I asked Dr. Judith Curry if I could repost her letter which she originally sent to Climate Progress, here at WUWT. Here was her response:
From: Curry, Judith A
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 2:10 PM
To: Anthony Watts – mobile
Subject: Re: request
Hi Anthony, by all means post it. I am trying to reach out to everyone, pls help in this effort. Judy
Dr. Curry gets props from the skeptical community because she had the courage to invite Steve McIntyre to give a presentation at Georgia Tech, for which she took criticism. Her letter is insightful and addresses troubling issues. We can all learn something from it. – Anthony
An open letter to graduate students and young scientists in fields related to climate research – By Dr. Judith A. Curry, Georgia Tech
Based upon feedback that I’ve received from graduate students at Georgia Tech, I suspect that you are confused, troubled, or worried by what you have been reading about ClimateGate and the contents of the hacked CRU emails. After spending considerable time reading the hacked emails and other posts in the blogosphere, I wrote an essay that calls for greater transparency in climate data and other methods used in climate research. The essay is posted over at climateaudit.org (you can read it at http://camirror.wordpress.com/ 2009/ 11/ 22/ curry-on-the-credibility-of-climate-research/ ).
What has been noticeably absent so far in the ClimateGate discussion is a public reaffirmation by climate researchers of our basic research values: the rigors of the scientific method (including reproducibility), research integrity and ethics, open minds, and critical thinking. Under no circumstances should we ever sacrifice any of these values; the CRU emails, however, appear to violate them.
My motivation for communicating on this issue in the blogosphere comes from emails that I received from Georgia Tech graduate students and alums. As a result of my post on climateaudit, I started receiving emails from graduate students from other universities. I post the content of one of the emails here, without reference to the student’s name or institution:
Hi Dr. Curry,
I am a young climate researcher (just received my master’s degree from xxx University) and have been very troubled by the emails that were released from CRU. I just want to applaud and support your response on climateaudit.org [95% of it 🙂 ]. Your statement represents exactly how I have felt as I slowly enter this community. The content of some of the emails literally made me stop and wonder if I should continue with my PhD applications for fall 2010, in this science. I was so troubled by how our fellow scientists within the climate community have been dealing with opposing voices (on both sides). I hope we can all learn from this and truly feel that we are going to need voices like yours to fix these problems in the coming months and years.
At the heart of this issue is how climate researchers deal with skeptics. I have served my time in the “trenches of the climate war” in the context of the debate on hurricanes and global warming. There is no question that there is a political noise machine in existence that feeds on research and statements from climate change skeptics. In grappling with this issue, I would argue that there are three strategies for dealing with skeptics:
1. Retreat into the ivory tower
2. Circle the wagons/point guns outward: ad hominem/appeal to motive attacks; appeal to authority; isolate the enemy through lack of access to data; peer review process
3. Take the “high ground:” engage the skeptics on our own terms (conferences, blogosphere); make data/methods available/transparent; clarify the uncertainties; openly declare our values
Most scientists retreat into the ivory tower. The CRU emails reflect elements of the circling of wagons strategy. For the past 3 years, I have been trying to figure out how to engage skeptics effectively in the context of #3, which I think is a method that can be effective in countering the arguments of skeptics, while at the same time being consistent with our core research values. Some of the things that I’ve tried in my quest to understand skeptics and more effectively counter misinformation include posting at skeptical blogs, such as climateaudit, and inviting prominent skeptics to give seminars at Georgia Tech. I have received significant heat from some colleagues for doing this (I’ve been told that I am legitimizing the skeptics and misleading my students), but I think we need to try things like this if we are to develop effective strategies for dealing with skeptics and if we are to teach students to think critically.
If climate science is to uphold core research values and be credible to public, we need to respond to any critique of data or methodology that emerges from analysis by other scientists. Ignoring skeptics coming from outside the field is inappropriate; Einstein did not start his research career at Princeton, but rather at a post office. I’m not implying that climate researchers need to keep defending against the same arguments over and over again. Scientists claim that they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to skeptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it! If anyone identifies an actual error in your data or methodology, acknowledge it and fix the problem. Doing this would keep molehills from growing into mountains that involve congressional hearings, lawyers, etc.
