Dear Ministry for the Environment,

I have 2 related requests which I have combined for convenience in the one OIA.

1) Could you please provide any records mentioning the following authors David Coe, Walter Fabinski, or Gerhard Wiegleb … or their paper “ The Impact of CO2, H2O and Other “Greenhouse Gases” on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures“, that can be found at this link: http://www.ijaos.org/article/298/10.1164...

2) I note the following conclusion in the abstract:
“Climate sensitivity to future increases in CO2 concentration is calculated to be 0.50K, including the positive feedback effects of H2O, while climate sensitivities to CH4 and N2O are almost undetectable at 0.06K and 0.08K respectively. This result strongly suggests that increasing levels of CO2 will not lead to significant changes in earth temperature and that increases in CH4 and N2O will have very little discernable impact.” … where K = the temperature difference in Kelvin.

a) What is the MfE’s view of this paper’s method and conclusion.
b) Has this paper affected the MfE’s policy?
c) Has an internal or external expert review been sought about this paper (paid or unpaid) by any person within the MfE ?

Yours sincerely,
Chris Johnston

Dear Ministry for the Environment,

Could you please let me know why no correspondence has been received for this OIA.

By law a response was expect by 15 November 2021.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Johnston

Dear OIA,

What follows is the original request:
——-
From: Chris Johnston

October 17, 2021

Dear Ministry for the Environment,

I have 2 related requests which I have combined for convenience in the one OIA.
1) Could you please provide any records mentioning the following authors David Coe, Walter Fabinski, or Gerhard Wiegleb … or their paper “ The Impact of CO2, H2O and Other “Greenhouse Gases” on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures“, that can be found at this link: http://www.ijaos.org/article/298/10.1164...

2) I note the following conclusion in the abstract:
“Climate sensitivity to future increases in CO2 concentration is calculated to be 0.50K, including the positive feedback effects of H2O, while climate sensitivities to CH4 and N2O are almost undetectable at 0.06K and 0.08K respectively. This result strongly suggests that increasing levels of CO2 will not lead to significant changes in earth temperature and that increases in CH4 and N2O will have very little discernable impact.” … where K = the temperature difference in Kelvin.
a) What is the MfE’s view of this paper’s method and conclusion.
b) Has this paper affected the MfE’s policy?
c) Has an internal or external expert review been sought about this paper (paid or unpaid) by any person within the MfE ?

Yours sincerely,
Chris Johnston

——-
A complaint has been made to the Ombudsman about the non-response. Please expedite this.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston

Dear OIA,

I am seeking confirmation that this OIA is received and underway.

Also, please let me know what date the MfE is aiming for?

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston

Dear OIA,

I am concerned that I have not had an acknowledgement of this OIA, nor a date nominated for complying.

Please respond.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston

Dear OIA,

This is what I receive from you in your reply.
====

We had emailed you back asking you to send the request through to [MFE request email]
We don't seem to have received this. All we can see is the subject. Can you confirm your request is only what is in the subject line?
====

You can see that the email address you recommend literally comes through as “[MFE request email]”.

I am using the fyi.org.nz site which works for every other agency in NZ.

The thing that puzzles me is:
1) How you can receive some emails with content but not others?
2) How it is legal to treat emails to one of the MfEs as OIAs and not emails received at another email address. You need to comply wherever the request enters your organisation.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston

Dear OIA,

To answer your question my OIA is more than the subject line.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston

Dear Ministry for the Environment,

Thanks for the reply, the apology, and undertaking to resolve your technical issue.

Now that the paper has been downloaded by the MfE , and that it is illegal under the Public Records Act to delete a record, please answer 2a.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Johnston

Dear Ministry for the Environment,

2a

Further to my email of 19 Jan 2022 - I have received a prompt response from the Ombudsman dates 21 Jan 2022. Besides communicating that they have been liaising with the MfE to assist this OIA come to a reasonable conclusions, the letter outlines that an OIA request is for existing information - and not to create new information.

This email confirms that 2a is not a request under the OIA and is in fact a general enquiry about the reaction the MfE has to this new information that it was not previously aware of, and that seems to contradict the assumptions underlying the policy recommendations the MfE sponsors. Occasions like this are often an opportunity to assess and re-validate the core assumptions (or start to assess whether the science may be evolving in a new direction).

For example one might start to consider in this case that the evidence for runaway warming is being challenged by the idea that there may be a natural cap on the warming. This is similar to the findings of Ned Nikolov et al in their paper.

Evidence for the MfE responding to such situations where contrary evidence is provided in the past can be reviewed in the email from Chris Holland to Bridget Fraser on 8 June 2017 10:23am and a response from Alex Pickford cc'd to Info at MfE on 12 June 2017 10:52am - both email trails related to the same external enquiry by a member of the public.

Hence I would request that the MfE gives the same due diligence to this situation, and by implication members of the NZ public that may find this enquiry on fyi.org.nz in future.

3

A final phase of this OIA is to ask the MfE to:
a) confirm that you have indeed filed the referenced peer reviewed and published paper (a new Record) in your archives for future reference by your staff, ministers, legal professionals and members of the public, and
b) communicate the location and any meta data classification that it has been given in your systems (eg you may use SharePoint and have attached tags to the Record and you might name the SharePoint site or Library).

The purpose of (3) is to provide evidence to future stakeholders as to the actions taken from this OIA and compliance with the Public Records Act. Whether the MfE experts seriously engage with this new information in its core activities will be explored in future questions.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Johnston

Dear Ministry for the Environment,

Please acknowledge that this additional request has been received and is being actioned.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Johnston

Dear OIA,

Thanks for the reply.

A couple of questions to clarify, as I believe that the responder(s) have missed a couple of key implications of the previous correspondence.

1) Paper downloaded using the link provided is a Record as defined under the Public Records Act and needs to be filed. This Record will have been saved to the “Downloads” folder of the users computer and needs to be saved along with the correspondence/response mentioned in your reply. Saving the link only is unreliable because the source of the link may disappear off the internet - depriving Archives NZ of the ability to store an accurate record of government if NZ’s business.

Please provide evidence of the MfE or Ombudsman legal opinion that justifies your action.

2) The MfE’s response of “warming” being proven shows perhaps that the MfE has misunderstood the key finding of the paper referenced - and hence the underlying assumption that is being challenged. The published peer reviewed paper finds that there is “a limit on warming” - and that the high and accelerating growth projected by the IPCC may have a discrepancy / error that needs to be reconciled.

Now the discrepancy in findings may be explainable but it would seem that at least two courses of action might be reasonable:
A) The MfE asks for this new paper to be reviewed by an expert - perhaps even the IPCC if you want to formally refer it; and
B) A note is made in advice to stakeholders that some contrary evidence exists and is being reviewed.

After all:
1) There are very high costs to the NZ economy from getting policy recommendations wrong in this area - so the evidence needs to be compelling and without question.
2) Papers like this should be able to be reconciled with the existing science, and modelled simulations.
3) The IPCC models continually over estimate the warming so published peer reviewed papers like this may be able to assist and progress the thinking.

In the meantime, I ask you again to provide me the MfE’s view of this paper (now that I have corrected the view of the responder about the findings of the paper).

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston