Temperatures Rise as Sceptics Want Their Day in Court

New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) faced a legal challenge by sceptics group Climate Science Coalition. The coalition has launched high court action over the institute’s climate data, calling for the country’s temperature record to be set aside and for NIWA to produce a “full and accurate” temperature record.

By Brian Williams in the Courier-Mail (17 August 2010):

SCIENTISTS have hit back at climate change sceptics, with a paper affirming the case that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause of warming.

The Australian Academy of Science yesterday went on the front foot to clear up confusion after challenges to warming theories.

It came as New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research faced a legal challenge by sceptics group Climate Science Coalition.

The coalition has launched high court action over the institute’s climate data.

Academy past president Kurt Lambeck said the scientific statement aimed to boost climate change understanding.

The role of CO2 in the atmosphere was well understood and unless greenhouse gas emissions were reduced, an upward trend in global temperatures would continue.

“The available evidence implies that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause (of warming),” Prof Lambeck said. If emissions continued at business-as-usual rates, temperatures would rise significantly.

Records over millions of years showed that a stable climate could not be taken for granted. Measurements over the past 100 years showed that as CO2 levels rose, the Earth also warmed.

Scientists say it is important to have debate on climate change, but spurious attacks were taking up an increasing amount of time to debunk.

In NZ, the coalition’s statement of claim calls for the country’s temperature record to be set aside and for NIWA to produce a “full and accurate” temperature record.

NZ Climate Change Research Institute senior researcher Professor Andy Reisinger said NIWA had checked its records, validated long-term trends with thousands of meteorological stations around the world and answered innumerable queries.

“The coalition has not put forward any clear and consistent scientific arguments against this local or global temperature trend; has not published its views in scientific peer-reviewed journals; has not disclosed its own scientific methods by which it claims to show that there has been a cooling rather than warming; and its members have little credibility,” Prof Reisinger said.

“The High Court action will cost taxpayer money to defend the obvious against the obscure and ridiculous.”

Massey University’s Ralph Sims said he had yet to find a recent peer-reviewed paper authored or co-authored on climate science by coalition commentator Bryan Leyland.

Source: www.heraldsun.com.au