A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand

[IanC]

a new look at NZ temp dataset. the SI says that the official method was used (Salinger and Rhodes 1993) but station metadata was incorporated into the homogenization. amazingly the 0.9C/century trend is down to 0.3C/century.

I hope a non-paywalled version comes out soon. and that it is discussed in the blogosphere.

Abstract
Detecting trends in climate is important in assessments of global change based on regional long-term data. Equally important is the reliability of the results that are widely used as a major input for a large number of societal design and planning purposes. New Zealand provides a rare long temperature time series in the Southern Hemisphere, and it is one of the longest continuous climate series available in the Southern Hemisphere Pacific. It is therefore important that this temperature dataset meets the highest quality control standards. New Zealand’s national record for the period 1909 to 2009 is analysed and the data homogenized. Current New Zealand century-long climatology based on 1981 methods produces a trend of 0.91 °C per century. Our analysis, which uses updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data, produces a trend of 0.28 °C per century.

 

[IanC]

not a whole lot out on this yet.

here is one review of the paper-

In introducing their recent study of the subject, deFreitas et al. (2014) write that "a homogenized New Zealand national temperature record has only once appeared in the literature," citing the one produced by Salinger (1980). They report, however, that it was based on a measurement technique that was significantly improved by its author and a colleague (Rhoades and Salinger, 1993) over a decade later. And although they state that "applying that improvement could have a significant effect on trends," they indicate that such an improved trend for New Zealand "has never previously been published."

The three New Zealand researchers thus set out to fill this void by applying the measurement technique described by Rhoads and Salinger to data for the period 1909-2009. And they did it, in their words, "exactly as they [Rhoads and Salinger] describe, without adjusting it in any way," although they say they corrected for "the contamination of raw data identified in the refereed literature (Hessell, 1980)" and for "shelter-contaminated data." So what was the final result?

De Freitas et al. report that, whereas the previous analysis yielded a trend of 0.91 ± 0.30°C per century, their analysis - which used updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data - produces a trend of only 0.28 ± 0.29°C per century, which is a heck of a lot less than what had previously been believed to have been the case.

The significance of de Freitas et al.'s work is two-fold. First, the authors report that the old, contaminated data with the inflated warming trend has been "widely used as inputs for societal design and planning purposes" all across New Zealand. Second, de Freitas et al. note these data are "extensively used in hindcast verifications for regional and local models." However, as the saying goes, "garbage in equals garbage out." Therefore, at best, the corrected New Zealand temperature trend, which is three times smaller than the uncorrected version, calls into question all results, findings, conclusions, and policies built upon or derived from the old contaminated data record. And at worst, it invalidates them.

Given the great importance of starting with the proper baseline, one would hope that with so much at stake in terms of economics, personal freedoms, and governance, much greater care and scrutiny would be applied to ensuring the quality and reliability of near-surface air temperature records. But obviously, such has not been the case for New Zealand. And it begs the question as to where else temperature records might be less than par.

I seem to remember a NZ court case in the last few years where an outside group tried to force the NZ Met to update its dataset by showing that the results were not consistent with the Salinger/Rhoades93 method. it was tossed out because the court said it had no business in science.

so.....the trend was less than stated using the stated methodology and uncorrected data. and now....the trend is less than one third using the stated methodology and data corrected for location. I like the ending sentence of the article- And it begs the question as to where else temperature records might be less than par.

 

[SSDD]

You aren't expecting any actual engagement from him on this are you? It runs contrary to the dogma.

 

[IanC]

You aren't expecting any actual engagement from him on this are you? It runs contrary to the dogma.

this is actually a bookmark for me. I will be able to find it down the road. there are lots of things I lose because I dont know where they are anymore, and 'denier fodder' links seem to disappear quite often. eg Zwally's NASA laser altimetry papers on Antarctica.

 

[Saigon]

Ian -

Was the person/group involved in the court case from a science or a politics background?

If the answer is extreme right-wing politics, what do you think that tells us about the nature of denialism?

