There is only one goddess Gaia and Al Gore is her only prophet...

[kandrathe]

The kvetching of the programmer is interesting - and what point that represents relative to the finished papers. But, as with many of the e-mails themselves, I'm not sure how smart or fair it is to read something nobody ever intended to be read at face value. It may represent temporary frustration more than reasoned analysis.

This section from the American Thinker article was most troubling to me;<blockquote>In two other programs, briffa_Sep98_d.pro and briffa_Sep98_e.pro, the "correction" is bolder by far. The programmer (Keith Briffa?) entitled the "adjustment" routine “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!” And he or she wasn't kidding. Now IDL is not a native language of mine, but its syntax is similar enough to others I'm familiar with, so please bear with me while I get a tad techie on you.

Here's the "fudge factor" (notice the brash SOB actually called it that in his REM statement):

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

These two lines of code establish a twenty-element array (yrloc) comprising the year 1400 (base year, but not sure why needed here) and nineteen years between 1904 and 1994 in half-decade increments. Then the corresponding "fudge factor" (from the valadj matrix) is applied to each interval. As you can see, not only are temperatures biased to the upside later in the century (though certainly prior to 1960), but a few mid-century intervals are being biased slightly lower. That, coupled with the post-1930 restatement we encountered earlier, would imply that in addition to an embarrassing false decline experienced with their MXD after 1960 (or earlier), CRU's "divergence problem" also includes a minor false incline after 1930.

And the former apparently wasn't a particularly well-guarded secret, although the actual adjustment period remained buried beneath the surface.</blockquote>It is clear that the array valadj(fudge factor) skews the data.

Here is a link to a more complete analysis of that particular section.

So, is there a scientific reason for this "very artificial correction for decline"? This is not mere proxy substitution. I'm actually beginning to believe the theory that this was not a hack, but an intentional leak from inside UEA CRU.