So with this reaffirmation of core climate research values, I encourage you to discuss the ideas and issues raised here with your fellow students and professors. Your professors may disagree with me; there are likely to be many perspectives on this. I hope that others will share their wisdom and provide ideas and guidance for dealing with these issues. Spend some time perusing the blogosphere (both skeptical and pro AGW blogs) to get a sense of the political issues surrounding our field. A better understanding of the enormous policy implications of our field should imbue in all of us a greater responsibility for upholding the highest standards of research ethics. Hone your communications skills; we all need to communicate more effectively. Publish your data as supplementary material or post on a public website. And keep your mind open and sharpen your critical thinking skills. My very best wishes to you in your studies, research, and professional development. I look forward to engaging with you in a dialogue on this topic.
Judith Curry
Chair, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
References:
My past public statements on climate change can be found at my website http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/climate/policy.htm
My paper on “Mixing politics and science in testing the hypothesis that greenhouse warming is a causing an increase in global hurricane intensity” can be found at
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currydoc/Curry_BAMS87.pdf
My presentation on the integrity of climate research can be found at
http://www.pacinst.org/ topics/ integrity_of_science/ AGU_IntegrityofScience_Curry.pdf
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How sad is this situation that Dr. Curry should receive so much praise for actually admitting that colleagues should not be manipulating data and strong-arming editorial boards to prevent opposing viewpoints from being heard. Her statements should be a given; a bare minimum in science and hardly worthy of praise.
Then she writes:
“But the “skeptical” arguments by scientists that are qualified by virtue of the training, hard work in doing analyses, and engagiement in the dialogue by joining the relevant professional societies, deserve to be heard.”
So once again we have the logical fallacy that only those who belong to the proper ‘club’ have the ability to think rationally on climate change. All others, no matter how valid their arguments, can be summarily ignored on the grounds that they do not have the proper pedigree! This would include the likes of Anthony, Steve M., Lord Mockton and many of the others who have done the hard work of pointing out that the ‘climate king has no clothes’.
It would be nice if she would come down from her Ivory Tower and talk science, instead of maintaining her elitist attitudes and condescending tones. But then, she might have to admit that her position is untenable.
Scientists claim that they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to skeptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it!
Dr. Curry, not “trying it” is not an option in the case of publishing scientific research. If you don’t publish or archive your data and methods fairly contemporaneously with your research and so that any interested person can get it, you don’t even have any research to either promote or defend in the first place.
That’s the way the Scientific Method and Process works. This issue is not about anyone’s “core values” in the sense of any particular person acting in concert with what can be entirely his or her own subjective values. It’s about doing Science objectively, which is indeed the only way it can be done. Try it.
Jim (06:57:21) “If you have published in a science journal, what legitimate reasons would you have for not releasing the code? IMO, if you won’t release the code, you should not be allowed to publish.”
This is a question I expected in response to my comments.
It underscores that many may not realize there are legitimate (not necessarily malicious) reasons for not releasing code.
It seems we have a topic requiring further discussion in the years ahead. (This is certainly not a simple issue that can be summed up in a few lines. Data release is the simple issue.)
Unsettled science = lots of sceptics.
Why does she not understand that simple relationship ?
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Paul Vaughan (09:33:49) :
Jim (06:57:21) “If you have published in a science journal, what legitimate reasons would you have for not releasing the code? IMO, if you won’t release the code, you should not be allowed to publish.”
This is a question I expected in response to my comments.
It underscores that many may not realize there are legitimate (not necessarily malicious) reasons for not releasing code.
It seems we have a topic requiring further discussion in the years ahead. (This is certainly not a simple issue that can be summed up in a few lines. Data release is the simple issue
********************
Could you at least list a few reasons? You are not really answering the question. Surely is isn’t all that complicated!!!
To understand Curry, all one has to do is read the political philosophy of Hegel, Woodrow Wilson, Rousseau, etc.
Jeremy (07:23:23) “If you were talking about physics, chemistry, or biology, then possibly.
Biological modeling is at least as difficult as, if not a lot more difficult than (depending on context), climate modeling. When I used to work on ecological modeling, my bosses were happy if they got within an order of magnitude of reality. That job cured me of any earlier naivety about modeling (of highly complex systems).
