16 August 2010
Exclusive to Scoop
Climate Science Coalition chair challenges Science Media Centre
The chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, Hon Barry Brill, has taken issue with comments gathered by
the Science Media Centre relating to the case being taken to the High Court seeking invalidation of NIWA temperature
records.
“The Science Media Centre is a Government-sponsored blog which receives taxpayer funding of about $10,000 per week to
promote its viewpoint about scientific issues. Today, the blog has assembled some reactions by Government scientists to
the court proceedings seeking rectification of the New Zealand Temperature Record. Few, if any, of these sound-bites
address the issues raised by the case, “ said Mr Brill.
“Professor Keith Hunter sees an implication that the Climate Science Coalition must have an alternative record. This is
correct, insofar as the Coalition relies upon the NZ Met Service temperature records which are held in the National
Climate Database. We say that any alterations to those data need to be justified.
“Professor Hunter becomes exercised on behalf of the two people who supervised James Salinger’s thesis 30 years,
apparently unaware that neither was a climate scientist.
“Dr Glenn McGregor correctly notes that long-term temperature records sometimes need adjusting for homogeneity. But he
is sadly misinformed in believing that the NIWA adjustments have been ‘subject to stringent international peer review’.
They have never even been reviewed by anyone in NIWA, let alone independent scientists. Not only have they remained
unpublished and untested, they have never been documented, and cannot now be found.
“Dr Andy Reisinger rails against a straw man, denouncing the Coalition’s view that there has been no warming trend. But
that is not the Coalition’s position. We say there has been modest warming for 150 years since the earth emerged from
the Little Ice Age, but that the warming trend in New Zealand is not the 1°C contended by NIWA. Dr Reisinger says
climate scientists have no reason to believe that NIWA’s adjustments are incorrect. But neither he nor any other
scientist has ever been able to replicate them, and will never be able to do so in future. The sole copy of the
calculations was lost in 1983.
“Dr Dave Lowe suggests that the NIWA adjustments have been ‘scrutinised, peer reviewed and had their techniques
validated by research organisations world wide’. If only that were true. He would carry more credibility if he could
provide reference to a single scientific paper which approves of the Salinger 1981 techniques, or shows any of the
calculations.
“Professor Ralph Sims says techniques need to be continually improved, and that they should be the subject of a
scientific paper. We agree.
“Euan Mason is another to sing the praises of published papers. Is it not astonishing that New Zealand’s most important
climate record has been created by an unpublished technique, used by no other country anywhere, and that the missing
calculations have never been checked by NIWA?
Mr Brill concluded: “Most of the comments by these learned scientists is limited to ad hominem, rhetorical cant,
providing little confidence that they are well-informed on either the New Zealand temperature record or its
significance.”
ENDS