I had to laugh. Governor Jerry “moonbeam” Brown has created a comical clone of the Skeptical Science website at his state office website, and announced it today in lake Tahoe with this missive via the Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Alert:
The Democratic governor, in Stateline, Nev., for the annual Tahoe Summit, has long been frustrated by conservative politicians who say the effect of global warming is overstated, or who argue government intervention to address climate change is a drag on the economy.
“Global warming’s impact on Lake Tahoe is well documented. It is just one example of how, after decades of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humanity is getting dangerously close to the point of no return,” Brown said in a prepared statement. “Those who still deny global warming’s existence should wake up and honestly face the facts.”
Well documented? I suppose Gov. Brown has never seen the kind of problems associated with the official NOAA weather stations, like this one I documented at Lake Tahoe with a trash burn barrel nearby:
No wonder the data looks steep:
And when you look at other nearby data at properly sited weather stations, you have to ask, where’s the warming? Russ Steele has the story:
by Russ Steele (from Is it 2012 In Nevada County yet?)
In Part I of this fact checking project, I will start with the section titled California’s Changing Climate. The first sentence set off my alarm bells right away, as I have been studying the climate change in the Sierra since 2004.
Observed changes over the last several decades across the western United States reveal clear signals of climate change. Statewide average temperatures increased by about 1.7°F from 1895 to 2011, and warming has been greatest in the Sierra Nevada.
I have not see any great changes in the Sierra temperatures over the last several decades except at one Lake Tahoe Surface Station. This station neighbors include a tennis court, and for a while a trash burn barrel. More on this site later in the analysis.
There was no indication in the report where the Sierra temperatures were measured. But in previous reports there was a high dependence on the COOP station at Lake Tahoe, as it had the longest record in the basin.
As you can see there was a significant jump in temperature starting around 1980. A jump that is not evident in other sites around Lake Tahoe and the Sierra. Some investigation revealed that 1980 was about the time a concrete tennis court was installed next to the surface station. According to the condo property manager that an investigator spoke to said the court was installed in the “early 80′s”, though she was not there at the time. This tennis court heats up during the day and gives up energy at night, warming the area. According the grounds keeper, he picked up trash during the day and burned it at the end of the shift, leaving a warm burn barrel to increase the night time temperatures.
Starting in the late 1980s the Forest Service started installing remote automated weather stations (RAWS) well way from built up areas with potential heat sources like the Tahoe tennis court. These remote rural sites do not show any significant Sierra warming.
Owens Camp, El Dorado National Forest, near Kyburz was one of this RAWS sites.
There is a modest increase in the night time temperatures and a decline in the day time temperatures, which average out to no average change.
Quincy Ranger Station, Tahoe National Forest, is another RAWS station
As you can see the temperatures vary from year to year, but according to the regression analysis the temperatures are essentially flat for the 19 years examined. It appears that from about 2002 to 2010 the temperatures have been in declining year over year.
There is also a COOP station in Truckee with recored that goes back several decades that is only 15 miles from the Tahoe station.
As you can see there is no significant warming just 15 miles away from the COOP site at Lake Tahoe. No significant jump in 1980.
There you have it, three Sierra sites that do not show any significant warming. So, where did the scientist at the Climate Change Center find the Sierra warming data? If they only used the Tahoe Site, they were fooled by a poorly sited weather station. Real scientist would not use a single site, but look at the whole Sierra. This report appears to be more the work of political hacks than scientists. Here is the lead authors web site: http://www.susannemoser.com/ You decide?
=================
h/t to Marc Morano for the Sac Bee alert
Journal: Bulletin of the AMS Early Online Release (8/8/12)
Authors: Kenneth Kunkel (NOAA CICS NCDC), Thomas Karl (NCDC), Harold Brooks (NSSL), James Kossin (NCDC), Jay Lawrimore (NCDC), Derek Arndt (NCDC), Lance Bosart (State University of New York – Albany), David Chagnon (Northern Illinois University), Susan Cutter (University of South Carolina), Nolan Doesken (Colorado State University), Kerry Emanuel (MIT), Pavel Ya. Groisman (NCDC), Richard Katz (NCAR), Thomas Knutson (GFDL), James O’Brien (Florida State University), Christopher Paciorek (UC-Berkeley), Thomas Peterson (NCDC), Kelly Redmond (Desert Research Institute), David Robinson (Rutgers University), Jeff Trapp (Purdue University), Russell Vose (NCDC), Scott Weaver (NOAA CPC), Michael Wehner (Lawrency Berkeley National Laboratory), Klaus Wolter (CIRES/ESRL), Donald Wuebbles (University of Illinois)
Summary:
The state of knowledge regarding trends and an understanding of their causes is presented for severe convective storms, extreme precipitation, hurricanes and typhoons, and severe snowstorms and ice storms.
Important conclusions:
Overall, changes in the frequency of environments favorable for severe thunderstorms have not been statistically significant. For extreme precipitation, there is strong evidence for a nationally-averaged upward trend in the frequency and intensity of events. For hurricanes and typhoons attribution of trends to anthropogenic forcing remains controversial. There are no significant multi-decadal trends in the areal percentage of the contiguous U.S. impacted by extreme seasonal snowfall amounts since 1900. There is no distinguishable trend in the frequency of ice storms for the U.S. as a whole since 1950.
