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NIWA reveals NZ original climate data missing
From the "A goat ate my homework" excuse book:

More major embarrassment for New Zealand's 'leading' climate research unit NIWA tonight, with admissions that it "does not hold copies" of the original reports documenting adjustments to New Zealand's weather stations.

The drama hit the headlines worldwide in late November when serious questions were raised about the "adjustments" NIWA had made to weather records. The adjusted data shows a strong warming trend over the past century, whereas unadjusted records had nowhere near as much warming.

NIWA promised to make its data and corrections fully available, but responding to an Official Information Act request their legal counsel has now admitted it cannot provide copies of the original adjustment records....

...“NIWA’s website carries the raw data collected from representative temperature stations, which disclose no measurable change in average temperature over a period of 150 years. But elsewhere on the same website, NIWA displays a graph of the same 150-year period showing a sharp warming trend. The difference between these two official records is a series of undisclosed NIWA-created ‘adjustments’.

“Late last year our coalition published a paper entitled ‘Are We Feeling Warmer Yet?’ and asked NIWA to disclose the schedule detailing the dates and reasons for the adjustments. The expressed purpose of NZCSC was to replicate the calculations, in the best traditions of peer-reviewed science.

“When NIWA did not respond, Hon Rodney Hide asked Oral and Written Questions in Parliament, and attended a meeting with NIWA scientists. All to no avail, and the schedule of adjustments remained a secret. We now know why NIWA was being so evasive - the requested schedule did not exist.

“Well qualified climate scientist members of our coalition believe that NIWA has forfeited confidence in the credibility of its temperature recording procedures, and that it cannot be trusted to try to cover up its own ineptitude by in-house adjustments. What is needed is open access in the public domain to all of the known reasons for post-reading adjustments to enable independent climate analysts to make their own comparative assessments of temperature variations throughout New Zealand since the middle of the 19th century,” said Mr Dunleavy....