Comments on: UEA CRU climate data is a free data issue too http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/2009/12/uea-cru-climate-data-is-a-free-data-issue-too/ A Guardian Technology campaign for free public access to non-personal data about the UK and its citizens Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:15:46 +0100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Jonathan Gray http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/2009/12/uea-cru-climate-data-is-a-free-data-issue-too/comment-page-1/#comment-131583 Jonathan Gray Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:51:54 +0000 http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=548#comment-131583 You may be interested in the following: http://blog.okfn.org/2009/12/05/climate-change-climate-sceptics-and-open-data/ http://ckan.net/group/climatedata You may be interested in the following:

http://blog.okfn.org/2009/12/05/climate-change-climate-sceptics-and-open-data/
http://ckan.net/group/climatedata

]]> By: Nick Barnes http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/2009/12/uea-cru-climate-data-is-a-free-data-issue-too/comment-page-1/#comment-131568 Nick Barnes Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:37:41 +0000 http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=548#comment-131568 Yes, it is unsatisfactory. The CRU ought to say more about why it needs to use this data. For instance, which "parts of the world" would be affected detrimentally without the data? They ought also to provide additional gridded datasets which are free of all such data constraints. Possibly they don't actually know, down at the nitty-gritty number-crunching level, which source datasets are constrained. It all sounds rather like a gridlock which would need the intervention of more senior people to unwedge it (e.g. head of the met office talking to heads of other NMSes). Changing contracts is easy - the work of a few days at most - if the heads of the contracting organisations actually want to make it happen. But getting their attention for long enough to "make it so" can be very difficult. This has presumably never been important enough to gain the attention of those senior people. Maybe the (IMO ridiculous) stink over these emails will change that. Once their code and data is free, the <a href="http://clearclimatecode.org/" rel="nofollow">Clear Climate Code</a> project will be happy to take a look at it. A tiny quibble: shouldn't an article which begins "I've" come with some sort of byline? I think, from the RSS, that this was written by Charles Arthur. But that information needs to appear on the post page. Yes, it is unsatisfactory. The CRU ought to say more about why it needs to use this data. For instance, which “parts of the world” would be affected detrimentally without the data? They ought also to provide additional gridded datasets which are free of all such data constraints. Possibly they don’t actually know, down at the nitty-gritty number-crunching level, which source datasets are constrained.

It all sounds rather like a gridlock which would need the intervention of more senior people to unwedge it (e.g. head of the met office talking to heads of other NMSes). Changing contracts is easy – the work of a few days at most – if the heads of the contracting organisations actually want to make it happen. But getting their attention for long enough to “make it so” can be very difficult. This has presumably never been important enough to gain the attention of those senior people. Maybe the (IMO ridiculous) stink over these emails will change that.

Once their code and data is free, the Clear Climate Code project will be happy to take a look at it.

A tiny quibble: shouldn’t an article which begins “I’ve” come with some sort of byline? I think, from the RSS, that this was written by Charles Arthur. But that information needs to appear on the post page.

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