Climate Conversation Group

Today, the NZ Herald announced:

New Zealand’s climate is forecast to warm by at least 1°C by 2050, while the average rate for the world has been put at more than 2°C.

via Warming likely boost to vineyards – NZ Herald.

The article said it was good news for wine. James Renwick was asked to comment and thought stonefruit and pipfruit wouldn’t suit warmer conditions and “other potential negatives included more floods and cyclones, sea level rises, and more plant and insect pests.” (There’s always someone with a gloomy view, isn’t there?)

But this move in temperatures is hard to reconcile with what we know. Read more… »

The NZ Climate Science Coalition’s opponents have attacked it for creating a Trust (the NZ Climate Science Education Trust, NZCSET) for the sole purpose of unfairly (perhaps, in the opinion of some, unlawfully) avoiding costs if they lost the court case against NIWA.

However, there are sensible reasons for creating a legal entity to take someone to court. One of the first questions a judge asks is “who are the parties?” If that simple question cannot be answered by naming a legal entity the case doesn’t get off the ground and the judge just gets annoyed.

So, although the NZCSC did the scientific work in challenging NIWA’s techniques, it couldn’t take the court proceedings. An unincorporated association cannot sue or be sued, as it has no legal existence separate from its multifarious members. Read more… »

– by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

The Sunday Star Times (SST) has today reported that the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (“Climate Trust”) has asked Mr Justice Venning to disclose whether he held any financial interests under the Emissions Trading Scheme when he heard the trust’s recent case against NIWA.

In a discussion on Wednesday about the Climate Trust’s filing with the Court of Appeal, the SST reporter asked me about allegations of judicial bias. He claimed to have information that the appeal was based upon the judge’s forestry investments. I assured him that the appeal made no mention of bias and that this question had arisen only in the course of the current costs argument in the High Court. Read more… »

UPDATE1

So shut up, you lot!

NIWA, in its memorandum to Justice Venning about the costs of our court case, says some curious things. I’ve pulled out a few of the ripostes that the NZCSET’s lawyers have just delivered to the judge and which I’m delighted to share with you. (Bear in mind that the APPLICANT is the Coalition. The DEFENDANT is NIWA.) This one’s a pearler:

29. The defendant alleges in paragraph 17 that the proceeding did not concern climate change…

This is breathtaking. It will surprise their long-suffering supporters – having endured NIWA’s hogwash about the 7SS not being “official” or even a “national” temperature record (“oh, it’s only for study”), and that this organisation of top scientists has no obligation WHATSOEVER to strive for excellence, they now have to stand cringing as their favourite publicly-paid climate scientists argue that the court case had nothing to do with climate change.

Really? What rot. I’d like to shake these men up and make them see sense. Read more… »

NIWA displays an unattractive arrogance toward challengers.

The question arises, m’lud, of costs

Unaffordable justice is not justice.

But before payment ever becomes an issue, the very availability of a Court of law is vital, for it guarantees that the ordinary citizen may have his grievances examined by a disinterested judge. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of the unperturbed mind to resolve disputes, remedy wrongs and instil peace; it’s fair to say that nothing else can.

The significance of the Court’s availability increases with the increasing power of one’s adversary, until the adversary is the Crown itself, when the importance of an open Court surpasses everything. For in battling the Crown or the State one stands to lose everything, the combat is so unequal. Only the judge stands between the citizen and the Crown. Outside the courtroom the citizen would be crushed without thought, but before the judge the agent of the Crown will discover that he meets an equal Read more… »

From Australian fellow sceptics – the NO CARBON TAX Climate Sceptics Party (NCTCS)

– by Anthony Cox, Solicitor and NCTCS Secretary

A court challenge to the validity of the New Zealand temperature record [NZTR] has concluded. The Judgement refused all three parts of the challenge to the NZTR.

The challenge had been initiated by a group of climate researchers called The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust [the Trust] against the government funded scientific body which prepared the NZTR, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research LTD [NIWA].

The Trust issued a Statement of Claim [SOC] seeking:

A declaration that the New Zealand Temperature Record is not a full
and accurate record of changes in the average surface temperatures
recorded in New Zealand since 1900.

Read more… »

To be a judge in New Zealand is to wield substantial power. Here we have evidence that judicial power can reverse the meaning of a word.

The judgement in our case against NIWA said at paragraph 9:

Both the original statement of claim and the first amended statement of claim were prolix.

The word “prolix” comes from the Latin “prolixus”, which means “extended” (literally “poured out”) or “courteous, favourable”. It has come to mean “tediously lengthy, bombastic, long-winded, verbose, wordy.”

It’s not used as a compliment. When a judge describes your submission as prolix he’s saying “your explanatory skills are poor, you waffle and you have wasted much of my time.” Read more… »

The Herald has today editorialised its rancour against climate sceptics and repeated oft-heard unfounded criticisms (h/t – Andy). They make a couple of good points but so many blunders I’ve time for only a brief tour of them. Herald statements in green (emphasis added).

A year ago, James Hansen, one of the world’s top climate scientists, conceded that climate sceptics were winning the argument with the public over global warming. This, he said, was occurring even as climate science itself was showing ever more clearly that the Earth was in increasing danger from rising temperatures.

