Suggestions for coding standards

rowing-and-running-pace-and-speed Actually, its just another pile of links thinly disguised.

We thought that mandating python-style indents with pre-processing back into C might be nice. Alternatively some scheme whereby indent levels reflect coder status, so you can see immeadiately what not to fiddle with. And of course, what font should the code be in?

Watching the Deniers says There will be no US Congressional investigation into "Climategate": or how global warming sceptics got duped. And may be correct. Even the wackos aren't really wacko enough to take on the science, it seems: the froth is just for the voters, who are easily fooled.

At last, Tamino confesses all: yes, Phil Jones was wrong. Hopefully that will make the septics happy. Actually that looks possibly publishable. It does however raise the issue of how your dof should be adjusted when you remove "noise". I've asked there, belatedly.

If you don't erg, Cracknell versus Pinsent will mean little. What I like is the way you can't tell who has won, afterwards.

Tim Worstall channelling Harry Hutton is worth a larf.

I don't really do bio-diversity here, other than being generally in favour of it and recognising its loss as being one of the important but hard-to-quantify costs of GW. But Eli makes an effort.

James in ungrateful but can you blame him?

And to conclude, I'd like to say: TF-288! TF-288! TF-288!.

ps: Joke, from the letters page of the Economist: Three religions are asked, "when does life begin?". At conception replies the Catholic priest. At birth, says the Calvinist parson. When the children grow up and leave home, says the rabbi (that one is for Kevin).

pps: even though I'm late to the party, because it looks like being popular, Getting things right (from RC, about the silly NGO that managed to convince itself of 2.4 oC warming by 2020; see-also Bart's take)

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"There will be no US Congressional investigation into "Climategate": or how global warming sceptics got duped."

The Oversight Committee backtracked and it's an option again. Maybe they didn't get permission first? (see UPDATE)
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/01/issa-cools-global-warming-investiga…

[Well, we can only hope they make a mistake and do investigate -W]

"Tamino... I've asked there, belatedly."

Being clueless, and especially on such things, how does Tamino's response affect your take on it?

[It makes his work more plausible and more likely to be publishable. He'd have to provide a bit more detail that "yes" to get published, though :-) -W]

"[It makes his work more plausible and more likely to be publishable. He'd have to provide a bit more detail that "yes" to get published, though :-) -W]"

Wouldn't that put the cat amongst the pigeons, especially for Richard Lindzen who started the "no statistically warming since 1995" thang in the first place (via Watts and Motl). Morano might have to charge overtime which, in this instance, I wouldn't mind ;)

"[Well, we can only hope they make a mistake and do investigate -W]"

They'll probably leave the option hanging in the air in case of another manufactroversy. But, yes, hopefully they will. A year ago it would have seemed something to worry about, but if the best the "sceptics" have are Curry, Michaels and Lindzen, with senior US Navy officers also saying the aforementioned are wrong and delay is a threat to national security, it would be worth getting a barrel of popcorn for while watching on CSPAN. I suspect the Oversight Committee know this all too well, and more. In fact, it's interesting that they did go cool on the subject now that they're in office, assuming they now have access to far more info than they previously would have had.

Actually life doesn't begin till both the kids leave home and the old dog dies.

[Yep, that was what the Economist had, too. But we don't have a dog -W]

By Paul Middents (not verified) on 23 Jan 2011 #permalink

TF-288 is mining brown coal which is a step below cow shit for heating value. If any German asks you what they should do to help stop global warming, mention that they need to bag 288. But it is a great video:)

Font for coding??
Make sure you use the correct font!
After all, if you really want to it to loop, you better make sure the computer knows that!

Or something like that...

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 23 Jan 2011 #permalink

"what font should the code be in?"
Thanks, I can't wait to use that one on my PHB.

Re 'Getting things right', here are two consecutive sentences from sworn expert testimony presented at the first of the two recent Ratcliffe-on-Soar trials:

'For the first time ever it is likely that within five years there will be no ice at all over the North Pole during the summer[6]. The rate of sea level rise around the UK is presently up to 1cm per year and this rate is increasing exponentially[7].'

Footnote #6 pointed to a Wikipedia page that, until last month, still included a version of Maslowski's speculation that Arctic sea-ice might disappear in summer by 2013. Nuff said.*

Footnote #7 merely said, 'This means that rises are occurring at an accelerating rate.' (Wot? You mean years are getting shorter?) In defiance of the declaration that all expert witnesses sign, which says in part that 'I have shown the sources of all information I have used', no source (not even Wikipedia) was provided for either the 'up to 1 cm' claim or the claim that the rate of rise is increasing exponentially.

