The Warmest Decade on Record

Of Court Jesters and Tea-Leaves

Our NIWA "scientists" and their stoolies working in the media are laughable. And, as we proceed, let's never forget that NIWA scientists are actually employed by us. They are public servants.

Here is the scenario. NIWA came out recently to announce portentously that the most recent decade in New Zealand had been the warmest on record. Several media outlets--apparently those whose reportage staff have not taken the time and trouble to read about Climategate--trumpeted the NIWA press release.

But some reporters and editors are showing that they have followed Climategate and that they are a little bit less credulous and a bit more sceptical than they once were. This is heartening. A headline in the Christchurch Press reads: "Doubts Cast on Warmest Decade."

The article quotes one Blue Skies Weather forecaster Tony Trewinnard who skewers NIWA and, without malice, holds them up to deserved ridicule. It turns out that the average temperature in the past ten years in New Zealand was just a few hundredths of a degree Celsius higher than the 1980's. This is well within the margin of error. Nevertheless NIWA blew its global warming trumpet loud and long.

Tony Trewinnard's rebuttal of our bureaucrat-scientists was as follows:

However, Trewinnard questioned how Niwa could claim a long-term warming trend when the 2000s were only marginally warmer than the 1971-2000 norm and the 1980s, and when the 1990s were cooler than both those decades.

"There isn't a long-term warming trend by his [Renwick's] own numbers, nationally," he said.

"That's not supported by the data.

"If you're comfortable with saying three-hundredths of a degree is different, then that's fine, but are those claims really supported by the data?

"It's like a political party claiming it leads in the polls when its lead is less than the margin of error in the poll."

Three-hundredths of a degree difference in a decade was the same as 0.3C difference in a century, which was still 10 times less than some of the international predictions of rising temperatures, he said.

"Suppose, for the sake of argument, nobody had ever thought about climate change and global warming, but we just wanted to look at climate trends," Trewinnard said.

"If you had this data, I'm absolutely certain your conclusion would be that temperatures were much the same for the 2000s as the other decades."

Clearly NIWA was drawing a very long bow, whilst grinding a very rusty axe. This is not science--it is propaganda, pure and simple. Great to see it being exposed in one of our main metropolitan dailies.

But there is a corker in the article which deserve a long belly laugh. It occurs immediately after quoting Niwa principal climate scientist James Renwick, although the statement is not directly attributed to him. It reads:

A warmer atmosphere provides more energy for weather systems, which leads to more extreme weather. In winter, that increases the chances of severe snowstorms, like those being experienced in Europe, North America and parts of Asia.

The clear implication in the article is that this gem came from our chief climate scientist himself.

So now we learn that a warmer atmosphere makes for a colder earth. Global cooling is caused by global warming. How bizarre. The implication is that if man were to succeed in cooling the atmosphere, as the zealots are calling for, the globe would--wait for it--heat up! These guys deserve only to be laughed at. They excel at the art of the comic. Maybe this is in the fine print of their job-descriptions as NIWA scientists: "at all times you must fulfil the role of a court-jester."