From the “our expert is smarter than your expert” department and Tallbloke’s Talkshop:
How NIWA added lots of warming in New Zealand – and got away with it – so far
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark New Zealand. A judge has disregarded as inadmissible expert evidence from a statistician who showed that the adjustment method NIWA claimed they used only give a 0.3C/Century rise in temperature and ruled that NIWA (now a limited company) can adjust the temperature record as they see fit without having to demonstrate the use of a method based on any accepted science. here’s the graph:
NIWA are now claiming $118,000 from two named individuals in costs. This looks like a vindictive move.
NZCSET, the organisation which brought the review case to court are examining their options for appeal.
A comment on Jo Nova’s site summarizes the judgement.
Jaymez
September 7, 2012 at 10:17 pm · Reply
It is a very disappointing judgement. I have read the entire judgement and at first pass it seems to me that Justice Venning found himself an escape hatch. Judges do not want their verdicts to be controversial or overruled, and you can bet he knew if he had found in favour of the ‘Coalition’ his ruling would have been attacked.
His escape hatch was two pronged:
1. Venning found that two of the key ‘expert witnesses’ for the Coalition, did not satisfy his definition of ‘expert witness’. That allowed him to simply disregard their arguments and evidence rather than look at them with as much weight as he applied to the testimony of NIWA’s experts which he appeared to accept without question.
[51] Section 23 of the Evidence Act 2006 provides that a statement of opinion is not admissible except as provided by ss 24 or 25. Opinion is defined in the Evidence Act at s 4 as: “A statement of opinion that tends to prove or disprove a fact.” I accept Mr Smith’s submission that there are substantial portions of Mr Dunleavy’s original and reply affidavits where he proffers opinions on matters in issue in the proceedings, particularly on scientific practices and the validity of the scientific practices of NIWA. Such evidence could only be admissible under s 24 or s 25. Section 24 is not applicable in the circumstances. Section 25 could only apply if Mr Dunleavy was an expert in the particular area of the science of meteorology and/or climate. He is not. He has no applicable qualifications. His interest in the area does not sufficiently qualify him as an expert. I also accept Mr Smith’s further point that Mr Dunleavy’s views are not capable of offering substantial help to this Court on the issue that it has to determine. To that extent I agree that substantial passages of Mr Dunleavy’s evidence are inadmissible.
[53] Similar issues (as to the limited nature of his expertise), apply to the evidence of Mr Dedekind. Although in his affidavit in reply Mr Dedekind purported to comply with r 9.43, Mr Dedekind’s expertise is in relation to computer modelling and statistical analysis.
In fact Vennings makes the following outrageous statement which reminds me of the same criticisms which were made of Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre who were ‘unqualified’ to critique Michael Mann’s infamous Hockey Stick graph, with errors which had escaped the notice of thousands of supposedly qualified climate experts!
More here:
Thanks for highlighting this one Anthony. To try to help our friends in NZ, I’ve been emailing John Christy today, and hopefully he’s now onboard to assist with his expertise and status as a bona-fide card-carrying climatologist the appeal judge will have to listen to.
The NZ statistician who has done the bulk of the analysis work has called in at the talkshop to discuss the issues, so come on over, everyone welcome.
Amazing expert statistician can’t provide evidenced on the use of statistic in climate science but bad statics from climate scientists themselves must be taken on face value.
Th fact that NIWA still will not claim that they produce a ‘official’ warming value tells you how much they really trust their own work to stand up to a real review from those that on their payroll .
So according to the judge climate statistics and statistics are two separate and unrelated fields.
Its all starting to make sense now.
“… Mr Dedekind’s expertise is in relation to computer modelling and statistical analysis.”
Yet these are exactly the same areas within which his testimony was to be applied.
Modern science has a problem in that it is now trivially easy to apply various statistical tools to data using readily available computer ‘statistical tool kits’, without necessarily understanding the techniques involved, and without needing to verify whether the techniques be appropriate to the data or to the conclusions being drawn from the processing.
When I went to University something like a linear regression could take days, weeks, or even months of laborious calculations, depending on the size of the dataset, using a slide rule or log tables. So before embarking on such an arduous task, one made bloody well sure that the method was going to be appropriate and applicable.
A researcher nowadays can toss the data into 50 or 100 different computerized ‘black box’ algorithms until one set of such algorithms appears to excrete the results that are expected or desired.
And it may require an expert in statistical analysis to be able to confirm whether the method is valid for the conclusions drawn.
Should’ve asked the BOM to give their expert opinion on NIWA methods and data use..now that would’ve been fun to see and hear.How can a judge dtermine who’s more expert on somthing he has no expertise himself is mystifying.appeal appeal…and retire this numpty judge
At the end of the day the judiciary will rule that the expert giving evidence that conflicts with NIWA is not an expert climatologist or statistician. Put up a climatologist and be told that he is not a statistician. Put up a statistician and be told that he is not a climatologist. In NZ new evidence is not normally accepted in appeals which are supposed to consider only matters of law. The success rate on appeal is negligeable here. NZ judges are most loth to over-rule their mates. In a society of four million these buggers all know each other! The only way to get a crazy verdict overturned is to get a judge in from Australia to review the whole case. This was done in the Arthur Allan Thomas case by the Prime Minister of the time, Muldoon. That being about the only decent decision the bugger made in his whole political life.
The judge’s ruling is a gift to sceptics. He is basically saying that the climate record in NZ need have no basis in fact or science. So he is basically saying that the record has no meaning except the opinion of the keepers of the record (pure opinion, not peer-reviewed scientifically-justified information). That is huge. That should be shouted from the rooftops by every sceptic in the world.
Legal process has become one of the casualties of main stream climate science.
Here is a completely independent analysis of the New Zealand temperature record: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/new-zealand
Seems to correspond pretty well to that of NIWA.
hey Zeke did you see my email to you last week? Never got a reply.
Zeke Hausfather says:
October 25, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Here is a completely independent analysis of the New Zealand temperature record: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/new-zealand
With 1.5 trillion dollars of tax “revenues” at stake if the government is wrong, are you going to trust a .gov site to give you accurate results when checking government-modified figures to audit another part of the government-needed “research” on the climate??
Give them a cheque for $1.53 and tell them it can be “adjusted” in 50 years time to whatever amount they like.
Zeke:
“Seems to correspond pretty well to that of NIWA.”
Not really. The BEST trend from 1910 is 0.68°C/century, while NIWA’s from 1909 is 0.91°C/century.
When we applied the RS93 method rigorously on the same stations, we came out with 0.34°C/century.
Bob D,
You are correct that Berkeley has a lower trend (0.68 vs 0.91 for 1910-2010). I was simply eyeballing the graphs, as the NIWA site doesn’t make it particularly easy to download the anomalies. Mea Culpa on my part for a quick post before digging into the data (in my defense, its been a long day at work :-p )
That said, the Berkeley results are still more in line with NIWA than the pre-adjustment record.
RACookPE1978,
I’m rather partial to that particular .gov site, given that I’m a member of the team who is responsible for it.
This is rather an old, though shocking, story – here is the Jo Nova thread :
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/09/nz-justice-shows-courts-are-useless-in-a-science-debate/
There is a certain wry amusement in that he considered a statistician to be unqualified to comment on the statistical methods used by climate scientists as they are unique to climate ‘science’ – they certainly are!
Zeke,
Great stuff….the earlier data is based on assumptions based on Hobart in australia less the number we first thought of …maybe a bit more or less…… .check…http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2012/10/niwa-says-it-wasnt-about-climate-change/comment-page-1/#comment-129735
Zeke Hausfather says:
That said, the Berkeley results are still more in line with NIWA than the pre-adjustment record.
————————————-
You realize that the BEST data is adjusted (homogenized, normalized, maladjusted and then molested) as well?
