KEY POINTS:
A group of scientists who have previously warned against climate change "hysteria" say yesterday's figures revealing one of the coldest Decembers in 60 years were evidence there is no global warming in New Zealand.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition is chaired by retired Rear Admiral Jack Welch and made up of 13 scientists including weather forecaster Augie Auer, Professor Bob Carter and Associate Professor Chris de Freitas.
In July it wrote to MPs asking for a Royal Commission to be established to investigate climate change.
The group said it believed the public was being given incomplete, inaccurate and biased information about the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
In response to figures released by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) yesterday, the group released a statement saying the figures were more evidence against global warming.
"This bears out what the coalition said in July 2006 in its open letter to members of the New Zealand Parliament, when we pointed out that Niwa's own data showed little evidence of warming, and no evidence that humans are affecting the temperature," the group said.
Points made in that letter included the fact New Zealand may be no warmer in 2006 than it was in 1800 and according to temperature records there had not been any significant warming in the last 50 years.
"There's some warming and some cooling, but on average no change," the statement said.
Temperature records for Christchurch showed a peak in 1915 greater than 1998, a cooler period from 1925 to 1955, but no overall change since 1905.
The Wellington records available only up to 1989, showed a high peak in 1918 and 1922, a cooler period between 1925 and 1955, but no overall change since 1880.
The group said the contradiction between records and claims by the government there was sufficient warming to justify limiting carbon dioxide emissions was one of the reasons it called for an inquiry into climate change.
- NZPA
