Science Media Centre

Chris Barton writes in New Zealand Herald about Lord Stern, the author of the 2006′s Stern Review, which looked at the costs of mitigating (or not) climate change. Stern, an economist, has said that an investment of 2% of the world’s GDP now into climate-change related action could mean we avoid costs as large as [...]

Pro-vice chancellor of Sciences at the University of Otago, Keith Hunter, has said that the legal action being brought against NIWA over its temperature data records is only creating confusion, and lacks merit. The NZ Climate Science Coalition (CSC) has alleged that NIWA’s data are flawed, and is trying to have the High Court have [...]

An ice break-off from the Tasman Glacier has been far bigger than expected – instead of the 10 million tonnes expected, estimations are that up to 50 million tonnes of ice may have calved off the glacier. The glacier is the largest in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, and this latest calving has shortened it (previously29km) [...]

Sam Fisher, in an opinion piece in the NZ Herald, looks at the legal action being threatened against NIWA by the CSC, making the case that courts aren’t the proper place to test science. He also writes that denying anthropogenic climate change is a fool’s bet. An excerpt: (read in full here) “Courts aren’t the [...]

Reports emerged over the weekend that the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (CSC) will be taking the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) to court over temperature data accuracy. The CSC has lodged papers asking that NIWA’s official temperatures record be invalidated – the records have been used to show that global warming [...]

Bjorn Lomborg writes in an opinion piece in The Press that, while climate change is real, man-made and needs to have action taken over it, it is not the end of the world. A recent study has suggested that a 6m sea level rise (higher than most predictions) would not be as catastrophic as feared [...]

More “undeniable evidence” The State of the Climate 2009 report, released this week by the US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),  confirms not only that the world is warming, but that the last decade has been the warmest on record. In the wake of the Muir Russell review’s recent exoneration of UEA climate scientists, [...]

Paul Holmes talks about his experience filling in for Leighton Smith last week, and why he can’t understand why people think anthropogenic global warming is a conspiracy. He also discusses the ETS, and explains why it’s not necessarily as bad an idea as many people appear to think. An excerpt: (read in full here) “I [...]

225 members of the US National Academy of Sciences have written an open letter to the UK’s Guardian newspaper defending climate science and climate research. The letter admits that mistakes have been made in the course of scientific progress, but points out that much of the science is certain, including the fact of anthropogenic climate [...]

Kiran Chug writes in the Dominion Post about a new report in Nature which says that loopholes in the Copenhagen Accord and a lack of global determination are seeing hopes of keeping global temperature rise to 2 deg c by 2100 fading fast. They caution that action is needed urgently if temperatures are not to [...]