My summer project - a national weather station audit

You may remember a couple of weeks ago I got sideswiped by Ms, Sherri Quammen, who in a letter to the editor called me a “weapon of mass destruction” because I’m actively involved in climate change issues locally. While funny, it did give me the impetus (aka kick in the pants) I needed to get very busy and serious about a project I had been contemplating for some time:

A national repository of weather station site surveys.

ZZZZ Snore, ho hum you say? I’d normally agree, as the subject matter is the stuff of sleep inducers. But there’s a hitch. It seems that the folks at the top of the food chain in climate research didn’t do their homework at the base level, and didn’t bother to do a quality control check on the many weather stations used in the climate records and the computer models used to predict our climate future.

I remember a talk in the spring where Jim Price of CSU had to interrupt (at the behest of a couple of folks that felt a comment about the sun’s role in climate change studies was being ignored was “biased”) the Chico observatory series, Cosmic Hike to give us all a tongue lashing on why Global Warming is “good science”. I asked him a question in front of everybody about how well biases in measurements at weather stations had been accounted for (Jim’s on the IPCC committee) and he said that they had been “carefully accounted for and considered”. I didn’t believe him then, even less now.

Ok back to my summer project. Thanks to Quammen’s inspiration, I got busy putting together a website called www.surfacestations.org for the purpose of doing a nationwide, and hopefully a worldwide audit on the viability of the weather stations used in climate research.

To seed the effort, I’ve been driving around Northern California photographing and logging weather stations, and blogger Russ Steele from Grass Valley has been helping do surveys too. You’ve seen some of them in my blog posts titled: How not to measure temperature.

Some, like Marysville, are just unbelievably badly biased, and to be blunt, the data they produce is simply useless. Yet, they are part of our “official” climate temperature record, and the data is in fact used in the computer models.

So Monday, I go live with the www.surfacestations.org website showcasing some of the US Historical Climate Record sites which is the major framework that global warming science is built upon.

The reaction was immediate and visceral in the science blogosphere. I’d hit a nerve. Some posters called for my “removal”, not knowing that I’m not funded by grants, nor employed by a government agency. I’m funding all this myself, out of my own pocket. I had to chuckle. Some called me an amateur, others said I would taint the outcome, some just ranted (I think maybe Tasker joined in). Many questioned why such an effort was needed at all. The reaction to taking photographs of weather stations to document their conditions raised a stink I never could have predicted. Why? How can something so simple raise so many hackles? Aren’t many climate scientists saying “case closed” and “no more debate”? How could a few pictures threaten this established science?

Well here’s why: Lets use the weather station in Willows at the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority as an example. Its a lights=0 station. A what? Lights=0 means it has no lights around it. Ok so what does that have to do with climate change and temperature measurement? Well, it turns out that Dr. James Hansen of NASA, in creating his USHCN database didn’t actually visit the weather stations to see if they were working well and bias free, but rather conducted an armchair survey where he used nighttime Department of Defense satellite photos to evaluate the potential heat bias from growth around the stations. He figured counting streetlights in a radius would be a good indicator. For stations like Willows, out at the end of Hwy162, yes it works. It also works for out of the way stations like Lake Spaulding, except that the armchair light counting survey didn’t catch the fact the temperature sensor is parked over an aluminum boat next to a building, on a steel tower over a rocky surface. How hot could that be? I presume the boat is there for a fast getaway in case of catastrophic sea level rise.

But this armchair survey didn’t catch things like air conditioners blowing hot exhaust air on sensors, or the Marysville Fire Department parking their vehicles within 6 feet of the sensor, or the fact that Tahoe City had a new tennis court put up 25 feet away and a trash burn barrel located next to the station. And when the really embarrassingly bad weather stations Russ and I documented started showing up, the pro warming folks had to do something because it challenged the very data itself.

The www.surfacestations.org site has been up two days now, and I’m getting hundreds of registrations across the country from people wanting to get involved in the grass roots effort to photograph, measure, catalog and contribute to the database of weather stations. I’m getting inquires from Congress, Policy think tanks, and bloggers worldwide. I even had a mom who’s driving cross country with her daughter contact me to ask how she could participate.

BTW you can sign up to help, its free, easy, and fun too. Find the stations can be a bit of a puzzle, like GPS caching.

I’ve been invited to submit a research paper, and I’m having a lot of fun too. Now I know why I lost the school board election, it was to give me time to do this. Everything happens for a reason.

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.

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.

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:

Chico’s soon to be Pine Tree Cell Tower ?

As I drove through Grass Valley today, the cell phone tower disguised as a pine tree reminded me that Tuesday night, the City Council will consider once again the cell phone tower proposal for the Chico Elks Lodge property.

I expect the usual suspects will be there, telling us all how “dangerous” the “radiation” from the proposed cell tower will be. Given the intenisty with which some will argue health issues, I expect some councilors will cave to the overly concerned. I don’t have a stake in this fight, except to say improved cell phone coverage in Upper Park will benefit everyone.

We’ll hear the old tired arguments about “dangerous radiation” emanating from cell towers, which I don’t see dangerous at all, I’d like to point out things around town that give off equal or greater amounts of “dangerous electromagnetic radiation” and the approximate relative field strengths to the proposed cell tower given its distance from the road.:

- Cell phones next to your head - 1000x greater
- Cell phone in the car you are riding in, - 100x greater
- Cell phones carried by people walking at the farmers market - 10x greater
- STL microwave link from radio station KZFR above city plaza to their transmitter - about the same
- WiFi router in your house 10x
- WiFi public hotspot in Has Beans 10x
- Channel 12/24 Live van around town, live at city plaza concert 100x
- Microwaving popcorn 1x
- Police radar traffic gun 10x (concentrated narrow beam)

So you see, “dangerous electromagnetic radiation” is everywhere. The fact is, its not dangerous at all, and I’d suggest those city councilors that don’t know their science, bone up. There really isn’t a leg for them to stand on when you look at the many other accepted electromagnetic radiation sources around town that emit equal or greater radio signal strengths.