 

[Old Rocks]

Chris de Freitas - SourceWatch

Chris de Freitas is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is a global warming skeptic, is listed as a contributor to the climate contrarian website ICECAP, and is listed as a Heartland Institute "global warming expert" and an advisor to the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition[1]

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Controversies
• 2 Quotations
  • 2.1 Related SourceWatch Articles
  • 2.2 External resources
  • 2.3 External articles
  • 2.4 References

Controversies
Under de Freitas's editorship of Climate Research (journal), several poor quality contrarian papers were published, that he had shepherded through the peer review process; half the journal's editors ended up resigning in protest at the lax editorial policies that had permitted these papers to slip through and the publisher's unwillingness to enforce suitably stringent ones. [2] De Freitas doesn't accept that extreme weather events are linked to human induced climate change [3]

 

[Old Rocks]

Tim de Freitas - SourceWatch

Tim de Freitas

​	Learn more from theCenter for Media and Democracy's research on climate change.

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

This article is a stub. You canhelp by expanding it.

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Tim de Freitas is Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of Exploration at Manitok Energy Inc. He has "worked for Imperial Oil and then Talisman Energy, and served as editor of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin."

"In June 2002, Tim de Freitas published a controversial paper by his brother Chris entitled Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really dangerous?"[1]

Hmmmmmmmm............................................

 

[IanC]

Chris de Freitas - SourceWatch

Chris de Freitas is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is a global warming skeptic, is listed as a contributor to the climate contrarian website ICECAP, and is listed as a Heartland Institute "global warming expert" and an advisor to the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition[1]

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Controversies
• 2 Quotations
  • 2.1 Related SourceWatch Articles
  • 2.2 External resources
  • 2.3 External articles
  • 2.4 References

Controversies
Under de Freitas's editorship of Climate Research (journal), several poor quality contrarian papers were published, that he had shepherded through the peer review process; half the journal's editors ended up resigning in protest at the lax editorial policies that had permitted these papers to slip through and the publisher's unwillingness to enforce suitably stringent ones. [2] De Freitas doesn't accept that extreme weather events are linked to human induced climate change [3]

yes, the climategate emails were very informative about how deFreitas could be smeared and removed from the Journal. and in fact was and was

when are you ever going to learn how to separate ideas from those who speak them?

 

[IanC]

Ian -

Was the person/group involved in the court case from a science or a politics background?

If the answer is extreme right-wing politics, what do you think that tells us about the nature of denialism?

I suppose I should go back and re-read about the court case. I believe the political spokesman for the group was at one time Minister of Science. but I may be confusing an Australian court case with this one.

why do I have the feeling that any conservative politician is considered extreme right wing to you. do you ever dismiss liberals as being extreme left wing?

 

[Saigon]

Ian -

If this is the case I think it is, the man is a member of ACT, a libertarian group in NZ.

ACT also has ties to the coal industry, funnily enough.

 

[mamooth]

this is actually a bookmark for me. I will be able to find it down the road. there are lots of things I lose because I dont know where they are anymore, and 'denier fodder' links seem to disappear quite often. eg Zwally's NASA laser altimetry papers on Antarctica.

This paper?

Overview and Assessment of Antarctic Ice-Sheet Mass Balance Estimates 1992 2009 - Springer

You understand that unfounded paranoia is one symptom of a cultist, right?

 

[IanC]

this is actually a bookmark for me. I will be able to find it down the road. there are lots of things I lose because I dont know where they are anymore, and 'denier fodder' links seem to disappear quite often. eg Zwally's NASA laser altimetry papers on Antarctica.

This paper?

Overview and Assessment of Antarctic Ice-Sheet Mass Balance Estimates 1992 2009 - Springer

You understand that unfounded paranoia is one symptom of a cultist, right?

thanks, but no. I am talking about the two that find first a 30 GT, then a 40 GT increase.