Bernie Madoff All Over Again!
That is one context of ClimateGate. We have the appearance of respectability with Madoff being a former chairman of NASD, and Jones being the Director of CRU. How could a people of such reputation participate in, much less, originate what are possibly the largest scams in the history of the world?
It is precisely because Madoff was so respectable that he was able to pull it off. It is also because Jones and company commanded a high degree of respect in the scientific community that they were able to go a decade without releasing their data and methods. Any sophmore refusing to reveal her work or methods would be given a failing grade. Why not the professor?
My attention to the climate debate started years ago when watching CSPAN. Michael Mann was defending his hockey stick in front of a Congressional panel, and Steve McIntyre and Dr. Wegman were there, also. I remember thinking that Mann was probably the most arrogant character I had ever seen. His verbal tap dancing simply did not seem adequate for someone so confident in his work, and his appeals to authority and peer review seemed a bit casual.
Michael Mann’s scam may turn out to be the biggest scam in the history of the world. It would be a travesty if ClimateGate were allowed to cool, and formerly respectable people like Mann and Jones are allowed to continue living off public largess. Perhaps Mann and Jones need to be behind bars, just like their fellow traveler, Bernie Madoff.
[snip]
Although I applaud her letter, by nature, all scientists should be skeptical. The constant reference to those seeking truth and not simply confirmation of beliefs is quite disheartening. The climate community needs “skeptics” or, as we have seen by this entire debacle, the entirety of their work will begin to become nothing more than a biased circular argument.
JamesG said:
“Just a sidenote about the chap above who mentioned cold fusion research. F+P’s results were actually replicated by many others, which is why research, if low-key, is still ongoing. The only problem is that conventional physics can’t explain it. Trouble is, if we’d always listened to conventional physics we wouldn’t have progressed in science or engineering at all. Thus F+P were unjustly treated by an overly-skeptical scientific community. Hence skepticism can go too far and also retreat into dogma.”
Cold Fusion is still a good example of how science, especially a “break through” is supposed to work. Publish, present ALL the data and the method, then allow the critics to attack. New ideas are ALWAYS attacked by the “standard wisdom” and go through a trial by fire. That is to be expected if you are a scientist. (A thick skin is mandatory)
Another recent science advance was the idea ulcers were caused by the bacteria Helicobacter pylori. “..the hypothesis that peptic ulcers are caused by bacteria was initially viewed as preposterous by many gastroenterologists…” http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Ulcers.one.html I remember when this initially hit the news and the established authorities were scathing.
Very very few scientific advances are going to be welcomed with open arms, that is part of human nature as well as what make the Scientific Method so powerful. If the idea makes it through the gauntlet and still stands then it was a good idea. In some cases it make take a generation to become accepted in the mainstream – Darwin and evolution come to mind.
The short circuiting of the Scientific Method by the AGW group is what has me so angry. We do not need that type of “modification” of the Scientific Method to creep into the culture surrounding science. The fact that a letter such as the one above needs to be written means we need to take a close look at exactly what type of ethics is now being taught to our science students.
It may be of interest to some of you folks that my primary interest in the atmospheric sciences is in long term natural climate variability and the use of multi-decadal and inter-annual signals to make accurate seasonal forecasts…and that I have recently contacted at least one prominent skeptic in the search for a university at which I can conduct research in this field with the support of the faculty as I’m close to finishing my masters degree and in the hunt for a Ph.D. program. My current university is inextricably linked to the IPCC and I know for certain tha I do not wish to remain where I am.
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Paul Vaughan (09:33:49) :
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OK Paul, I’ve given you some time to answer. You are exhibiting the same sort of hubris and condescending behavior as the Hockey Team. You just want us to take your word that you can’t publish code.
I am a programmer. I write code for a living, as apparently you do. I have worked for both private companies and the government. In no case have I ever had IP rights to the code I write. Of course, a private company would not publish their code, but we are discussing government funded code. Unless you work for a private company, your assertion that you can’t publish code is bunk. If your work is funded by the public, then ultimately the public owns it and can get it by the FOIA. And no matter what, if you can’t publish the code, any paper that uses it should not be published by journals.
Jim (09:46:12) “Could you at least list a few reasons? You are not really answering the question. Surely is isn’t all that complicated!!!”