Radio signal strength follows the inverse square law

That means that doubling the distance from a transmitter means that the power density of the radiated wave at that new location is reduced to one-quarter of its previous value.

Given the location of the proposed tower at the Elks Lodge is well set back from the road and building, and the park, I see no realistic issues of concern.

911 Truth

You can use your mouse to interact with the flash graphic above.

The Chico News and Review has gotten quite a number of letters on their 911 Truth article which gave a platform to the people whom prefer to believe that a gigantic government conspiracy was the reason behind the 911 WTC collapse, and that the towers were brought down with explosives, rather than by fire.

I wrote a short blog essay on the subject, and a letter to the editor, pointing out that the recent collapse of the I580-880 freeway interchange had a lot of similarities, illustrating that fire can indeed take town steel and concrete structures.

Predictably, the 911Truthers lobbed a couple of ticked off letters back at me, even going so far as to say I’m “spreading distortions”.

While I don’t intend to argue their points, since you can’t usually come out winning when you argue with people whom believe conspiracy theories, I will present another view.

For those of you that prefer rational science and engineering, I present this item, a paper published in 2003 by The Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, presents a balanced view that shows that the collapse didn’t need steel melting temperatures to occur. It was written by Thomas W. Eagar, the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Engineering and Engineering Systems, and Christopher Musso, graduate research student, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

You can read the report in its entirety here: http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

Or just skip to this conclusion:
While it was impossible for the fuel-rich, diffuse-flame fire to burn at a temperature high enough to melt the steel, its quick ignition and intense heat caused the steel to lose at least half its strength and to deform, causing buckling or crippling. This weakening and deformation caused a few floors to fall, while the weight of the stories above them crushed the floors below, initiating a domino collapse.

There’s a maxim called Occam’s Razor; “All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one.” In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and hypothetical entities tends to be correct. Conspiracy theories require many more assumptions, some unprovable, than a fire and materials failure does.

NOTE: Comments have been closed to prevent overrunn by 911 Truthers, whom seem as irrational as ever and intent on proving their twisted logic.

Something is up at the ER

Its Sunday Morning, 8:04 AM… No newspaper delivery and even more amazing, no online edition of the Enterprise Record is available. The only thing that is available is the image of the typeset front page of Sunday’s paper, as shown above. I knew something was up at 12:20 last night when I finished a blog entry and the online edition text wasn’t updated, but the front page image was.

I’m not being critical, just concerned for them. A newspaper is a synchronized dance of a variety of dissimilar elements, all of which must come together in scheduled precision. If one of the critical elements fails, boom, no newspaper. The Sunday edition is even more complex, with extra sections and scads of insertions.

Even so, its times like that when heroic efforts are made. I remember when the U2 plane crash hit the Mercury Register in Oroville. Yet they got the paper back up and running.

Given the reliance on computers for typesetting and control of printing presses, I’m guessing a network or server failure occurred at the ER last night. Because if it were the press, we’d have an online edition. For both to be missing says it has to be a common element, like the network or server. Though if it were the press, maybe they are all too busy scrambling for repair to get the online edition updated. Good luck to them in fixing it. And folks please cut them some slack when the paper finally does get published.

Or, maybe publisher Wolf Rosenberg simply decided to let us bloggers do the heavy lifting from now on. I’ll ask him at coffee Monday.

UPDATE: The print edition just arrived at 8:43 AM, so it appears the problem is with the online edition

UPDATE2: As of about 4PM, the online edition has been updated

Major Daily Newspapers in Circulation Decline

I’m very distressed to read this. Newspapers are the life blood of a community. Television news has also been in decline, but television doesn’t become the record for the community, as TV is more transient, and not considered a searchable news resource. People can’t go to a TV station and search archives, for example. The Enterprise Record recently had to lay off staff, not so much for circulation decline, which has been flat, but for declining advertising revenue.

From the American Thinker:

Newspaper industry collapse intensifying
Thomas Lifson
The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) has released the latest circulation numbers for big city dailies, and the news is almost uniformly bad for big newspaper publishers. The sole bright spot continues to be the New York Post, whose weekday circulation is up an impressive 7.6% to 724,748 in the six month period. The Post has a winning combination of a low cover prices and lively non-liberal writing. Oddly enough, no other papers seem to copying the successful tactics, something which ought to concern shareholders of the collapsing businesses.

Some key newspapers are in real trouble:

The Dallas Morning News hemorrhaged 14.2% of daily circ to 411,919.

The San Diego Union-Tribune slipped 6.5% to 296,331

The San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, daily circ declined 4.9% to 230,870

The Los Angeles Times lost 4.2% of its weekday circ to 815,723

The Chicago Tribune slipped 2.1% to 566,827

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported daily circ dropped 4.8% to 345,252.

Small circulation gains were reported by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Daily News.

The New York Times, which has reported small overall circulation gains in recent years, thanks to the roll-out of new regional printing plants for its national edition, compensating for the loss of metropolitan circulation in New York, reported a loss of circulation this term, down 1.9% to 1,120,420.