On New Year's Day 1995, a single giant wave hit the Draupner oil platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. By chance, the platform was fitted with laser measuring equipment which recorded the height of waves as they passed by. This one measured in at an unprecedented 25.6 metres, about the size of a seven storey office block. The Draupner event finally confirmed the existence of rogue waves, previously known only to science through the anecdotal evidence of the few who had seen and survived them.

Curiously, the existence of rogue waves was predicted mathematically more than ten years earlier by Howell Peregrine at the University of Bristol in the UK. The theoretical prediction and the observational confirmation should have generated an obvious question: shouldn't rogue waves also occur in other wave-like systems?  . . . .

But what of more abstract systems? Today Zhenya Yan at the Institute of Systems Science in Beijing says that rogue waves can also occur in financial systems, and in particular in equity markets. Traditionally, econophysicists have modelled equity pricing using the Black-Scholes economic model, in which prices change stochastically, like the movement of particles under Brownian motion.

Researchers have long known that the Black-Scholes model cannot account for the observed volatility of the real market but had no alternative to turn to. However, earlier this month, Vladimir Ivancevic at the Defence Science & Technology Organisation in Australia proposed a nonlinear wave model as an alternative to Black-Scholes

"Global Warmists Dig in Their Heels over Climategate — Kind of".

"Climategate: how they all squirmed."

NRO contributor Henry Payne gives us two for the price of one: the major media don't like this story any better than they did the story twenty years ago that acid rain wasn't that big a deal. (Remember acid rain?) And he therefore dubs the scandal "Climaquiddick".

Whether the theory is right or wrong, something all reasonable people should agree on is that the Climatic Research Unit's data are a mess and that the unit's unwillingness to make clear and public their data and procedures is terrible. (I posit a White Bronco Theorem: people usually don't act like they have something to hide unless they do.)

Unfortunately for the scientists involved, though, replication is the heart of science. Frank J. Tipler:

I am automatically skeptical of any claim that by its very nature cannot be replicated by other scientists. What keeps scientists honest is not that scientists are more honest than other people — we aren’t — but that we know our colleagues are looking over our shoulders. Everyone is honest when he knows he is being watched.

Eugene Volokh:

My inclination would be to say that data should nearly always be shared. If you share your data, this lets others check the conclusions you draw from the data, as well as verifying the accuracy of the data against other available sources. They might disprove your arguments, or lead you to improve your arguments, or, if they reproduce your results, they might help prove the validity of your arguments. But in either case, science progresses better, and the decisions made based on the science are more reliable, than if you keep the data secret.

So the defense that it is just so taxing to deal with questions about the data won't wash. Especially now that it seems as though a lot of the original data has been destroyed. UPDATE: maybe the data isn't gone after all.

Not surprisingly, with stuff this strange, Wayne and Garth make an appearance: "Top 10 Annoyances in the Climate Change Debate". Ron Rosenbaum expands on number two, the incredible misuse of the term "denialist". Mark Steyn expands on number three, the argument that everything is O.K. because the studies received "peer review".

If the temperature data remains extremely questionable, the next front in the battle will be the question: are glaciers melting?

Last, two worthy--for now--summary statements:

Glenn Reynolds--aka the Blogfather--argues that the controversy illustrates his Army of Davids thesis.

And Christopher Booker at the U.K. Telegraph writes a piece headlined, "Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation".

This year progressives, lead by President Obama, have stopped apologizing for our view the proper role of government, and begun to assert that Reagan was fundamentally wrong when he said government was the problem. Instead, as Congressman Barney Frank says, government is the name we give to the things we choose to do together.

The right wing argues that government can never do things as well as the "private sector."

Government is not always the solution, any more than it is always the problem. But in many cases, progressives know that it is more efficient, more effective and more consistent with the values of a democratic society for all of us to do something together - through our government.

Progressive leaders need to finish getting out of that defensive crouch, stand up straight, and assert our view of government forcefully and without apology.

Robert Higgs, "Nineteen Neglected Consequences of Income Redistribution":

Virtually every government action changes the personal distribution of income, but some government programs, which give money, goods, or services to individuals who give nothing in exchange, represent income redistribution in its starkest form. . . .