I love it when this happens. I know far too many people that believe UHI is some kind of conspiracy excuse. Or that regional land use could never influence “global” temperature records. I am sure this site is just averaged in with the good sites. Yep, no influence at all….
When a site has a main link with the word “consensus” and others with the d word, you know it’s not going to be about “facts”, and definitely not about science.
She studies effective communication on climate change and offers training to help us all improve how we communicate. OOOKKKAAYYYYYYY then! This pile…er…piece of sh…. er…work will look good on her resume doncha think?
Excess Moonbeams…that’s the problem.
Why wouldn’t you listen to Gov Brown and the other California politicians on global warming? They’re smart enough to spend $100 billion on high-speed rail when the state is already broke.
trash burn barrel nearby
Was the trash burn barrel put there in 1980? Otherwise it is irrelevant for the jump in temps in 1980.
REPLY I know it was there for several years and now removed after we pointed it out, but if you’ll check the article, the temperature spike correlates with building of the apartment complex and tennis court nearby. The burn barrel would make short term peaks in the daily temps. – Anthony
Dear Anthony, that’s quite a synergy! The perception that the governor’s website is an imitation of Cook’s website was the first thing it made me think! 🙂
I guess that Governor Brown didn’t read the studies that show that the clarity of Tahoe’s water has been improving.
This surprised the scientists who have been studying the water there.
And one of the reasons these scientists give for the improving clarity???
… cplimate change.
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Researchers-find-surprises-in-Lake-Tahoe-data-3776364.php
This is what I get when I checked Tahoe City.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425000487580&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1
Can anyone explain the discrepancy? No warming here.
The author is committed to the climate change/social change movement, by her own description. Misleading, prevaricating, selective evidence withholding, lying——all in a days work for someone dedicated to and excused by a noble cause.
From Office of Planning:
“Many of the deniers share some traits:
” Many have little or no expertise in climate science. While some have some science background, their training often is unrelated to climate science and they have not published “peer-reviewed” scientific work in climate or atmospheric science. ”
Apparently, Brown is an expert with extensive climate science background and …. training, thus having the “traits” and authority to publish his “peer-reviewed” web propaganda.
Soon, it will be unlawful to disagree with the state, on any issue. After all, they are the experts who decide who else are experts.
The mere existence of a burn barrel in California is quite amazing.
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 13, 2012 at 2:07 pm
trash burn barrel nearby
Was the trash burn barrel put there in 1980? Otherwise it is irrelevant for the jump in temps in 1980.
The burn barrel nearby is an example of shoddy care in making the site legitimate. Pretty obvious, the site is surround by gravel, next to tennis courts, and receives reflective energy from the buildings.
It seems I now get an internal service area on above link to a ‘non-warming’ Tahoe City. So I found this one. I wonder if this one will ‘disappear’.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425000487580&data_set=13&num_neighbors=1
Again it’s happened. Try this
Tahoe city.webarchive
No. Doesn’t work either. I give up.
just a minor point of observation – the trash burner is set onto a wooden pallet – which clearly shows no evidence of scorching? I’d surmise the trash burner is moved from that location before actual use (possibly even closer to the screen! LOL) or even that the pallets are for ‘future’ burning?
It matters not though – clearly this site is in the dumps!
I meant the station site – not WUWT !!! (thought I’d better add that in case anyone gets the wrong idea)
Those who still deny global warming’s existence should wake up and honestly face the facts.
Which facts would those be? While it has been warm for the last 15 years, it is important that we not confuse “been warm” with “warming” as many alarmists do. RSS has now gone 15 years and 8 months with a totally flat slope. This is 188/204 or 92.2% of the way to Santer’s 17 years. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 13, 2012 at 2:07 pm
“trash burn barrel nearby
Was the trash burn barrel put there in 1980? Otherwise it is irrelevant for the jump in temps in 1980.”
When offering photos of trash burn barrels and such, Anthony is not trying to create an argument about specific temperature readings. He is trying to show that management of the temperature station was non-existent if not worse. Who knows whether the station manager placed the trash burn barrel there? Such clear evidence of non-existent station management should invalidate all readings from that station. Or maybe you want to excuse such management? In my humble opinion, our government, such as it is, should be paying big time for its sloppiness in managing temperature data and its stonewalling of criticisms.
California is desperate for more of other people’s money.
It isn’t the science, it’s the taxes.
I you compare USHCN maximum and minimum temperatures at Tahoe City the maximum has never exceeded the 1930’s. Only the minimum temperature spiked higher and typically minimum are very sensitive to surface changes
Are the data for the RAWS instruments available for compilation? They don’t appear to be “CRN1-2” based on vegetation. But it would still be interesting to see the pure-rural/wild station data as a compiled set.
I was quite ticked off that they had a Section called “DENIERS”. I felt it was inappropriate and sent an email to Ken Alex who is listed as the man in charge of this project.
Hi,
As someone who is very skeptical of the science and motives behind the promotion of CAGW I have to tell you I’m quite perturbed to be called a “Denier” by the very state I choose to reside in. That term is offensive; it’s a transparent effort to link the skeptical side, to which a good portion of California’s constituency are, to Holocaust deniers. Now perhaps you may think it’s a good idea to denigrate a good portion of the population but I can assure you that’s not the case. We do care.
