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?
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h/t to Marc Morano for the Sac Bee alert
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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.