Scientists in New Zealand are refusing to release information about a new temperature index they have published. They have argued that technical details of how the new index was constructed and papers relating to the peer review that is alleged to have been performed are all exempt from the country's freedom of information legislation.
Is there no end to the corruption?
Australian FOI law keeps secret the construction of New Zealand seven station temperature series
May 7th, 2011 by Warwick HughesThe New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) has revised a seven station temperature series to arrive at a national temperature trend from 1910.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) has been attempting to obtain from NIWA details of the adjustments and construction of the seven station series from the many component data. To date NZCSC has not succeeded and some history of their efforts is recorded here.
In December the revised NIWA seven station trend was published after “peer review” by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM)
The NZ blog Climate Conversation Group has an article on 28th April “NIWA — show us the peer review!” – where they discuss the unsatisfactory state of affairs due to NIWA secretly adjusting raw station data to make their high warming seven station trend a trend that is unverifiable until NIWA releases details.
In February 2011 I lodged an FOI request with the BoM to release to me all documents and data connected with their peer review of the seven station series for NIWA. After a couple of extensions of time – on 6th May they emailed me the following pdf files which in a nutshell – tell me that all relevant documents and data are “fully exempt” from the FOI Act – and are thus still secret.
First the BoM reasons for refusal.
Some relevant sections of the FOI Act
Schedule of Documents – a very interesting list of 159 exempt documents comprising over 1600 pages plus 642 files – there may be some duplication.
This schedule shows the “peer review” process started at the end of August 2010 and the list ends on Christmas Eve – pretty much four months.
I am hoping that people smarter than I might see ways to carry on the battle to get these papers and files released. What can be so secret about the things publicly funded scientists and bureaucrats do to adjust common garden old weather records into a form that suits them. We are not talking about nuclear weapons secrets here.
There were two other pdf files;
References to papers on homogenising climate data;
The BoM covering letter to NIWA 14 Dec 2010 already public.