An as an aside, perhaps you’re not aware just how flimsy the evidence is behind CAGW. The entire case is built upon computer modeling and that there will be a positive feedback to CO2 in the other greenhouse gases, namely water vapor. This is the theory despite the fact for the vast majority of earth’s existence the CO2 level has been several times higher than it is today and there was no positive feedback or runaway warming, otherwise earth today would be much hotter because there’s no mechanism to halt or reverse warming in the face of positive feedback. Obviously negative feedbacks have always been the case in the past and there’s no reason to believe it will be different now. Computer models simply show the preconceptions of the programmer and are should always be considered subject to “GIGO” (garbage in, garbage out). If the modeler wants to show warming all he has to do is program it in (and they do).
Couple this with the fact that there has been no warming in the past fifteen years despite rising levels of CO2 (which the computer models say is impossible) and that according to satellite measurement sea level rise has actually slowed in recent years (also impossible according to the models), there is no observed evidence that the CAGW theory is correct. So perhaps you can tone down the rhetoric on your new website and perhaps even give both sides of the argument instead of ticking off a good portion of California voters.
Usual alarm. A couple of points: those automatic weather stations don’t look to be very well sited either- far too close to trees and shrubs which hinder night time cooling and possibly shade too close during the day. While the incinerator would provide rapid heating when alight, it should cool rapidly as well, and shouldn’t affect minima unless lit up in the early morning. The tennis court on the other hand would make considerable difference.
Ken
Obviously that barrel is not used for burning anything at its current location. Besides at that distance, if it was used, you would see much more than a degree or to change in the data. I would look to the tennis courts and the houses behind it in the picture as changing the micro-climate of that area. I would bet the housing development was put in sometime right before you start to see the temperature rise. Cutting the trees, changing wind patterns due to housing construction, and putting in roads, and tennis courts are going to change the temp much more than an empty barrel placed a few feet away.
The changes observed at the RAWS stations – an increase in night-time minima and decrease in daytime maxima averaging out to no change – is precisely what you would expect to see from the growth of vegetation, in particular trees, in the area surrounding the measurement site.
If the area is natural then yes – vegetation will be growing there until the next forest fire sweeps through and clears it all and the cycle starts over again. You would expect to see a step change in the temperature record when that happens. And of course there is likley to be an almighty record for the daily high temp on the day of the fire itself :-). How do they deal with these kinds of natural changes to the measurement site? You can’t stop the cycle of trees growing and being cleared by fire – at least not without managing the site thereby rendering the environment unnatural.
A friend from South Lake Tahoe, CA passed through this week and during breakfast mentioned the declining number of full-time residents. So I looked it up:
http://www.sierrasun.com/article/20110309/NEWS/110309898
“The number of people living in the city dropped by more than 10 percent, from 23,609 to 21,403, between 2000 and 2010, according to statistics released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
During the same time frame, the city’s total housing units rose from 14,005 to 15,087, while occupied housing units dropped from 9,410 to 8,918, according to the statistics.”
I wonder if Jerry “moonbeam” Brown considers this good or bad?
It is not surprising that the “greens” missed the impact of the tennis court and other buildings in the area. I read that a “green” in England wants to rip out all the lawns and replace them with perennial plants, rocks or concrete to save water and the annoying sound of one’s neighbors mowing. He has no idea how much concrete lawns would raise the temperatures of the areas. Even rock would cause a significant difference. I guess when the solar ideas of the past decades involving greenhouses with concrete floor that passively radiated heat over night were posting, these people were busy saving polar bears or something. It’s truly frightening.
Look at how that Tahoe heat chart starts rising before well before 1980. According to correlation serving as causation of AGW it started the day California Gov. J. Brown sang along with The Trammps’ 1976 song “Disco Inferno” :
“…satisfaction came in a chain reaction – Do you hear?
I couldn’t get enough, so I had to self destruct,
The heat was on, rising to the top
Everybody’s goin’ strong
That is when my spark got hot
I heard somebody say –
Burn baby burn! – Disco inferno! …”
Reblogged this on Is it 2012 in Nevada County Yet? and commented:
Anthony has linked my analysis of the Tahoe Surface Station for this report.
I get a chuckle every time I here about Gov “Moonbeam”. Back when he was running for President in ’92, I was at a bachelor party at a bar. When I went into the mens room, there was “Brown for President” flier. I put it in the urinal and for the rest of the night whenever someone needed to use the head, they said ” I’m going to vote for Gov Brown”.
One minor quibble. The Quincy Ranger Station is on the Plumas National Forest.
The lead author’s website says all one needs to know to dismiss her as un-credible: “Social Science for Climate Change”**.
**(Is that code for – extreme tree-hugging political activist?)
The governor’s press release talks specifically about the observed warming trend in lake temperatures.
Ah, Governor Moonbeam… When we desperately needed a new chunk of freeway to bypass 280, he sold the right of way. Couple of decades later all those newly build houses had to be bulldozed (AFTER buying them back at higher prices) and 85 was finally built.
For a decade or two we had a marvelous “High Rise” overpass interchange where 280 and 101 intersect. Just no ramps to it. It was dozens of feet up in the air with no way to get to it. Jerry had cancelled the project.
