Monday 5 June 2006

Cold May, cool science

A few bloggers have already noted that this last May was NZ's coldest in ten years, and wondered where global warming is when you need it. In a Saturday press release, the Climate Science Coalition agrees and expands on the point:

NEW ZEALAND CLIMATE SCIENCE COALITION

3 June 2006. PRESS RELEASE

Claims by Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons today about "greenhouse" gases and "global warming" are contradicted by the national climate summary just released by the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) showing that last month was the coldest May since 1996.

Dr Vincent Gray, a member of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition's scientific panel and a member of the expert reviewers panel of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says the NIWA report demonstrates that there is no relationship between warming and level of gases in the atmosphere.

"This coldest May in 10 years comes at a time when recordings made at Baring Head of carbon dioxide over New Zealand show that concentrations of the gas have increased by almost 15 per cent since 1970, in spite of the fact that average temperatures in this country have been in decline since 1998," said Dr Gray. "This makes a mockery of claims by global warming propagandists that warming is driven by carbon dioxide. In turn, this brings into question the whole rationale for the Kyoto Protocol, carbon taxes and other unjustified measures that have been in the public and political arena in recent months.

"Global warming enthusiasts claim that there is a steady increase in global temperature caused by the steady increase in what they erroneously label as "greenhouse" gases. But there was no warming between 1942 and 1978 despite a steady increase of greenhouse gases over that period. Similarly, there was no increase in the average temperature of New Zealand between 1955 and 2006. The greenhouse gases seem only to work over some periods and they stop working at others. This is impossible. The odd warming period (for example 1910 to 1942, 1978 to 1998) must have some other cause," he said.

Dr Gray has just published a paper responding to global warming claims by the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "I believe my paper to be the only international response so far to the NOAA paper, which in most respects is the last remaining serious claim of the greenhouse supporters and the IPCC for a relationship between greenhouse gas increases and 'global warming'. The warming takes place only on the earth, but not in the lower troposphere where it is supposed to happen, " said Dr Gray, whose paper is available on the coalition's website: www.climatescience.org.nz

Dr Gray has commented also on methane: "The rate of increase of methane in the atmosphere has been falling since records began in 1984, It has now reached a constant value for five years, and can be expected to fall. Of course, all the models predict that it will rise."

Contact: Climate Science Coalition

ENDS

TAGS: Global_Warming, New_Zealand

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