Tag: Doug Edmeades

When asses go to court

Perhaps the least interesting aspect of the High Court hearing which started today — the NZ Climate “Science Education” Trust (NZCSET) versus the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), before Justice Venning — is the ostensible casus belli, the construction of a long term temperature record for New Zealand. The law does not concern itself with trifles, and the minutiae of the techniques used to homogenise temperature records to account for site moves and instrument changes is nothing if not trifling with respect to the climatological big picture. New Zealand and the world have warmed significantly over the last 150 years, of that there is no doubt, and no amount of legal action will make warming go away and New Zealand’s glaciers recover the mass they’ve lost.

Nor has the the long term New Zealand temperature record been important to the formulation of government policy on climate change. That has relied on international diplomacy, the workings of the United Nations and the international consensus on the science of climate, all leavened with a healthy dose of local politics. The NZ temperature record played no part in either the design of the emissions trading scheme or its watering down.

So if this case is not about temperature records and their relevance to government policy, what is it about? We need to consider a few key questions.

  • Who is bringing the action?
  • Who is paying the lawyers?
  • Who wins, and who loses?

The answers are bad news for the taxpayers and citizens of New Zealand — and perhaps the world.

Continue reading “When asses go to court”

NIWA v cranks 3: the economics of truthiness

Bryan Leyland’s dissembling about the funding of the NZ Climate Science Coalition under direct questioning from Sean Plunkett on Monday morning’s Morning Report on RNZ National — he repeatedly asserted his ignorance of financial matters, directing Plunkett to Terry Dunleavy — puts him in an awkward position. Leyland is a trustee of the NZ Climate Science Education Trust (along with Dunleavy and Doug Edmeades), the body hastily established to request a judicial review of NIWA’s national temperature record. Before lodging papers with the High Court, the trustees should have held a properly minuted meeting and discussed how they intended to fund the action — both in terms of meeting any legal fees, or dealing with any costs awarded against them. This would be standard good governance practice in a charitable trust, and if such a meeting were held then Leyland must be fully aware of the NZCSET’s current funding, and how it expects to fund an expensive and risky legal action. If no meeting were held, or Leyland has no idea how the trust expects to fund the action, then he is failing in his duty as trustee. Perhaps this is an issue that Plunkett and Morning Report might like to follow up…

Listen to the Morning Report segment here:

Climate sceptics take NIWA to court over data

Some interesting dates: I understand that the Statement of Claim lodged with the High Court is dated July 5th, and refers to the NZ Climate Science Education Trust. However the NZCSET’s Deed of Trust (go here, and enter 2539286 in the organisation number search box) is dated July 30th so did not exist when the Statement of Claim was drawn up. The Statement of Claim also states that the NZCSET is a registered trust, but registration was not granted until August 10th. Minor administrative matters, I am sure, but hardly indicative of the creation of trust intended, as its deed says, to:

…promote a heightened awareness and understanding of, and knowledge about, the climate, environment and climate and environmental issues among scholars and researchers, members of the professions and members of the public… (Sec 4.1.1)

One might suggest that the cart was put a very long way in front of the horse. More reaction to this strange affair below the fold…

Continue reading “NIWA v cranks 3: the economics of truthiness”

Doug digs denial

Waikato farmers who deny human-caused climate change will be cheered by the support lent by a real live scientist in an interview prominently reported in the latest issue of the Waikato Farmer, a monthly feature supplement of the Waikato Times.  Admittedly not a climate scientist – a soil scientist actually – but one who has done much reading on the subject, including Nigel Lawson’s A Cool Look At Global Warming.  Thus fortified he is able to substantiate the opinions of the 99 percent of the farmers consulting him who he says think global warming is a hoax and the Emissions Trading Scheme unnecessary.

Doug Edmeades is his name.  He’s not listed as a member of the NZ Climate Science Coalition, but his “coming out” as a sceptic was posted on their website. To be fair, in his statement on his joining the ranks of the sceptics he acknowledges that he does not read the scientific literature on climate change and cannot be considered as an authority on the subject. Indeed he says he’s a layperson who must rely on the views of others who specialise. However those whose views he then goes on to cite don’t include any climate scientists. Willem de Lange and Bob Carter are the two scientists he mentions, and they are buttressed by Bjorn Lomborg, Ross McKitrick and, yes, Christopher Monckton who demonstrated there is no scientific consensus.

Back to the Waikato Farmer interview. It’s the usual farrago. Climategate was a scandal which confirmed most farmers’ suspicions that global warming is a politically driven theory. Phil Jones has admitted there was no global warming in the past 15 years, calling into question the reliability of climate models and temperature records. Water vapour is the biggest greenhouse gas; why aren’t we taxing it? Doubled carbon dioxide will increase food production by about 30 percent. Carbon dioxide doesn’t determine global temperatures.  Humans and the natural world are good at adapting to survive.  Even if the alarmists are right and the average temperature increases by 2-4 degrees the likelihood is that we could be better off. And so on.

Edmeades’ expressed views are mostly wrong or reckless or silly. There’s nothing in what he says to deserve time spent countering it here. But it’s depressing that views of this nature should be regarded as worth highlighting in a farming publication and are evidently nourishing the opinion of many farmers that global warming is a matter of no great moment or still under dispute.  The edition of the Waikato Farmer in which the interview appears is much concerned with the cost of the Emissions Trading Scheme to farmers.  One can understand that this should be a matter of concern and debate.  But to couple it with denial of the seriousness of climate change is a different matter.  One of the farmers reported didn’t go as far as that, but said, “The science is not robust enough. Some of the research has been a bit shaky.”  This is perception, not knowledge. It’s high time the NZ farming community discovered that the essentials of the science are established and did its thinking about the ETS or other mitigation schemes without dallying with the idea that perhaps there’s nothing in climate change to be worried about. Then people like Edmeades can be valued for their soil science and ignored for their rejection of climate science.