More thought-provoking thoughts from Richard on the duties and responsibilities of statutory bodies like NIWA. (NIWA is actually an incorporated body that is owned by the Crown, where-ever that plays into things.) Anyway, everyone seems to agree that their handling of the temperature records in New Zealand is biased and deficient. The issue is, does scientific incompetence violate their charter? With all this evidence, the Coalition case is looking very good on the plain facts. The threat Read more [...] 4 com

Quote from the defense: He must have been responding to our charge that NIWA did not perform its statutory duty. He said: “They’re not duties, they’re not called duties, they’re called operating principles.” This seemed to come from the current legislation, or recent decisions. Where in the operating principles is the principle that government climate scientists be "in bed" with green groups like the WWF putting pressure on government to enact green policies. The disclosures reveal Read more [...] none

Quote of the day from New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research: The matters [at issue] arise between the plaintiff’s (the Coalition’s) Statement of Claim (SOC) and the Defendant’s (NIWA’s) Statement of Defence (SOD). NIWA counter-claimed they had no obligation to pursue excellence or to use best-quality scientific practices and also that the national temperature record was not only not official, but they themselves had no obligation to produce or maintain it. Read more [...] 2 com

A new WSJ article signed by 16 scientists: A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts Read more [...] none

Its reported that a new record has been set by a Japanese anesthesiologist for most retractions by a single author. An investigation of 212 of Yoshitaka Fujii’s 249 published papers found that he had invented patients, forged evidence that medication was administered, and signed on as co-authors other scientists who had no idea they were affiliated with his research. There are a couple of simple solutions to this. First, archive all the data and code and expect reviewers to go through it. Read more [...] none