It is tempting to think about government transfers in a simple way: one person, taxpayer T, loses a certain amount of money; another person, recipient R, gains the same amount; and everything else remains the same. When people look at income redistribution in this way, they tend to make a judgment about the desirability of the transfer simply by considering whether T or R is the more deserving. Commonly, especially when the issue is discussed in the news media or by left-liberal politicians, R is portrayed as a representative of the poor and downtrodden and T as a wealthy person or a big corporation. Opponents of the transfers then appear callous and lacking in compassion for the less fortunate.

In fact, the overwhelming portion—more than 85 percent—of all government transfer payments is not “means-tested,” that is, not reserved for low-income recipients.² The biggest share goes to the elderly as pensions and Medicare benefits, and anyone over 65 years old, rich and poor alike, can receive these benefits. Today people over 65 have the highest income per person and the highest wealth per person of any age group in the United States. Federal transfer payments to farmers present an even more extreme case of giving to those who are already relatively well off. In 1989, for example, the federal government paid about $15 billion to farmers in direct crop subsidies, and 67 percent of the money went to the owners of the largest 17 percent of the farms—in many cases payments to farmers are literally welfare for millionaires.³ It is simply a hoax that, as a rule, government is taking from the rich for the benefit of the poor. Even people who believe in the rectitude of redistribution à la Robin Hood ought to be troubled by the true character of the redistribution being effected by governments in America today.

But apart from the troubling moral questions raised by redistribution, the issue is far more complicated than ordinarily considered. Beyond the naked fact that T pays taxes to the government and the government gives goods, services, or money to R, at least 19 other consequences occur when the government redistributes income.

C'mon, folks, bring that required value down some, and you might make me move. :-)

Amid widening concern over unintended acceleration events, including an Aug. 28 crash near San Diego that killed a California Highway Patrol officer and his family, Toyota has repeatedly pointed to "floor mat entrapment" as the problem.

But accounts from motorists such as Weiss, interviews with auto safety experts and a Times review of thousands of federal traffic safety incident reports all point to another potential cause: the electronic throttles that have replaced mechanical systems in recent years. . . .

Michael Pecht, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland who has studied sudden acceleration for 10 years, said it's nearly impossible to replicate an electronic control system fault simply by driving a short distance.

"These are not things that occur every day. If it occurred a lot, you could track it down. If it occurs once in 10,000 trips, then it is difficult to find," he said.  

Interesting, but as Fark would say, "Still no cure for cancer."

Came the sixth, and here it was, that one special moment that you always look for when Joe Frazier is in a fight. Most of his fights have shown this: You can go so far into that desolate and dark place where the heart of Frazier pounds, you can waste his perimeters, you can see his head hanging in the public square, maybe even believe that you have him, but then suddenly you learn that you have not. Once more the pattern emerged as Frazier loosed all of the fury, all that has made him a brilliant heavyweight. He was in close now, fighting off Ali's chest, the place where he has to be. His old calling card—that sudden evil, his left hook—was working the head of Ali. Two hooks ripped with slaughterhouse finality at Ali's jaw, causing Imelda Marcos to look down at her feet, and the president to wince as if a knife had been stuck in his back. Ali's legs seemed to search for the floor. He was in serious trouble, and he knew that he was in no-man's-land.

Whatever else might one day be said about Muhammad Ali, it should never be said that he is without courage, that he cannot take a punch. He took those shots by Frazier and then came out for the seventh, saying to him, "Old Joe Frazier, why I thought you were washed up." Joe replied, "Somebody told you all wrong, pretty boy."

(Note to Forbes: something either is or isn't unique. It can't be "most unique". But, sigh, I think that battle has been lost.)

Pretty good advice for most jobs, I expect.

Two on world poverty: A serious answer about what to do from William Easterly. Still the best answer from Sam Kinison.

And if by some chance you're having trouble finding things to be thankful for, read this beautifully written but overwhelming, searingly sad piece, "Nothing Left to Say," for an example of how terrible life can be. Most of our lives are pretty good compared to it.

From all of us at the Door, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

A noted statistician, after reviewing the hockey stick paper and ensuing controversy, stated: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." (p. 10)

Mann, the lead author of the original hockey stick paper, is quoted as objecting to the statistician's review: "[He] uncritically parrots claims by two Canadians . . ." (p. 11) You can understand Professor Mann's exasperation, can't you? If they're Canadians, how can they be right?