Just as Hansen didn’t justify his statement then, the leader writer doesn’t justify it now, Read more… »

In November 2009, about a week before the international climate change conference in Copenhagen, the CCG and the NZCSC (the Coalition) released a paper we’d been working on for some time — “Are we feeling warmer yet?” (AWFWY).

On pages 13 and 14 of his affidavit to the High Court, Dr Wratt devotes six paragraphs to our paper and contrives to misrepresent it – obviously trying to give it a bad name. First, he correctly quotes a sentence from the paper:

There are no reasons for any large corrections.

Then he observes:

“NZCSC members… appear to ignore the fact that good scientific practice requires adjustment for site changes before temperature series are analysed for long-term changes.”

Thus he establishes two things:

1. The paper finds no reasons to make large corrections, but it should.
2. The paper makes no corrections, but it should.

Fairly straightforward and not hard to understand. Except that: Read more… »

Professor de Freitas from time to time advises the NZ Climate Science Coalition, but he does not speak for it. Nevertheless, this op-ed in today’s Herald gives such a clear view of the issues touching our court case that it deserves a hearing here.

– by Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor, School of Environment, University of Auckland.

One assumes scientific analysis is objective, so it may come as a surprise that this was challenged in a New Zealand High Court case, the results of which were released last week.

The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET) contested the claim by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) that New Zealand air temperatures had climbed by 0.9°C over the past century. The trust maintains that objective analysis of the data shows a trend closer to 0.3°C per 100 years. Read more… »

– by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

It was a great disappointment that Justice Venning was not prepared to declare NIWA’s data adjustments to be a breach of the Crown Research Institutes Act 1992.

On the law, the Judge found that any review should be “tolerant” and “cautious” because NIWA was “a specialist body acting within its own sphere of expertise.” He declined to rule on the disputed science – while tending to favour the 92-page opinion evidence provided by NIWA’s Dr Wratt (which was not subject to cross-examination).

Where does this now leave the NZCSC’s long-term effort to show that the NIWA temperature adjustments are wrong? Read more… »

Awards costs to NIWA

Mr Justice Venning has released his judgement in the case between the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET) and NIWA.

All three of NZCSET’s requests to the Court were declined. Costs were awarded to NIWA.

I’ll have more to say when I’ve read the judgement in full. In the meantime, Scoop has a story with a number of links.

James Renwick has been admirably quick with a press release from a small group of scientists but he entirely mischaracterises our suit:

Scientific analysis and discussion is carried out through the peer-reviewed literature. The basic science of climate change (global warming) has been established for well over a century, and almost all scientists active in climate research agree that human activity is causing the climate to change. For a small group of scientists to appeal to a court of law to find otherwise is bizarre.

I have evidence, having corresponded with him, that James can read, but did he read what was clearly stated in the judgement? The facts are that our three causes of action concerned the New Zealand temperature record, not any global record, and we discussed only the New Zealand climate, not the global climate. We never discussed the causes, magnitude or future course of global warming.

In repeating this lie about what we said he makes it well-nigh impossible for even a well-informed member of the public to assemble anything but a wrong-headed view of our actual intentions.

In doing so Professor Renwick corrupts his position of influence.

UPDATE 8 Sep 2012

Jo Nova comments on the decision.

John O’Sullivan expressed interest in our court project against NIWA. But some of his comments describe more hope than fact, possibly through a misunderstanding of NZ law and the nature of our court case, and perhaps my inadequate reporting has contributed to that.

This morning my inbox was filling up with requests to explain and I could sense some people becoming distinctly over-stimulated by the imaginary achievements of the brave Kiwi sceptics.

The problem is that the judge hasn’t even made his decision, which my recent posts have made clear. We run a distinct risk of contempt of court if we appear to endorse the wild claims about the state of the case, of legal moves, even of victory, that are beginning to sound around the world.

It’s a shame, for the case contains enough of genuine merit; it can do without being overshadowed by needless exaggeration.

In an attempt to calm emotions, I’ve left a comment at John’s blog Read more… »

Here’s some good news: Mr Justice Venning said today that he intends granting my request to view the Court documents.

The other party to gain access is APNZ News Service, through Matthew Theunissen – that’s the Herald’s agency.

Because the file is in his Chambers and is the subject of a reserved decision, we must wait until the decision is delivered before we get access to it. I’m looking forward to studying the transcript because I missed a lot by not attending all the hearing. I’m not sure there’s much of interest in the other exhibits, but of course I haven’t seen them yet!

The Registrar’s office told me none of the material exists in electronic form. So that’s a shame – it means anything I want to post online I’ll have to type or convert with an OCR program. So let’s hope the quality is good.

It sounds as though I’ll get access to the whole suitcase full but I might have to be selective in posting only the juicy pieces online. And I won’t see the file for perhaps two or three months anyway.

The High Court at Auckland, constructed as the Supreme Court from 1865-1868, photographed in 1869. Among New Zealand’s earliest structures — though the discussions and decisions it hosts can be expected to last much longer than the building.

Today we bring you more details of the High Court hearing from two weeks ago, including a surprising admission by NIWA, who practically discard the “peer review” provided for them by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).

In various previous posts (NZ sceptics v. NIWA – summary of case, More about the NZ temperature record, What warming, Incredible sham from NIWA and others) we summarise the *Coalition’s case against the Seven-Station Series (7SS).

Since 1999 this temperature series has been providing the basis for New Zealand’s climate change policies, but its major role has been to be presented whenever a public body needs official evidence of the country’s temperature history.