 

[Crick]

not a whole lot out on this yet.

here is one review of the paper-

In introducing their recent study of the subject, deFreitas et al. (2014) write that "a homogenized New Zealand national temperature record has only once appeared in the literature," citing the one produced by Salinger (1980). They report, however, that it was based on a measurement technique that was significantly improved by its author and a colleague (Rhoades and Salinger, 1993) over a decade later. And although they state that "applying that improvement could have a significant effect on trends," they indicate that such an improved trend for New Zealand "has never previously been published."

The three New Zealand researchers thus set out to fill this void by applying the measurement technique described by Rhoads and Salinger to data for the period 1909-2009. And they did it, in their words, "exactly as they [Rhoads and Salinger] describe, without adjusting it in any way," although they say they corrected for "the contamination of raw data identified in the refereed literature (Hessell, 1980)" and for "shelter-contaminated data." So what was the final result?

De Freitas et al. report that, whereas the previous analysis yielded a trend of 0.91 ± 0.30°C per century, their analysis - which used updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data - produces a trend of only 0.28 ± 0.29°C per century, which is a heck of a lot less than what had previously been believed to have been the case.

The significance of de Freitas et al.'s work is two-fold. First, the authors report that the old, contaminated data with the inflated warming trend has been "widely used as inputs for societal design and planning purposes" all across New Zealand. Second, de Freitas et al. note these data are "extensively used in hindcast verifications for regional and local models." However, as the saying goes, "garbage in equals garbage out." Therefore, at best, the corrected New Zealand temperature trend, which is three times smaller than the uncorrected version, calls into question all results, findings, conclusions, and policies built upon or derived from the old contaminated data record. And at worst, it invalidates them.

Given the great importance of starting with the proper baseline, one would hope that with so much at stake in terms of economics, personal freedoms, and governance, much greater care and scrutiny would be applied to ensuring the quality and reliability of near-surface air temperature records. But obviously, such has not been the case for New Zealand. And it begs the question as to where else temperature records might be less than par.

I seem to remember a NZ court case in the last few years where an outside group tried to force the NZ Met to update its dataset by showing that the results were not consistent with the Salinger/Rhoades93 method. it was tossed out because the court said it had no business in science.

so.....the trend was less than stated using the stated methodology and uncorrected data. and now....the trend is less than one third using the stated methodology and data corrected for location. I like the ending sentence of the article- And it begs the question as to where else temperature records might be less than par.

Since we're all now expected to bow down to Rhoades and Salinger, I'm curious what THEY think of the adjustments made for "shelter contamination". And surely we need to be suspicious of data that truly seems to be intended to make New Zealanders feel more comfortable.

;-)

 

[Crick]

yes, the climategate emails were very informative about how deFreitas could be smeared and removed from the Journal. and in fact was and was

Could you show us studies that Freitas got published before the Climategate Two decided to suppress his dangerous truths? That is, can you show us that that man ever did work deserving of publication?

 

[IanC]

yes, the climategate emails were very informative about how deFreitas could be smeared and removed from the Journal. and in fact was and was

Could you show us studies that Freitas got published before the Climategate Two decided to suppress his dangerous truths? That is, can you show us that that man ever did work deserving of publication?

I'll bite. who or what are the 'climategate two'?

BTW, it wasnt de Freitas's work that was suppressed. he was forced out as editor. more recently Trenberth accepted Wagner's resignation and apology for publishing a paper by Spencer.

 

[Crick]

NZ CRANKS FINALLY PUBLISH AN NZ TEMPERATURE SERIES – BUT THEIR PAPER’S STUFFED WITH ERRORS
by GARETH on OCTOBER 31, 2014

You can’t teach old dogs new tricks, it seems — certainly not if they’re gnawing a much loved old bone at the time. The lads from the NZ Climate Science Coalition — yes, the same boys who tried to sue NIWA over the New Zealand temperature record and lost, and who then folded a trust to avoid paying court-ordered costs — have finally found a learned journal gullible enough to accept and publish their shonky reworking of NZ’s temperature record. Earlier this monthEnvironmental Modelling and Assessment published A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand by CR de Freitas & MO Dedekind & BE Brill (DOI 10.1007/s10666-014-9429-z).

