Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Y’know, some of these climate games are getting kind of boring. I’m tired of people who are paid with my taxes hiding their data, results, and findings. Case in point, the “Community Earth System Model” of the University Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). They describe their model as:
The Community Earth System Model (CESM) is a fully-coupled, global climate model that provides state-of-the-art computer simulations of the Earth’s past, present, and future climate states.
Figure 1. The forcings and major flows in the CACM1.0 model. Source
OK, fine. This new CESM model is the successor to the CCSM3.0 climate model. People always tout the fact that the CESM code is open source, so you can investigate their results. I wanted to find out more about the CCSM3.0 model, in particular the forcings used in the AR4 simulations of the 20th century. What could go wrong?
Well, the first thing to go wrong is that you have to register to read their data. I don’t like that, but I can live with it. But then I find out that I can’t just register—I need to be approved by the good folks at UCAR to even view their holy climate results, we wouldn’t want just anyone reading them I guess …
About 95% of the UCAR funding comes from my taxes, and I need their approval to see their results??? C’mon, fools, this is not secret Al-Qaeda documents or the floor plan to Fort Knox, it’s just your stupid model results. Why are you making it hard to access?
Having no option, I applied to get access to the repository where they store the sacred results and forcings of the model runs. I figured OK, I can play their games. So I applied for the lowest level of access, read-only.
But this being climate science, today it got worse, viz:
- From: XXX <XXX@cgd.ucar.edu>
- Subject: Your request for access to the CESM repository was declined.
- Date: May 6, 2011 12:49:13 PM PDT
- Your request for access to the CESM repository was declined.You still have access to all public releases of CESM. Go to http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/ for access to the public model releases.
- Title:
- First Name: Willis
- Middle initial:
- Last name: Eschenbach
- Account name: XXX
- My position: climate researcher
- Primary working group: Climate Change and Assessment
- Relevant working groups: Atmosphere Model:Climate Variability:
- Type of access: Level-1: Read-only
- Summary of work: Analyzing the relationship of forcing to output of cesm models
- List of CESM collaborators: None
- Start date: Now
- End date: 2 years after starting
- Submission date: 5/6/2011
- Acceptance status: Declined
- Password issued: no
- Remarks on status: please use released cesm1 code base
Oooooh, that angrified my blood mightily, and I waxed wroth. I am ashamed to say that I generally disturbed the peace of the neighborhood with my voluble speculations on the species and personal habits of their ancestors, and with my loud suggestions that the good folks of UCAR should perform anatomically improbable forms of sexual auto-congress …
And Judith Curry and other people wonder why the public doesn’t trust climate scientists, and why their message is so widely disbelieved? In general, the public rightly assumes that people who hide something … have something to hide. Bozo logic, I know, but strangely, people believe it.
I can’t tell you how tired I am of this petty, provincial, and anti-scientific ‘you have to say the secret password before I’ll show you my results’ point of view. I have linked to this post in my response to the charming UCAR fellow … we’ll see how it plays out. Yeah, I know I should have written to them to straighten it out before posting, and if this were my first rodeo I would have done that. At this point, I’ve been stuffed around by this kind of nonsense too many times, I’m tired of being Mr. Nice Guy.
And more to the point, there is absolutely no reason for them to restrict access in the first place. It is non-secret, non-sensitive public data paid for by public money, and the public should have full and unfettered access to read it any time, without preconditions.
w.
[UPDATED May 7, ’11] If anyone else would like to join in the hunt, what I am looking for are the numbers underlying the graphics shown on this page. Month-by-month global values for the forcing variables. I’d prefer if they were in GISS style, where all of the forcings are expressed in W/m2, but raw concentrations (e.g. ppmv) are fine too.
[UPDATED May 8, ’11] Well, the powers that be have decided to let me in, and I’ve found what I need. My thanks to Steven Mosher and Derecho64 for the assistance. I’ll post up the results in Excel form once I convert them (the ozone data alone is almost 2 GBytes).
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Willis Eschenbach says:
May 7, 2011 at 6:41 pm
“I find it laughably pathetic. Others defend it as a justifiable and reasonable practice … you make the call.”
