WUWT reader “Purakanui” emailed me: “I have just read an extraordinary news item. Jim Salinger is the voice of global warming as far as New Zealand is concerned. Until recently he was always there when a new ‘record’ appeared, or a glacier retreated. He was a breathless and apparently wholly convinced warmer. Also he is a good scientist.”
I checked his bio page:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/ncc/contact/staff/jsalinger/bio
And it has been removed. Now if NASA could just get the stones to do this for Jim Hansen for promoting civil disobedience. – Anthony
From TV New Zealand
One of New Zealand’s top climate scientists has just been fired from his job at the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric research (NIWA).
Dr Jim Salinger has been the public face of the organisation for three decades, but says it was his unauthorised talking to the media that’s got him sacked.
Salinger, whose work as a science communicator has earned him accolades and even contributed to a Nobel Peace Prize, says he is now planning to sue his former employer for unjustified dismissal because according to him, he cannot understand why he was sacked.
“It’s not as though I’m doing bad science, it’s not as though I’m not performing and so I’m really astounded”.
What got Salinger fired is something that in the past brought him high praise – talking to the media.
Salinger says he always believed that his media work actually brought NIWA into repute.
Read the complete story here
My first reaction was that Hansen will give him a better job.
Mark Hugoson (08:34:59) :
> Bio page link is DEAD as of 10:30 AM CDT, USA.
> Interesting. Evidently in this Brave New World you can be made a “non-person as fast as you can be made an overnight celebrity. Telling!
Hardly! While I wasn’t able to find that page in Google, one problem was all the other hits through NIWA that are still there. I doubt they’ll delete the reports he co-authored or take the time to delete his name.
Radio and TV stations do a much better job of purging past employees, especially those to join the competition.
Is this person really an AGW proponent and he was fired? How could this happen to him?
As I previously thought, no one can lose his/her job because of promoting AGW and supplying the media with an endless source of scaremongering stories. But if you are a government-funded researcher and you are expressing your skeptical views publicly, you shouldn’t be surprised if you lose your funding and/or get fired suddenly.
Fortunately (like the climate itself), things are always changing. However, in the case of Jim Hansen and his civil disobedience movement I can’t be so optimistic.
Quoted from The Australian today hahahah Thank you Australian…. (hint last line qualifications of writer)
“It goes without saying that Plimer has every right to publish whatever it is he believes. However, for the editors of this newspaper to give books such as his the kind of enthusiastic welcome hundreds of others published in this country every year cannot dream of receiving and, even more, to treat their publication as important events, seems to me a grave intellectual, political and moral mistake.”
Robert Manne is professor of politics at LaTrobe University in Melbourne.
Story
Obviously a dastardly plot by Big Oil to surpress the truth about the dangers of AGW!
From the press report (never totally reliable, of course) this sounds sounds like a battle of wills between a supervisor under political pressure and a scientist used to getting his own way. There are references to insubordination and new policy. I suspect neither party handled the situation well from the beginning and now it’s escalated. Regardless of the scientist’s opinions, pro- or anti- AGW, there need to be clearly defined and publicized policies for individuals other than official spokespersons talking to the press or this sort of thing is almost guaranteed to happen. Agencies should be neutral and advocacy should be personal. And it’s the job of both parties to make this clear to the press.
OT… Swine influenza hits Mexico. We have more than 800 suspected cases and 57 deaths in several states of the country. I hope there is not a politician who would attribute it to global warming.
Regarding the case of Dr Jim Salinger, it makes me angry because true scientists are being fired for doing correct science. This is evidence on the existence of a crusade against those who struggle with the weapons of truth against the climate change priesthood.
From http://www.3news.co.nz/News/Niwa-sacks-top-scientist/tabid/209/articleID/101155/cat/41/Default.aspx
and
More from Salinger:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/1999/1999-01-28-1
“The top ten warmest years have all been since 1983, with seven of them since 1990…”
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/publications/all/wa/16-2/news4
(That’s it, get the beer drinkers onboard… that’ll get action!)
Scan through some of the links at http://en.wordpress.com/tag/jim-salinger/
MAKE NO MISTAKE: Salinger is one of the MAIN AGW alarmists. His Chicken Little impersonation should never have had the tacit approval of a government. His “Nobel Peace Prize” contribution, as expected, was as a member of the IPCC… http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0710/S00029.htm – and thus is totally pointless and meaningless (as all Nobel Peace Prizes are lately).
Thus, Mr. Salinger’s dismissal is a GOOD THING, and should be celebrated by science-oriented people everywhere. It is one more step in the dismantling of the ridiculous AGW religion.
Also, the warmists are FURIOUS, posts abound about this being a travesty, bad, horrible, anti-science, etc.
I, for one, will be celebrating Mr. “Deer in the Headlights what did I do wrong?” Salinger’s well deserved dismissal.
“…he is now planning to sue his former employer for unjustified dismissal because according to him, he cannot understand why he was sacked.”
I’m sure they ‘splained it to him. He’s simply in denial. He evidently assumed that being PC/pro-AGW would give him permission to override the rules.