My attention was drawn to dFDB 2014 by an NZCSC press release, and yesterday Richard Treadgold, the man who kicked off the whole sad affair five years ago, posted a disingenuous and misleading article about the paper at his blog. As you might expect given the authors, the paper does not call for an upward revision in the amount of warming NZ has experienced over the last century. The abstract concludes with the following:

Current New Zealand century-long climatology based on 1981 methods produces a trend of 0.91 °C per century. Our analysis, which uses updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data, produces a trend of 0.28 °C per century.

As you might also expect, given the authors and their respective track records, the paper is riddled with schoolboy howlers and outright misrepresentations. It would probably never have seen the light of day without the assistance of Chris “Pal Review” de Freitas and his undoubted ability to steer tosh to publication.


Here’s a partial list of the errors, misdirections, misrepresentations and shoddy scholarship in the paper, and in the approach taken by de Freitas, Dedekind and Brill (dFDB 2014).

dFDB 2014 repeats the old canard that NIWA’s Seven Station Series (7SS) before the 2010 review was based on the adjustments made in Jim Salinger’s 1981 thesis. This was a key claim in the NZ Climate Science Education Trust‘s evidence to the High Court and so transparently at odds with written reports and papers from 1992 onwards that it was easy for NIWA to refute. As one close observer of the case told me:

Judges may not understand maths, but they are pretty good at English, and take a dim view of litigants who wilfully and perversely misrepresent simple English sentences.

dFDB 2014 derives a warming rate of +0.28ºC per century, by claiming to apply a method published by Rhoades and Salinger in 1993 (RS93). It claims to create a new benchmark record by reapplying an old technique — essentially ignoring all the work done by NIWA in deriving the current 7SS. Unfortunately, the paper is based on a misapplication of the very method it claims to rely on, and includes numerous errors.

The paper as published contains no workings or supplemental material that would allow reproduction of their results, but it appears to be essentially identical to an “audit’ of NIWA’s Seven Station Series conducted by the NZCSC, and which was offered as evidence in their trust’s attempt to sue NIWA.

As such it contains mistakes that were pointed out in NIWA’s evidence to the High Court — evidence which was extensive, thorough and damning, but is not (yet) available in the public domain.

dFDB 2014 claims that RS93 mandates the use of one year and two year periods of comparison data when making adjustments for a station change, but RS93 makes no such claim. RS93 uses four year periods for comparison, in order to ensure statistical significance for changes — and no professional working in the field would use a shorter period.

The choice to limit themselves to one and two year comparisons seems to have been deliberately made in order to limit the number of adjustments made in the reconstructed series. Limiting the comparison periods makes it harder for adjustments to reach statistical significance, leading dFDB 2014 to reject adjustments even in cases where the station records show site moves or changes!

The effect of that is to reduce the warming trend because, as Treadgold’s first venture into this field showed, a naive reconstruction of the raw data shows not much warming.

But perhaps the most critical flaw in dFDB 2014 — one that should have been sufficient to prevent publication in any self-respecting journal operating a credible peer review process — is that their method ignores any assessment of maximum and minimum temperatures in the adjustment process. This was pointed out to the authors in NIWA’s evidence in the High Court. One of these adjustments will almost always be larger than that for the mean, and if that change is significant, then the temperature record will need to be adjusted at that point – it doesn’t matter if the mean temperature adjustment is statistically significant or not.

Silly mistakes in the application of their version of RS93 appeared in the “audit”, were pointed out in NIWA’s evidence to the High Court, but appear to be uncorrected in dFDB 2014. For example, in the “audit”, they infill a month of missing data (May 1920 in the Masterton series) by choosing an unrealistically warm temperature based on an average of years around the adjustment date. This ignores the fact that May 1920 was one of the coldest Mays on record, at all sites involved in the adjustment calculation.

The dFDB 2014 infill has the effect of reducing the statistical significance enough to reject an adjustment — despite the station record clearly showing that an adjustment is required! Any other approach — skipping the month, making a reasonable estimate based on surrounding stations, or even leaving the unrealistically warm guess at the start of the new series but looking at three years instead of limiting it (wrongly) to two years would make an adjustment necessary.

