Tag: NIWA

Deckchairs? We haven’t even got a boat…

Followers of Hot Topic’s new Twitter feed might have noticed this link, posted this morning. It’s a Guardian report of a select committee hearing in the UK Parliament, in which the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change (at Manchester University) took the Labour government to task for the “dangerously optimistic” nature of the targets it has adopted.

Professor Kevin Anderson, the director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the government’s planned carbon cuts – if followed internationally – would have a “50-50 chance” of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2C. This is the threshold that the EU defines as leading to “dangerous” climate change. Anderson also said that the two government departments most directly involved with climate change policy, were like “small dogs yapping at the heels” of more powerful departments such as that run by the business secretary, Lord Mandelson. He said that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), run by Ed Miliband, should be given more power.

What are the British targets that so concern Professor Anderson? In the April budget, Gordon Brown’s government formally adopted the target suggested by the committee it established to advise on the matter — a 34 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 from a 1990 baseline. Anderson wants that tightened to 40% before the Copenhagen meeting in December, in order to get a reasonable deal out of the process.

… without more ambitious action he feared that a significant deal at Copenhagen would not be achieved. “No one I talk to thinks there is going to be anything significant to come out of Copenhagen,” he said. “We are going to come out and recover the deck-chairs in preparation for moving them as the Titanic sinks. We’re not even at the stage of rearranging them,” he added.

There’s a message here for New Zealand’s politicians and scientists, and it’s not a comfortable one for either group.

Continue reading “Deckchairs? We haven’t even got a boat…”

We better talk this over

jim_salinger.jpg Jim Salinger’s sacking by NIWA has gone to mediation. Stuff has an iffy picture but good background to today’s first meeting: six NIWA execs attended, facing up to Salinger and his lawyer. The meeting finished at 3pm this afternoon, and Jim tells me that “the matter has not reached resolution, but talks continue”. He won’t be saying more until the process has concluded. Meanwhile Ken Perrott has an excellent summary of the reaction to Salinger’s sacking from the NZ scientific community at Open Parachute. Should be more coverage in the days to come, and I’ll update this post with links as they come in.

[Bob Dylan]

Science rallies round Salinger

jim_salinger.jpg The scientific community in New Zealand and around the world has been buzzing with the news of Jim Salinger’s dismissal by NIWA, and messages of support have been flooding in. This morning’s NZ Herald quotes former colleagues bemused by NIWA’s action:

Former Niwa scientist Andy Reisinger, who now works at Victoria University, said the decision to sack someone of Dr Salinger’s standing for breaking media protocol was “incomprehensible”. “I’m not sure how that can be justified.”

Others are concerned at the increasing bureaucratisation of the research institutes:

Dr Dave Lowe, who left his job as a principal atmospheric scientist at Niwa about 18 months ago, said one reason for his departure was a lack of freedom “to get on with the job”.

“These big Crown research institutions have become dominated by managers. They tend to forget that the bread and butter for the company … comes from its top scientists and they include people like Jim Salinger.”

In this week’s NBR, Tom Frewen’s Media Watch column provides some interesting background on the revamping of NIWA (not available online):

…the board and chief executive then [2007] embarked on a programme of corporatisation, ratcheting up directors’ allowances and executive salaries to attract top talent. NIWA’s 2007-8 annual report reveals that the number of employees on $100,000 – $110,000 doubled from 24 to 51, while those on $110,000 – $120,000 tripled from ten to 30.

Frewen also quotes the new NIWA chief executive , John Morgan, from that same report:

Something we recognise is that the science sector is not too good at promoting itself. We need to better communicate our science. NIWA’s duty is to be experts and confidently present facts. This can be a challenge” Mr Morgan added ominously, “in a media environment where personal opinions and controversy often gain profile.”

Ominous words for Jim, Frewen concludes.

Meanwhile The Press this morning prints a letter of support for Salinger from expat New Zealand scientist professor Peter Lamb of the University of Ohio:

Dr Salinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to communicate complex scientific information to the public. Few scientists are able to perform this role as well as he does.

Salinger’s also been getting support in Parliament, with Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons asking the hard questions:

John Key said in a speech in 2005 that he didn’t want NZ to keep exporting scientists and importing taxi drivers. This case won’t help him realise his dream.

See also: Nature News, and listen out for RNZ’s Mediawatch tomorrow (May 3).

Sound of silence

jim_salinger.jpg The National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has fired climate scientist Jim Salinger for “unauthorised dealings” with the media. Salinger has been one of New Zealand’s leading climate scientists since the 1970s, and his sacking has shocked many in the scientific community. The Dominion Post reports:

The Crown agency’s long-serving principal scientist was dismissed earlier this week, reportedly for trying to help TVNZ’s weatherman Jim Hickey with some “climate-related inquiries” and for doing an interview with Radio New Zealand’s Checkpoint programme without permission.

He said he received a letter in March from management summoning him to a disciplinary meeting for an interview he did with TVNZ in February commenting on Auckland’s hottest day. The interview had not been approved and was labelled “serious misconduct”. He was also reprimanded for talking to TVNZ about glaciers for which he thought he had permission.

I covered the offending glacier story here: it was an excellent piece of journalism, reflecting well on both TV NZ and the NIWA staff working on the survey. Salinger was also one of the five NZ scientists who complained last year about being on Heartland’s list of people whose work didn’t support global warming: a move which gained Jim a lot of support in the NZ media — hardly surprising when for years he’s been one of the main “go to” men for a quotable opinion on climate and weather issues.

NIWA have not commented on the dismissal, and they are unlikely to in the short term given that an employment court case is in the offing. Whatever the ins and outs of employment law, the Crown-owned research institute is going to have to work hard to avoid the suspicion that — in an echo of attempts by the Bush administration to muzzle Jim Hansen — management fired Salinger because he was refusing to be gagged.

The Green Party has already called on NIWA’s shareholding ministers, Wayne Mapp and Bill English, to ask the CRI’s board to investigate the sacking, but Mapp has refused according to the DomPost:

Dr Mapp said he would not intervene. “The matter is an employment dispute, which must be handled by the chief executive and the board,” he said.

I think Mapp has this wrong. Salinger’s dismissal raises questions of free speech and academic freedom, and if the government is to avoid suspicions of censoring inconvenient truths — at a time when cranks are being given time to spout nonsense before the ETS Review committee — then it needs to act swiftly to reaffirm that New Zealand scientists are not being muzzled. The international reputation of our science could be at stake.

See also: Stuff, Herald on Sunday, and for a critical take on the burgeoning role of bureaucrats in NZ science, an opinion piece by Doug Edmeades in Australasian Science this week (via the Science Media Centre).

[Simon & Garfunkel]

Weighing up water world

The Ministry for the Environment doesn’t leave local government bodies without advice about sea level rise as a consequence of climate change. I’ve been looking at their guide for local government Preparing for Coastal Change, published last month.  It’s backed by a much longer website document Coastal Hazards and Climate Change rewritten last year by NIWA scientists Doug Ramsay and Rob Bell. The guide is thorough. It points out the impacts of climate change on other physical drivers which would exacerbate the problem of rising sea level.  Storms, storm surge and storm tides, tidal range and high tide frequency, special estuary effects, waves, and the supply of sediment to the coast all add to the likely effects of sea level rise.

Continue reading “Weighing up water world”