McIntyre has posted links to two reports that are harshly critical of the hockey stick result (and that were--surprise!--headlined incorrectly by the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Nature).

I was also interested to see that McIntyre has a section on his site, "Econometric References". It lists a dozen articles from the economics literature on how to do statistical analysis properly. The list doesn't make him right, but it does mean he's probably better read on a key issue than 99.9% of the journalists who write about global warming. (And probably more than a few of the scientists, too.)

For still more background, I recommend Bishop Hill's "Caspar and the Jesus Paper" and Warren Meyer's "Don't Panic!"

For discussion related to the recently revealed information, some fine posts are the following:

John Hinderaker discusses four of the e-mails and concludes:

Apparently the alarmist climatologists acknowledge that SO2, frequently emitted in conjunction with CO2, nullifies, wholly or in part, any warming tendency associated with the CO2. What is the net effect? This is, obviously, an empirical, quantitative question. But these scientists can't answer it, not only because each of their models gives a different result, but because they have no idea how much SO2 is being emitted by the main countries that produce that pollutant, India and China. Having no idea what the facts are, their models are useless. It does appear, however, that one obvious alternative to impoverishing humanity in a most-likely-futile effort to stave off global warming would be emitting a whole lot of SO2 over the ocean, and continuing those emissions indefinitely rather than banning them as is currently contemplated by the warmists' models.

Devil's Kitchen deconstructs a "read me" file attached to the computer code.

Jeff Id comments on "The Hockey Stick Peer Review Gauntlet".

AJ Strata makes a good point about phony precision in the old temperature data.

The BBC's Martin Rosenbaum writes ". . . they [the e-mails] are certainly interesting from the FOI point of view."

If you'd like a perspective on what's behind the global warming hysteria, or if you're just a fan of Public Choice, I recommend Bruce Yandle and Stuart Buck's paper, "Bootleggers, Baptists, and the Global Warming Battle". Their story is supported by this recent article recounting how some folks expect to make lots of money from global warming:

UKRAINE'S economic collapse has produced a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza, allowing the country to reap windfall carbon credit profits from the dead chimneys of its industrial decline.

Finally, a welcome bit of humor: "What happens when you run the Climate Models?"

(Oh, and if you're following George Mason econobloggers, I make the score on this issue Bryan Caplan, 1, and Tyler Cowen and Robin Hanson, 0.)

But you might want to read this, too: "The Black Friday deals that aren't".

Two months ago, Patrick J. Michaels warned that CRU seemed to have "lost or destroyed" much of the key historical temperature data: "The Dog Ate Global Warming".

Rand Simberg writes:

Many in the climate change community have condemned what they call “skeptics,” often to the point of declaring them de facto criminals and assigning them to the same category as Holocaust deniers. They tell us that “the science is settled” and that we should shut up. But every scientist worthy of the name should be a skeptic. Every theory should be subject to challenge on a scientific basis. Every claim of a model’s validity should be accompanied by the complete model and data set that supposedly validated it, so that it can be replicated. That is how science works. It is how it advances. And when the science is supposedly “settled” and they refuse to do so, it’s not unreasonable to wonder why.

Well, now we know.

In fact, when scientists become politicians but continue to pretend to be doing science, that is the real crime. The theory being promoted by these men was being used to justify government actions that would result in greatly diminished future economic growth of the most powerful economy on earth (and the rest of the world as well). It would make it more difficult and less affordable to address any real problems that might be caused in the future by a change in climate, whether due to human activity or other causes. It could impoverish millions in the future, with little actual change in adverse climate effects. And when such a theory has the potential to do so much unjustified harm, and it has a fraudulent basis, who are the real criminals against humanity?

And here's a very interesting speculation on how the information became public, involving neither "hacking" or whistle-blowing.

For those who'd like to keep up with the controversy, these sites are useful:

Climate Audit--Mirror Site.

Bishop Hill blog.

Watts Up With That?

the Air Vent.

Democrats have accused conservatives of spreading fear and misinformation about their health-care legislation. They might want to look into this new and most insidious propaganda arm of the conservative movement: NPR.