The south bay got to suffer through about 20 years of horrific traffic thanks to old Moonbeam…
Now he’s building a “Train To Nowhere”. Out in the Central Valley just were we don’t need a train. Connecting er, um, “nothing” to “more nothing”. But the land is flat and buying the right of way is easy… (Putting new train right of way over the mountains and through densely populated areas is painfully expensive and hard… so don’t bother…)
Oh, and since voters have several times voted down a Peripheral Canal to take the Sacramento River from the north side of the delta to the south for shipment to The L.A. Basin, he’s now also promoting a multi $Billion “hole in the ground”. They want to put the river in a tunnel UNDER the delta… http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/editorials/article/Chunnel-plan-to-bypass-delta-is-falling-down-3567107.php
I gotta get a job in another State…
Makes you wonder how the Forest Service managed to avoid the idiocy. Somewhere in that agency there must be a bureaucrat with a true respect for science and facts.
My first thought was “Give that man a prize!” … but that would only get him fired by the ordinary status-seeking bureaucrats. Better to just quietly appreciate his anonymous nobility, and pray for long life.
Bob Johnston says:
August 13, 2012 at 3:18 pm
“I was quite ticked off that they had a Section called “DENIERS.”
How classless and base. They do it freely without shame. Those who elect them are equal in moral stature.
One has to wonder WHY a trash burner is placed near a thermometer (or is it the other way round?) Was this deliberate?
Furthermore, doesn’t all that metal fencing give off heat during the evening? What about the metalic looking stand for the thermometer?
The governor does not care about the quality of Lake Tahoe weather data, or any data, for that matter. All that matters is his agenda. That’s pretty obvious by the fact that he and his cronies voted to borrow tens of billions of dollars to build a train that no one wants, at a time when the state is dead broke and digging itself deeper.
What truly is the agenda?
[snip. You know why. ~dbs, mod.]
Werner Brozek says:
August 13, 2012 at 2:59 pm
“RSS has now gone 15 years and 8 months with a totally flat slope. This is 188/204 or 92.2% of the way to Santer’s 17 years. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend.”
What does Santer do at 204/204? Has he indicated what he might do?
You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good, baby you’re no good………
You would have thought the Governor would have learned his lesson with ENRON.
This is really no surprise. When Brown was in office before he was called The Fruit Fly – because of the way he handled a fruit fly problem!
The Governor’s web site http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_climatechangefacts.php is peppered with “deniers” and “denialists” over and over and over again. Is it now fair to refer to his fanatic followers as “Brown shirts”?
Theo Goodwin says:
August 13, 2012 at 6:15 pm
What does Santer do at 204/204? Has he indicated what he might do?
Excellent questions! Will he say the warming is NOT catastrophic? Or will he say he was wrong about the 17 years and move the goal posts? Time will tell.
Brown has been pushing the idea of a bullet train to nowhere in California just to game ia few federal dollars. He’s just one of many cash for clunkers social economists in the state that can never see anything except through a pink lens of Leftist politics and the entire state is going down the drain because of it… several California cities have already filed for bankruptcy. It was reported just a few days ago the the Poway School District was prepared to spend $1 Billion to Borrow $100 Million. It is not surprising that these sorts of folks believe in global warming.
Are we sure this is a burning trash barrel? Looking at the picture I do no see a standard 8″ rain gage. But the ‘stack’ coming out of the barrel sure looks like one. Maybe the barrel is a holder for the standard 8″ gage and keeps it off the ground higher.
REPLY: I was there. Burn barrel. – Anthony
Apparently Governor Brown, has also never visited sanity either. Isn’t it time to exile him to Siberia, or recall him, or what ever it is you do in California with incompetents…
Russ Steele: “Starting in the late 1980s the Forest Service started installing remote automated weather stations (RAWS) well way from built up areas with potential heat sources like the Tahoe tennis court. These remote rural sites do not show any significant Sierra warming.”
Nor does the Lake Tahoe site. So I don’t get the significance of this point. It is the jump around 1980 that is contentious not what happened in the late 1980’s and beyond.
kasphar says:
August 13, 2012 at 2:55 pm
No. Doesn’t work either. I give up.
Strange. On this list (closest stations to Tahoe City) most worked around 30 mins ago. Now many close to Tahoe City do not appear to work. The only thing I can see in common is that the ones which give 500 Internal Server Error have records after around 1990, and within about 150km of Tahoe City. The ones which work tend to end before 1990. Probably nothing, just maintainance, but it seemed a little strange. Particularly since I’ve never seen a similar error on the site before.
Thank goodness the Calif. Governors Office of Planning & Research taxpayer funded website http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_climatechangefacts.php offers refreshing KoolAid categories like:
… “Common Deniers Arguments”
…”The Scientific Consensus”
… “The Deniers”
… and “THE Science” …
If everyone just read those facts by Moonbeam light there would be nobody be left to “…spread doubt and confusion to prevent action.”
Even without rubbish burning in it, that dark metallic barrel converts visible light into higher air temperatures and some additional infra-red. A slight breeze in the right direction would magnify the impact on the weather station.
I’d be interested to know how a burn barrel manages to be used without burning the wooden pallet that it’s sitting on. Perhaps it isn’t actually used.
