Gorebal Warming: Mmm, Fudge!

Eric Raymond is one of the main advocates for Open Source software. As such, he makes intellectual arguments in favor of open processes that allow anyone to examine how a system works, and point out errors. This was once the way that science worked, but for some reason, the "researchers" into Gorebal Warming have fought against releasing their primary data and the source code of the software they used to produce things like the infamous "hockey stick" graph.

Unless you've been living under a rock (or only getting your news from the MainScream Media), you're aware that someone either hacked or leaked megabytes of files from the Climate Research Unit. Eric has been perusing them, and found this interesting excerpt (emphasis mine):

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

Eric thinks calling it a mere "smoking gun" is a massive understatement: "it’s a siege cannon with the barrel still hot." Well, let me add that they didn't just cook the data; they marinated it for a week, put on a rub, laid it in the smoker for a day and a half, sliced it up, wrapped it in bacon, dipped it in batter, rolled it around in the flour, and deep fried it.