"A few thoughts on Climategate"

Samizdata has an interesting piece by Michael Jennings about climate modelling and his experiences resulting from his background in research science. Here are some extracts from a very interesting article:

"As it is, we have a few extremely crude mathematical / computer models that suppose mechanisms that go from human activity to CO2 release to global warming. They don't agree with one another, and they are incredibly crude. (The Earth's atmosphere is an extremely complex system. These models only have a tiny fraction of its complexity). They have a poor record of predicting the future.

The science of global warming ultimately boils down to saying that "The level of warming is unprecedented". "Human releases of CO2 into the atmosphere are unprecedented". "Therefore, the second causes the first". This isn't an inherently ridiculous thing to say. If climate change really is unprecedented then we would look for other unprecedented things as likely causes and human activity would be the likely one. We could then look for mechanisms and solutions, but we would largely be doing so with our eyes closed.

I will listen to somebody who more or less says this and that the risks of global warming are so great that we must do something about them, but somebody who simply states that the science is settled and beyond discussion is frankly not even worth arguing with.

...

In scientific research involving computer modelling and data analysis, this often leads to computer models consisting of layer on layer of code crufted on top of lower layers that are not well (or at all) understood. Data does get lost, or assumed to be correct because the previous person used it and there is no real way to verify it. Supposedly impartial journals do become captive of a particular point of view. People's whole careers do become dependent on a particular interpretation of the results, and it then becomes very hard for them to back down. People become more and more certain of their results when the personal cost of abandoning them gets greater and greater."