A balanced summary on climate change available

The New Zealand
Climate Science Coalition

Media advisory: 3 February 2006

A balanced summary on climate change available Feb 6

An independent summary of the latest United Nations report on climate change will be released Monday, February 5 in London, England by The Fraser Institute, a well-known Canadian think tank.

The Independent Summary for Policymakers (ISPM) is a detailed and balanced overview of the 2007 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that was released February 2 in Paris, and widely reported in New Zealand news media Saturday 3 February.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition has been authorised to release the ISPM, embargoed for publication until 11 p.m. Monday February 5, timed to coincide with its release in London.

To allow time for adequate study, we will email to media at 10 a.m. Monday, the ISPM, a covering media release from the Fraser Institute, plus a further covering release from the Coalition which will contain the names of New Zealand scientists who may be contacted for interviews or comments.

During past releases of the IPCC report, public attention focused on the accompanying IPCC Summary for Policymakers. This is a brief document produced through negotiation by government bureaucrats. It is neither written by nor reviewed by the scientific community and has been criticized for its promotional tone and failure to adequately communicate the complexity and uncertainty of the underlying science around climate change.

By contrast, the Fraser Institute's Independent Summary for Policymakers (ISPM) is prepared by qualified experts in fields related to climate science and has been reviewed by more than 50 scientists around the world. It clearly lays out the real state of current climate change knowledge as expressed in the IPCC report and provides specific citations to the chapters and sections of the IPCC report so readers can easily find what scientists have to say on the wide range of issues.

An example relevant to New Zealand is the reference to temperature trends in the Southern Hemisphere being small compared to those in the Northern Hemisphere. We will present in the Coalition’s release on Monday some interesting temperature data relating specifically to New Zealand. Media here may also note that the availability of information from the ISPM on Tuesday, comes the day before presentation of the IPCC version in Wellington on Wednesday, February 7, and may provide the basis of some interesting questions for media representatives attending the Wellington event.

Co-ordinator of the ISPM, Dr Ross McKitrick, of the University of Guelph, Vancouncer, Canada, was one half of the two man team (with Steven McIntyre) who initiated the questioning of the Mann “hockey stick” which culminated in it being totally discrediting on the basis of inaccurately interpreted statistics. The writing team comprised nine eminent scientists from Canada, United States, Australia, Sweden and Estonia..

We do this in the hope of restoring some balance to a topic that has been over-hyped to the point of what some of us believe to have been irresponsible scaremongering.

Ends

© Scoop Media