Climate change readings ‘inaccurate’
TREVOR QUINN
A climate change group has taken the National Institute for Atmospheric and Water Research (NIWA) to court over what they say are inaccurate temperature recordings.
The New Zealand Climate Education Trust – a branch of the NZ Climate Science Coalition – are challenging NIWA figures which show a rise in temperatures in New Zealand of 1degC over the past 100 years.
This figure is significantly higher than global warming figures around the world and the trust is questioning how NIWA calculated the figures and whether they are accurate.
It believes there has either been no warming or a trivial warming of around 0.2degC.
The group’s lawyer Terry Sissons told the High Court at Auckland today that NIWA could have obtained inaccurate New Zealand average temperatures due to ‘sudden site relocations’ and by regularly changing temperature gauging instruments.
“We’re not saying that climatic changes are not happening but let’s at least ensure the evidence gathered for the benefit of New Zealanders is accurate and is done properly,” Sissons said.
More at Auckland Now h/t to WUWT reader “AB”
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Maybe it should be noted by the court that 25.5% of all temperatures recorded in NIWA were logged as a rounded .0 Fahrenheit, instead of the 10% that would indicate an unbiased distribution of decimals. This has an unknown effect on pre-Celsius averages, although there is reason to believe that rounding down, rather than up, underestimated historic temperatures. Details at http://www.waclimate.net/round/new-zealand-temperatures.html
The media have gone very quiet on this; I couldn’t find any reports online after the Monday item announcing that the action was taking place. However, my local newspaper did print this opinion piece. Not much that’s new, but at least it got featured.
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/217521/its-getting-colder-not-warmer
In the same issue the manager of Dunedin’s forestry assets said that the Government should not sign up to the latest version of Kyoto because of the huge financial penalty to forestry.
If anyone has recent developments in the NIWA case, please post!
Check the Herald website wew.nzherald.co.nz for news. They’re covering it. The paper is usually warmist not skeptical on the issue. Use their search facility, input NIWA to find stories.
Good source of info here:
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/niwa.ct.docs.pdf
Trevor;
Enough of your error, aberration, and distortion! It’s “Shenanigans”, not “…ins”. >:p
There is not a single report about this in any newspaper here in NZ that I know of. I goggled up the judge who is hearing this and I read he was “a govenment man” so I’m afraid to say that the giant hand of govt. which subtly runs this country,is saying “nothing to see here…move along please”
But I hope I’m wrong. 🙂
NIWA court response Thursday 19th
Mr Smith today questioned the credibility of the evidence of two of the trust’s “expert” witnesses, including IT professional Manfred Dedekind, who said he also had qualifications and experience with statistical analysis.
“It is submitted that Mr Dedekind is not an expert on the application of statistical techniques in climate science and therefore cannot give evidence on the application of statistical techniques in climate science,” Mr Smith said.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10819943