Letter from Ken Ring to some of the NZ media

Dear Phillipa
NIWA has recently put out a damage-control article "Niwa publishes climate data to answer critics"
Rather than have silence over the accusations that they cooked the books to show global warming in order to continue to receive research funding, along with the East Anglia Climate Centre, in which Dr Jim Salinger once worked, they have attempted to explain away their alterations to data. But their new NIWA figure of 1C rise in 60 years compares badly with their previously published figure of 0.7C rise over 100 years and only 1C rise over the past 8,000 years on NIWA's own website.

http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/clivar/pastclimate
scroll down to Years Before Present
and the following comment of "temperature rise of around 0.7°C that occurred over the 20th Century". This means at least one if not all three of their reports is incorrect and misleading. Which is it? They can't all be correct. The temperature can’t rise by only 0.7C over 100 years, but also more (1C) over the shorter time span of only 60 years, whilst at exactly the same time rising only 1C over 8,000 years. For that would indicate that prior to 1900 the global temperature was absolutely static for 7,900 years, which is clearly nonsense.
 
In case you are unaware, real science as taught in international universities works by way of first a hunch expressed as a Hypothesis
"The average temperature of New Zealand has increased since 1850" balanced, to distinguish it from pseudoscience, by a so-called Null hypothesis
"The average temperature of New Zealand hasn't changed since 1850"
Science requires rejection of the null hypothesis in order to proceed with a theory. In this case, to be believed in the world that is science, a world that is by definition proudly governed heavily by precision, NIWA is required to come up with evidence that their data and methodology gives enough precision to show that the average temperature across NZ (whatever that is) would or would not have changed, before any figures are looked at. The question then arises how anyone could know what the average temperature leading up to 1850 would have been, for us to be able to determine whether or not it changed after 1850. Failure to be able to do this puts NIWA beyond sound scientific practice. To continue to advance a theory whilst side-stepping calls from skeptics to be professional empiricists places NIWA in the camp of politics rather than in the camp of science. There seems to be a reluctance to call NIWA to account over this very basic and fundamental point of the debate. For without addressing it there is absolutely no science happening, no matter how many computer models are employed, and no matter how many scientists express their consensus that this science is somehow settled. What science? How settled?
 
I wonder if TV3 Campbell Live has the courage to debate this, or if NIWA is simply too big and threatening for such a debate to take place.
These are very simple questions to relate to. Have NIWA the equipment to determine the true temperature variations, and have they the pre-1850 data gathered with flawless reliability. Is there one temperature rise figure or several, depending on what small fires of public dissension currently need to be quelled.
NZ's economy hangs in the balance over the ETS. There is no bigger drain about to occur on the livelihoods of every NZer. It is bigger than any other story.
If we are going to Copenhagen pledging to hand over billions of dollars to the UN banking cartels based on poorly derived data that fails the most basic test of being truly scientific, therefore a scam and deception, surely the NZ public have a right to be made aware of it.
 
Sincerely
Ken Ring
Longrange forecaster