Until we investigated, NIWA’s web site did not disclose that the temperature readings had been adjusted. We only found out when we went to graph the data they provided – our graph was wildly different from theirs and showed no warming. Read more… »

So is it?

Let’s start to crack this open. Since the judge hasn’t delivered his decision we’ll be careful, but I’m advised we can discuss it freely as long as we don’t insult the judge (or NIWA’s scientists, for that matter). [ADDENDUM: Or attempt to influence the judge's decision.]

There are several incongruous aspects of NIWA’s 7SS adjustments that have always mystified Coalition* members:

1. The whole warming trend of about 1.0°C/century is brought about by pre-1945 downward adjustments, which are curiously linear (see graphs).
2. Although the site changes causing them are random, over 90% of the adjustments move in the same direction; they do not balance out as the literature suggests they should.
3. The 7SS adjusted warming trend is inconsistent with the official temperature series published in 1867 and 1920; these showed that the nationally-averaged temperatures recorded back then were just as high as they are now.
4. The largest New Zealand warming occurred during the half-century 1909-59, with the second highest being 1859-1909. The period 1959-2009 – which coincides with IPCC-reported global warming – shows the smallest trend (only 0.4°C/century).

Read more… »

EDITORIAL NOTE: As an organ of the NZ Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC, or the Coalition), the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET) was created especially to carry the Coalition’s legal suit against the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Limited (NIWA). The creation of a subsidiary is common in such cases and carries the approval of the judge. References here to the Coalition include the Trust. As a member of the Coalition, I sometimes say “we”, meaning the Coalition. The following is based on notes and conversations with our legal team and should be fairly accurate. Any mistakes are mine.

The hearing of the case between the Trust and NIWA ended on Thursday, with no surprises emerging from the defence presentation.

The Coalition had three causes of action against:

(a) The original Seven Station Series (7SS) published in 1999.
(b) The Review of NIWA’s “Seven-Station” Temperature Series (which is now the official version of the national temperature record).
(c) The Eleven-Station Series that was unadjusted.

Note that the Eleven-Station Series was issued in 2009 solely to counter the Coalition’s paper, “Are we feeling warmer yet,” published on November 25, 2009. The hastily-prepared 11SS appeared just eight days later in rebuttal, Read more… »

My apologies for my tardiness. I’ve been taking care of business, family and self. Now I can at last post a brief description of the final day of the hearing.

But first, please join me in a round of bashful giggling aimed at me. Why? I never knew that Wednesday, the day before this last day, had been scheduled as a rest day, and nobody turned up. Which renders my apology for not turning up quite redundant, I think. Well, let’s move on.

On this Thursday morning Justin Smith, counsel for the defendant, NIWA, presented their defence to the Coalition’s statement of claim. When I arrived after lunch he was presenting legal authorities concerning crown bodies, or state-owned enterprises. He spoke in a remarkably soft voice and, as I was seated behind him, that meant I failed to pick up a good three-quarters of what he said.

He must have been responding to our charge that NIWA did not perform its statutory duty. He said: “They’re not duties, they’re not called duties, they’re called operating principles.” Read more… »

The hearing finished about 3:30 pm today, Mr Justice Venning reserved his decision and the legal team and I had a few beers afterwards.

There’s little sense of what the decision might be. I’ll post a fuller report of the day’s session tomorrow.

Ken Perrott described so well the laudable principles of scientific scepticism. Who would have guessed he would poke his own neck into a noose he was preparing for us?

He says scientific debates depend upon good faith, but then claims good faith justifies calling us by the despicable term climate “deniers”.

Which is like claiming to rob banks in the cause of honesty. But it gets better. Read more… »

I’m sorry, but there was too much work today to get to the High Court. There’ll be no report from the forecourt of the High Court today.

I plan to be in attendance tomorrow afternoon and hope it’s now NIWA’s turn to bat. I can’t wait to hear what they say.

UPDATE: This day (Wednesday) was a rest day – nobody attended the case. So everything worked out well.

Four lawyers went to court today, among a total of 13 people: the judge and a clerk, four lawyers conducting business, one sceptical witness (yours truly – Bob was busy), two senior NIWA scientists, a friendly David Wratt and slightly sullen Brett Mullan, the friendly Tim Mahood (their general counsel), and three others who appear highly prosperous and might be lawyers. Six for them and one for us (not counting working lawyers).

From time to time one or two female journalists sit to one side tapping on their laptops. Just before lunch a fellow turned up and sat beside me. I introduced myself and he said he was a sceptic (“from way back”) who heard of the court case only yesterday and couldn’t wait to come along.

Today was the second day of the Coalition’s action against NIWA. Our counsel, Terry Sissons, was still taking Mr Justice Venning through our statement of claim. It should have been NIWA’s turn by now, Read more… »

When the Herald reported that an “‘Abrupt increase’ in CO2 absorption slowed global warming” the first question it raised was what sort of increase was an extra “one billion tonnes of carbon per year”. It said:

The earth would have warmed faster in the last two decades had there not been an unexplained rise in the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed on land, scientists believe.

Fortunately, Jo Nova and David Evans have commented. David describes the billion tonnes of carbon as insignificant. Jo mocks the implication that our selfish warming would have been worse without this previously unknown factor. Read more… »

The NZ Climate Science Educational Trust (NZCSET) enters the High Court at Auckland on Monday morning to challenge the national temperature record produced by NIWA.

