NIWA is being sued by the NZ Climate Coalition, mainly due to the differences in data in this graph:
Niwa sued over data accuracy
The country’s state-owned weather and atmospheric research body is being taken to court in a challenge over the accuracy of its data used to calculate global warming.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition said it had lodged papers with the High Court asking the court to invalidate the official temperatures record of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).
The lobby of climate sceptics and ACT Party have long criticised Niwa over its temperature data, which Niwa says is mainstream science and not controversial, and the raw data publicly available.
The coalition said the New Zealand Temperature Records (NZTR) were the historical base of NIWA’s advice to the Government on issues relating to climate change.
Coalition spokesman Bryan Leyland said many scientists believed although the earth had been warming for 150 years, it had not heated as much as Government archives claimed.
He said the New Zealand Meteorological Service had shown no warming during the past century but Niwa had adjusted its records to show a warming trend of 1degC. The warming figure was high and almost 50 percent above the global average, said Mr Leyland.
Full story here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4026330/Niwa-sued-over-data-accuracy
But it seems some think the challenge is “stupid”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4026553/Court-challenge-to-Niwa-stupid
The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust, a newly registered arm of the Coalition, has filed a claim in the High Court seeking a declaration to invalidate the NZ Temperature Record, currently promoted by NIWA, and featured on its website. Media release, backgrounder and summary of claim here:
http://www.climatescience.org.nz/images/PDFs/niwa.ct.docs.pdf
Partial text below, more details in the PDF link above.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
Hon Secretary, Terry Dunleavy MBE JP, 14A Bayview Road, Hauraki, North Shore City 0622
Phone (09) 486 3859 – Mobile 0274 836688
– Email – terry.dunleavy@nzclimatescience.org.nz
13 August 2010
High Court asked to invalidate NIWA’s official NZ temperature record
The High Court has been asked to invalidate the New Zealand official temperature record (NZTR) as promoted by the Crown Research Institute, NIWA. These records are the historical base of NIWA’s scientific advice to central and local government on issues relating to climate change. NIWA maintains temperature archives for the past
century, and also projects them forward for the next century.
The statement of claim filed on behalf of the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET) asks the court for three rulings:
A: to set aside NIWA’s decisions to rely upon its Seven Station Series (7SS) and Eleven Station Series (11SS), and
to find the current NZTR to be invalid
B: to prevent NIWA from using the current NZTR (or information originally derived from it) for the purpose of
advice to any governmental authority or to the public
C: to require NIWA to produce a full and accurate NZTR.
”Twentieth-century temperature records are now being challenged all around the world” said Bryan Leyland, spokesman for the NZCSET. “But I think we are the first country where the issues are to be placed squarely before an independent judicial forum.”
“Many scientists believe that, although the earth has been in a natural warming phase for the past 150 years, it has not heated as much as Government archives claim. The precise trend figure is extremely important, as it forms the sole basis of the claim that human activities are the dominant cause of the warming.
“The New Zealand Met Service record shows no warming during the last century, but NIWA has adopted a series of invariably downward adjustments in the period prior to World War 2. Because these move the old temperature records downwards, the 7SS NZTR shows a huge bounce-back of over 1°C in the first half of the century” said Mr
Leyland. “Although this is out of line with dozens of other records, and has been the subject of sustained questioning by both the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition and the ACT party, NIWA refuses to accept that there are serious problems with the adjustments. In fact, no one has been able to explain exactly how they were
arrived at.”
The Court proceedings also allege bias and unethical conduct on the part of NIWA’s National Climate Centre. These are based partly on NIWA allegedly delegating the NZTR decision to a former employee, James Salinger, knowing that he had a vested interest in an untested theory put forward in his own 1981 thesis. NIWA also knew that the data and calculations for that theory had been lost, and, thus could not be replicated.
Another core criticism is NIWA’s constant reliance on an eleven-station series it produced last December. The flaws in this paper have been highlighted many times, including at
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/06/nz-climate-crisis-gets-worse
“We find it hard to believe NIWA management just failed to notice that all the warming in the ‘eleven-station’ series was caused by the fact that it starts off with only three stations in 1931. From 1945 onwards there are between 9 and 11 stations” said Mr Leyland, “It’s astonishing how the increasing number of stations leads to greater warming, more alarm, and increased research grants.”
