Niwa sacks top scientist

Dr Salinger is clearly a good bloke and on its face his sacking does sound like petty minded bureaucracry gone mad
We shall miss his cheery face on TV
However sharing a Nobel Prize with Al Gore is hardly a AAA reward rating and let's hope the good doctor spends some of his pending free time reviewing his outlook on global warming and the arrogance of humans trying to change the climate.
Anthropogenic global warming is a croc and the 'science' is overwhelmingly political.
For over 500 million years the planet's climate has changed naturally and the original CO2 levels were many times higher even during the little ice age..
Sunspots and clouda are major climate determinants and to suggest we can change either of these is like trying to stop the tides.
So forget the dogma Doctor and review the current real sciuence.

I disagree with the Doctor's views , but to sack a scientist for speaking on the field he is employed in is a dangerous precedent.

If he believes what he says to be true then what is wrong.

Perhaps his views are not the party line of the present Government.

Salinger has repeated nonsense about global warming for far too long and has so wildly exaggerated even NIWA's flawed models that he has made NIWA the laughing stock of serious scientists. Tnak goodnes someone had the sense to sack him.

what extraordinary comments on this matter, involving unfortunate conflations of changes in climate with the risks to humans and other species from changes in climate; and conflations in the extraordinary difficulties in modelling the long term climate from the visible changes already occuring in the climate...

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1124-climate.html

I think Graeme will find the science isn't as clear as he thinks it is.

PS I suspect we haven't seen the last of Dr Salinger on TV.

For those of you who don't know about the little ice age Graeme refers to...here it is..

.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

The research I have read would suggest that at no time since man has been walking planet earth has the atmospheric carbon dioxide level ( 387 ppm) been as high as it is today.

This greatly concerns me. It suggests to me that man- made greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for the exponential rate of global warming we are seeing today.

If you can convince me that this isn't the case then please do.

Dear Kenneth,

Certainly, a scientist should be held accountable for bad science. This has often happened in the history of science, in which peer review of scientific research is ruthlessly targeted at proof coupled with experimental evidence. Scientists are not 'fired' for doing 'bad science'. Their reputations and authority are derived from hard work and years of endeavour. I can speak from personal experience as an ex-Crop & Food Research Science Technician, where it took me 3 years to gather enough evidence to published as a co-author internationally, which was a wonderful and heart-warming experience for me, and to present a poster at a conference at Palmerston North. Dr. Salinger has done much more than I, and I respect his opinions because I know that they are based on a career of hard work and experimental research. However, I personally find your comment abrasive and ill informed - who are the 'they' ? Are these people to be the arbiters of truth simply because they can pay a salary ? I left Crop & Food when I ran out of funding. Dr. Salinger has experienced a professional rebuff and extremely poor treatment on the part of this 'they' - more on that later. But I am 100% confident the good doctor will be offered posts from several Universities in due course, all happy to have him as a lecturer within the science of climate, in which he is so consummately a master.

With regard to the hidden agenda, comments by readers Graeme Edwards, Brian are well on target - Global warming is indeed a threatening phenomenon, and will almost certainly have dire climatic and environmental effects. Consensus among a very large majority of scientists (me included !) is that to lay the blame squarely at the feet of industrialised society is very far fetched indeed. There is a mounting data set indicating that while global warming is indeed a real phenomenon, but there is an equally mounting data set indicating that mankind's contribution - though real - is in fact completely insignificant overall.

Planetary environment fluctuates, but is mainly sun-driven. The Earth has seen epochs of glaciation, and epochs of sultry warmth (e.g. the age of Dinosaurs, though they had glacial periods too!). We, Mankind, live in a temperate era - the Earth is not so warm that we do not have ice, and not so cold that we have nothing but.

Perhaps the best explanation of the 'conflagration of debate' comes from something more primal in human beings - the desire to maintain the status quo, and resist change. Climate change is seen as being bad - because it implies that the supposedly static background of the world is fluid, and therefore power structures will fall because of this. This fear is true and well founded, and therefore the powerful do all in their admittedly limited scope to prevent their ousting by natural forces. Political will is therefore to prevent climate change by thwarting the natural human drives of industrial development in order to create wealth - it may even be argued that this political machination will be considered a contributing factor in the world's current economic meltdown - the rising price of doing business.

Thus we come to the crux - it is wrong to attempt to quash the truth. If you wish to name the absolute, do so correctly : "TEMPORARY"

The political force that sacked Dr. Salinger was one of fear coupled with greed and spite. The minister would do well to root out the perpetrator, and fire that person in their turn.