I’ll give you one example beyond intellectual property:
The code I write is not in linear format. It is organized in (sometimes vast) 3-D arrays. There is no way to list it in lines. The file sizes go over 100MB, so I can neither ftp nor e-mail the files even though I have access to a generous university online system. Bottom line: If someone wanted to bar me from publishing for not realeasing my code, I’d have to live with that outcome (but in my view publishing is overrated so I wouldn’t be upset).
I’ve never had a need to ask for anyone’s code. I read journal articles & webpages and reproduce calculations independently. As for “superconfuser fantasies”: That stuff is such hilarious abstraction (based on absolutely untenable assumptions) that I wouldn’t waste a minute of my time on it.
The issue I see is data availability – and I have been quite vocal about that around here in the past. I can’t do my own calculations without data.
[NOTE – FYI, this was posted before the previous rebuke of PV was posted. ~ Evan]
To Dr. Curry,
I would add a significant aspect to your open letter to graduate students. Many a climate scientist has been led (or is just naturally so inclined) to believe they are all-knowing. To the degree that some who have never logged, planted, nourished, clearcut, then graded 3rd, and sometimes 4th generation trees for various markets, seem to have suddenly developed what they view is the ultimate knowledge of tree ring parameters. Something that loggers could only have developed over many generations of handed down wisdom and knowledge based on field experience.
In other words, what graduate students need right now is a heavy dose of humble pie from the likes of us. The front-line folks who have been in agricultural families and logging families for generations. We know climate, and we know weather pattern variation, to a far greater degree than you. Not through sudden book knowledge or experiments with models, but through generations of historical and oral histories and experiences of the land we care for, the produce we grow, and the historical patterns of weather variation that determines whether or not we survive during cold and warm years and decades. Yet we are being forced to accept what is being trotted out as this new, unprecedented climate change? By babies of climate change no less, whose heads are blown to ugly size with nothing more than sudden puffery, even at your hands I dare say.
If we were to believe this nonsense about hockey stick climate warming, and some have made this mistake, we would be left with ruined crops and bankrupted lives. So here is my challenge, you had better take care to get this right, and understand finally that having a Ph.D. in climate science is no guarantee. If you don’t get this right and manage to disregard the field experience wisdom of the ages, you can kiss the food on your plate, the dinner wine you drink, and the house you set in, good by.
Arijigoku (06:25:19) :
“Einstein did not start his research career at Princeton, but rather at a post office.”
At a post office? You might want to check that one out…
Thanks, I won a bet with myself that someone would notice.
There is a “political noise machine” and it has been 99.9% behind AGW. I know because like many here I believed the AGW nonsense because it was the only thing out there. I had to do my own searching to find the answers. So, Dr. Curry, please try to have a little credibility.
What you should have said to the grad students is for them to discard everything they’ve been taught about climate science. The science needs to be completely rebuilt using true scientific principles. The core of your science is rotten. It’s time to discard the blinders and see the truth. It’s not just CRU, it’s New Zealand, it’s Australia, it’s NOAA and NCAR and GISS and NCDC … It’s a cancer that has destroyed your field of study. Nothing less than complete removal of dozens of those who have been complicit will be acceptable. Only then call you start fresh and rebuild.
As for the nice little video on UHI, I’d also like to see this as an article (if it hasn’t already been done). I’d like to know how the rural stations were chosen. They could have been cherry picked. I’d suggest using the closest station that meets the “rural” definition. This would avoid any potential cherry picking. If the video holds up to this analysis than it should be shown on Fox News and the little boy and his dad should be interviewed. Oh, and maybe Dr. Curry could explain what this means from a climate scientists perspective.
At the heart of this issue is how reasonable and rational people deal with institutional AGW frauds, cheats, and liars. I have served my time in the “trenches of the climate war” in the context of attempting to prevent my friends from being fired for voicing their scientific findings and to prevent my state and federal governments from jumping off a cliff like crazed lemmings. There is no question that there is a political noise machine in existence, funded to the tune of tens of $billions, and designed to enslave humanity with authoritarian nincompoopery and insanity. In grappling with this issue, I would argue that there are three strategies for dealing with alarmists:
1. Fire their butts
2. Prosecute, convict, and incarcerate the fraudsters
3. Clean house in Academia and government to rid our institutions of mendacious con persons and their syncophants
Note to young climate scientists: change your major. Your professor is going to jail soon, or at least is going to be discredited and fired. Try some other science, preferably a real one.