The Court will be asked to rule that NIWA has refused to repudiate the current NZTR in order to avoid political embarrassment, and feared loss of public confidence in the objectivity of its scientists. The proceedings were filed and served this week, and NIWA has up to a month to respond.
I think that Hadley CRUT did the same thing. Look at this chart of temperatures from 1940-1997, it is basically flat, very little warming. So if we plot Hadley from 1940 to 1980 there is no change in temperature trend. Then let’s plot satellite temp from 1978 to 1977 and that temperature trend is also basically flat.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1980/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1997/mean:12
If you look at temp this way, since 1940 – the beginning of the industrial age, the ONLY significant rise in temp was in 1998, and we all know that was due to El Nino when an enormous amount of heat was released from the ocean, and temps have been flat since.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1998/to/mean:12
Nick Stokes says…
the advantages of judges ruling a manifold:
– an independent panel is prerequisite
– they will hear both sides of the issue
– they can seek truely independent and compentent advise to resolve issues (I would guess that qualified statisticians are able to do a much better job than Salinger or NIWA)
This is in every point better than any of the inquiries we had this year.
I hope they NZ Climate Coalition) have good representation and solid (deep) funding. Anyone who thinks the Govt side will not arm themselves with the best QCs is fooling themselves. Govt money underpinning the case of course.
Nick Stokes says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:15 am
What a strange suit! What would it mean for the court to “invalidate” the record? Would there be a “valid” court-enforced record? Updated? Would it be a contempt of court to suggest that it might be wrong?
Valid point, but not being a legal eagle myself, I would hope that a fair court would rule on the testimony/expertise of those called to testify. I think to be successful the applicants would have to show that any errors (if any)-(benefit of doubt) in the record are as a result of negligence or deliberate falsification. That would then open other avenues for further litigation. I don’t believe that any court can rule on what the record should show. However a successful outcome for the applicant will seriously damage the credibility of official climate records, perhaps globally. This application will also enable us to see just how deep the political influences run and just how independent the judiciary really is. Let’s wait and see.
Surely this sort of dispute should be played out in the scientific literature rather than in the courts, should it not? If certain people think they have more accurate figures then they should publish a paper and let it be subject to scrutiny by their fellow scientists rather than by a court of law.
The whole exercise seems a bit of a nonsense, given that we have a number of different temperature series produced independently around the world, from both satellite and terrestrial data, all showing the same warming trend and the same short-term variations. Roy Spencer and John Christy aren’t noted for being ‘alarmists’ so why would their data agree with Jim Hansen’s analysis that the world is warming at between 0.15 and 0.2C per decade, if it wasn’t true?
I think it’s well past time to start taking global warming seriously and stop all the nit-picking, cherry-picking and general misdirection about the problem. People in our comfortable first-world societies have been lulled into a false sense of security, assuming without question that there will always be food on the shelves of our favourite supermarket, but with failing harvests around the world due to heatwaves, drought and flooding our food supply is looking increasingly perilous. I’m not point-scoring here folks – this is serious. None of us know what real hunger is like, I very much doubt. Famine has been a constant presence in human history, but we’ve forgotten about it in the last few generations, we think we’ve overcome it, that it’s a thing of the past. Well, it’s going to become painfully clear that that is not true. How can farmers feed the world if the climate is changing so fast that they don’t know what to plant, and what they do plant dies in the ground?
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/press_room/C68/2010_pressrelease1/
Randy,
One would hope that the NZ Climate Coalition has thought this through and is already well prepared, both on the facts, and the likely evasions by the other side. Also one would hope they are mustering some credible expert witnesses. If they get past the depositions hearing things could get interesting.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew how accurate the 100 year old thermometers were, and how they were calibrated? It may solve a central problem.
Why does no one care about errors?
Icarus:
At August 16, 2010 at 4:30 am you suggest:
“Surely this sort of dispute should be played out in the scientific literature rather than in the courts, should it not? If certain people think they have more accurate figures then they should publish a paper and let it be subject to scrutiny by their fellow scientists rather than by a court of law.”
Please read the legal complaint. It provides a complete explanation of why your suggestion is mistaken. And that reason is that NIWA is the only body authorised to provide climate data to the NZ government.
So, publishing a refutation of NIWA’s data and methodolgy is pointless, but a legal case to force NIWA to correct its errors has potential to correct misleading information being supplied to (and used by) the NZ government.
