Computer software at CRU measured and found wanting

Shannon Love over at chicagoboyz has examined the software code used by our friends at Hadley CRU to determine that the end of the world was eminent, with the expected results:

"Programmers all over the world have begun wading through the code and they have been stunned by how bad it is. It’s quite clearly amateurish and nothing but an accumulation of seat-of-the-pants hacks and patches.

The code is at the heart of the CRU predictions which have been the framework for the IPCC's recommendations to reduce greenhouse emissions. Their appearance on the internet have left them open to inspection by computer software engineers, a proverbial hanging out of dirty laundry:

"Indeed, the comments of the second programmer, the hapless “Harry”, as he struggled to understand the work of his predecessor are now being read as a kind of programmer’s Icelandic saga describing a death march through an inexplicable maze of ineptitude and boobytraps."

This is what we are basing the dismantling of the entire industrialized world upon?

"As far as I can tell, none of the software on which the entire concept of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) is based has been examined, reviewed or tested by anyone save the people who wrote the code in the first place. This is a staggering omission of scientific oversight and correction. Nothing like it has happened in the history of science."

It is one thing to be unable to handle the information one is accessing. It is quite another to shield those issues from the scientific community at large.

"Given that literally hundreds of millions of lives over the next century will depend on getting the climate models correct, we have to start all our climate modeling over from scratch."

Good grief.