Warmist-in-chief Salinger a 'stranger to truth' [updated]

A court heard today that sacked alleged climate scientist Jim Salinger is “a stranger to the truth.”  I agree.

Salinger is still seething over being peremptorily dismissed by his former employer, the Government's National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA), and is appearing before the Employment Relations Authority in an attempt to pull down truckloads of cash for the pain, hurt feelings and the bruise on his sorry arse caused by the long-overdue appearance of his employer’s boot there.

But Salinger was known less as the head of NIWA, which was what he was paid to be, and more as "New Zealand's most prominent climate alarmist," and “the voice of global warming in New Zealand.” But that wasn’t a role his employer wanted to pay for, and as NIWA’s lawyer indicated in court yesterday, it required him to put his warmism before the truth.

Here’s just some of the “wisdom” dispensed on behalf of his former employer, that back up the lawyers’ claim:

• At a convention of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in New Zealand, Jim Salinger appeared to scare the crowd with news that climate change is going to cause a decline in the production of malting barley in New Zealand and particularly Australia. "It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up," speculated the irresponsible scaremonger, without benefit of any science.
• "Regional warming" is killing NZ’s glaciers, said Salinger in November 2007. Yet figures from Salinger's own former organisation, NIWA, showed (and still show) there has been no “regional warming” at all in New Zealand (so if those glaciers are receding, it could only be because they’re psychic). I’ll say it again, no regional warming at all.  Just take a look:
  • New Zealand's average temperate the month before Salinger’s colourful claim was 0.5 degrees Celsius below average,
  • New Zealand experienced no warming at all over the last century,
  • and the “regional” warming over the Southern Hemisphere for the last 30 years showed "a warming trend of around 0.00 °C per decade.“
• In April 2007, Salinger claimed that heavy rain and flooding in Northland was the direct result of global warming since, he claimed, “as climate warming occurs, the atmosphere can hold more moisture and therefore more rain falls.”  But NIWA’s own figures demonstrate that there have been no local warming at all; and as meteorologist Augie Auer said at the time, "As an explanation of the cause and consequences of last week's Northland rains, Dr Salinger's statement ... is as unscientific as it is incorrect. " 
  "So simplistic, it's silly" was how the late Dr Auer described the statement, and “the strongest argument [yet] for the disbanding of NIWA and the return of all weather matters to MetService. “
• In February this year, Salinger was quoted in the Herald on Auckland’s so called “hottest day ever” -- “the highest since official NIWA records began in September 1868” the Herald quoted Salinger as saying – a remarkable judgement based on one outlying reading in Whenuapai, a station which only existed from 1945 to 1993 and from 2005 to now. (See discussion here at NZ’S Weather Forum.) This interview was among those cited as a reason for Salinger’s sacking.

Frankly, Salinger looks less like a scientist than a serial liar. He has as much credibility as Al Gore’s movie, which a British High Court Judge found contained nine serious lies and exaggerations. 

There sure is a pattern here with all these warmists, don’t you think?

UPDATE: The hearing continues.  NewstalkZB reports Salinger faced questions today “about disregarding a clear request by management to not use traditional local knowledge when compiling a climate report in the Cook Islands [traditional local knowledge!?]. Dr Salinger also admitted to doctoring an email which was sent to management regarding the issue.”

Doctoring an email would certainly put him onside with the likes of fellow warmist Phil Jones – who’s managed to mislay the entire modern temperature record.  The dog apparently ate his homework.