The remainder of your post is irrelevant to the issue at hand (but is a fine example of anti-science scaremongering).
Richard
Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have worked for people at NIWA and the Department of Conservation when I lived in New Zealand and I am sure their “intentions” were real, but their “facts” and “approach” just follow the party line (Which was Labour at that time – Hey Helen Clark, how’s your new UN job going?). Far too many of these people were, errrrmmm…what’s the word, “precious” and “fragile” IMO. Some of the NIWA systems I saw, installed, debugged, supported etc, were put together in a very “Heath Robinson” way (Google it, it’s a British term for “shonky”, which is a NZ/Aus term for the same).
NIWA does have some very powerful support, namely the NZ Govn’t, and they have a vested interest to keep the ETS going, they need the tax income.
It is interesting the involvement of NZ Maori Party (And this is no disrespect to Maori at all in anyway) in sustainable resource management, and in this post of mine I mean all aspects of environmental management, when one remembers Maori ate Moa (A big chicken) to extinction. I guess if you’re on the pay of Govn’t middle-class welfare, then you are onto a winner! Cha-ching all the way to the bank.
Icarus,
Russia has a stockpile of some 29 million tonnes, enough to have covered their sales, OR for their people and livestock. the push to ban export was from the Swiss Glencorp.
markets are panic buying and making them and others very rich at the expense of all, and worst for the poor among the world.
Americas saying bumper wheat harvest- in spite of Canadas lost crops, there isnt going to be a real shortage just a MADE one, for money.
Aus produces enough to export 60% of our crops, so the cry of GM to save us is also a lie.
Sth Aus last year had millions of tonnes under Tarps as there wans t room in silos, so you tell me theres a shortage?
I tell you to start reading the NON warmist info.
As always, follow the money. Aw crap! With all the vested self-interest groups out there, how do you follow a string of spaghetti in a pot, all riding each other’s backs for a taste of the folding stuff..?
stumpy says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:28 am
Nice spotting on the glaciers. I thought NIWA should bet a chance to explain this, so I sent the following email to Michelle Hollis, NIWA’s media contact (I called her Sir, I hope she’s not offended)
Dear Sir
I was interested in your press release last year, http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/glaciers-continue-to-shrink2 recording the 30 year trend of ice loss from NZ glaciers. The attached graph of changing mass balance between 1978 and 2009 does indeed show an overall downward trend in ice mass.
I was intrigued therefore to be recently directed to your earlier release of 5 Sept 2006 http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/2006/2006-09-05-1 In this article by Dr Salinger we are informed of a 30 year increasing trend in NZ glaciers. This is illustrated by a graph part way down the page of cumulative mass balance, which shows a very different picture to the one in your more recent release.
I would be grateful if you could explain the apparent very large difference between the two graphs. They appear to be in similar units (meters elevation), yet in the more recent graph 2006 is shown as essentially the same level as 1978, whereas in the 2006 release 2006 is shown as being about 700m higher. The caption on the 2009 graph reads “scaled mass balance index” while the earlier one reads “cumulative mass balance index”- is this the cause of the difference, and if so how? I would be interested in the scaling procedure used to produce such a large variance.
I am sure you will agree that the apparent contradiction between these two graphs, which I would certainly interpret as illustrating the same phenomena (as would most readers I would assume) is deserving of some explanation, which I would be very happy to pass on to the weblog on which this issue was raised.
Regards
Peter Wilson
I shall of course keep you posted if (IF) I get a reply.
Icarus:
It may not be unusual for you to cry about failing crops, but this happens all the time due to natural weather patterns and local climate shifts. Bumper crops can happen on the other side of the world at the same time:
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2010/08/nice-timing-from-climate-hoax-promoters.html
What you should be concentrating on, is the biofuel scam, which takes arable land from food crops to grow fuel crops,which essentially take food from hungry mouths to power clunkers that don’t need it and actually expend more GHG’s at the same time. You need to look into this further, and take the blinkers off this time.
This is great. Court. The keepers and destroyers of numbers will have to defend their behavior. Then the almighty question: prove that the minor warming is caused by CO2. Why are we using cooked numbers to make stiff laws for energy use?
Awesome to hear about grain shortages. In the history of records, we produce a greater percentage of grain in a ratio to demand than ever before. We actually have more people on the planet struggling with obesity than starvation.