The NZCSET is applying for a judicial review of NIWA’s actions in connection with the 7SS – the “Seven Station Series”. Please note that the application does not ask the Court to adjudicate on climate science. The Court would refuse to resolve a scientific question in any field.

I especially hope the climate deniers from Hot Topic and elsewhere finally note that point. They have been jeering from the sidelines for a long time about what they claim is our attempt to get the court to declare the science, but they were wrong.

The hearing is expected to last a week. Until now, the public had no access to the documents filed by each side over the last 18 months (even up to just a few days ago) and we were unable to describe what they said or comment on them.

But the commencement of the public hearing gives us access to the submissions, so I’ll be asking the Registrar on Monday for copies.

I’d like to post or describe the documents here and give readers a chance to comment. Watch this space.

It’s getting worse than they thought (for them!)

NZ monthly temperature anomalies 2001-2012 from NIWA’s monthly press releases. Although the trend is as near to zero as “damn it” is to swearing, it is, as a matter of fact, cooling. Anyway, for at least 10 years and 5 months, New Zealand has officially experienced no warming — unlike the great globe itself, which was predicted by highly skilled computer models to warm about 0.2°C over the same period, and so no doubt it did warm. Oh, no it didn’t.

This insight into the NZ temperature record is from the resourceful Bob D. I’ve promoted it because it’s priceless. Bob says:

NIWA’s Climate Updates

I thought I’d share the local New Zealand temperatures over the last decade. I downloaded all NIWA’s Climate Updates from their website (the first one I could find was Oct 2001) and plotted the temperature anomalies that were published for each month.

Of course, what with Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and all, I expected to see temperatures rising (accelerating, even) in a wild, out-of-control fashion, as the water vapour feedbacks kicked in, tripling the initial warming that came from the gigatons of poisonous carbon dioxide pollution that we’ve spewed (spewed, I tell you) into the atmosphere over the past decade.
/sarc

I was a little surprised at what I saw. Read more… »

The subject of our court case against NIWA has surfaced again with our recent filing of papers. Ken Perrott has been quick to go on the attack but so far he hasn’t a clue what we’re actually asking for.

For the record, Ken, we’re not accusing our public climate scientists of “scientific fraud” as you claim on your blog. We’re saying (and proving) they made serious mistakes in their reconstruction of the national temperature record.

WUWT has posted a great summary of the NIWA story written by one Andi Cockroft in NZ.

This is a fresh thread for an interesting court case that’s being watched around New Zealand and the world, from all sides of the climate debate.

“RENT BOY” UPDATE, 20 May

Someone’s finally told another “rob taylor” about his namesake insulting one of us at Hot Topic. He writes in high dudgeon, claims the same name, says he has worked for Greenpeace and disowns any interest in our discussion of the environment.

On the Internet, where nobody knows you’re a dog, it’s usually best to let sleeping dogs lie. Where might this lead?

It’s odd that this new rob taylor also disdains the use of capital letters, just like the rob taylor we know and love. Must be our modern mis-education system.

This is the latest rob taylor’s comment in full. It was received on May 20, 2012 at 2:10 am.

This is rob taylor from greenpeace, the only rob taylor from greenpeace and in no way have I been involved with this debate until this point until a friend informed me of this chat, which I have not the slightest bit of interest in. I have not worked at GP in NZ since I organized the March Against Mining on Queen St in 2010, and do not intend to engage in any environment debates in NZ in the foreseeable future let alone describing people I do not know in a public forum as “rent boys”. look somewhere else please lads and do not drag mine and Greenpeaces name into your discussion.

The determination of high-level dishonesty committed by NIWA scientists is wending inevitably to a conclusion.

Chairman of the Coalition and counsel for the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET), Barry Brill, filed the Trust’s evidence with the Court during January (copies will soon be available on the NZCSC website) and NIWA is expected to respond by 2 March. We’ll then learn (for the first time) the shape of its defence and have the opportunity to reply. On 20 March, the Court will finalise a timetable, including a fixture for the hearing – which our counsel expects could occur about June or July.

The wheels of justice sometimes turn exceeding slow, but everyone gets a turn to speak and what they say is heard—simple principles, more often honoured in blogland in the breach than the observance yet generally revered.

Decisions in this seminal case against NIWA are eagerly awaited around the world. Will its scientific knavery survive a judicial examination? Can it really say one thing, do quite another, and get away with it—honoured, as before, as a leading scientific institution?

Remember, NIWA said it would use a particular method to calculate adjustments to the raw temperature readings; it not only didn’t use that method, it broke all the rules laid down by that method. I recently posted a summary of NIWA’s scientific outrages against the NZ temperature record.

Thanks to those who advised me of this amazing email from the Climategate 2 collection, either through comments here or private email. It concerns the pre-1930 cooling of the New Zealand temperature record, and makes food for thought, especially for those supporting NIWA, Salinger and the increasingly shaky AGW story. Although it’s more of a novel, and a bad one at that, with gaping holes in the plot and evidence so carelessly thrown together it fools nobody. Now, as many of us feared was the case, comes evidence that the NZ temperature record has been applied to far more places than where it was observed. We now know it was stretched over far-flung places it was never intended to go. This is the worst result possible.