Re: SABR Matt (10:21:55)
There aren’t many holes in the fences blocking attempts at nonalarmist PhDs at present. I expect that will change in future. Any research funding opportunities I’ve found recently would require that I change focus away from the natural climate variations which I investigate. For example, one agency suggested I come up with something about catastrophic consequences of CO2. I was led to believe related funding could be generous. I got no sense that scientific rigor would be required.
I think it’s important for us to realize that the CRU leaks are a seminal moment in time, so to speak, we should never let it go. On the other hand, we should realize that this is just a pattern of human nature that happens everywhere, all the time. It points to a bigger picture of Corruption for political gain.
The AGW scientists like Curry are mostly True Believers, their belief in man’s overuse of energy trumps any natural skepticism they may have. They see their role as ‘workers’ towards a greater good, when sensible public policy will reign supreme over a formerly ravenous Robber Baron corporatocracy feeding a generally stupid population. Or at least that’s how the huckster Mr. Gore helped to sell the plan to everybody.
But the AGW people don’t seem to realize that the corrupt Big Energy and Big Manufacturing interests are firmly in control behind the scenes of the UN apparatus, and want the new political changes the (corrupt) AGW science is being created to justify.
Any scientist or engineer at some point has to step back from the numbers and ask, “What is the problem here I’m trying to solve?”. I think this straightforward analysis by Norm Kalmanovitch of the CO2 warming hypothesis discounts it quite easily:
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/CO2_forcing_and_models.pdf
There are a lot of dots out there to be connected wrt to ‘Climate Change’. Such as who created the UN IPCC, and why? Why are it’s Terms of Reference to find AGW and ignore everything else of scientific relevance? Can statistical models and graphs be massaged to show AGW, even if it wasn’t there? Of course.
But some of the dots that need connecting is who created the UN in the first place? It’s not an elected body. Why is Al Gore who championed NAFTA for the currently in free-fall USA, featured so prominently in this debate? He was / is a member of the Club of Rome, a UN think tank that wants “Limits to Growth”, and that “hit upon the idea” of selling air pollution as the reason for people to declare “Man as enemy of the Earth”. And Al has a business already raking in cash from so called carbon credits. This is primarily a political and big business issue masquerading as a scientific and moral issue. Malthusian population reduction strategy as Environmentalism. And to stress the obvious point I rarely hear – we can have CO2 ’emissions’ without having air pollution. That’s where our funding should go, developing scrubbers etc.
And that’s just touching the surface of Al Gore Warming, this new ‘pope’ is married into the Schiff international banking family, the same people who control along with the Rockefellers and Rothschilds basically everything in the world, including the UN and all it’s approved ‘Green’ NGO’s. We are in trouble here, we are rapidly approaching a totalitarian world super union where no ‘heretical’ ideas like Truth will be allowed (as the leaks from CRU help to illustrate).
And the natural defenders of freedom and goodness are either watching TV or buying a mercury vapour lightbulb or analysing a statistical data set. We have to start looking at the bigger picture. AGW was a solution looking for a problem and the Malthusian elite wanted to scare us with it, and they succeeded for a while. But from my investigation into the theory of AGW, nothing about it stands up at all, nothing. From the fact that CO2 emitted at ground level stays there:
http://ocii.com/~dpwozney/carbondioxide.htm
To the whole idea that CO2 is a very ‘green’ gas, the higher the concentration of it (at ground level, where it is) the greater the amount of crop yields, and the greater the resulting biodiversity. Below 200 ppm CO2 plants die, at 1,000 to 1,500 ppm CO2 they thrive. These are facts not theories. And then one wonders how ‘science’ has anything to do with the mantra, the new Carbon Cult of trying to reduce CO2 production to ‘Save the Planet’. We’re dealing with a new religion here, and science is no longer that relevant. Gore is even in Newsweek saying he’s leading the new cult / religion.
