Col_Rouge nothing about your failed Arts degree and stumbling into IT and calling yourself a business consultant gives me confidence that you have the theoretical knowledge to understand the statistics behind R Castles criticism of the methodology. I have more faith in integrity and predictions of scientifically trained CSIRO climate scientists who publish in peer reviewed journals than I do in pushy untrained self-made men.

Sams and Billie,

For clarification, my initial is ‘I’, not ‘R’. I'm the author of this article and I've been posting on OLO as IanC.

I was formerly the Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and am an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. As such I subscribe to the Institute’s Declaration of Professional Ethics, which holds that ‘A principle of all scientific work is that it should be open to scrutiny, assessment and possible validation by fellow scientists’. It urges particular attention to this principle when using computer software packages for analysis.

I welcome David Stockwell’s posting of his R programming and of links to the data sets to which he was finally given access - thereby giving those with the skill to do so the opportunity to scrutinise, assess and possibly validate his results. I hope that the authors of the report are among those who accept his invitation.

I don’t know why no prior evaluation of the models' fitness for purpose was not undertake3n, but it wasn't. That leaves Australia’s two leading climate science research organisations with a heavy burden of responsibility.

The President of the NSW Farmers Federation, Mr. Jock Laurie, has said that the reporting of the results of this study had ‘added confusion and pressure to farm families at a time when they can least afford it’- and that the Federation had ‘received a number of calls from members who are extremely agitated, confused and upset about the reports of droughts every second year in future.’It's a matter of grave concern that this alarm has been triggered by models that don't pass standard validation tests.

The Minister's statement said that the study was the first of its kind in Australia. Surely the requirement to validate in this case is no less than it would be in the case of the results of a novel medical study.

CSIRO and BoM have been declining for some time; John McLean noted this in a 2007 article which exhibited some prescience in that he observed that CSIRO was relying on untried and untested climate models; his paper is here; http:mclean.ch/climate/CSIRO_review.pdf. Steve McIntyre has also observed problems with not only modelling by BoM but their collection methods as well; McIntyre notes the old methods of gathering data were more preferable, even if "thermometers (were) being seized by dingoes, taken by crows and being smashed by angry wives; his 3 part report is here; http:www.climateaudit.org/?p=1492.
A couple of commentators have seen fit to raise the old chestnut about peer-reviewed papers; apart from insulting Dr Stockwell's paper, which is in a peer-reviewed form, and his impressive qualifications, it ignores that there is a veritable blizzard of peer-reviewed papers about the total predictive failure of the IPCC's models; here are 2 of them;
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/850
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions?p=6

billie, billie, what can I say other than as the article said-

“It is truly unfortunate that the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology did not undertake a prior evaluation of the models used in the first study of its kind in Australia in order to ensure that those models were able to reproduce the past situations that were relevant to the study.”

That means (for you of so much faith and critical of my humble understanding), if historic data were passed through these models, the tested history would not present as the outcome of that data.

So why would that be – well

Unreasonable / inaccurate / unfounded or just plain wrong assumption to the relationship between the measured variables.

Inappropriate emphasis being placed on particular variables

Lack of data or data which was not representative as a sample of the whole

Theory based learning, lacking regard for practical observation, experience and spurious variability and collection error, caused when insufficient data has been collected over either as widespread an area as necessary or over an appropriate period of time.

So billie, You are entitled to your views. But since you are not paying me, I will not bother to illuminate your own dark, miserable little corner of ignominy beyond the above and leave you in the glimmer of your own ‘birthday-cake candle’ of brilliance.

I have no intention of giving credence or correcting what you write as your version of a supposed miniature bio of me.

However, I would rather be considered, as you call me, one of the “self-made men.”

Than one who is clearly “small minded, envious and in need of someone else to tell him when and how to wipe his backside”.

This is not surprising Ian, as both agencies now produce political press coverage in support of their prime ministerial funding allocations
The Bom in particular takes the short grab daily with no long term horizon past its own navel. (Indigo Jones, rip).

If you want to have a Historical point of view of drought in Australia written by a historian you can go no further than Michael McKernan's "Drought , The Red marauder" (Allen & Unwin 2005)
It describes the pain and suffering of people and the land under drought conditions very well.
It is incumbent on the CSIRO and BoM to be accurate as possible in its predictions on this reoccurring climatic condition.
But it is of no surprise that most scientific research is now being done in the Co-operative Research Centres nowadays.
CSIRO has certainly lost its gloss!