Suggest we rename it “heat island” as it occurs in both urban and rural areas. Over the last 60 years our small town of 5000 has lost 80% of its trees, has undergone a transformation from a residential area to a business center with lawns being replaced by parking lots, and has seen traffic increase 7 fold. Temperature drops 5+ degrees as you leave town which I expect you would not have seen in the 1950s.
Looking at the other pictures of sites in or near the forest shows how costly proper site maintenance is. Trees grow in all sorts of places not planned for in wild situations. Cost cutting results in unreliable temperature data sets.
From Jerry Brown:
“Many of the deniers share some traits:
Many have little or no expertise in climate science.”
Did he really mean Al Gore?
http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_denier.php
From Jerry Brown:
“Many of the deniers share some traits:
……receive funding for their efforts from industries with a financial interest in ignoring climate change. Oil companies, coal-burning electric utilities, and other companies that make their profits from burning fossil fuels…….”
Was he really meaning David Suzuki? David Suzuki receives funding from these type of companies. But I certainly wouldn’t expect Jerry brown to actually know things from the real world.
http://www.opr.ca.gov/s_denier.php
I really don’t know what’s worse, Jerry Brown or the people that reelected him even though he did a poor job the first time he was governor. Seriously, WTF is going on in California!
“I’d be interested to know how a burn barrel manages to be used without burning the wooden pallet that it’s sitting on. Perhaps it isn’t actually used.”
Not a revelation Louise, question has already been asked and answered. Check upwards !
Californians are like animals. They have no concept of the past or future, just the present. How else would anyone explain re-electing a failure from 30 years ago?
I think Josh could make a cartoon out of this … He could make a cartoon with the burn barrel and temperature sensor. Rising temps at the sensor lead to lots of government documents about global warming. Gov Brown could be feeding these reports into the burn barrel where the prevailing winds cause the temperature sensor reading to rise, causing more government reports causing more burning in the burn barrel causing increased temp readings causing ….
@Amino
“Seriously, WTF is going on in California!”
California is a State of Mind.
“Dave says:
August 13, 2012 at 1:50 pm
I love it when this happens. I know far too many people that believe UHI is some kind of conspiracy excuse. Or that regional land use could never influence “global” temperature records. I am sure this site is just averaged in with the good sites. Yep, no influence at all….”
Worse, it is homogenized with the good sites and used to excuse adjusting them upwards to match the tennis court trend. If you don’t build asphalt around the thermometer they’ll just build its effect in for you.
It would be interesting to hear from this moonbat,* Susanne Moser, once she has read Anthony’s post and this thread. I won’t hold my breath, of course. I doubt that she would have the courage to debate CAGW (or “climate change”) with the scientists and engineers who frequent this board.
/Mr Lynn
* If she can call skeptics “deniers,” I can certainly call her a “moonbat,” which is a friendly term compared to the nasty opprobrium associated with “denier.”
If the recent election of Moonbeam had been restricted to those who were old enough to “re-elect” him, he would have lost. He won because of votes from the generations that didn’t know what he was.
“There isn’t a correlation between rising temperatures and CO2 emissions – therefore, humans can’t be causing climate change.”
“This is false – as humans have put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the global average temperature has indeed gone up. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere began steadily rising since the mid 1800s, and increased more rapidly over the past 50 years. Ice cores and other evidence show that the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than any time in the last half-million years. Temperature increases followed this trend, with the second half of the 20th century being the warmest 50 year period in the past 1,300 years.”
The above is from the Mr. Brown’s web page. Notice how they mention ice cores but fail to say that temperature leads CO2 not follow as said in the next sentence. This is deception at its best.
With apologies to The Coasters for adapting 1959’s hit song “Charlie Brown”:
“..Fee, fiy,
foe, fum
I smell smoke
in the auditorium ” –
Jerry Brown, Jerry Brown
“He’s a clown,
that” Jerry Brown –
“He’s gonna get caught !
Just you wait and see,
(? Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me ?)”
I don’t see any pollution control device on that burn barrel.
Louise says:
August 14, 2012 at 1:40 am
I’d be interested to know how a burn barrel manages to be used without burning the wooden pallet that it’s sitting on. Perhaps it isn’t actually used.
Looks like more than one pallet is in use. Like Caribou, pallets move.
http://2012nevadacounty.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/tahoe_city2.jpg
Louise says:
I’d be interested to know how a burn barrel manages to be used without burning the wooden pallet that it’s sitting on.
You mean like this?
http://gasp-pgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/burn-barrel-dreamstime_16998683.jpg
or this?
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_681/1334041816pPUA51.jpg
The bottom of a burn barrel does not necessarily get hot, esp if there is a layer of accumulated ash inside, or sand/soil placed there for that very purpose.
I know metal ULD’s (Unit Load Devices) have to conform to IATA burn rate specs. Wood (pallets or otherwise) used in air freight also has specs to follow.
http://www.cougar-aviation.com/index.php?p=1_4_Technical-Details
Treated wood pallet
http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Unit_Load_Devices
I would think most modern wooden pallets would be scorch resistant.
If only Schwarzenegger had been a Republican…
Last time you posted on this station you were told very clearly that the tennis courts were built in 1973. Why did you repost this station “audit” with the erroneous date, which is based on hearsay?
