Monday, July 04, 2005

"If I did get such a letter, I would become desperate"

The Chronicle: Daily news: 07/01/2005 -- 01


Those who think that the Barton letters are just reasonable "oversight" should have a read of what Professor Hans von Storch says, towards the bottom of this news article. von Storch has previously been outspoken in his criticism of Mann, calling his work "rubbish."


I don't know of any scientist who could answer such questions. It's just not the way our work is done - there is far too much pressure for rapid and new results for us to maintain full "audit trails" and answer an unlimited number of questions from any troublemaker with too much time on their hands. By the time 5 years have passed, our work is either irrelevant and forgotten, or else superceded, either because it really was wrong, or because someone else improved on it. In either case, complete replication of the original is a waste of time.

4 comments:

William M. Connolley said...

But, the translation you point to is by Sonia "septic" BC. Would you trust it?

James Annan said...

Well, it seems like she quoted the German correctly, and Babelfish says "Methodically it is wrong, one could also say: Rubbish."

Anonymous said...

There was one omission otherwise the translation is reasonable.

v. Storch:
"Nach unseren Computermodellen pendelten die Temperaturen wesentlich schneller und stärker. Sie waren auch vor 900 Jahren einmal annähernd so warm wie heute. Zwischen den Jahren 1400 und 1800 kommen wir hingegen auf wesentlich niedrigere Werte als Mann."

Translation: According to our computer model temperatures fluctuation were significantly larger and took place faster.

Missing the second and third sentences: "Nine hundred years ago they were about as warm as today. Between 1400 and 1800 we found significantly lower values than Mann."

Anonymous said...

There was one omission otherwise the translation is reasonable.

v. Storch:
"Nach unseren Computermodellen pendelten die Temperaturen wesentlich schneller und stärker. Sie waren auch vor 900 Jahren einmal annähernd so warm wie heute. Zwischen den Jahren 1400 und 1800 kommen wir hingegen auf wesentlich niedrigere Werte als Mann."

Translation: According to our computer model temperatures fluctuation were significantly larger and took place faster.

Missing the second and third sentences: "Nine hundred years ago they were about as warm as today. Between 1400 and 1800 we found significantly lower values than Mann."