But finally, what about the whole idea that even the Greenhouse Effect theory doesn’t hold the water we presumed it did? Hans Schreuder has put out some very convincing analysis that could transcend the whole debate:
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Falsification_of_the_Atmospheric_CO2_Greenhouse_Effects.pdf
As well as the topical:
http://tech-know.eu/uploads/EPAInput.pdf
Why is it, that the Earth with it’s vaunted Greenhouse Effect is so much colder than the Moon, when the Sun is shining?
It underscores that many may not realize there are legitimate (not necessarily malicious) reasons for not releasing code.
Nah, not if you are doing Science. In fact, in respect what to a lot of the elite Climate Scientists publish, the code is their science, especially since they also seem to think that fiddling with coded Models is doing Science, you know, conducting “experiments” and such.
Not releasing code would be equivalent to an alleged scientist publishing only his/her conclusions nakedly, without anything else whatsoever in support of them.
n.b. – that’s one of the things which started to alert me to the possibility that the ippc, enc., was not doing Science back in 2000 when I decided to look at the AGW issue simply because I wanted to understand it – I had never had any idea that Scientists would not be doing Science.
It happened that the ipcc was about to release the TAR. I saw the press release, or whatever it was, from the ipcc stating findings, then eagerly looked for the actual TAR which was intended to support the findings. It wasn’t there! I thought there must be something wrong with me, but no, it turned out that they were only going to publish the TAR later, and they didn’t tell me even that or when, at least as far as I could find.
I gave them a pass back then, but things only got worse.
Perhaps I missed it in my quick scan of the emails, but as near as I can understand, Dr Curry still has not grasped the significance of the skeptical view.
1. ANY scientific study, (peer reviewed or not), INCLUDING HERS, which is based on the manipulated data, is now flawed; and does not have any scientific value, until the data has been fixed, and the conclusions based on real data, have been reviewed!
2. In the second place, the manipulated data can’t be fixed until the weather STATION PROBLEMS have been addressed and fixed! The raw data has no value unless the stations are giving true readings, or at least are being compensated correctly!
3. The billions of dollars and the thousands of hours used in scientific study, based on the bad data, are wasted. It is one thing to spend money to prove or disprove a given hypotheses; it is something else when it is wasted on purposefully corrupted data.
4. In the future don’t confuse mythical and political skepticism with data, methodology and transparency skepticism.
Stephen
Rats deserting the sinking ship is right!
The alarmists think they have a PR problem, when the real problem is their complete lack of scientific integrity.
Too little, too late, Judith.
Dr. Curry has opened herself to dialogue with scientists and others who have been marginalized for a long time. That is a beginning.
she had the courage to invite Steve McIntyre to give a presentation at Georgia Tech
Dr. Curry, please invite Steve back again soon for a symposium on “Climate Science and ClimateGate: How Can Science Survive Politics”. This thread shows that there is much interest in this topic. Invite the MSM to cover it.
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Paul Vaughan (10:40:29) :
Jim (09:46:12) “Could you at least list a few reasons? You are not really answering the question. Surely is isn’t all that complicated!!!”
I’ll give you one example beyond intellectual property:
The code I write is not in linear format. It is organized in (sometimes vast) 3-D arrays. There is no way to list it in lines. The file sizes go over 100MB, so I can neither ftp nor e-mail the files even though I have access to a generous university online system. Bottom line: If someone wanted to bar me from publishing for not realeasing my code, I’d have to live with that outcome (but in my view publishing is overrated so I wouldn’t be upset).
I’ve never had a need to ask for anyone’s code. I read journal articles & webpages and reproduce calculations independently. As for “superconfuser fantasies”: That stuff is such hilarious abstraction (based on absolutely untenable assumptions) that I wouldn’t waste a minute of my time on it.
The issue I see is data availability – and I have been quite vocal about that around here in the past. I can’t do my own calculations without data.
[NOTE – FYI, this was posted before the previous rebuke of PV was posted. ~ Evan]
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I apologize in that I didn’t know you had answered. I have an 8 gig thumb drive. I’ll mail it to you (just kidding, but you get the point.) 100 mb ain’t squat. I just did an ubuntu update that was about that size as I recall. It took an hour or two, but was certainly doable. I wasn’t using a torrent which would have made it much faster. Size really isn’t an issue, now is it?