Tue, 08 Dec 2009 7:22p.m.
A senior geologist drilling off the New Zealand coast has called for the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be "killed".
"The IPCC's incompetence is manifest in its failure to detect the corrupt science that has for so long permeated the activities of the international jetsetters of the climate science power group," Professor Bob Carter, of James Cook University in Townsville, told the ABC.
"The organisation should be closed down (without tears), and the Copenhagen COP-15 meeting would be a good place to start this process happening," said the Otago University graduate, who earlier this year teamed with a well-known climate sceptic, Chris de Freitas, of Auckland University, to argue that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate and that little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.
Today, Prof Carter argued that the study of climate change had been "captured" by the small group of well-connected, well-networked and well-funded atmospheric scientists and computer modellers who advise the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He claimed that the course of climate history and change on Earth should be the domain of geologists, "not meteorologists and computer jockeys".
The palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist is now drilling holes in the seabed off the Canterbury coast in the hopes that core samples will provide new clues to the link between climate and sea-level changes over the past 35 million years. He is on the drillship Joides Resolution, which is carrying a multinational expedition to study sediments.
The expedition involves 33 scientists, including three New Zealanders - Greg Browne and Martin Crundwell, of GNS Science, and Otago University's Kirsty Tinto.
Prof Carter was particularly critical of aspects of the so-called 'Climategate' controversy over a series of emails between climate scientists leaked on the eve of the Copenhagen climate conference.
Climate change sceptics have argued that the 1000 emails and 3000 documents have been posted on websites showed some of the world's top experts decided to exclude or manipulate research that didn`t help prove global warming exists. Other researchers - including the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (Niwa) in Wellington - have pointed out that weather records have had to be adjusted to compensate for changes around weather stations.
One of the United States' most senior climate scientists, New Zealander Kevin Trenberth, of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, said the hackers distributed only those documents that could help attempts by sceptics to undermine the scientific consensus on manmade climate change.
"A lot of charges have been made that I think are quite unjustified, cherry-picking information and... misrepresenting what it's actually saying," he said.
But Prof Carter said the "global warming scare" was a scam and the hacked files had demonstrated "scientific malfeasance" of an influential and internationally well networked segment of the climate research community.
He was critical of political interference in government-funded research groups, and the power and financial clout of the Green movement.
The Canterbury expedition is investigating the relative importance of global climate change in comparison to local tectonic forces, on changing sea level and the laying down of sediment on the seafloor.
Huge volumes of sediment stripped off the Southern Alps mean the ship should be able to recover core samples with layers of organic matter that make it easier to track fluctuations in sea level, which has varied by as much as 100m.
NZPA
