NZ Should Base Climate Policies on Facts

NZ Should Base Climate Policies on Our Own Facts, Not UN Computer Models

An audit of New Zealand climate records should take precedence over foreign computer models before any decision is reached on emissions trading within this country. This call has been made by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition through its chairman Rear Admiral Jack Welch.

“Before New Zealanders are burdened with the costs and infringements on lifestyle that will result from trading in emissions of carbon dioxide, our government should establish once and for all whether future climate behaviour is more accurately established by meteorological observation than by computer modelling.

“The Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill now before Parliament rests entirely on the government’s blinkered belief in computer projections reported by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that even IPCC itself describes as ‘scenarios”, scrupulously avoiding any reference to them being predictions. These same computer models failed to predict that the world would cool from 1998, creating extreme doubt whether their future projections are credible.

“On the basis of this computerised ‘kite flying’, our government is trying to foist on New Zealanders an economic nightmare far more wide-ranging than Rogernomics in the 1980s, but this time with profound detrimental effect.

“Instead of being led by the nose to accept these hypotheses propounded by a small group of United Nations bureaucrats and their deferential fund-seeking scientists, why can we not use our own No 8 wire practicality to look at the situation as it really is,” asked Admiral Welch.

“Let’s look at some hard facts from actual meteorological observations: surface temperature records show it has only warmed for one 20 year period in the last 70 years, that is from (roughly) 1978 through 1998. The rest of the time the trend was either flat or cooling.

“The purported 20 year warming period is covered by the satellite readings, which are now universally acknowledged as being accurate. These satellite readings show all the warming in the 20 year interval occurred in just one year – 1998, when we experienced an extreme El Nino southern oscillation. When allowance is made for the cooling effect of volcanoes, the temperature trend was flat before 1998 and since then was stable for a few years followed by a more recent pronounced decline.

“So the only significant warming in the last 70 years all occurred in just one year - 1998. Warming of this sort, a one year jump in 70 years, is completely inconsistent with the theory of greenhouse gas warming, which is gradual. This jump therefore provides no evidence whatever for man-made global warming (MMGW). If anything it falsifies MMGW.

“The independent climate scientists associated with our coalition are adamant that there is no, repeat no, evidence to support the IPCC hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing or will cause dangerous global warming. There are many well established meteorological observations available within New Zealand that show that, over many decades, there has been little if any increase in temperatures, dependent on area, in spite of a well recorded gradual rise in the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide.

"There is good evidence of temperature differences between the northern and southern hemispheres, with ours cooler and quite stable. But as well as those hemispheric differences, it´s time we examined the quality of scientific data for New Zealand on which costly decisions will depend. For instance, if emissions of greenhouse gases are a problem, which we doubt, where is the research into how much of our emissions are offset by our existing forests and pastures, not to mention the ocean content of our extensive exclusive economic zone. To date these have been based mainly on guesswork and unproven assumptions.

“Before we buy into this UN promoted emissions trading madness, should we not have a thorough investigation of what our own climate records tell about our past, and what they suggest might happen in the future,” said Admiral Welch.

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