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR-2000), and a contributing author on several other chapters of that report. The Technical Summary of the report, echoing Mann's paper, said: "The 1990s are likely to have been the warmest decade of the millennium, and 1998 is likely to have been the warmest year."
Mann is also now on the editorial board of the `Journal of Climate' and was a guest editor for a special issue of `Climatic Change'. He is also a `referee' for the journals Nature, Science, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, JGR-Oceans, JGR-Atmospheres, Paleo oceanography, Eos, International Journal of Climatology, and NSF, NOAA, and DOE grant programs. (In the `peer review' system of science, the role of anonymous referee confers the power to reject papers that are deemed, in the opinion of the referee, not to meet scientific standards).
He was appointed as a `Scientific Adviser' to the U.S. Government (White House OSTP) on climate change issues.
Mann lists his `popular media exposure' as including - "CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, CNN headline news, BBC, NPR, PBS (NOVA/FRONTLINE), WCBS, Time, Newsweek, Life, US News & World Report, Economist, Scientific American, Science News, Science, Rolling Stone, Popular Science, USA Today, New York Times, New York Times (Science Times), Washington Post, Boston Globe, London Times, Irish Times, AP, UPI, Reuters, and numerous other television/print media" .

The IPCC is an arm of the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environmental Program. The lead agency would therefore be the State Department, probably through the Undersecretary for Global Affairs. NOAA/NWS also must play a strong role.

Interestingly, v. Storch et al in "Reconstructing Past Climate from Noisy Data" Science claim to have replicated the algorithm of MBH98.

There is also a further description of the algorithm at tp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MANNETAL98/METHODS/AlgorithmDescription.txt

Eli,

I note that the description of the algorithm at the link you provide is in English rather than maths (or German, or Chinese or Lower German). The existence of the additional readme file at that same location indicates that the algorithm description is not of itself perfectly clear. Perhaps Dr von Storch would care to comment on how useful he found that description in replicating the algorithm of Mann et al.

John, I take it you object to "multiply the number of apples by the number of pears". Come now, it is perfectly normal to describe an algorithm in natural language.

Eli,
I'm not saying it can't be done. But the more complicated it is the harder it gets. I have had many experiences where source code has made clear what a journal article confounded. The more complicated is the process, the harder it is to explain in English and the more room for confusion there exists. Mathematics (and source code as a mathematical language) is a much more natural way to express these sorts of things than any natural language

By way of corollary you might like to consider why there are so many lawyers in this world. If what you suggest were true there would never be any contract disputes heard in courts because the terms of the contract would be clear and unambiguous. Instead, lawyers are fully employed arguing over exactly what particular terms mean in contracts - English (or whatever) is far from clear and unambiguous even with the best will in the world.

John: I think you are being more than slightly tendacious. The method of MBH98 has been replicated by several people.

The standard is (I will quote from the AGU instructions to authors, although the equivalent can be found in almost all other journals) "A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to public sources of information to permit the author's peers to repeat the work."

The standard has been met.

The standard is not that a method can be replicated by every hobbyhorsist standing at the bar in the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The standard is not that a mathematical representation of any algorithm be presented.

In short you and many others are engaged in a moving the goalposts exercise.

Eli,

Depends what you mean by moving goal posts: I have not changed what I am arguing for, my goal posts are unmoved; I will argue, however, that the goal posts of disclosure as set out in, for example, the AGU guidelines, should be moved. Standards of disclosure vary by discipline and mine are set out here: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data_availability_policy.html. As you will notice, these are in excess of current AGU policies. I do not argue that MBH, or any other climate scientist for that matter, have not complied with the AGU guidelines. I argue that that standard should be higher. And to tie this back into the purpose of Prometheus, I argue it should be this way because the science is used by people other than the scientists' peers - it is used for public policy.

...and I just looked up tendentious and accept that. My point of view is controversial.

I think that Barton is correct in his request for Mann et. al. to document their data and methods in detail. To understand why, I'd like to point out an interesting parallel to another scientific case that came before Congress 15 years ago, cold fusion. Both cold fusion and the hockey stick carry three common elements: (1) an extraordinary claim; (2) huge economic consequences, and; (3) the response of the scientific community.

(1) Pons and Fleischmann made the extraordinary claim that they had produced significant nuclear fusion by chemical means, electrolysis of heavy water. And they had done it without producing much nuclear radiation of either alpha particles or neutrons. They had produced "cold fusion" in contradiction to the known physics of nuclear reactions and quantum mechanics. (2) If this were true, energy would suddenly become very cheap and abundant [and P&F would become richer than God because they held the patent and he didn't] The social and economic implications of this discovery were almost unimaginable and would change the world. (3) The physics community immediately tried to replicate the experiments and calculate, using known physics, to understand if the phenomenon was real. A few experimental groups "replicated" cold fusion, but the overwhelming majority did not. Quantum mechanical calculations of the nuclear physics also pointed to an false experimental result. Except for a few acolytes, no one bothers with cold fusion anymore.

(1) MHB98 made the extraordinary claim that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age never happened and that the twentieth century was the warmest in the last thousand years. This was in direct contradiction to hundreds of studies that showed the existence of both the MWP and the LIA. (2) The IPCC used MBH98 to push the Kyoto protocols which would cost the world trillions of dollars of lost economic activity because of the need to reduce human production of CO2. (3) The community of climate scientists appears to have accepted the validity of the MBH98 hockey stick despite the overthrow of years of research that shows otherwise. And, with the very public exception of McIntyre and McKitrick, it has done so without any debate. This is very unlike the case of cold fusion. Yes, there is "replication" of MBH98, but there was replication of cold fusion too.

In the case of global warming, Barton, by asking Mann et al for detailed justification of their work, is taking up the part played by the critics of cold fusion . This is a part that should have been played very loudly and vocally by climate scientists but hasn't.

Why don't some of the proponents that full disclosure has already occurred try writing up a program that replicates Mann's results and publish it (along with all source code). Use Fortran, Excel, and Matlab or whatever suits your fancy (as long as it is available to the public). I look forward to your response!

Already been done on sci.env, Frank. Thanks for asking.

Hans, if you're still checking this, we're not debating an 8-year old paper. The subject is von Storch's reaction to Barton's demands. please stay on topic.

Thanks!

D

a fascinating post. Hans argues that climate scientists, uniquely amongst all science, should be exempt from the requirement to record and keep a record of what they have done.

lab scientists keep lab notebooks for good reason. In the Pharmaceutical industry, lab records must be at the higher and statutorily-defined standard of GLP.

But when climate scientists get several million dollars to do research on computer, they can't even burn CDs or keep records on tape, because it is too difficult for the poor darlings.

What is wrong with this picture ?
yours
per

O Dan,

I was arguing that it is *only* eight years old, For a publication this young, there is zero negative effect for digital archive retrieval.
Mind you it wasn't a climate model, so Mann has no excuse to hide his code.

And another thing, the Barton letters are about MBH. So I think my comments are on-topic.