Sceptics are welcome
Posted by Nick.Barnes | Filed under policies
Our project goals are well-defined:
1. To produce clear climate science software;
2. To encourage the production of clear climate science software;
3. To increase public confidence in climate science results;
The following are not project goals, and will not form part of the project:
1. To pick fights and flame wars with sceptics and/or denialists;
2. To judge or arbitrate in climate science;
I am not a scientist and I didn’t set up the project to make judgements about climate science. By doing ClearClimateCode I hope to help actual climate scientists to do actual climate science, and to help others to trust the results.
My personal beliefs on some aspects of climate science are pretty well-documented (if you make the reasonable and correct guess that I am the Nick Barnes who sometimes hangs out on blog comment threads): I am certain that anthropogenic global warming is real and a serious global crisis. And those beliefs form a strong motivation for me to start and take part in this project. But this project is not intended to be a platform for promoting those beliefs. The blogosphere is full of places to vent views about these subjects; this is not one.
In particular, the project welcomes sceptics to take part: write code, read code, criticise code.
If you truly doubt the climate science consensus and are (therefore rightly) alarmed at moves for critical public policy to be based on that consensus, then I expect you are keen to discover and publicise the truth about the global temperature record. Working on the project will allow you to do that. Please, join the mailing list, download the code, work with us.
(this important post is partly cut-and-paste from a message I sent last year to the project mailing list)
January 24th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
That sounds like a great project, and something that has been needed for some time now. Congratulations. It would also be of great use for environmental science students. I would like to try it and then recommend it to students later.
I’m not sure why Python has been described in some associated project documents as easier or friendlier than Fortran. They are both pretty simple in that regard. I agree there are other reasons that Python (like some other new languages) is a better choice for a new project with many contributors and users.
January 25th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Thanks for this comment, Dan. It has prompted quite a long post in reply.