New Zealand Agency Also Fudged Data to Prove AGW

ClimateGate: New Zealand Agency Also Fudged Data to “Prove” AGW

It would seem that fudging climate date wasn’t limited to the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Centre. It has been recently discovered that the New Zealand Government’s climate agency has been fudging the numbers as well. Here is some coverage of this from TBR.cc, via Watt’s Up With That.

UPDATE 15:49 NZDT – NIWA’s news release in response to this story appears to have been delayed, and according to a radio news report a few minutes ago Rodney Hide, leader of the minority Act Party and a minister in the National Government, is now calling on his Cabinet colleague, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith, to “please explain” [normal transmission now resumes]

The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there.

The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre.

In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:

So, this is somewhat reminiscent of the infamous “hockey stick” graph used by AGW Alarmists. However, there is more. Apparently, the raw data has been obtained from New Zealand, and when this is plotted, a much different picture emerges.

But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:

Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.

The revelations are published today in a news alert from The Climate Science Coalition of NZ:

Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?

Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!

Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?

It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each station (from NIWA’s web site) with the adjusted official data, which we obtained from one of Dr Salinger’s colleagues.

Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.

Proof of man-made warming

What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.

About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there’s no apparent reason for it.

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.

NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.

NIWA’s David Wratt has told Investigate magazine this afternoon his organization denies faking temperature data and he claims NIWA has a good explanation for adjusting the temperature data upward. Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data.

“Do you agree it might look bad in the wake of the CRU scandal?”

“No, no,” replied Wratt before hitting out at the Climate Science Coalition and accusing them of “misleading” people about the temperature adjustments.

Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU’s Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were “destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data.

This is astounding to me. While these are great developments, in the respect that we can now see that “the books are being cooked.” However, the downside is that we now have a major issue with trust from the scientific community.

In the end, we now have two climate agencies that have been caught manipulating data to make claims that are at the very least, exaggerations, or, at worst, fabrications, we have to question the government’s push for climate legislation. The science is not settled, it never was, and now, even more so.

It is my belief that there are no great “conspiracies.” I do think that people with similar ideas do similar things. Think of these scientists. Most of them probably believe in the idea of AGW, or at least they did. However, what does it do to one’s professional reputation if all one’s work is shown to be incorrect? What does one do when one’s body of work isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on? Where does one work or get published once one’s work is ruined by reality? These seem to be proud people, perhaps proud enough to get really creative in order to maintain their status.

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