Anthony, in your original (linked) post on this weather station you were told clearly that the tennis courts were built in 1973, and given evidence. Why are you reposting your original claim (“early 1980s”) here, when this evidence has been given to you? Can you confirm here that you have checked the dates you originally gave were correct, and that 1973 is wrong, or is your “audit” of this station based entirely on hearsay?
Skeptics vs. Deniers:
If there are so many skeptics on this site, why do only two or three question the “trash burn barrel” identification?
Some clues:
1. Barrel is of a very unusual configuration which appears inconvenient for burning. What are the bolts through the middle for?
2. Similar barrel is adjacent, used to support a box
3. Barrel is behind a locked gate
4. Generally, burning in barrels is prohibited in California
5. The “flue” (pipe on top) is black on bottom (from welding?) but shows no other effects of heat. The small amount of the inside of the flue visible does not look sooty.
But in any event it is Jerry Brown’s fault.
One other thing, the barrel is siting at the edge of the pallet, hanging off a bit, and the hole in the side is towards the inside, something of a hint that for burning they pulled the barrel off the pallet. and moved it elsewhere.
Anthony, further to brownianmotion’s question, in the original post you make the claim that the groundsman likes to burn trash in the can. Did you actually speak to the groundsman and confirm that a) it is a trash burning bin, b) that he uses it to burn trash and c) that he does so in the locale of the weather station and d) frequently enough to affect readings? In this thread you stated “trust me I was there, it’s a trash burning can” but did you actually confirm anything about the can or its use?
The OPR web site is there to illustrate a conservation law.
A moonbeam cannot be transformed or attenuated, but it can be reelected.
[Snip. You will not label our host a liar. ~dbs, mod.]
brownianmotion says:
Skeptics vs. Deniers:
If there are so many skeptics on this site, why do only two or three question the “trash burn barrel” identification?
Parsimony. When we see a black and white striped equine, we think Zebra. Maybe it really is a jellyfish in an elaborate Halloween costume, but we leave such flights of imagination to the True Believers ™.
Some
cluessilly rationalizations:There, fixed that for ya.
1. Barrel is of a very unusual configuration which appears inconvenient for burning.
No. Barrel looks like a burn barrel, configured specifically for burning convenience. See: http://robj98168.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html If you squint, perhaps you’ll see the resemblance.
What are the bolts through the middle for?
Likely, they support the grate that keeps the fire off the bottom of the barrel. This is a common feature on burn barrels, esp the more elaborate ones that have other burn-barrel specific features … like chimneys. The elevated grate improves airflow, and keeps the bottom cool. You know, so that the pallet you’ve set it on doesn’t burn.
2. Similar barrel is adjacent, used to support a box
There are two other barrels in that enclosure. They dont look specifically like burn barrels as far as I cant tell, but we can go with your call. Note to Anthony: Update site description to reflect alarmist assesment that the Stevenson screen is in near proximity to three burn barrels.
3. Barrel is behind a locked gate.
What an odd thing to say. Does putting a fence around something change what that something is? If I put a lump of lead behind a locked gate, will it become a bar of gold? A general comfort level with the principles of alchemistry would tend to explain your uncritical acceptance of “climate science”.
See this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/field_museum_library/3405475874/
Still a zebra.
Hey, maybe the groundskeeper put the burn barrel behind the locked gate to keep kids away from the fire … nah, that could not possibly be it.
4. Generally, burning in barrels is prohibited in California
Generally, burn barrels were legal in California for most of the life of the station (up till 2004), and remain legal in some areas and for some purposes today.
In the event that you are hung up on the legal thing, consider which is more likely:
a) that a barrel with a flue pipe is a burn barrel, and somebody broke a goofy environemental law, or
b) that all Californians always obey the law.
5. The “flue” (pipe on top) is…
… a flue pipe. In most analyses, this would be called a “clue”. What kind of barrel apart from a barrel used for burning has this feature? Perhaps there is a jellyfish inside, and the flue pipe is a docking aparatus for hooking up with other jellyfish in similar jellyfish robot costumes?
… black on bottom (from welding?) but shows no other effects of heat. The small amount of the inside of the flue visible does not look sooty.
It is black on the bottom from the smoke from the fire escaping thru the non-welded joint. It looks like a typical galvanized stove pipe.
But in any event it is Jerry Brown’s fault.
That you deny the obvious? I wouldn’t rule out a contributory effect, but it seems a bit harsh to blame Moonbeam entirely.
LOL Sorry LMFAO
So Anthony, you have time to delete my comment but no time to answer my questions, or to update the post with the correct date of installation of the tennis courts. Would you be happy with climate scientists getting dates wrong by 10 years on the basis of hearsay? And making assumptions about how equipment near their weather stations is used?
If you want to prove that the station audit process is valid, you need to be able to answer questions about your classification method. Can you?
[Reply: What comments of yours have been deleted? ~dbs, mod.]
REPLY: None of his comments have been deleted, I checked SPAM and TRASH folders. I think he has the same problem finding his own comments as he does doing reading or simple math, as in this comment, deciding that the data was divided down the middle, resulting in 39 stations, when in fact it was a population of 74, with groups of 35 and 39. Wondering though, what he does for the University of Tokyo, when the comments originate from. Would be interesting to hear what his background is.