You’re looking at two counterfeit notes (bills) and saying, “Look, they match. They must be real.”
BTW It’s been over a year, has the BEST study passed peer review yet? How long does is take to rubber stamp these things?
Reg Nelson,
Yes, BEST fiddles with the data like Michael Mann taught. Compare the before and after:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/30/article-2055191-0E974B4300000578-6_634x639.jpg
Another incredible hokey stick chart.
I am not a qualified chef, but I can smell a rotten egg. Although two Universities have suffered me, I am not an “expert” in climatology or statistics, but I can recognise a massaged result when I see one. Possibly my main qualification is that I do not rely on the system for my pay packet, so I can beg to differ from the official line.
Zeke:
October 25, 2012 at 5:23 pm
“…in my defense, its been a long day at work :-p”
No worries.
“That said, the Berkeley results are still more in line with NIWA than the pre-adjustment record.”
If you mean that BEST is also high, then yes. I don’t have access to the individual station records used in BEST, nor do I know how each site adjustment was made, so I can’t comment on their results. If they use an automatic homogenising algorithm, then they will certainly introduce errors in the NZ record, simply because most NZ sites are urban (UHI) and/or sheltering affected (see Hansen, 2001). A good example is the transition from Albert Park to Auckland Aero. See here (pg 57):
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/docs/Statistical%20Audit%20of%20the%20NIWA%207-Station%20Review%20Aug%202011%20SI.pdf
For a summary, see here:
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/docs/Statistical%20Audit%20of%20the%20NIWA%207-Station%20Review%20Aug%202011.pdf
On the other hand, I am fairly well acquainted with each site adjustment made on the NZ 7SS, and am confident that the BEST team is unlikely to have gone into the detail I have in checking the NZ adjustments specifically. That’s not to say the “true” NZ trend (1909-2009) is exactly 0.34°C/century, but I have more confidence in that number than, say, BEST’s 0.68°C/century.
Regarding the adjusted vs unadjusted trends, if we are prepared to accept that NZ covers a reasonable spatial scale, we would expect (Peterson 1995, 1998) that homogeneity adjustments should largely balance out, implying that the further you are away from the unadjusted trend, the more skeptical you should be about the result, initially at least.
When we excluded the two sites most affected by UHI and sheltering (Auckland and Wellington – see Hessel, 1980 & Fouhy, 1992) the trend became 0.26±0.30°C/century, and the homogenised sites all conformed pretty closely to that number (0.21 to 0.27°C/century, with one outlier, Masterton at 0.36 – also subject to UHI) Unadjusted trend, for reference, is 0.23°C/century. Contrast that with NIWA’s results, where the trends vary greatly over the 7SS (0.61 to 1.53°C/century) and the final result of 0.91°C/century is very far from the unadjusted number, and also significantly above the global average for the same period.
Bob D;
Is it just a coincidence that your 0.34 is exactly ½ of their 0.68?
>:)
“Albert Park to Auckland Aero”
Sorry, that should read Albert Park to Mangere (right next door to Auckland Aero).
Brian H says:
October 25, 2012 at 7:28 pm
“Is it just a coincidence that your 0.34 is exactly ½ of their 0.68? >:)”
Sadly, yes. 🙂
I find it odd we get so wrapped up in 100 to 200 year trends, when we have much longer trends that are able to show a bigger picture that does not necessarily depict anything other than a small general interglacial period of temperature variability that is insignificant. Yet there is such a cascade of effort to discuss basic nothingness. $,$$$,$$$,$$$
peterg says:
October 25, 2012 at 2:36 pm
So according to the judge climate statistics and statistics are two separate and unrelated fields.
Its all starting to make sense now.
Of course, “statistics” relate to the accuracy of a trend, “climate statistics” relate to the absence of money in a treasury.
Surely, in a civil case, there is no presumption of innocence or guilt and no presumption of truth or falsity?
In presuming that NIWA told the truth, simply because they have status, the judge is wrong in law?
Roger Dewhurst