NIWA has released details of a newly calculated long term temperature series for New Zealand, based on 11 stations that have had no major site moves or significant adjustments made to their raw data. Running from 1930 to present, the series shows that significant warming has taken place, confirming that the national temperature series recently attacked in a shonky analysis published by the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition and Climate Conversation Group is not only pointing in the right direction, but actually warming a little more slowly than the new series.

Here’s a graph of the new compilation:

The stations used in the analysis are Raoul Island, Tauranga Airport, Ruakura (Hamilton), Gisborne Airport, Chateau Tongariro, Palmerston North DSIR/AgResearch, Westport Airport, Molesworth, Queenstown, Invercargill Airport and Campbell Island. All were identified by Jim Salinger as offering consistent long term records requiring little or no adjustment for site moves or other influences. Salinger’s calculations were confirmed separately by NIWA’s chief climate scientist Jim Renwick, and the results were identical. Over the period, warming of 1ºC is seen.

Bottom line? Unless there’s a significant “urban heat island” at places like Molesworth Station, warming over New Zealand and in the wider NZ region is undeniable.

Not that that will stop the likes of the NZ C”S”C or Treadgold. Amusingly, Treadgold’s latest blog piece is not the apology he so obviously owes NIWA and Salinger, but a diatribe about an Associated Press article covering the Antarctic report I blogged about at the weekend. RT’s source seems to have been the Royal Society of NZ’s web news page, and that has annoyed him greatly:

That the story is promulgated by our once-proud, independent, trustworthy and in particular scientific Royal Society is now a source of shame to all New Zealanders. There is no doubt that our Royal Society has abandoned, in respect of the global warming controversy, any pretence to objective investigation. It has instead adopted such a strong intention to champion the hypothesis of man-made control of the climate that it blinds itself to the necessity of finding evidence.

He’s only getting started though:

Our Royal Society even helps champion, through web site connections, the blatantly alarmist web site Hot Topic, which routinely insults scientific sceptics asking reasonable questions with terms like crank, denialist and worse. We have come to expect that from the likes of Mr Renowden and his bigots, but the support for it from the scientists of the Royal Society is reprehensible. It is scientific misbehaviour.

Unfortunately Richard T must have missed the disclaimer on the Royal Society’s web site news page:

Science in the News is a daily service provided by the Royal Society of New Zealand. Material is not endorsed by the Royal Society of New Zealand and the content includes unedited text from the New Zealand Press Association and news releases supplied.

In the small print, the RS adds:

Content consists of unedited articles supplied by the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA) and news releases from organisations that may have a vested interest. The intention is to inform the subscriber about what is being said in the news, not to provide informed comment on the science behind it. Material in this bulletin must not be regarded as necessarily authoritative or endorsed by RSNZ (my emphasis). Members of the news media should only use material on this bulletin as leads for further investigation and not as copy for publication.

Not content with failing to check his facts on NZ’s temperature series, now he’s happy to accuse the nation’s premier scientific body of “misbehaviour” without bothering to read the small print (or even the bigger stuff at the top of the page). On behalf of all the bigots at Hot Topic (and because the Royal Society would be far too polite to say so in so many words): Treadgold, you give cranks, denialists and “sceptics” a bad nam