7 p.m. 1 April 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Challenge to Dr Cullen for evidence of consensus on climate change

A challenge has been issued to Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Michael Cullen to produce the evidence for his statement on TV One’s evening news tonight that there is “a vast overwhelming consensus of international scientists” behind claims of human-induced global warming. The challenge comes from RearAdmiral Jack Welch, chairman the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.

“Dr Cullen’s claim is typical of the misrepresentation of climate science that it being fostered by those who want to control our lives in pursuit of their green agenda. This consensus claim springs from reports of the United National Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are alleged to represent the views of the majority of climate scientists in the world.

“But for the first time, the 2007 assessment review by IPCC has been required to reveal the numbers of signatories, which turn out to have been less than a few dozen, all in the employ of governments, as many of them non-scientific bureaucrats as scientists. Even then, their findings have been grossly misrepresented.

“Dr Cullen should stop playing politics with this issue and urge his government colleagues to agree to calls for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the very wide range of views on whether or not climate change is no more than the product of natural cyclical factors. He should remember that, at the outset of his government there was similar hysteria about the effects of genetic modification, an issue that was put into realistic perspective by the Royal Commission established by his government.

“Such a Royal Commission will be able to take into account the views of thousands of independent scientists throughout the world who say that the findings set out in the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers are not supported by sound science based on hard evidence and the latest climatic data.

“There has been no increase in temperatures in the world since the El Nino spike of 1998, and people are entitled to ask how many years of such temperature stability will have to elapse before the carbon bubble bursts in the face of accumulating evidence.

“As a first step, I issue a cordial invitation to Dr Cullen and any of his Ministerial colleagues to be my guests in Auckland on Friday evening, 18 April to hear an eminent international climate scientist, Professor Bob Carter, explain how and why the IPCC have over-exaggerated problems for our planet, and, in particular, why carbon dioxide does not justify being termed a pollutant or the basis for charges on the community for its emission,” RearAdmiral Welch concluded.

ENDS

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