Kia ora Chris

Thank you for your email.

The Ministry for the Environment has no record of receiving a request under the Official Information Act from you.

Could you please send your request through to [MFE request email]. Upon receipt we will send through an acknowledgement email, before providing you with a response to your request as soon as practically possible.

Kind regards
OIA Team

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Johnston <[FOI #17224 email]>
Sent: Tuesday, 16 November 2021 1:36 pm
To: OIA <[MFE request email]>
Subject: Re: Official Information request - Any records mentioning the climate scientists David Coe, Walter Fabinski, or Gerhard Wiegleb or their referenced paper

MFE CYBER SECURITY WARNING
This email originated from outside our organisation. Please take extra care when clicking on any links or opening any attachments.

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

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Kia ora Chris

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?

Ngā mihi
OIA Team

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Johnston <[FOI #17224 email]>
Sent: Thursday, 9 December 2021 9:43 pm
To: OIA <[MFE request email]>
Subject: RE: Official Information request - Any records mentioning the climate scientists David Coe, Walter Fabinski, or Gerhard Wiegleb or their referenced paper

MFE CYBER SECURITY WARNING
This email originated from outside our organisation. Please take extra care when clicking on any links or opening any attachments.

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

-----Original Message-----

Kia ora Chris

Thank you for your email.

The Ministry for the Environment has no record of receiving a request under the Official Information Act from you.

Could you please send your request through to [MFE request email]. Upon receipt we will send through an acknowledgement email, before providing you with a response to your request as soon as practically possible.

Kind regards
OIA Team

-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Hi Chris

That's really bizarre.

Can you send to [email address]

Hopefully that will work.

Thanks
Anita

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Johnston <[FOI #17224 email]>
Sent: Friday, 10 December 2021 3:33 pm
To: OIA <[MFE request email]>
Subject: RE: Official Information request - Any records mentioning the climate scientists David Coe, Walter Fabinski, or Gerhard Wiegleb or their referenced paper

MFE CYBER SECURITY WARNING
This email originated from outside our organisation. Please take extra care when clicking on any links or opening any attachments.

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

-----Original Message-----

Kia ora Chris

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?

Ngâ mihi
OIA Team

-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Kia ora Chris Johnston,

Thank you for your Official Information Act request received on
16/12/2021.

We will endeavour to respond to your request as soon as possible and in
any event no later than 20 working days after the day your request was
received. If we are unable to respond to your request by then, we will
notify you of an extension to that timeframe.

Please note the Ministry for the Environment will release responses to
selected OIA requests on our [1]OIA responses page shortly after the
response has been sent.

If you have any queries, please feel free to contact us at
[MFE request email].

Please note that this Taku Mahi inbox is not monitored.

Ngā mihi nui

Ministerial Services Team 

Ministry for the Environment – Manatū Mō Te Taiao

Email: [MFE request email] Website: [2]www.mfe.govt.nz 

23 Kate Sheppard Place, Thorndon, Wellington 6143

References

Visible links
1. http://www.mfe.govt.nz/about-us/official...
2. http://www.mfe.govt.nz/

Kia Ora Chris Johnston

Please find attached information regarding your Official Information Act
request.

Ngā mihi nui

Ministerial Services Team 

Ministry for the Environment – Manatū Mō Te Taiao

Email: [email address] Website: [1]www.mfe.govt.nz 

23 Kate Sheppard Place, Thorndon, Wellington 6143

References

Visible links
1. http://www.mfe.govt.nz/

Kia Ora Chris Johnston

Thank you for your email of 25 January 2022 asking for further clarifications in light of the Ministry for the Environment’s (MfE) response, dated 19 January 2022, to your Official Information Act (OIA) request.

As per your email, you have asked about MfE’s reaction to information it was not previously aware of, and that would appear to contradict the assumptions underlying policy recommendations.

MfE considers that scientific evidence of warming is unequivocal. The science is clearly explained in a number of peer reviewed, publicly available forms. You may already be aware of the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose Sixth Assessment Report was completed in August 2021. This report represents the global expert assessment of knowledge on climate change.

We can also confirm for you that in responding to you request, MfE made use of the public links provided to us. While the referenced paper, 'The Impact of C02, H20 and Other “Greenhouse Gases” on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures', has not itself been subsequently filed, the correspondence on and public links to the paper have. This information has been stored within the documentation that went into generating our response to you under the Act and will be accessible should future requests arise under the designation OIAD-181.

Ngâ mihi nui

Ministerial Services Team

Ministry for the Environment – Manatû Mô Te Taiao

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Johnston <[FOI #17224 email]>
Sent: Sunday, 23 January 2022 9:43 pm
To: OIA <[MFE request email]>
Subject: Re: Official Information Act Request OIAD-181

MFE CYBER SECURITY WARNING
This email originated from outside our organisation. Please take extra care when clicking on any links or opening any attachments.

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

-----Original Message-----

Kia Ora Chris Johnston

Please find attached information regarding your Official Information Act request.

Ngâ mihi nui

Ministerial Services Team 

Ministry for the Environment – Manatû Mô Te Taiao

Email: [email address] Website: [1]https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlo...

23 Kate Sheppard Place, Thorndon, Wellington 6143

References

Visible links
1. https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlo...

-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Kia ora Chris

Thank you again for your email.

For the record, a pdf. copy of the paper titled "The Impact of CO2, H2O and Other “Greenhouse Gases” on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures" has been filed under the reference number OIAD-181 within MfE's database for future use.

MfE has no intention to review the paper at this stage.

However, MfE will continue to follow the latest science and we thank you for bringing it to our attention in case MfE wishes to review it at a later date.

Ngā mihi nui

Ministerial Services Team
Ministry for the Environment – Manatū Mō Te Taiao
Email: [email address] Website: www.mfe.govt.nz
23 Kate Sheppard Place, Thorndon, Wellington 6143

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Johnston <[FOI #17224 email]>
Sent: Sunday, 13 February 2022 10:18 pm
To: OIA <[MFE request email]>
Subject: RE: Official Information Act Request OIAD-181

MFE CYBER SECURITY WARNING
This email originated from outside our organisation. Please take extra care when clicking on any links or opening any attachments.

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

-----Original Message-----

Kia Ora Chris Johnston

Thank you for your email of 25 January 2022 asking for further clarifications in light of the Ministry for the Environment’s (MfE) response, dated 19 January 2022, to your Official Information Act (OIA) request.

As per your email, you have asked about MfE’s reaction to information it was not previously aware of, and that would appear to contradict the assumptions underlying policy recommendations.

MfE considers that scientific evidence of warming is unequivocal. The science is clearly explained in a number of peer reviewed, publicly available forms. You may already be aware of the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose Sixth Assessment Report was completed in August 2021. This report represents the global expert assessment of knowledge on climate change.

We can also confirm for you that in responding to you request, MfE made use of the public links provided to us. While the referenced paper, 'The Impact of C02, H20 and Other “Greenhouse Gases” on Equilibrium Earth Temperatures', has not itself been subsequently filed, the correspondence on and public links to the paper have. This information has been stored within the documentation that went into generating our response to you under the Act and will be accessible should future requests arise under the designation OIAD-181.

Ngâ mihi nui

Ministerial Services Team

Ministry for the Environment – Manatû Mô Te Taiao

-------------------------------------------------------------------
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[FOI #17224 email]

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If you find this service useful as an Official Information officer, please ask your web manager to link to us from your organisation's OIA or LGOIMA page.

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