Climate Science Coalition - Statement

The New Zealand

Climate Science Coalition

7 August 2011 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“New Zealand’s temperature record is a dog’s breakfast” says the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, commenting on its finding that average temperatures have remained stable for the last 150 years. “And it underscores our vulnerability to NIWA’s monopoly of official advice on climate science.

“In a lengthy and expensive review, NIWA has rearranged the historical data to exactly match the warming trend shown in its previous official record” said Hon Barry Brill, chairman of the Coalition.

“Our paper has exposed the review’s total lack of credibility:

§ It runs counter to all the historical records regarding “NZ average temperatures,”, including those compiled in 1867, 1920, and 1964. The archive shows that current temperatures are slightly cooler than those of 150 years ago.

§ Its trend outcome is heavily influenced by data from Auckland and Wellington stations which are declared in the peer-reviewed literature to be contaminated and to show false warming; and it fails to adjust for UHI at any of the six non-rural stations.

§ It uses adjustments derived from comparisons between “isolated stations” in direct defiance of the scientific authorities.

§ It radically departs from the statistical techniques laid down by its chosen precedent, Rhoades & Salinger. Correctly applied, those techniques demonstrate that New Zealand has experienced no material warming trend during the past century.

§ It does not disclose the uncertainties (margins of error) associated with any of its adjustments; and statistically insignificant changes are applied.

§ Its high warming trend is created by implausible accumulating adjustments, which lack the random spread and self-balancing effects described in the literature.

§ Its sole corroboration, the 11SS, is driven by missing data and is demonstrably flawed ; it serves no purpose other than to damage NIWA’s credibility..

§ Recommendations from station reports by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) were apparently ignored. The pervasive secrecy surrounding all of the BoM review documents casts doubt on the process.

§ Most of the warming in NIWA’s graphs occur during the first half of the twentieth century. This pattern is at odds with NIWA’s official advice that warming was driven by global CO2 emissions – which are concentrated in the last 40 years.

These multiple defects make the record completely useless.”

“If the Government doesn’t know what happened to New Zealand’s temperatures over the past century, – how can we trust them to spend billions of dollars attempting to change or control New Zealand temperatures over the next century?

Early last year, the Coalition asked the Chairman of NIWA to undertake an internal enquiry into the activities of the Climate Group. In declining, he promised a major review of the temperature record. The Coalition was dissatisfied with this response and issued High Court proceedings alleging incompetence and bias – a suit which is still winding its way through the judicial process.

Now that the review has proved so obviously deficient, the Coalition has renewed its call to the Chairman for a Board inquiry.

“The Board of this Crown-owned company is responsible to taxpayers for ensuring that its staff offer high-quality objective scientific advice. This is particularly important when billion-dollar policies turn on that advice”.

“NIWA became an early and passionate convert to the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) soon after it was incorporated in 1992”, said Mr Brill. “Much of its advice is coloured by this partisan view, rather than by objective science.”

“If public confidence in official climate science is to be restored, NIWA’s monopoly on such advice needs to be broken. The Government should appoint an advisory committee of scientists who are completely independent of NIWA and the IPCC. The proceedings and advice of that committee should be totally transparent and open to input from all scientists.”

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