All the answers to the classification method are here:
Leroy, M., 2010: Siting Classification for Surface Observing Stations on Land, Climate, and Upper-air Observations JMA/WMO Workshop on Quality Management in Surface, Tokyo, Japan 27-30 July 2010 http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/Activities/qmws_2010/CountryReport/CS202_Leroy.pdf
– Anthony
faustusnotes says:
August 15, 2012 at 6:16 pm
Anthony, further to brownianmotion’s question, in the original post you make the claim that the groundsman likes to burn trash in the can. Did you actually speak to the groundsman and confirm that a) it is a trash burning bin, b) that he uses it to burn trash and c) that he does so in the locale of the weather station and d) frequently enough to affect readings? In this thread you stated “trust me I was there, it’s a trash burning can” but did you actually confirm anything about the can or its use?
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If only you were so skeptical of Hansen and Mann!
As to the barrel. You may have a point. Obviously it’s nothing more than a …uh… tennis ball launcher? … potato gun for really BIG potatoes? … missing heat recepticle? … I KNOW!! A tornado gun! The Germans in WW2 tried to make one. They failed. This one appears to be perfected. Maybe it’s the source of “weather weirding”?
faustusnotes says:
August 15, 2012 at 6:16 pm
Anthony, further to brownianmotion’s question, in the original post you make the claim that the groundsman likes to burn trash in the can. Did you actually speak to the groundsman and confirm that a) it is a trash burning bin, b) that he uses it to burn trash and c) that he does so in the locale of the weather station and d) frequently enough to affect readings? In this thread you stated “trust me I was there, it’s a trash burning can” but did you actually confirm anything about the can or its use?
REPLY: Yes actually I did. The fellow (the groundskeeper) that drove the van, seen in one of the pictures is the one I spoke to. He confirmed that yes it was a trash burn barrel and that he had used it there. The trash bin has now been removed from the station. It was gone about 3 months later in the follow up I did.
The issue is non-standard siting. If they didn’t think having a burn barrel nearby was a problem, they would have left it there. The tennis courts and other urbanization, seen here http://binged.it/P1RdWU contributed to the non-standard siting as well. – Anthony
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 14, 2012 at 4:32 am
Seriously, WTF is going on in California!
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Our goal is to pretend we’re socialists, without actually knowing what a socialist is, but it sure sounds like we’re really nice, especially in polite company and at expensive cocktail parties and the like.
We love and honor poor people, which is why we feel the need to make more of them.
Anthony, that still hasn’t answered my questions. Why are you continuing to claim in this post that the tennis court was built in the 1980s when you have been told it was 1973? Did you confirm that the groundsman burnt the trash frequently enough to affect readings? How long had he been burning trash for? As I asked, did you actually confirm anything about the can or its use? You say it was gone 3 months later – does that mean its use was temporary? How much effect would its use have relative to the step effect in 1980? Have you checked with Time of Observation Bias adjustment data to see if the step is actually already accounted for in the adjusted data series from this station?
The issue here is not non-standard siting; it is your non-standard method of classifying sites. What do you consider to be a suitable distance for a tennis court or other radiative surface from a weather station? Why? Is a station acceptable if a waste heat source is used at a different time to the collection of temperature data? If so, how long between usage time and collection time do you deem to be too short? Why?
A proper station audit necessarily involves a lot more work than just taking a photo and asking when a tennis court was built – and worse than useless if you accept hearsay evidence about important aspects of the built enivronment. Established temperature datasets include adjustments for many factors and you are claiming that your adjustments are better, but at present they’re just looking like a grab-bag of subjective and poorly-investigated factors. If a climate scientist said to you that “oh, this weather station has a stable trend, nothing has changed since about the early 1980s” you would sneer at their lack of rigor. Similarly if they said “oh, I don’t think the trash can affects the temperature but I didn’t actually check whether it is used close to the reading time of the thermometer.”
If you want your station audit to provide a more rigorous assessment of data quality than is currently provided by the major providers of the data, you need to try harder than this.
[Hi – Anthony is probably getting some well-earned zzzzz’s – I’ll leave it to him to respond more completely if he so desires. ~ac]
faustusnotes,
You sound like a friggin’ idiot. It’s been explained to you several times now that it is a burn barrel. But you just cannot accept that simple fact. Because if you accept the fact that a burn barrel is in close proximity to a thermometer, you must then admit that the station data is no good. So yours is the typical alarmist’s response to that inconvenient fact.
Faustusnotes:
“You say it was gone 3 months later – does that mean its use was temporary? How much effect would its use have relative to the step effect in 1980? Have you checked with Time of Observation Bias adjustment data to see if the step is actually already accounted for in the adjusted data series from this station? ”
TOBS for a temperature step change that shows up in the GISS plot where TOBS and other adjustments have already been applied?
Now I know you haven’t a clue as to what you are talking about. Classic throw and see what sticks.
1. Note the picture of the incinerator at Quincy with that weather station. People do stupid things, that’s not my fault. For some reason though this photo causes hackles to raise by many people. It is threatening to their belief that climate science is conducted correctly in all ways. Its a burn barrel, get over it.
2. Its gone now, proof enough that NOAA realized it was a problem. In fact they’ve gone around and cleaned up or closed many USHCN weather stations after I brought attention to them.
