On the Sciblogs podcast this week, we head to the High Court where climate sceptics have this week been seeking a judicial review of NIWA’s climate records. We catch up with Sciblogger Gareth Renowden about the case and we talk to former NIWA climate scientist Jim Renwick about the current state of climate science and what it is telling us about the extent of warming on a global scale.
We also talk to Dr Melanie Massaro about her paper Trapped in the postdoctoral void and her concern at what she considers to be an oversupply of doctoral students in the New Zealand education system.
Subscribe to the Sciblogs podcast via iTunes or Stitcher.com – or just stream it straight from the site here!
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[audio: http://ia600403.us.archive.org/8/items/SciblogsPodcastEpisode37ClimateScepticsDayInCourt/SciblogsPodcastEpisode37.mp3%5DShow notes
Hot Topic: When asses go to court
Open Parachute: Scepticism, denial and the high court
NZ Herald: Global warming sceptics accuse NIWA over temperature records
Dominion Post: Wellington’s climate record shows warming trend
James Renwick’s profile
NZ Herald: Climate change slow but real phenomenon
James Renwick’s Victoria lecture
Melanie Massaro’s homepage
Melanie Massaro’s paper will be published at http://www.scientists.org.nz
PETER GRIFFIN 
The total output of HAARP when it is operating is only 4GW. I am not sure how this is relevant to the discussion.
Only 4 GW. What about the rest of the ionspheric heaters. Did you miss the bit where it said it heats up a larger area than where it was aimed.
They say it is to communicate with submarines, but there is evidence they are trying to own the weather.
All that power being absorbed by the Ionosphere, heating the particles up there, it is very irresponsible, when they don’t even know what it could be doing to our planet.
Derek, no, not really.
Have a look at the make-up of the Earth’s atmosphere, the ionosphere is above the point where the temperature could reasonably be expected to be transmitted back down to Earth. Good thing ‘cos up there it’s routinely hundreds of degrees, sometime breaching thousands on degrees. The “heating” achieved by HAARP does not make much difference. Note, from a different portion of the web page you quote (and don’t reference by the way, that’s getting very old.):
“This power is partially absorbed by the ionosphere, and though only a tiny fraction of the power it naturally receives from the sun, can still produce subtle changes that can be detected with sensitive instruments.”
http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/experiments-haarp-ionospheric-heater
I put heating in quotes as while it is real, it’s not quite the same as putting something under a heat lamp. The atmosphere up there is extremely attenuated, consisting of gas and free ions (hence ionosphere), the temperature reflects the energy these particles have but you would still freeze to death if you were up there.
“Within the thermosphere temperatures rise continually to well beyond 1000 degrees C. The few molecules that are present in the thermosphere receive extraordinary amounts of energy from the Sun, causing the layer to warm to such high temperatures. Although the measured temperature is very hot, the thermosphere would actually feel very cold to us because the total energy of only a few air molecules residing there would not be enough to transfer any appreciable heat to our skin.”
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/maps/satellite_feed/atmosphere_layers/
Anthony Watts has just issued a press release about his new paper with Steve McIntyre and John Christie where they propose that the surface station data in the USA exaggerates the warming trend by a factor of 2
This would appear to be very relevant to the NIWA case. This paper has been submitted for peer review
Scientists don’t normally issue press releases about yet to be published papers as issues may arise during the peer review process.
@Simon.
Correct, but Watts was emulating Richard Muller who did this with his BEST paper.
Muller issued a press release about his pre-publication and Watts felt compelled to do the same.
IIt gives independent observers the chance to critique the paper before publication. Is this not a good thing?
Andy,
Why is some new paper relevant? Courts can’t decide science – I thought we already understood that.
I think this development is highly relevant to the discussion http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?_r=2
@Grant. Why does a paper showing that US temperature records may have been exaggerated have relevance to a NZ court case showing that temperature records may have been exaggerated
I must admit it’s a tricky one..
@Peter,
Mullers “road to Damscus” OpEd is embarrassing even to the warmists
Check out William “Stoat” Connelleys piece:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/07/28/muller-is-still-rubbish/
The fact is that if Watt’s et al stands up to peer review etc then a lot of papers will have to be trashed, including BEST work.
Roger Pielke Snr also has something to say on Watts et al and Muller.
Andy,
No need to be snarky, you’re not getting my point. (Or perhaps not considering my point. Consider this: courts can’t decide if this USA data exaggerates the effect either. Also: as a separate event wouldn’t it have no bearing?)
Just a thought: There’s a saying that ‘the data are the data’. You can debate the interpretations of data (scientifically, that is) but you can’t wish away the data – they are there, whatever they are and whatever people think of them.
Sorry if I sound snarky Grant. You comment is a valid one. What does the data show us in NZ? The raw unadjusted data shows no warming at all over the 20th Century.
The warming in the 7SS is all in the adjustments, and it is the interpretation of the adjustments that is key. Whether this is an issue for courts is another point.
>The warming in the 7SS is all in the adjustments
Yes, but as I noted before, the same warming trend is clear in the 11 stattion series, for which there is were no adjustments.
Adjustments were needed. For example, one sees snow at the top of mountains – its colder up there. So when the Wellington measurements went from close to sea level where they used to be taken, up the hil to Kelburn, about 100m up, on any day the temperature reading was lower at Kelburn than it would have been if it was still measured at sea level. So to chain link the old with the new temperatures to get a continuous record for Wellington, the old temperatures measured at sea level had to be adjusted downwards to be comparable with what the measurements would have been at Kelburn. And similarly for Auckland, where the earlier Albert Park temperature measurements were affected by the warm current that comes down the east Auckland coast and had to be adusted downwards for comparability with the new measurements at Auckland Airport, where temperatures are affected by the cold ocean current that comes up the west Auckland coast. And so on for the other five stattions.
Possum – yes but the issue is with the correct application of the Rhoades and Salinger methodology to do the adjustments in the 7SS.
The claim is that the methodology was not applied and this led to an artificially high warming.
I can’t comment on the 11SS.
Incidentally, the pre-publication paper by Watts et al that shows artificially high warming in the US was co-authored by Steve McIntyre, who also got another Aus/NZ paper tossed out (Gergis e at) because of incorrect methodology
Gergis at al uses NZ temp data for calibration, so there is quite a lot a stake if you are interested in accurate science.
Just to clarify, the issue is not with intra-station adjustments but inter-station interpolations