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Thread: BBC climate change experiment cocked

  1. #1
    Target Butt IronBits's Avatar
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    BBC climate change experiment cocked

    This is NOT good

    THE BBC'S CLIMATE CHANGE EXPERIMENT started in February and almost 200,000 users around the World have signed up. With supercharged computers winding down after two months of number crunching, now is perhaps not the best time for the boffins at Oxford University to discover that the data they built into the model is flawed.
    Users, including hundreds of schoolkids, who were looking forward to completing their climate-change models in the next few days are now being asked to start again from the beginning, with corrected data.
    As you might expect, there is a lot of heat being generated over at the BBC's Climate Change Forum.
    The scientists at the Oxford Institute for Extreme Cleverness confessed to a "major error in one of the files used by the climate model," here.
    Project Coordinator Nick Faull, said the file had underestimated levels of man-made sulphate emissions and models had tended to warm up too quickly. The file error was "also responsible for causing models to crash in 2013 which is how we originally came across the problem," he said.
    Faull claims that the data gathered isn't completely useless, but that there is 'no alternative' but to start models again from the beginning.
    "It's a big disappointment to have to give you this news," he confesses.
    With around 200,000 PCs running the experiment non-stop for two months, it looks very much as if the BBC experiment is making more of a contribution to global warming than scientific knowledge. µ
    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31073

  2. #2
    The same problem effects the main CPDN project too, since that's handing out the same type of work units now. "Kill" trickles have been sent out to cause all the problem WUs to abort.

    I don't think it's a total disaster though, it seems that the science returned so far is still of use. It is a shame though.
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  3. #3
    Keeper of the Fridge PY 222's Avatar
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    OUCH, this is a PR's worst nightmare.

  4. #4
    DinkaTronic Shish's Avatar
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    Oh Dear. Aunty BEEB pulls a dud.
    Well maybe some good will come of this cos mebbe some of the users will remain hooked on DC.
    BBC+OXFORD DON (figured the project out on his desktop cos he couldn`t get soopercomp time?) = BIG BUNCH of CLOWNS.
    Bet ITV (who wished they`d got in first but now have a newsman wandering the world in search of scarestories on global meltdown ) are laughing their socks off but I think they`re now creating news stories more than reporting them to justify their massive ads funded budget.

    Any other UK`ers noticed all the created news recently?
    Like an ol` 8086, slow but serviceable.
    One advantage of old age...nobody can tell you how much cake you can eat


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