===
The whole idea behind these models, is that (given enough information) we can learn to control the weather.
Call me skeptical. And tired of wasting my tax dollars on foolishness.
I like your chart, but there seems to be a big hole in the middle.
Where are the Big Money Boys? Where are the banks, finance companies, and ENRON types who want to make a fortune selling “carbon credits” and the like?
They will suck at least as much money out of us as the governments do?
Further to my previous pose, the “carbon trading” bit at the side is far too small.
Love Figure 1 but couldn’t find Al Gore in there where I expected him to be, at the end of a money flow arrow!
Willis:
At May 7, 2011 at 7:10 pm you say;
“Usually I do an end run around this kind of nonsense by just digitizing their graphs, and I may end up doing it yet. It’s some hours of work … but at this point, I’ve put more than that into trying to do it the right way.”
I write to thank you for this thread and to ask you to keep “trying to do it the right way” and to report what happens so not to do your usual “end run”.
My reasons for my thanks and request are not technical but are two-fold.
Firstly, and importantly, this thread clearly demonstrates some of the problems confronted by anybody attempting verification of climatological model studies. This demonstration needs to run its full course if others are to use it as a case study and/or for reference purposes.
Secondly, (and of little importance except to me) the excuses, red herrings and obfuscations from notably Steven Mosher and Dercho64 are very, very funny so have given me several belly laughs and I hope to get some more.
Richard
Once again, I am either pathetically stupid and way behind the times of ethical practice, or in my lowly station of ex-researcher life, I clearly understood that raw data should be made available on request, and thus should be stored for some period of time.
I still have my raw data (kept nearly 30 years) and will provide it post haste with a simple written request. I no longer work for the government agency I was employed by, but I still have my input data. In fact, I welcomed another pair of eyes (though if I do say so myself, just try and find an error in my data). To the credit of others, the premise of the study was done again by others, using different subjects, and resulted in similar conclusions.
So I find this current situation puzzling. Just by coincidence, are we having the same problem with climate career scientists in this field that we have with career politicians? Or are we having this issue because they are one and the same and sleep in the same biased right vs wrong bed?
As a parent, it is giving me a headache to hear this constant “Are too!…Are not! argument. So here it is: “Give the man a look at the data, then go stand in the corner until you have learned to cooperate like a big boy! And NO desert!”
I love how the defenders of UCAR want to claim that their plain vanilla ice cream science and their dog crap “register for access and deny nonsense” can be mixed together and come up with vanilla ice cream …
They are hiding … end of story … there s no reason a scientist in their position should be doing that …
They are con men and propagandists looking for power and or money and will soon be ridden out of town on a rail if they don’t end up in jail …
@steven mosher says:
May 6, 2011 at 3:08 pm
registered for access to SVN. got it in 10 seconds
Yeah, but you’re one of them as was readily apparent when your brown-nosing blew up in your face (nasty imagery, there) a few weeks ago… For you to be trying to stick your nose up this guy’s deep dark, you can’t expect any respect.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/22/friday-funny-f-word-fusillade-by-michael-tobis/
What Willis –
– did you appear on their ‘no fly’ list or something?
/sarc
It’s easy to get the file you want.
See the link “Download” on the page Mosher referred to?
It’s here:
http://www.earthsystemgrid.org/download/fileDownload.htm?fileAccessPointId=e41a5f84-239f-4328-9231-79f8c945876c
How hard was that?
[UPDATED May 8, ’11] Well, the powers that be have decided to let me in, and I’ve found what I need. My thanks to Steven Mosher and Derecho64 for the assistance. I’ll post up the results in Excel form once I convert them (the ozone data alone is almost 2 GBytes).
EllisM says:
May 8, 2011 at 8:48 am
It’s easy to get the file you want.
See the link “Download” on the page Mosher referred to?
It’s here:
……..
How hard was that?
And i got the screen asking for username and password.
Not as easy as you make it sound, that’s for sure.
Hi Willis. You were slagging Steve M now thanking him. For all the popcorn munchers watching this story unfold pray tell how the little golden locks were made to release their hold on the data you wanted? Thanks.
