{"id":1891,"date":"2010-09-01T11:32:05","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T15:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/?p=1891"},"modified":"2010-09-02T13:29:53","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T17:29:53","slug":"i-never-said-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/2010\/09\/i-never-said-that\/","title":{"rendered":"I never said that!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m pleased to see that my recent paper, “Climate Change: A Software Grand Challenge<\/a>” is getting some press attention. However, I’m horrified to see how it’s been distorted in the echo chamber of the media. Danny Bradbury, writing in the Guardian, gives his piece the headline “Climate scientists should not write their own software, says researcher<\/a>“. Aaaaaaargh! Nooooo! That’s the exact opposite of what I would say!<\/p>\n

Our research shows that earth system models, the workhorses of climate science, appear to have very few bugs<\/a>, and produce remarkably good simulations of past climate<\/a>. One of the most important success factors is that the code is written by the scientists themselves<\/a>, as they understand the domain inside out. Now, of course, this leads to other problems, for instance the code is hard to understand<\/a>, and hard to modify<\/a>. And the job of integrating the various components<\/a> of the models is really hard. But there are no obvious solutions to fix this <\/a>without losing this hands-on relationship between the scientists and the code. Handing the code development over to software professionals is likely to be a disaster.<\/p>\n

I’ve posted a comment on Bradbury’s article, but I have very little hope he’ll alter the headline, as it obviously plays into a storyline that’s popular with denialists right now <\/del>(see update, below).<\/p>\n

Some other reports:<\/p>\n