Throughout dFDB 2014, the analytical choices made by the NZCSC team have the effect of reducing the warming trend, and thus minimising the appearance of the very real warming NZ has experienced over the last century. Very convenient choices given their ideological stance on climate change, a cynic might note.

Quite apart from the methodological issues — which are undoubtedly huge — dFDB 2014 makes no reference to the Eleven Station Series (11SS) derived by NIWA from temperature sites that need no adjustments, presumably because it tracks warming at the expected level1 — that is, three times faster than dFDB 2014 finds.

One might speculate that if they had chosen to “audit” the 11SS — which has a strong warming trend in the raw station data2 — they would have been desperate to find adjustments to reduce that trend.

dFDB 2014 fails to acknowledge the existence of or address the issues raised by NIWA scientist Brett Mullan’s 2012 paper in Weather & Climate (the journal of the Meteorological Society of NZ), Applying the Rhoades and Salinger Method to New Zealand’s “Seven Stations” Temperature series (Weather & Climate, 32(1), 24-38), despite it dealing in detail with the method they claim to apply. Perhaps this is because it points out most of the egregious mistakes they made in their “audit”.

dFDB 2014 also fails to make any reference to sea surface temperature records around the country and station records from offshore islands which also support warming at the expected level — as does the well-documented reduction in ice volume in the Southern Alps.

Beyond any doubt, dFDB 2014 is a model of shoddy scholarship. How on earth did it get accepted for publication by Environmental Modelling and Assessment? An earlier version of dFDB 2014 was submitted to a much more relevant journal,Theoretical and Applied Climatology, but was sent back to the authors for substantial revision at least twice before being rejected. One can surmise that in that case peer review was an uncomfortable process for de Freitas, Dedekind and Brill because the peers being consulted were professional climatologists who understand the nitty-gritty of station adjustments.

At EMA, de Freitas seems to have found a more compliant editor and friendlier reviewers — so friendly that they were happy to allow an obviously and critically flawed paper through to publication. A few simple checks by the editors and reviewers should have raised warning flags.

They should have noted that de Freitas presents himself as lead and corresponding author, yet has no publishing track record in climate records and their homogenisation. He acts as front man for Dedekind and Brill — two men with no relevant academic affiliations or any publication track record — effectively prostituting his position at Auckland University to usher yet another rubbish paper through to publication3. If that wasn’t enough, then competent reviewers should have noted the obvious critical flaws and demanded changes.

As an example of ideologically-driven data torture, A Reanalysis of Long-Term Surface Air Temperature Trends in New Zealand is hardly unusual in the world of climate denial. What makes it stand apart is that such a poorly put together and politically-inspired effort has made its way into the peer-reviewed literature. That is a sign of a gross editorial failure by Environmental Modelling and Assessment, and it should be immediately withdrawn. Meanwhile, the NZ temperature record will continue to show what it always has – substantial and highly significant warming over the last 100 years.

1. The level demonstrated by NIWA’s re-working of the benchmark Seven Station Series, 0.91ºC per century since 1909 [↩]
2. A powerful argument why there should also be one in any homogenised 7SS. [↩]
3. See “Pal Review“, and the Maclean, De Freitas & Carter saga for other examples of de Freitas playing fast and loose with the accepted conventions of scientific peer review. [↩]

NZ cranks finally publish an NZ temperature series 8211 but their paper 8217 s stuffed with errors​

 

[Crick]

Here is a website which supports dFDB2014 against Gareth's comments above. If you've read all of Gareth's comments the one thing that will strike you here is how few of them the dFDB's supporters attempt to refute and even where they make the effort, get nowhere.

Bite the third Climate Conversation Group

 

[IanC]

crick- did you bother to read their rebuttals?

