NIWA’s minister told to put up or shut up

New Zealand's Climate Change minister Nick Smith has been told to make good on his promise to front NIWA scientists for a grilling by members of parliament in the wake of the Climategate and NIWAtemp scandals.

Act party leader Rodney Hide, a minister in the coalition government cabinet, has released a letter sent to Smith this afternoon.

Hide has told his cabinet colleague only openness and honesty about NIWA's scientific methods will assuage growing public concerns about the integrity of climate scientists and their data.

Read more over at Whaleoil.

If NIWA think yesterday's news release in any way answers questions about their historical temperature adjustments, they need more than a grilling.

 

Comments

[fletch]

This is good, but I don't trust the bastards; they'll be in damage-control mode now and manufacturing even more stories to support whatever fraudulent data they've already produced.

The good thing about the climategate emails was that it was sprung all of a sudden and the Hadley people had no time to concoct some lame rationale.

[Shane Ponting]

It will be identical to the CRU hack emails, just replace the names, so the "we've deleted ours and you should delete yours" fits this.

[steve]

Can we get the raw temperature data, modified temperature data as well as the methodology and rational for the adjustments released under the Official Information Act 1982?

[R2D2]

This whole thing shows why it is better to use constant proxy when studying climate change in a historical context than temperature records that are disjointed over time. That is why the IPCC and others should use proxies rather than 'reconstructions'. This study's (below) proxy data shows nothing extraordinary, but then the author splices a temperature reconstruction on the end, does 'Mike's nature trick' of removing the last 20 years of proxy data to 'hide the decline', or the divergence between the proxy and the temperature reconstruction that we now know is there thanks to leaked emails, and then claims extraordinary warming.

Jones & Mann:

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/mannjones03.pdf

Only the last 20 years of temperature data show dramatic warming. Was the proxy wrong or the temperature data wrong? What justification did the authors have to trust the temperature data over the proxy data? Did they just like the results better?

This study does the same:

http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/moberg.nature.0502.pdf

I guess it’s a well accepted peer reviewed method…

The proxy data is significantly colder than 1000AD temperatures and only the instrumental data is warmer.

I guess it’s a well accepted peer reviewed method…

This study shows proxies for many locations. In most of them most of the modern warming happens between 1850 and 1930, with only modest warming occurring post 1930. Why do temperature records not show this?

http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/people/homes/rgroves/wilsonpub4.pdf

[Bamm Bamm]

Steve:

All the climate change data is now compromised ...
The first thing you do in faking data, is make the original data fit your story.

Its all COMPROMISED!

[Peter]

More than a grilling? Depends on how hot the grill is, I would recommend 500F, they'll talk soon enough.

[Bamm Bamm]

Ian:

The people responsible at NIWA for publishing, collating, collecting and manipulating these fake 'datasets' need to be publically identified, and PROSECUTED.

There can be no middle ground in the NZ government, nor the taxpayers response to this.

[Richard Treadgold]

Ian,

Some comments here exemplify widespread misconceptions of our study and conclusions which have led to the expression of unpleasant feelings. It is a pity to read many of them, such as the ones at Hot Topic, since they suggest the writers unworthy of the term sceptical scientist.

Steve: You say "can we get the raw temperature data…" The short answer is yes. Our study was based on the raw data, which anybody can download for free from the CliFlo database maintained by NIWA on their web site. The modified data (for just the seven stations in NIWA's graph) we obtained from a colleague of Dr Salinger and the adjustments and rationale are precisely what we've asked NIWA to provide, in our second media release, and which Rodney Hide has asked for in the open letter which is the subject of this post.

Bamm Bamm: A little immoderate, sir! I understand your anger at the thought of their not being honest with us, but you are misguided to call for prosecution. NIWA have refused, without explanation, to release public data. I'm not sure that's unlawful, even if it's irritating.

We await their response. We are leaving them alone for a space to compose themselves and it.

In the meantime, we're about to post the first of our supporting material on www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz that will help those trying to replicate our results.

It was serendipity alone that brought publication of our study in the midst of the climategate scandal. If we'd anticipated the resulting huge interest in our work, we might have prepared the supporting material earlier, but we never guessed.

Cheers,
Richard Treadgold,
Convenor,
Climate Conversation Group.

[Bamm Bamm]

Well Richard.
As I feared, you might want to look at this:
Climate change data dumped

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

And Richard, I'm now publically calling you to please provide a record here for other scientists whom choose to use your data, that is has not been contaminated.

If you cannot guarantee that it isn't contaminated, then please state that for the record also.

[Bamm Bamm]

Richard?
Hello?

Richard? ...