Anthony wrote:
> I checked his bio page:
> http://www.niwa.co.nz/ncc/contact/staff/jsalinger/bio
Where did you find that link? Even http://www.niwa.co.nz/ncc claims to not exist. It looks like they have changed the contact info into “key contacts” pages for each of their 13 divisions, see http://www.niwa.co.nz/site-map There is also an employee search page that doesn’t have biographical data, but does have Salinger, see http://www.niwa.co.nz/about-niwa/our-people/search/results?title=sal*&submit=Search+Staff
Uh-Oh!!! Bigger mistake… Dr. Salinger is on the other sideway, that is, on the wrong side. Sorry.
hey Daffy … 🙂
thanks for the link of the Polish Academy of Sciences … those 10 points are what I would call “the Big Picture” …
I find it interesting that Gore is using the “Fraud”. I believe he wants to get out first and loudest to Congress and the Media – right after he read Lord Monckton’s Report.
This is a pleasant change from two years ago when the Oregon Governor forced the state climatologist George Taylor from his job at Oregon State University because he did not support carbon dioxide alarmism.
http://climatesci.org/2007/02/07/political-correctness-for-state-climatologists-in-order-to-force-these-positions-to-embrace-global-warming-as-summarized-by-the-ipcc-%e2%80%93-a-chilling-development/
On eTaiwanNews: NZ climate scientist fired for unapproved comments
I think this is a standard organizational ‘mechanism’; that one is required (at least ‘by the letter’) to run media-engagements etc past the Boss before jaunting off to effectively represent the Government, the Military, one’s University, or her local Brownie Troop, all by one’s little lonesome.
This type of rule or control often exists, but generally lies moribund for extended lengths of time. But given the right circumstances, it can suddenly be dusted off & enforced … to much gnashing & rending.
Could it be applied to NASA’s Jim Hansen? Certainly. Could he be hung out to dry purely for innocuously promoting “civil disobedience”? Probably not. Could he be sent packing for using lenient American rules that allow for orderly civil disobedience, as a ‘cover’ to instead engage to foment violent, destruction or subversive activities?
In a heart beat. … That is, the moment that authorities decide his usefulness (which I assume largely explains the Hansen-Circus) has come to an end.
New Zealand has a number of prominent climate “skeptics/realists” (I am not one of them) notably Vincent Gray, who is in Wellington area and Chris de Freitas who teaches at the University of Auckland. Vincent is a Physicist, and I am not sure of Chris’ credentials but he teaches I think Geography and Climate science in some relational way. I had a good chat with him on a visit there in 2004, and I talk to Vincent now and then.
At the recent elections in late 2008 (just after the US) NZ elected a more conservative group of politicians; but I am not sure exactly how things ended up, because the old Laborite Helen Clark still seems to be Prime Minister.
But NZ is becomeing more suspect of the AGW thesis for some good reasons. They have a huge domestic farm animal population that outnumbers the human population 20:1, so they ahve the flatulence problem; but they also have intensive tree farming; probably the most efficient in the world, and generally are tired of the international community telling them they can’t carbon offset their methane with their CO2 absorbing tree farming.
All NZ native timbers are relatively slow growing; so they have created the world’s largest man made forests; of things like Douglas Fir (which is called Oregon pine down home) and other species, I think Pinus Radiata, and Pinus Insignus are two species that come to mind. They mature rapidly and are used for virtually all forest products with very little native species lumbering.
So i think Kiwis are getting a little sick of the UN telling them how to run things; and I’m hoping that the birdbrains in Canberra, can look across the Tasman, and see that they should follow NZ’s lead out of the AGW morass.
Australia has a significant carbon sourcing “problem” because of their general desert areas being so massive; so I am sure they feel the undeserved heat of the AGWers wrath. We can still kick their a*** on the rugby fields, but we are with them in this carbon fiasco.
George
however … I tried to confirm the link from a source at the P.A. of Sciences, but did not succeed … the “the Geologic Science Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences” is mentioned, and I checked a website ” http://www.ing.pan.pl/index_E.htm ” , but I did not find any mention of the report … I wouldn’t know if that is the correct place to look …
anybody interested and more succesfull ?
tia
The Polish Academy’s 10 points are well worth a click! Thanks, Daffy.
The law of Unintended Consequences at work. A new tax credit is given to paper mills for *adding* fossil fuels (diesel) to their fuel mix for power generation. Oops.
http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2009/04/24/8321/paper_firms_reap_billions_from_tax_credit_–_but_should_they
I learned from a teacher of mine, with whom I also did research, that Nature usually raise red flags here and there to try to show us how it works. The deal with research is to try to see those flags and learn to read the language. Ignoring the red flags and not learning to read the signs only leads to bad conclusions.
CodeTech (09:53:30),
The reaction of Greenpeace – talking to New Zealand like they’re the USA browbeating North Korean – raises the question: Could the dismissal of Salinger be a way to confront the ever-growing sense of peerage with which Green & AGW NGOs interact with global States?
Is it, perhaps, that the entities whom the Salingers of the world champion have finally gotten just one size too big for their britches?
That is: It ain’t Salinger – it’s Greenpeace.
NZ has some of the most “employee favourable” employment legislation in the world.
If NIWA have not followed the correct procedure Jim could yet get his job back. But he has been annoying people with his public statements for a while. Jim has been to NIWA what James is to NASA. An embarrassment.
Ok, I didn’t realize that beer was at risk because of global warming… I will now become an Algoreholic and send in the next ten years of cap ant trade taxes to the US government… I figure my life savings might at least put a down payment on it… heck it’s dropped halfway in value anyway… my kids and grandkids can pay the rest.
Not really, I’m fighting this thing to the bitter end.
See I figure that beer would be on the hit list considering how much co2 it produces in the process of making it.
Truman fired General MacArthur for insubordination, not for being a bad general. Likewise, the firing of Sallinger shows that in New Zealand at least, people aren’t above the rules.