How not to measure temperature, part 3

The picture below is from Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor. You may have heard of him, the Governor of Oregon tried to get him fired for not jumping on to the global warming bandwagon because he doesn’t see enough supporting evidence.

The picture is of Forest Grove, Oregon, and the temperature plot below shows how it is warming. But George says:

“Yes, it’s a window air conditioning unit to the east and the edge of a large asphalt parking lot to the north, northwest, and west. The pic is shot looking northeast. For those of you that may not immediately realize this, air conditions exhaust hot air to the outside.

Draw your own conclusion from this map

Today I visited my friend Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist and the man with a garage full of data going back to before the Gold Rush.

He’s been quietly toiling away in his retirement on his computer for the last 15 years or so making all sort of data comparisons. He gave me two CD ROMS full of data that I’m just now wading through. One plot which he shared with me today is a 104 year plot map of California showing station trends after painstakingly hand entering data into an Excel spreadsheet and plotting slopes of the data to produce trend dots.

He used every good continuous piece of data he could get his hands on, no adjusted data like the climate miodelers use, only raw from Coopertive Observing Stations, CDF stations, Weather Service Offices’s and Municipal stations.

The results are quite interesting. Here it is:

Squint hard and you can see a pattern emerge.

Restaurant Inspections tell a different story

Tuesday on page 7A of the Enterprise Record there was a full page ad for the Oriental Buffet at the corner of East Avenue and Esplande that touted a copy of the most recent Butte County Health Department inspection with the words in bold “Compliance Achieved” on the newspaper ad.

You may remember the previous restaurant left an indelible mark in the minds of many Chicoans when it was closed down over a year ago due to massive health violations. Here is the ER Article.

Everybody deserves a chance to succeed, but I have to wonder about the wisdom of opening a door like this by putting your health report in a newspaper ad because it invites people to take a further look. It was the topic of my morning discussion group on Tuesday, so I decided to look for myself.

You can see Food Facility Inspection Reports for the Chico Area online here

And the inspection reports starting 5/07/07 for the Oriental Buffet are here:
( you’ll need Adobe Acrobat PDF reader to view these - its free here )

Oriental Buffet, 2539 Esplanade, Chico 05/07/07 Inspection

Oriental Buffet, 2539 Esplanade, Chico 05/08/07 Re-Inspection

Oriental Buffet, 2539 Esplanade, Chico 05/09/07 Re-Inspection

Oriental Buffet, 2539 Esplanade, Chico 05/11/07 Re-Inspection

On the first inspection on 5/07/07 there were 7 major violations and 14 minor ones, for a total of 21 violations. The inspector made 22 notations on the issues filling two pages. The next day on 5/08/07 they were down to 4 major violations and no minor ones. On 5/09/07 they were down to 3 major violations. On 5/11/07 they finally achieved “compliance”. The restaurant has been open since April 8th.

But I have to wonder, compliance for how long? You have to wonder that when a restaurant runs a full page ad touting “compliance” given the visually dramatic stigma the building has attached to it maybe the owners don’t fully understand what they are up against. Like I said, everybody deserves a chance to succeed, but perhaps a different theme would be the way to do it in this case.

To be fair though, I’ll point out that the inspection reports show that Egg Roll King on Palmetto needed 4 attempts to reach compliance this year , as did Gen Kai on Pillsbury, and Big Al’s needed 4 last year and so did Rice Bowl this year, and so did Sin of Cortez. Thai House on Broadway needed 5 inspections this year.

The all time high was Happy Garden on Cohasset with six consecutive inspections required last year before compliance was acheieved.

How not to measure temperature, part 2

I decided I’d drop some more fun with entropy your way. Here is the USHCN
station of climate record in Redding, CA GISS number # 425725920010 and used in
the climate modeling database

It is now operated by the US Forest Service at their HQ located at the
Redding Airport. It used to be operated by the National Weather Service, but
that WSFO closed in the mid 90’s.

Like Marysville, the site is surrounded by asphalt, and the surface is
unnatural - its wood chips over weedmat, and I’ll have to say it was hot as heck
to walk on during mid-day..

But the kicker is the “accessories” they’ve added for convenience of running
the hygrometer and for night observations. Yes it is another fine high-quality
USHCN climate recording site. I wonder how many times they forgot to turn off
the light? It looks like there might be room for a hot plate to keep your coffee
warm while making observations.

The blower is used to run air past the wet bulb hygrometer…its not the
correct way
to do it (manual aeration by rotation is specified).

Here is the satellite picture from Google Earth

Memorial Day

This morning, I took my children out front, and we placed three flags in our front yard. Each child got one little flag on a wooden stick to plant in the front garden, while mommy and daddy got the big flag to hang from the porch.

After a little discussion on why we did this on Memorial Day,” to remember those who keep us free”, my son William remarked, “ok…can we wash the car now?” (that was our next project).

Well maybe it’s a little early at nearly 4, to install some patriotism. But later when William and I drove to the hardware store together he said “Daddy, how come those houses don’t have flags? We have flags”. It was then I realized we were the only house on our entire street displaying flags today.

Good question son, good question.

The Meriam Park Cell Pickle - SOLVED

There’s an interesting thorn in the side of the recent planning commission approval of Meriam Park that nobody seems to have brought up or discussed. Maybe there are plans I’m not aware of, but given the issues being raised with a cell phone tower elsewhere in the city, it seems the issue would have been vocalized by now.

How not to measure temperature

I’m surveying climate stations of record around California and documenting their condition as part of a larger project I’m doing. You’ll see more about it here in the near future.

Today I visited Marysville’s Fire Station, just off Hwy 70 at 9th and B Street, where they have the station of record for the city using the MMTS electronic sensor installed by the National Weather Service. The data from this station is part of the USHCN (US Historical Climatological Network) and is used in the computer modeling used to predict climate change.

The Marysville station is located behind the fire department building on a patio and is probably the worst site visited so far. In addition to the sensor being surrounded by asphalt and concrete, its also within 10 feet of buildings, and within 8 feet of a large metal cell tower that could be felt reflecting sunlight/heat. And worst of all, air conditioning units on the cell tower electronics buildings vent warm air within 10 feet of the sensor. Oh and lets not forget the portable BBQ the firefighters use a “couple times a week.” The area has been constantly added to, what was once a grass rear yard was turned to a parking lot, then more buildings added, then a cell tower with one, then two electronics buildings and the air conditioners…no report on how long the firefighters were BBQ’ing back there, when they figured out why I was asking all the questions they clammed up.

I can tell you with certainty, the temperature data from this station is useless. Look at the pictures to see why, and is it any wonder the trend for temperature is upward?

Above: Vehicles with hot radiators park within 6 feet of the temperature sensor!

Now compare Marysville to Orland, just 50 miles away, where there’s not been any significant change in the last 100 years at the measuring location. Its obvious that Marysville is measuring UHI (Urban Heat Island) effects.

So the question is, how does bad data like this slip into the NASA GISS model database?

Dihydrogen Monoxide

It appears that in the quest to save our planet from dangerous chemicals, people will blindly sign anything. Read more about this dangerous chemical here: http://www.dhmo.org/ It’s “an odorless, tasteless chemical” that can be deadly if accidentally inhaled.

This chemical is so dangerous that a local city council in Aliso Viejo, CA put it on the agenda to ban foam containers made with it. I expect our liberal city council may soon address this danger like we’ve already done for nuclear weapons in the city limits.

Penn and Teller provide an entertaining look into mindless activism.

with a hat tip to Mark…

Fine Me

My friends at coffee this morning got a huge laugh out of Chico Peace and Justice Center member Sherri Quammen’s claim in a vitriol filled letter to the editor that I’m the “real WMD”.

For somebody who professes “peace and justice”, she sure seems to have a lot of anger to vent. She’s sent letters to all three newspapers, the ER, Chico Beat, and you’ll see the same letter come Thursday at the Chico News and Review I’m sure. Lately, the message of “peace on earth” seems to have lost the accessory clause of “goodwill towards men”. Though its hard to tell through her rant just what she dislikes about me most, it appears that my views and research into climate change must be the main factor.

I sent her a nice note last week, offering to meet and get aquainted over coffee or tea someday, (since we’ve never met) after the letter appeared in the Chico Beat, so far no response.

But that’s OK, being a public person, criticism comes with the territory. It’s an occupational hazard. I guess I should be honored that my threat level has been elevated. Poor Al Gore takes all sorts of flak daily.

Sooo….since I’ve been labeled a WMD, I think that I’ll have to look over my shoulder a lot to make sure I’m not being followed by police officers intent on giving me a ticket in case I go off in the Chico city limits. That’s a $500 fine you know.

To make it easier for people to spot me, I think I’ll get a T-shirt that says simply “BOOM”.

Gravel Mine proponents take different approach

I found the full page color advertisement on page 5E of the Sunday Enterprise Record quite interesting.

It lists a number of environmental reasons why the M&T Baldwin Gravel mine would be a good thing, not the least of which is the reduction of the number of truck miles traveled in Butte County due to trucking in building gravel from outside the county, and the reduction in gasoline burned and GHG’s avoided helping “Global Warming”.

And then there’s the angle that this mine pit will fill with water, and create an animal habitat just like the Teichert Ponds have done when it was used as a borrow pit to construct Highway 99 overpasses. There we have a clear example of how a lowly gravel mine got turned into a nature habitat, and there was no help or “kickstart” to nature as the M&T operators are proposing for their pits destined to be ponds.

It will be interesting to see how opponents argue against the project with these environmental assets it offers.

Here’s how Chico Creek Nature Center described the Teichert Ponds for a walking tour they sponsored of them: