First, the writer shows NO credentials to indicate he's qualified to even comment on climate change. Actually, he's just an ordinary dufus like you.
Rodney Hide is a former Member of Parliment, he has a degree in Zoology and Botany, a degree in Resource Management, and a Masters degree in Economics from Montana State University. As a member of parliment he started a third party that is generally characterized as center-right. Rodney Hide, as a Member of Parliment has
stated that:
"I think I will be the only person speaking in this debate who has any qualifications in environmental science.
It is not that that should count, but I think that it is significant for what I am about to say—that is, that the entire climate change - global warming hypothesis is a hoax, that the data and the hypothesis do not hold together, that Al Gore is a phoney and a fraud on this issue, and that the emissions trading scheme is a worldwide scam and swindle."
Of him, Brian Rudman
had this to say:
"Of more concern is his indulging Mr Hide in his fruitcake views on global warming. As part of the deal, Mr Key has agreed to a climate change select committee.
Attached as first appendix to the coalition agreement is Act's terms of reference, top of which is a requirement that the scientific case be relitigated.
It reads: "The committee shall hear competing views on the scientific aspects of climate change from internationally respected sources and assess the quality and impartiality of official advice."
The small print of the coalition agreement says these "terms of reference" are "an initial basis for discussion", but the fact that Prime Minister Key is happy to give official credence to this nuttiness risks making New Zealand, and him, a laughing stock.
He must know there's more chance of finding an internationally respected flat-earther, or apostle of intelligent design, or even a Holocaust denier than there is of finding a peer-reviewed case against human-assisted global warming."
In 2010 Rodney Hide
had this to say:
"The so-called scientific agencies responsible for the climate-scare have ruthlessly suppressed competing theories and contrary data controlling and manipulating the peer review process.
Government sponsored climate science has proved to have more in common with the Spanish inquisition than Popperian science.
Climate-gate, Glacier-gate, Africa-gate has left the once vaunted IPCC totally discredited."
To which
Gareth Renownden replied:
"Hide is certainly parliament’s highest-profile climate “skeptic” (his spelling), with a long track record of spouting the standard climate crank arguments, but yesterday Hide combined a complete misrepresentation of the so-called “climategate” affair with a scurrilous attack on the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, based entirely on the discredited smear campaign emanating from the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition and Richard Treadgold’s “Climate Conversation Group”. Here’s the relevant section of Hide’s diatribe, annotated by me to show just how far from the truth he strayed…"
He has characterized the IPCC Fourth Assessment was "infamously wrong" and stated that "It’s mates choosing mates. And the most important thing is for authors to believe the human-induced global warming nonsense before they start."
He has, however,
also stated the following:
"Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes warming. Yes, burning fossil fuels produces CO2 and the concentration of CO2 in the air has increased. And yes, the Earth is warmer now than it was 100 years ago. The science shows that doubling CO2 in the atmosphere would increase the Earth's temperature by a little over one degree.
It's warmer now than it was but the present temperature is nothing out of the ordinary. It's been warmer. And the present rate of temperature change is, again, nothing alarming. The Earth has seen it all before.
It's all about what happens next. That's where the leap occurs from science to computer models. The predicted rise in CO2 on its own doesn't produce a rise in temperature that is at all worrying. Its effect must be multiplied within the models.
The chief greenhouse gas is not CO2, but water vapour. The models are programmed so increasing CO2 warms the earth, producing more water vapour which, in turn, warms the earth even more. It's that multiplying effect through increased water vapour that causes the "climate change" scare, not the CO2 increase on its own."