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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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!
===============================
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.