Cc: t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 00:13:56 +0100 (BST)
from: “Tim Osborn”
subject: New Zealand summer temps
to: p.jones@uea.ac.uk

Hi Phil,

just a quick Q before I go to bed!

I’ve just updated the IPCC paleo chapter Southern Hemisphere plot where we
showed, amongst other things, Ed Cook’s New Zealand TRW reconstruction,
with CRUTEM2v Jan-Mar smoothed temperatures.

For my update I’ve used CRUTEM3v, expecting them to be rather similar but
with a few more years on the end.

But the pre-1930 temperatures are now very different, being much cooler
(by > 0.5 degC for a 25-year low-pass mean) in CRUTEM3v than CRUTEM2v.
Previously they had been, on average, near or even above the 1961-1990
mean, now they’re at -0.5 degC.

Is this a result of some homogenization work on New Zealand summer temp
data? Or just some random artefact of minor changes somewhere?

Cheers

Tim

– Dr. Tim Osborn RCUK Academic Fellow Climatic Research Unit School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timo/

Errors in the new 7SS

The shocking breakthrough in our audit is that NIWA didn’t use the adjustment method they said they would use. Barry Brill, chairman of the Coalition, released an overview entitled New Zealand Unaffected by Global Warming (pdf, 1.3 MB). The discovery that the country hasn’t experienced global warming is another startling finding. In Chapter 8, on page 24, he identifies nine criticisms of NIWA’s newest 7SS. These multiple defects destroy the credibility of the 7SS as a source of the NZTR. Read more… »

In July last year the NZ Climate Science Coalition published an independent analysis of NIWA’s reconstruction of our national temperature record (NZTR) entitled New Zealand – Unaffected by Global Warming.

It’s the only independent analysis carried out on the reconstruction (nobody else has bothered). As far as I know, nobody much has even read the report. So we need to tease out some of the details and start talking about them. They’re a bit startling, considering the diet of alarm we’ve been getting from the news media for the last twenty years.

What would Kiwis do if they knew the facts of the country’s temperature record? Would they demand the government ditch the ETS because there’s no reason for it? Would they march on Parliament?

Because one of the insights from our expert analysis is that there’s been neither unprecedented warming nor strong recent warming in New Zealand, despite claims of both from the alarmists. Read more… »

Hand-in-hand with the IPCC theory that we’re dangerously changing the climate go many inaccuracies, distortions and outright lies supporting its stupendously false diagnosis, ruinously expensive remedies and tyrannical administration.

The distortions have wormed their way into thousands of places, both public and private, open and secret, taking our taxes and governing us in ways we’re already forgetting, even if we knew when they began. Will we ever be rid of them?

For to destroy each of the distortions, you need time and patience to find references to, references against and develop a refutation. Then you wait for people to hear about it and agree with you. It’s slow work.

Here’s one of the lies: mankind is ruining a perfectly good climate which never changed before we came along. Read more… »

Will NIWA ever be free of Jim Salinger? What will it take to rid the organisation of his pervasive influence? He was fired long ago for his maverick media mouth, but his spirit never leaves, and the bright ideas of his younger self, not good enough to attract other scientists, still torment NIWA’s management as they strive to defend them. Salinger’s youthful enthusiasm for the then-radical crisis of man-made global warming, hatched by his mates in his old stamping ground at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, has crippled New Zealand with a “scientific” temperature “record” that shows remarkable warming — a feature we now know is entirely reliant on fiction, not on fact. – RT

– by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Dr Jim Salinger. Looking a little anxious?

When young geographer James Salinger was at Otago University in 1974, he noticed that a number of the glaciers in the Southern Alps were retreating. So he wrote an article for the journal Nature, contending that New Zealand was warming up.

This made him a noted sceptic, as the scientific consensus then was that the world was rapidly cooling. The news media worldwide were running horror stories, demanding that governments “do something” about the impending ice age. Read more… »

 

NIWA has an interesting web site which they change frequently. One must visit often to keep up with the changes, because NIWA never sends one a memo.

There’s a section under Climate called “NZ temperature record” where you can see the latest version of the seven-station temperature series.

I think the judge supervising our application for judicial review would be keen to know that what NIWA solemnly pledged to the Court was not the “official or formal New Zealand temperature record” is in fact named on its web site in effectively that very manner.

For taking the words “NZ temperature record” in their most natural meanings, without strain, one understands that NIWA is presenting to the public the very thing it promised the judge it does not have. Read more… »

NIWA is creeping closer to court to answer our allegations. It can’t fudge the facts in there.

Where the fudges have judges

UPDATE 1, 16 Sep 9:30 – If anyone harbours lingering doubts that NIWA claim to have used a particular method in calculating the adjustments in their “Review report” published last December, let them check NIWA’s web site, where they say: “The methodology for adjusting for site changes in the NZ temperature record was published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Climatology in 1993: Rhoades, D.A. and Salinger, M.J., 1993: Adjustment of temperature and rainfall records for site changes. Int. Journal of Climatology 13, 899 – 913.

UPDATE 2, 16 Sep 10:15 – Looking through NIWA’s web site this morning I discovered a seriously fraudulent statement. On the national temperature record review page there’s a section at the bottom that describes (and makes light of) our judicial review application in the High Court and makes this astonishing claim: “The reanalysis and peer review of the seven station series forms part of the judicial review action.” But that’s impossible — NIWA announced the review six months before we filed the papers with the court! Wayne Mapp, the Minister, had already announced NIWA’s review of the 7SS on 18 February 2010, and we didn’t lodge our application with the court until 16 August 2010, so is NIWA claiming to have extra-sensory perception? Is there a serial fraudster running NIWA’s media centre? Why can’t that organisation just tell the truth?

The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET), on 1 July 2011, filed an amended statement of claim to challenge NIWA’s revised NZ temperature record (the old 7SS, now called the NZT7) published in December, and NIWA failed to file a statement of defence within the time limit. A tentative agreement to meet and narrow the issues was advised to the Court but has not been followed up. NIWA has not responded to correspondence in recent weeks. Read more… »

The Holy Grail

Independently peer-reviewed scientific papers published in learned journals are the Holy Grail of climate science alarmists, and the IPCC in particular. So they want to get friendly papers in and keep contrary papers out.

The Climategate emails show continuous collusion between members of the “Hockey Team” to prevent journal publication of any paper which challenged the IPCC dogma. Because, once published, a paper becomes part of “the scientific literature” and authors are obliged thereafter to take it seriously.

Of course, the IPCC manipulates the system outrageously. After Chairman Pachauri assured the media that it disregarded non-peer-reviewed opinions, revelations came that more than one-third of the material used by some Working Groups came from the “grey” literature (usually written by Big Green activists).

NIWA closely follows the party line. That’s why it has insisted endlessly that the New Zealand temperature record (NZTR) included adjustments “described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature” which were “in accord with internationally accepted techniques.” Read more… »

NIWA shows 168% more warming than Rhoades & Salinger – the method NIWA betrayed. The blue dashed line shows the warming trend when the method is used correctly. The red line reveals NIWA’s outrageous fraud – it’s much stronger warming, but it’s empty of truth.

NIWA didn’t use Rhoades & Salinger. We can prove it. They lied.

NZ Climate Science Coalition statisticians have uncovered evidence of scarcely believable deception from our National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA).

Last December, NIWA released a reconstructed NZ temperature series Report on the Review of NIWA’s Seven Station Temperature Series (“7SS Review”) (pdf, 8.5 MB). It has a fresh new graph (below) that’s all but indistinguishable from the previous graph. But that’s not the point.

The point is the new series is a lie. Read more… »

NIWA’s paper finds strong warming. But when their temperature data are processed according to the proper methodology, there’s no unusual warming. Throughout their paper, NIWA cite the proper method, but they never use it. Why not?

NIWA’s data confirms: little warming

When it’s calculated correctly

Why did they lie to us?

In December last year, NIWA released their long-awaited review of the NZ temperature record (NZTR). We’ve reviewed that report and found serious errors. NIWA used the wrong method and created strong warming. We used the right method and found mild warming.

There are a few things we need to understand about weather stations. The first is that these stations sit there for a long time. Some of them have been in the same place for 80 years and more. If you sat in one place for that long, you’d see stuff happening around you — same for the weather station.

Trees grow, buildings go up, airport runways get covered in tarseal or concrete, roads appear, and these and other non-climatic influences affect the temperature readings, usually making them warmer, but not always. Sometimes the station gets moved, and it’s always better to keep all that history if you can, so you try to adjust it rather than start again with a new station.

NIWA had to start from scratch

Knowing this, when scientists examine a series of temperature readings they look for what has changed at the different stations. If the changes affected the temperature readings, they adjust the readings. Read more… »

The countless thermal pools must have kept global warming away from New Zealand,
because there hasn’t been any. Perhaps we’re hot enough — heh, heh.

Countless people

• told us we’ve been warming
• warmed up to the warming
• watch the warming
• guard against the warming

But…

But there’s been no warming — and NIWA’s graphs prove it. Not only that, but NIWA’s chief climate scientist says firmly that there’s little warming on the way.

So why is there now a giant bureaucracy in Wellington dedicated to “fighting” the warming? Why, in the 2008-09 financial year alone, have government contracts to research climate change been let worth over $2,700,000?

Claims of harm to New Zealand from future global warming have been made for a long time. Here are just a few to remind ourselves what we’ve been listening to for about 20 years. Read more… »

– by Barry Brill, Chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Warwick Hughes’ request under the Australian Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), has been declined by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) on the grounds that it might divulge information supplied “under an obligation of confidentiality” by a foreign Government to the Australian Federal Government.

The Court ruling which established this exemption to the FOIA dealt with a case involving intelligence-sharing with the Australian Security Intelligence Office (ASIO). In contrast, Mr Hughes’ case dealt with old weather records.

Several questions arise

1. Did NIWA impose an obligation of confidentiality on the Bureau?

It seems clear that neither party even thought about confidentiality until the request was made. Read more… »

All of the 159 documents in BoM’s “Schedule” are said to be communications received in confidence by the Australian Federal Government from a foreign Government.

Hah!

They simply cannot reconcile that claim with these actual Bureau descriptions:

Have a look at them: Read more… »

Amazing Australian storm seems to reach down to a puny, isolated ship. This is emblematic of our lonely struggle with a gargantuan government bureaucracy. What secrets, sinister or not, does the storm conceal? Will our two countries’ information laws combine to reveal them or to hide them away forever?

In Australia, Warwick Hughes has followed with interest our attempts to obtain from NIWA details of their adjustments to the NZ temperature record. When the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) supplied a letter apparently certifying the Bureau’s “peer review” of NIWA’s review of the temperature record, he noted our complaint that “there must be more than this.”

Hearing of my request to NIWA for records relating to that review by the Bureau, he was minded to help. So, back in February, he filed a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request with the Australian Information Commissioner.

In response to that FOI request, the Bureau submitted to the Information Commissioner a Schedule of Documents dated 6 May 2011.

Somebody at the Bureau has put in hours of work tracking these documents down, describing them, analysing their relevance to Warwick’s request and assessing whether they met the provisions for exemption. Well done, them.

The schedule describes 159 relevant documents, amounting to several thousand pages, and what do you know? The BoM claims full exemption from the FOI Act in respect of every single page! Who could have predicted that? Read more… »

What a secret!

See UPDATE, below.

Here’s a development that threatens to place publicly-funded weather data on the same footing as the next budget, or troop movements.

In February, Warwick Hughes lodged a Freedom Of Information request to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to release all documents connected with their peer review for NIWA of NIWA’s review of their seven station series (7SS).

Today, Warwick posted a story about it, Australian FOI law keeps secret the construction of New Zealand seven station temperature series.

What’s so secret about temperature records?

In frustration, Warwick laments: “I am hoping that people smarter than I might see ways to carry on the battle to get these papers and files released. What can be so secret about the things publicly-funded scientists and bureaucrats do to adjust common or garden weather records into a form that suits them? We are not talking about nuclear weapons secrets here.”

I agree. Let’s hope someone with legal expertise and a desire to uncover the truth can pick up Warwick’s endeavour and move it forward.

The NZ situation

We’re waiting for the outcome of an investigation by the Ombudsman into NIWA’s refusal to release to me similar documents related to the peer review.

UPDATE

The BoM, in a document setting out their Reasons for Refusal, reveals that no fee was paid to them by NIWA for the peer review.

What are you hiding?

The attractive image from the cover of NIWA’s report of their review of the national temperature record. But the presentation of the actual contents are amateurish, even shoddy — no authors, no page numbers. What the “Table of Contents” refers to as the “Australian Bureau of Meteorology peer review” is nothing more than a one-page covering letter. Why hasn’t NIWA published the real peer review? What could they be hiding?

NIWA’s temperatures unscientific, had to be ‘reconstructed’

The NZ Climate Science Coalition, with the assistance of the Climate Conversation Group (CCG), published the report Are we feeling warmer yet? in November, 2009.

It revealed that the official NZ temperature record compiled by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) owes all of its warming trend to adjustments made to the actual thermometer readings. So, naturally, we asked NIWA what those adjustments were and why they were made.

We were surprised to encounter a ferocious denial of wrongdoing and a trenchant resistance to answering our questions. To be fair, we had insinuated that NIWA scientists might have manipulated the figures.

Warmists even mislead Parliament — does anyone care?

Anyway, NIWA persisted in ill-advised attempts to persuade the Coalition that our questions had already been answered in the scientific literature. But after considerable pressure in the media and after the ACT Party raised numerous questions in the Parliament, NIWA undertook early in 2010 to “reconstruct” the New Zealand temperature record.

That was a tacit agreement by NIWA that our reservations about the scientific validity of the official New Zealand temperature record were well founded. In other words, NIWA effectively admitted that they could not validate the record as it then stood. Because if they could have validated it, they would not have spent good (taxpayers’) money on reconstructing it.

This was a victory for an unwavering scientific scepticism in the face of determined bullying from members of a warmist establishment, prepared to resort even to misleading the Parliament. Read more… »

Panorama taken in 1902 of Albert Park towards the south. It’s obvious here that the trees are very young—most are little more than shrubs. For perspective, see the figures standing by the fountain and on the path to the very left. Click for larger version.

The official New Zealand Temperature Record is made up of historical temperature readings (raw data) and NIWA’s adjustments. Both of those components are unreliable.

The 169-page Report on the Review of NIWA’s “Seven-Station” Temperature Series, or the Review Report (RR), published by NIWA in December 2010 devotes very little space to that bane of climatologists — the urban heat island (UHI) effect. It has been long recognised that air temperature readings taken in towns and cities are affected by the heat absorption of concrete and tarseal surfaces; by exhausts of vehicles, aeroplanes and air-conditioners; and by structures which deflect wind and confine humidity.

Because a “heat island” is not representative of the wider region or country, most climatologists try to give them a wide berth. Wikipedia says that “the temperature difference between urban areas and the surrounding suburban or rural areas can be as much as 10°F”.

A similar enemy of the climate archivist is “shelter” — trees or structures which interfere with the thermometer’s normal exposure to wind or sun, and thereby cause distortions.

The mean temperature impacts of both UHI and shelter are typically gradual, but non-linear. They are hard to detect and almost impossible to correct. Most climate archivists simply omit any sites suspected of being contaminated by UHI/shelter. Read more… »

We can now reveal that in trying to prove significant but unjustified warming, NIWA’s temperature shenanigans are pitting it directly against NOAA, the US climate giant, in a delightful dataset dustup. Guess who comes out of it with a bloody nose?

and the winner is… well, never mind: the loser is science

(Nobody’s won yet.) Now here’s more of the saga…

The ‘Seven-station Series’ (7SS) constructed by NIWA scientists claims a 20th-century warming trend for New Zealand of 0.9°C. The warming arises entirely from their in-house adjustments to the raw thermometer readings and they’re now very keen to find some corroboration for that warming.