"
Renowden on the reanalysis
OCTOBER 31, 2014 11:31 PM \ 12 COMMENTS \ BY RICHARD TREADGOLD
Gareth Renowden posted comment on the new paper in what seems to be his customary style: unpleasant, vexing, offensive, loathsome and short on fact. Still, along the way he did venture some factoids which I shall rebut while ignoring the vexatious.

First, his article was headlined: NZ cranks finally publish an NZ temperature series – but their paper’s stuffed with errors. To the first phrase, I note that publishing a temperature series is clearly beyond him and, to the second, I say we’ll see about that.

Renowden spends his first 300 words pouring malicious invective on the authors of the paper—and on me, but so what to any of it? In stooping so low, he reveals more of himself than of us.

I won’t answer the vitriol, just the errors; and I won’t do it all at once, but in pieces. He’s too poisonous to stay with for long. He would be eminently more readable were he to return to his journalistic roots, I’m sure, this activist role he’s chosen ill befits him. (He refers to the paper as dFDB 2014—good enough.) The first substantive thing he says is:

dFDB 2014 repeats the old canard that NIWA’s Seven Station Series (7SS) before the 2010 review was based on the adjustments made in Jim Salinger’s 1981 thesis. This was a key claim in the NZ Climate Science Education Trust‘s evidence to the High Court and so transparently at odds with written reports and papers from 1992 onwards that it was easy for NIWA to refute. As one close observer of the case told me:

Judges may not understand maths, but they are pretty good at English, and take a dim view of litigants who wilfully and perversely misrepresent simple English sentences.

Gareth, which sentences did we perversely misrepresent? You forgot to mention them."

I included the ‘close observer’ quotation simply because Renowden doesn’t even begin to attempt to pretend to justify it, so it’s a fantasy. Justice Venning, for all his errors, never made an allegation remotely like that. I don’t know why he calls it a ‘key claim’ in our suit. Our suit sought four things:

A. A declaration that the New Zealand Temperature Record is not a full and accurate record of changes in the average surface temperatures recorded in New Zealand since 1900;
B. An order setting aside NIWA’s 2010 decision to rely upon the Seven-station Series and the Eleven-station Series as the basis for the New Zealand Temperature Record;
C. An order preventing NIWA from using the NZTR (or information originally derived from the NZTR) for the purposes of advice to any governmental authority or to the public, pending its redetermination and independent peer review.
D. An order requiring the defendant to produce a full and accurate climate record of changes in the average surface temperatures recorded in New Zealand since 1900.

In paragraph 12 of our amended statement of claim of 1 July 2011, we stated in our introductory remarks:

The 7SS temperature data is sourced from the National Climate Database, but is subject to a number of adjustments (the Adjustments) taken from a student thesis submitted in 1981 by Dr James Salinger, a former NIWA employee.

This wasn’t even part of our claim, never mind a ‘key claim’. This was a simple reiteration of what NIWA had been telling us and the country for a long time. It’s what we thought was true, simple as that. Renowden is trying to pull the wool over our eyes and I will prove it. On 10 October 2010, I posted The Curious Case of the Missing Thesis. It includes:

When the NZ Climate Science Coalition made an OIA request for the NIWA amendments which shaped the whole NZ temperature record, it was told the amendments came from a doctoral thesis submitted in 1981 by James Salinger.

NIWA’s General Counsel officially advised (on two occasions) that “the methodology is documented” in the thesis, but “the original worksheets and/or computer records used for the calculations in Dr Salinger’s thesis work are the property of Dr Salinger, who no longer works for NIWA.”

When NIWA belatedly published its Schedule of Adjustments on 9 February 2010, it explained that relocations of weather stations required before-and-after comparisons against an independent station. The document notes that “Salinger (1981) provides the results of these three-site inter-comparisons for the 7-station series, up to about 1975.”

There is more corroboration that NIWA persistently and publicly claimed that the thesis was the source of the adjustments (I can’t believe I’m having to go through this just to counter lies). Again, from my October 2010 post:

The Minister responsible for NIWA, the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp, told Parliament on 18 February 2010 that the adjustments to the 7-station series were taken from the Salinger thesis. In a follow-up written answer (PQ1320) he explained more fully that “the adjustments used in the present “seven-station” series are consistent with those in the Salinger thesis. Some changes to the original adjustments have been necessary in the thirty years since the thesis was published.”