@Udar
The user interface is unintuitive. So much so that it threw an individual as intelligent as Willis Eschenbach. It is more like a private intranet page within an organization than a public web page aimed at a general audience.
If you are registered, then the link that Steve Mosher provided should download the required files, but if you are not registered you will only encounter the login page. Even without registering you can still check that the files in question are available by going to this page:
http://www.earthsystemgrid.org/home.htm
and searching for ’20C3M’ using the search box (but if you try to download these, you will be asked to log in).
It is typical for code and data under version control to have two levels of privilege. Private access allows you to alter the data in order to work on it, while public access allows you to read the same data without being able to change it, and possibly corrupt it. Willis mistakenly attempted to gain private access and was justifiably refused. They even gave him the link to the public repository in the refusal notice.
You have made an error here Willis. They didn’t relent and ‘let you in’ just because you made a fuss – they weren’t blocking you in the first place. You always had access. You should retract and apologize. Acknowledge your mistake, move on, and keep up the good work.
Willis, it might interest you and others that, at least in Canada, even private enterprise trading shares on stock exchanges have a legal obligation to reveal results of their development work to the public through press releases of fairly stringent format. The principle is continuous disclosure. For example if a mining exploration company plans a drilling program, they must report it – planned footage and purpose, etc. They then are obliged to report the results good or bad. If they undertake a feasibility study it must not only be reported on, the finished study-good or bad results- must be published on a site known as SEDAR. The ratioale is that …wait for it! … the shareholder paid for the work and the non-shareholder may be attracted to buy shares and therefore must also be fully informed. Hey, even big oil has got to inform y’all of its plans and what they are spending your money on.
Charlie A.
“@Steve Mosher — Why do you believe that the forcings data at PIK for an AR5 run is identical to the forcings for the specific AR4 related run at UCAR that Willis want to look at ”
Probably because I read the ar5 design of experiments and understand the historical forcings used for Ar4 and Ar5. You’ve read that document right?
anyway, since willis has his data and has thanked me I imagine some of you will think twice before challen
Steve Mosher, in his reply to my question why he believes the AR5 forcing data at PIK is identical to the AR4 forcing data at UCAR says “Probably because I read the ar5 design of experiments and understand the historical forcings used for Ar4 and Ar5. You’ve read that document right?”
No, I have not read the document. That is irrelevant. Even if PIK does describe the forcings for their AR5 related runs as being identical to those used for earlier AR4 runs by UCAR, it is still best practice to obtain the forcings data from the same set of files as the outputs you wish to review.
Some may remember this from the 1980s:
Mister Prosser wishes to demolish Arthur Dent’s house. Arthur isn’t keen:
MISTER PROSSER:
But Mister Dent the plans have been available in the planning office for the last nine months!
ARTHUR DENT:
Yes! I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You’d hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to pull much attention to them have you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.
MISTER PROSSER:
The plans were on display.
ARTHUR DENT:
Ah! And how many members of the public are in the habit of casually dropping around the local planning office of an evening?
MISTER PROSSER:
Er – ah!
ARTHUR DENT:
It’s not exactly a noted social venue is it? And even if you had popped in on the off chance that some raving bureaucrat wanted to knock your house down, the plans weren’t immediately obvious to the eye were they?
MISTER PROSSER:
That depends where you were looking.
ARTHUR DENT:
I eventually had to go down to the cellar!
MISTER PROSSER:
That’s the display department.
ARTHUR DENT:
With a torch!
MISTER PROSSER:
The lights, had… probably gone.
ARTHUR DENT:
So had the stairs!
MISTER PROSSER:
Well you found the notice didn’t you?
ARTHUR DENT:
Yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”. Ever thought of going into advertising?
Fortran 90. You’re ____ kidding me. How pathetic.
As a software engineer designing and implementing a new advanced safe parallel multi-threading distributed object oriented programming language for use in business, engineering, scientific and other applications that are highly demanding it’s a shock to see that these alleged state of the art climate models are being written in primitive ERROR PRONE Fortran 90. Very shocking.