Why are they so anxious to vindicate the 7SS? Because they’re finding it almost impossible to achieve. This conclusion of warming is an orphan — it contradicts all other official temperature records, going back decades. Read more… »

Rhoades & Salinger (1993).
When a document achieves this lofty status, should those who revere it believe it?

Rhoades & Salinger (1993)

The late Michael Crichton declared that ‘global warming’ had become a religion, with the IPCC reports comprising its bible. The central dogma of the religion rests on the global temperature record, which ‘proves’ recent global warming. It has a bible of its own, largely written by CRU’s “hockey team” — those conniving, partisan, anti-sceptical scientists of Climategate infamy.

Above and beyond everything else it might be, a bible inspires belief. That is the natural result of the veneration a bible gains by long use. And you don’t ignore something you venerate.

Around the world amateur, unpaid investigations reveal that recent warming trends don’t really exist. In fact, they are largely created by “homogeneity adjustments” to the actual thermometer readings. Read more… »

Our trusty family axe. The handle has been replaced four or five times and I know the head has been lost at least once. But it’s over 150 years old and it’s a family heirloom — we’d never part with it.

UPDATE: March 27, 8:50 p.m.

A reader points out that a replacement requires the virtual death of the previous version. As the traditional British announcement on the death of the sovereign (“The King is dead; long live the King!”) makes clear, you cannot have two of them. He’s reminded of Barry Brill’s recent post here 7SS – R.I.P. about the Monty Python parrot, whose death proved in the end impossible to ignore. Thanks, Australis.

NIWA’s minister has made a bizarre assertion to the Parliament which signals NIWA’s inability to admit its mistakes.

Last December, NIWA published a report reviewing the NZ Temperature Record which was based on its 18-year-old Seven-station Series (7SS). The 169-page report included a new spreadsheet and graph (which NIWA called the NZT7) and stated, on page 3, that “the revised temperature series supersedes the previous version posted in February 2010.”

When it was published, the previous 7SS was taken off NIWA’s temperature web page and the NZT7 was posted in its place.

But there’s some deception going on, because here’s the thing: NIWA’s web site describes the new graph as a replacement, but a few days ago Parliament was officially told the very opposite — that the NZT7 is not a replacement. As Hansard shows: Read more… »

Dr Vincent Gray

– by Dr Vincent Gray, founder member of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition and expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Those who provide us with the supposed Mean Annual Global Temperature Anomaly (graph shown below) treat the annual points in their graph as if they were constants. The points on the graph do not represent actual observations. They are processed versions of actual observations and they are subject to statistical uncertainties.

The latest CRU paper to calculate these uncertainties is Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Haris, S.F.B. Tett, P.D. Jones (2006). “Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850.” J. Geophys. Res. 111: D12106. doi:1020/2005JD006546.

This paper combines many sources of uncertainties and the final figures vary from year to year, but are typically about ±0.2 ºC on a 95% confidence basis. Some versions of their graph include these figures as “error bars” attached to the data points.

Brohan et al even admit that they do not include “unknown unknowns”, even referring to the internationally recognised expert on this subject, Donald Rumsfeld.

It is surprising that they have left out of their discussions the most important source of uncertainty in their figures, one which is “known” to every person who has studied stratistics. It is the uncertainty which arises every time you take an average. Read more… »

 

Questions raised over review of NZ temps

On 16 December, 2010, just before Christmas, just after the Parliament had risen for the year, just as the citizenry were rushing around doing Christmassy things and just as, necessarily, their oh-so-short memories of the year just gone were fading, NIWA released their long-promised review of the official New Zealand temperature record (NZTR).

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology gave it some luke-warm approval. In a letter dated 14 December, following their ‘peer review’ of NIWA’s ‘Review Report,’ Neil Plummer, Acting Assistant Director (Climate Information Services), at first gives this description of what the review would involve:

In this context ‘scientific review’ means a critical inspection/examination of the station reports taking into account the range of supporting evidence provided. The ideas, methods and conclusions of the papers are assessed for scientific error, internal consistency, clarity and scientific logic.

The data and methodology provided in the reports from NIWA are taken as an accurate representation of the actual analyses undertaken. We are not in a position to question all of the underlying analyses and data that have contributed to the final results, such as methods used to compile raw data taken at stations. We do, however, perform some independent analyses as appropriate to the aims of the review as outlined above.

Mr Plummer states clearly that they accept the data and the methodology presented by NIWA without questioning it. He also helpfully points out what the peer review will not do. Then he goes on in that vein at such length that he gives us the impression he doesn’t really want to review NIWA’s report at all. It would be too hard. Read more… »

 

NIWA refuses our OIA request—but why?

… continued from my initial post describing the weak endorsement from the Bureau of Meteorology of NIWA’s review of the official NZ temperature record (NZTR) and my subsequent demand under the OIA for copies of correspondence with the Bureau.

What has NIWA got to hide? They bought the Australian Bureau’s advice with taxpayer’s money — why is it being kept secret? Why can’t we see everything the Australians told their colleagues at NIWA? It’s only the temperature record, for goodness’ sake!

That’s not yet a state secret. It’s not like giving away the number of windmills we’re planning to build, or anything. Read more… »