For all the shouting from NIWA’s supporters that we “have” the information we’re demanding from NIWA, because it’s in the “publicly-available” thesis, it is surprisingly difficult to lay one’s hands on a copy of it.

Whether they gathered their information from a student’s thesis, an old textbook or just a bull session at the pub, the NIWA conclusions on it all had to be brought into their records at some point.

We know the adjusted figures, and the warming trend they created, are in NIWA’s records, because they have been used in the notorious graph on NIWA’s website, and frequently cited by NIWA when offering advice to others.

Is it possible that NIWA merely replaced the raw figures in the New Zealand national temperature series with the adjusted figures – making no record whatever as to their provenance, their magnitude, their calculation or their purpose? No, because Dr Renwick has said that NIWA has sufficient records to recalculate and justify all of the adjustments.

Besides, NIWA has an express statutory duty under S 3(c) of the Public Records Act 2005 -

“– to enable the Government to be held accountable by:
(i) ensuring that full and accurate records of [its] affairs are created and maintained; and
(ii) providing for the preservation of, and public access to, records of long-term value;”

NIWA couldn’t enter adjusted temperatures into the national series without creating a “full and accurate record”. So where is this record?

And the key question: Why did NIWA refuse to disclose computer records of the adjusted entries, and the data being used for reconstruction, when responding to the Official Information Request? What other records have they concealed?

Dr Renwick in an email said to me precisely this:

Yes, the “original worksheets” used by Jim Salinger for his PhD study in the late 1970s have indeed been misplaced, or possibly destroyed. However, the original data upon which his calculations are based are still in existence. We are in the process of re-creating Jim Salinger’s work, and of documenting the adjustments necessary to the various stations – as we indicated in a media release in December. We can check our overall result against the Salinger NZ time series, to see if we get the same answer.

Four days later, he said this:

I think you misunderstood my mail last week – the original SOA [Schedule of Adjustments] isn’t gone, it was published in Jim Salinger’s PhD thesis, and has been used in NIWA for many years. What’s “gone” are “the original worksheets”, i.e. Jim Salinger’s working notes from this PhD study. But the results (the SOA, etc) are in his thesis.

I take from this that Renwick is relying solely and completely on Salinger’s thesis for knowledge of the corrections to apply to the official seven-station temperature record.

However, to put the cat among the pigeons yet again, today (Friday), just four days later again, the Coalition discovered from a reliable source that neither the actual figures for the adjustments nor their reasons appear anywhere in the thesis.

Puzzling is the word.

I find that claim puzzling. The Official Information Act request is posted on the CSC website as is the response from NIWA’s general counsel, Mr Mahood. The request clearly related to copies of ALL original documents (including NIWA’s computer records) relating to the adjustments, and NO copies of any records were offered in response.

If Dr Renwick was correctly understood,it seems that NIWA may be perilously close to a breach of their legal duties under the OIA.