Commodity traders and speculators would rather have their investment in grain than is several falling currencies. Then they drive up prices and sell short to reap wealth on the great drop in prices.
‘…………..NIWA has adopted a series of invariably downward adjustments in the period prior to World War 2. Because these move the old temperature records downwards, the 7SS NZTR shows a huge bounce-back of over 1°C in the first half of the century.’
We should do this in Australia with our Bureau of Meteorology. The same thing has happened here when comparing the raw long-term data against the adjusted ‘homogenised’ trend data.
I recently checked 60 weather stations in NSW comparing the average max temp for the last 30 years against the long-term average and found an average rise of 0.20C (or 0.07C per decade) which is way below the trumpeted rise for the past 30 years.
The interesting part is that the 30 stations with the longest records had an increase of only 0.13C which suggests that the long-term record contains many warm periods in the first half of the 1900s thus showing little warming trend. The 30 shorter term stations (ie starting 60s and 70s) had a higher trend (0.09C per decade) because they started off in a cooler period.
No wonder the Climate Statement just released in Australia starts from the 60s. It just gets rid of those pesky earlier warm periods which would dampen the warming
(just like the warmer 1930s in the US temperature records).
Icarus
Bob Carter’s Plan B is far superior to Lester Brown’s Plan B which is hell bent on driving us back to the dark ages.
It’s warming to hear the msm discussing the importance of the jet stream in creating the droughts, fires and floods. Nothing to do with CO2 or CAGW.
Natural variability can be chaotic and frightening, but Bob’s Plan B will actually assist the survival of civilization.
Icarus says:
August 16, 2010 at 4:30 am
Surely this sort of dispute should be played out in the scientific literature rather than in the courts, should it not? If certain people think they have more accurate figures then they should publish a paper and let it be subject to scrutiny by their fellow scientists rather than by a court of law.
—Reply:
No, because public policy has been set using these bogus numbers–policy that has had a terrible impact on society. And since these “climate scientists” have made a mockery of the scrutiny process, the only timely remedy is through the legal system. Falsification of data is a crime.
There are very strong suspicions that the same thing has been done by Environment Canada to the Canadian temperature records. Would be interesting to see some activity on this here.
Even with the “adjustment” it goes to 1900, not 1940 (WWII)…
Thus there isn’t even a good “correllation” with CO2 increases!
So what’s their point, to show that “warming” is caused by nature? (Again, recognizing it may be a BOGUS relationship, and again, recognizing “average temperature” is more imaginary than Santa Claus..)
pat says:
August 16, 2010 at 12:17 am
It is about time. The NIWA data was pure fraud. They actually went out of their way to destroy all computerized records of the real data
Perhaps the same has happened around the world, after Climate Gate….most probably a “conspiration” for not losing the pleasures of coming “sinful pleasures jamborees”. Poor guys, they got used to a “jet set” way of living provided by their hidden masters.
Which of the two data sets are used by GHCN?
Olaf 5:36
Exactly right Olaf. And the resulting fuels are causing lots of problems for small engines and decreasing fuel economy on other engines. A total scam just for money and a misplaced “feel-good” mindset.
While I’m at it–A big BS to Icarus
There could be many more court cases. When the bubble bursts I could see a lot of climate ‘scientists’ being tried for ‘crimes against humanity’. This is not just a matter of playing about with the data – it has consequences.
In the UK for example one government body calculated the pursuit of renewables will quadruple the cost of energy. This will drive out or close all manufacturing in the UK.
About 40% of our power plants are due to be shut down within the next few years with no clear policy on how to replace them. This could lead to continuous power cuts, which would drive out any international businesses, such as is found in the City of London. Retail businesses would disappear as there would be little money to buy things.
If the winters continue to be long and cold then tens or hundreds of thousands of people will die as they can not afford to heat themselves. With a ruined economy the UK could not afford to import food so many more of the population could die – millions or even tens of millions.
The UK already owes over a trillion in debt, has commitments for over a trillion in pensions, and has a trillion tied up in failed banks. Pursuing what appears to be a false threat based on false data would push the UK over the edge and totally ruin the economy.
Most of the developed economies are in a similar position and will suffer a similar fate if these policies are pursued.
This is what is important about the NZ data – if the NZ government pursue policies based on this data which damages the economy then there are consequences for the whole population, not just the reputation of a handful of ‘scientists’.