3. 1980’s That is an older post by Russ Steele, I didn’t make the claim in this post. BTW when accusing me of factual inaccuracy it is always good to get your own facts straight first. 1973 or 1980’s doesn’t matter to the station siting rating.
4. You ignore the big picture, and the most important one: that nearby weather stations have significantly different trends. You ignore it because like the burn barrel it upsets your world view.
We could go round and round for years, but as Smokey said, you are beginning to look like a friggin idiot. You fit the classic concern troll pattern. I won’t waste any more time with you.
faustusnotes says:
Anthony, that still hasn’t answered my questions.
Your questions are misdirected.
Anthony’s work was to examine siting quality vs the standards that were supposed to have been adhered to by the people running the network. Your questions concerning the hilariously obvious failures to conform to those standards should be directed to those guys. They should be able to tell you when that tennis court was built. They should be able to produce the incineration schedule, and a rigorously investigated assessment of the effects of both. Perhaps you should give them a call.
The issue here is not non-standard siting;
Yes it is.
it is your non-standard method of classifying sites.
Anthony assessed the sites vs the siting standards of the agency responsible for the network. The problem here is that you are complaing to the wrong guy regarding issues of which you are woefully ignorant. Case in point:
Is a station acceptable if a waste heat source is used at a different time to the collection of temperature data? If so, how long between usage time and collection time do you deem to be too short? Why?
Those are some supremely stupid questions, given the way temp stations are operated. You are embarrasing yourself, and you don’t even know how.
A proper station audit necessarily involves a lot more work than just taking a photo and asking when a tennis court was built –
No it doesn’t. It involves less work than that. The photo is sufficient to document the site quality issues. It is incumbent on those running the network and using the data from same to demonstrate that failing to meet their own standards is a non issue.
Your points, Anthony:
1. the picture doesn’t cause any hackles to raise, but the picture tells us nothing without supporting data. If the barrel is not in use, or hasn’t been in use for long, there’s nothing to get over. You haven’t clarified that, and you haven’t provided any objective criteria by which you could.
2. How do you know NOAA removed it? How long was it there before you visited? QUestions you can’t answer?
3. You clearly state in this thread that the tennis court was installed in 1980. You have a whole paragraph about it. Blaming your colleagues or other members of the station audit team does not change the fact that this post contains inaccuracies. 1973 or 1980s does matter to your statements in this post, where you link the tennis court to a warming step. However in 1973 there was no such step. You have no objective criteria for determining if the tennis court is influencing temperature readings, so you are using the temperature trend itself – which is bad classification practice, and demands at least that you have the correct installation date.
4. The nearby weather stations may be further removed from the lake, at a higher temperature, or in areas with less insolation. And once again, if I incorporate that information into station siting classification I am not blinded to the temperature trend, which means my classification is biased.
There’s a whole literature on proper classification processes. I think you need to read up on it.
REPLY: I can answer these questions, but since you have not accepted any of my other answers, I won’t waste any more time with these. Nothing I can say (nor any other commenters) or offer satisfies you, you won’t respond to questions yourself, and you create lies (on another thread) suggesting I’m calling you a “Nazi”. So I’m done with the game you are playing. – Anthony
Here is one of those “excellently sited” MMTS stations in Olga, WA, out on Orcas Island. Beautiful area. http://whatcatastrophe.com/drupal/surveying_olga_2
Lots of problems with the site. Unfortunately when I took those pics the owner wasn’t home, so I didn’t enter the property to take measurements. But it’s pretty clear that the height requirement is WAY off, not to mention the distance from structures, sheltered by large trees, etc. They didn’t even try on this one.
Eyeballing the GISS data (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425004560960&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1 ), I’d say there has been no net warming there in 100 years, in spite of a change in equipment at some point to an MMTS.
Re my post above, I should add that the GISS and MMS lat/lon coordinates are about a mile off, based on what Google maps is showing me. 48.6 N 122.8 W
Wish that I had not missed this one. Everyone seems to miss the point that there are many papers on the effects of climate change on Lake Tahoe and its food chain. Lake scientists measure water temperature, usually out in the middle of this huge lake (but this does not matter since the surface waters are well mixed). Lake water temperature is easy to measure and is not affected by UHI. Diurnal changes are also more or less irrelevant. Gov Brown was referring to the excellent peer reviewed studies of the lake by the UC Davis group that studies recent, historical and paleolimnological changes in the lake, not changes in the town on its shores.
Original thread:
“…..As you can see there was a significant jump in temperature starting around 1980. A jump that is not evident in other sites around Lake Tahoe and the Sierra. Some investigation revealed that 1980 was about the time a concrete tennis court was installed next to the surface station. …”
Faustusnotes:
“…..Why are you continuing to claim in this post that the tennis court was built in the 1980s when you have been told it was 1973?….”
Now when I look at the graph, I can quite clearly see that there was a decline in temperatures from the early 1970s. Is that an indication that the construction of the tennis court caused the decline? If not, why not?
No need to answer – I will do it for you. There is no correlation between the construction of the tennis court and any change in temperature readings at the station. Alternatively – as you claimed in the original article, there is a correlation, it just happens to be in the opposite direction.
One of those must be correct – there is no other alternative. Unfortunately, neither alternative supports the claims in the original article.