But then both claims were tosh. The National Oceanography Centre puts the long-term climate-change component of mean sea-level rise 'around the UK' at 1.4 +/- 0.2 mm/year. The trend since 1990 is steeper - about 2 mm/year. Actual tide-gauge readings might get you to two or even three times that on some parts of the coast (because of local isostatic movements) but, even so, to get to 1 cm per year this expert witness would have had to have been talking about a single year or a very cherry-picked recent trend and that would have been [redacted] and I doubt that the witness has the [redacted], so he was probably just [redacted].

The rest of [redacted]'s expert testimony was not much better.

Of the other expert witnesses, only James Hansen had any scientific credibility on anthropogenic climate change and its likely impacts. (I'm not going to attempt to knock him down. He did his usual thing: unimpeachable WG1 stuff artfully interposed with runaway doom. Too clever for me.) One stuck solely to the failings of the political process, one stuck solely to blather and one relied wholly on the infamous WHO report about deaths due to climate change.

The jury found the 20 guilty, so at least some things are got right.

===
*Or not. This particular expert witness, a recently retired geography lecturer, also cited The Guardian, The Independent, Reuters, Common Dreams and Mother Jones as scientific sources. Worryingly, he says that he still advises the UN about fisheries (his alleged area of expertise). More worryingly for me, until recently he advised Kent County Council about the local impacts of sea-level rise. My mother lives near the Kent coast. Is she going to have to pay for sea-defences and other measures recommended by this Götterdämmerung tosser?

By Vinny Burgoo (not verified) on 24 Jan 2011 #permalink

Sorry. Missing hyphen. 'Götterdämmerung-tosser'. (What's the German for that?)

By Vinny Burgoo (not verified) on 24 Jan 2011 #permalink

Fonts are important, as we old guys remember from Algol 60 reference language.

By John Mashey (not verified) on 24 Jan 2011 #permalink

So, if you call whatever effects the trend in ways you don't like noise, voila! Significance.

[Well, that certainly was noise. Did you read Tamino's post? -W]

By Paul Kelly (not verified) on 24 Jan 2011 #permalink

For those who didn't see Horizon last night, with Sir Paul Nurse investigating the modern vogue for attacking science, here's a scientist's take on it (he also used to work for Phil Jones at CRU).
http://adamleadbetter.posterous.com/paul-nurses-excellent-horizon-raise…

[I didn't see it. But I have some concerns with that post. The idea that a substantial number of people are skeptics because they cannot afford to read the literature is wrong. firstly because they can, they just don't want to; and secondly because they probably couldn't read it even if given it freely -W]

> with senior US Navy officers also saying
> the aforementioned are wrong and delay is
> a threat to national security

I think the current plan appears to be to outsource defense work to the Chinese. It's in a great tradition; when all the world bought from the USA, the USA took responsibility for defending its markets and protecting its buyers. Now that all the world buys from China, noblesse oblige.

I read that Jones, using the standard methods, found just barely no statistical significance in temperatures for the past however many years. The Tamino novelty finds significance by filtering out what he calls exogenous factors. As I read it, he treats these factors as noise. It struck me as an example of working backwards from the conclusion.

[Ah, but you're wrong. This comes down to some extent to "who do you trust". I matters of data analysis, you should certainly trust Tamino rather than yourself.

As to the substance: we know that there is short-term "noise" in the climate system - El Nino; Volcanic; etc; and that this short-term noise can make longer-term signals harder to see. Filtering them out may help. If you do so, however, you have to be aware that you've cleaned them up. As I understand it the std way to do this is to adjust the degrees-of-freedom when assessing the significance of the fit: effectively, you've removed some dof (by the fitting) and so have fewer left, so your significance levels get slightly weaker -W]

Tamino must find significance because it is indeed warming, though at well less than .2C/decade. He says the skeptics can use the lack of significance for their purposes.

By Paul Kelly (not verified) on 25 Jan 2011 #permalink

Feel free to delete as this is off topic.
But there has been a persistant comentator across UK climate news stories and blogs claiming models fraudulently account for Mie scattering. The commentator is showing up pretty regularly so I thought Id run it past one or two expert bloggers who know models to see if I could get an answer on the issue.
http://shewonk.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/the-climate-denier-dunce-cap/#c…

Apoligies for going OT.

OT continued... dorlomin
Looks like he's explaining how he understands global entropy loss, and doesn't care of the measurements made simultaneously from space and earth. Sounds like something that would validate the 'iris effect' on a quantum level, but as there are these measurements I don't buy it. For more detailed explanation, Science of Doom or RabbetRun could be a place to ask, if they don't think it's too trivial.

In short, I hazard a guess that it is a theory based on a theory, backed with no observations.