In answer to PQ1193, Dr Mapp advised that the source material for NIWA’s Schedule of Adjustments were: “a list of the more than 30 sites used to develop the ‘seven-station’ series; raw unadjusted data for these individual sites from NIWA’s National Climate Database; the time series of adjusted monthly mean temperatures at the seven locations; and Appendix C from Dr Jim Salinger’s 1981 Ph.D. thesis.”

Finally, to refute NIWA’s original claim that the worksheets were with Salinger, “who no longer works for NIWA” we learn the real reason NIWA couldn’t produce them (we had asked for them repeatedly).

In answer to other Parliamentary Questions, Dr Mapp described how the detailed calculations for the Salinger thesis had been recorded on the VUW mainframe, and were lost when the University changed its system in 1983.

Renowden said that ‘our’ claim that the 7SS was based on the thesis was “so transparently at odds with written reports and papers from 1992 onwards that it was easy for NIWA to refute.”

If it was ‘at odds with reports and papers from 1992,’ why did they tell us to look in the thesis? He’s also forgotten to cite NIWA’s ‘refutation’. Where was it, Gareth, and exactly what did they say?

You want to have another go, Gareth? That was rubbish.
​

 

[IanC]

and the second bite-

"
Let me take a second bite at Gareth Renowden’s toxic commentary on the new national temperature reanalysis.

Remember that Renowden says in his vitriolic post:

dFDB 2014 repeats the old canard that NIWA’s Seven Station Series (7SS) before the 2010 review was based on the adjustments made in Jim Salinger’s 1981 thesis. This was … so transparently at odds with written reports and papers from 1992 onwards that it was easy for NIWA to refute.

There are two rebuttals I can make:

1. NIWA told us the methodology was in the thesis.
2. Renowden told us the methodology was in the thesis.

1. NIWA’s first citation to us of Salinger’s thesis after we requested the methodology of adjustments to the national temperature series (7SS) in 2009 was in a letter from their counsel dated 29 January, 2010. NIWA scientists instructed the amiable Tim Mahood, their corporate solicitor, to tell us that we’d find the methodology we wanted in the thesis. It’s plain in his letter:

3. You asked about adjustments made to the seven station data series. Information regarding those adjustments is available from the following publicly available sources [including]:
• Salinger, M.J., 1981. New Zealand Climate: The instrumental record. Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Victoria University of Wellington, January 1981;

Renowden now claims that was never true. But we took it as true at the time, spending many voluntary hours obtaining the thesis and studying it in a vain attempt to understand how the adjustments were made.

2. On 8 February 2010, under the title Treadgold and the NZ CSC: dogging a fled horse, Renowden wrote:

Everything is in the public domain. This is what happens in real science: knowledge exists in the literature. In fact, a lot of it is in Jim Salinger’s PhD thesis, a copy of which has been in the VUW library since 1981. Appendix C covers the details, I’m told. I could order it through my local library, if I really wanted to check the details. But even without that information, the CSC/CCG could take the raw data and the station histories and, using statistical techniques readily available in the literature construct their own long-term temperature series. That would be an independent replication of the method used by Jim Salinger and NIWA over the years.

So five years ago he said that the adjustment methodology was in Salinger’s thesis, and there are other passages in which he says the same thing. Yesterday he said we were making it up. He has either a short or a selective memory but either way he cannot be trusted.

Supplementary questions: Which NIWA scientist lied to their own solicitor? Who recently inspired Renowden to repeat reverse the lie?"​

 

[IanC]

and another one from the same group, defending themselves from some of the stranger accusations about the actual paper-

Analysis of Renowden s analysis of our reanalysis Climate Conversation Group

and of course Treadgold's third in the series that you already linked.

and you somehow think theyhavent defended themselves while making Renowden look like a fool for making false statements?