TKO for AGW? (II)

Here is a very important post on Watts Up With That. Much of the buzz over the hacked/whistleblower-released data from the CRU climate agency in Britain has focused on the e-mails, but there was actual data and computer code released as well. Now, people are beginning to focus on that. Here is some of the comments from one computer code:

; THIS WORKS WITH REMTS BEING A 2D ARRAY (nseries,ntime)
; OF MULTIPLE TIMESERIES
; WHOSE INFLUENCE IS TO BE REMOVED.
; UNFORTUNATELY THE IDL5.4 p_correlate
; FAILS WITH >1 SERIES TO HOLD CONSTANT,
; SO I HAVE TO REMOVE THEIR INFLUENCE
; FROM BOTH INDTS AND DEPTS USING MULTIPLE
; LINEAR REGRESSION AND THEN USE THE
; USUAL correlate FUNCTION ON THE RESIDUALS.
;
pro maps12,yrstart,doinfill=doinfill
;
; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled
; or not) MXD reconstructions
; of growing season temperatures. Uses
; “corrected” MXD – but shouldn’t usually
; plot past 1960 because these will be
; artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.
(Ann-Extra paragraphing added for readability.)

The first paragraph shows the level of tweaking that happens to get the program and the data to fit. If you have to do this, it's a good sign that your equations are crap.

The second paragraph holds the first bombshell, though: "these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures". In other words, the coder will massage the results later to make the model look more accurate for the more-recent time period. In other, other words: The objections people have had for years that these models can not accurately predict the past, were far more true than they even knew.

Here's another stunner from another code, which might be talking about the same 1960+ problem; a distinct echo of the "hide the decline" e-mail:

From documents\harris-tree\recon_esper.pro:

; Computes regressions on full, high and
; low pass Esper et al. (2002) series,
; anomalies against full NH temperatures
; and other series.
; CALIBRATES IT AGAINST THE LAND-ONLY
; TEMPERATURES NORTH OF 20 N
;
; Specify period over which to compute
; the regressions (stop in 1960 to avoid
; the decline
;
(Ann-Extra paragraphing added for readability)

The ultimate question has to be: is this really science? Because it sure looks like they were making it up as they went along.