Bishop Hill Your environment
Mar 9, 2014 Climate: Statistics Climate: Surface Climate: WG2 Ross McKitrick has unveiled an excellent new initiative:
I am very pleased to announce the launch of yourenvironment.ca, a new project of mine. The idea is very simple: to present the complete environmental record of every community across Canada. The site currently shows air emissions by source (back to 1985), air contaminant levels (back to 1974) and monthly average high temperatures (back to 1900) for hundreds of places across the country. Water pollution data are coming this summer.
The layout is self-explanatory and it's very easy to use. The data are all from government agencies, but most of it has not hitherto been disseminated in a usable form to the public. All my sources are, or will soon be, linked and the data I use will all be easily-downloadable.
So the next time you find yourself in a conversation with someone who (i) is convinced that Canada does nothing to protect the environment, or (ii) thinks winters around here used to be a lot colder/longer/snowier; or it never used to be this warm/cold in April/October/ etc, or (iii) worries/guffaws about the alleged/obvious ecological disaster all around us, and you wonder what, if any, of this is true, look at yourenvironment.ca and find out.
I especially hope households with high school students will learn about it, though from the experience at our home it might put some kids at risk of being expelled.
What an excellent idea. I don't think we have anything like this in the UK.
Any volunteers?
Reader Comments (37)
As I said in 1999 of the original wiki: simply brilliant. Brilliantly simple.
A superb idea.
Got a question: why Ross using the Homogenized data from canada and not the raw? Is it that environment canada has a well-defined and understood adjustment package? I searched their site and could not find a publication of the algorithm. I know that they have done such things as Time of Day Adjustment and that they reference at least 4 papers on doing Homo/Adjusting but I am curious.
The final paragraph is worrying; though reflects the current Establishment's determination to influence our school children to follow the Greenie path, and ignore the sceptics.
Tim, the homogenized data includes corrections for discontinuities due to time of observation change, equipment change, station moves and changes in exposure, but not for artificial trends due to regional land surface changes. See Vincent, Lucie, X. Zhang, B.R. Bonsal and W.D. Hogg (2002) “Homogenization of Daily Temperatures of Canada.” Journal of Climate 15, pp. 1322—1334.
So I think it's better than than the raw data but still not free of local non-climatic biases except perhaps outside the major urban areas. I used these data in my paper on wind and the urban heat island effect in Climatic Change last year:
http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/encompassing.preprint.pdf
Hmm, lot of work there Andrew, well done to Ross - it's a joy....................................volunteer - sort of down Paul's (Homewood] street?
Soz Paul ;¬)
Paul Homewood should consider using Kickstarter to fund this?
Amen. this is important. In so many small town and national newspapers/broadcasts I've read so much nonsense about rainfall, snow, heat, cold, wind, water quality, and particulate matter without any natural or background or historical references being used to justify a lot of strange choices at every level of government here in Canada.
Ross McKitrick walks the walk as well as talking the talk.
Great stuff.
Cool! It's a superb idea to allow people to look at data for where they live.
Ross, this may be a stupid question, but so be it!
To make the impact this project deserves is it possible to give lay people with modest mathematical skills ways to convert the data into more readable graphical formats such as line charts to demonstrate trends.
A someone who looks at the Environment Canada raw data it isn't that good. Lots of errors. Even the monthly summaries have easily detectable errors.
The saddest thing (for me) about EC data is that once upon a time (June of 1978 to be precise) if you downloaded Environment Canada’s monthly summaries, you would have found 313 stations with sunshine data.
There was one station in Feb 2014's summary with sunshine data.
PJ: when I do the first major revision in the summer I plan to add trend coeffs + (VF) standard errors for the temperature graphs.
Conceptually yes but I have reservations on the practicality for the UK.
Note that I did a surfacestations project for the UK.
Maybe something for discussion.
So who has the data. The Met Office and/or the CRU?
Off Topic 30 year Anniversary of the Start of the Miners Strike
Listening to LBC (used to be just London commersial FM talk station now its gone nationwide digital).
Ian Collins show saturday night guest Peter Tatchell lambasting Mrs Thatcher over the miners.Tachell is a prestigious gay rights activist hes also a big Enviromemtal Campaigner.He wants to close the Coal powered stations and have us all living in the dark and cold with stone age windmills .So for the new green left seems maybe Thatcher was right afterall.
Great way for Britain cut its Carbon Footprint sack 50 000 British Coal Miners.
That is superb.
Whilst I would happily volunteer to help where I could - we really need a group capable of organising this / securing some funds. Maybe the GWPF could take a lead?
Maybe the GWPF could take a lead?
Maybe, but that guarantees that many folk of an alarminst bent will not trust anything published on the site, which will defeat it's purpose.
Much data is there but obfuscated - to be a bit topical..... flooding ->hows about something based on this ?
I feel confident that both kickstarter and other funding would work - once data access issues had been straightened out.
Re: Jonathon Cook
> we really need a group capable of organising this / securing some funds. Maybe the GWPF could take a lead?
You have fallen for the green propaganda.
The well funded (by fossil fuel interests of course) GWPF does not actually exist. What does exist is a GWPF whose entire annual income (£362,632) wouldn't cover 3% of what WWF spend generating income (£13.8million), is only 10% of their spend on advocacy in the UK and EU (£3.6million) and is just a little more than 4% of what WWF spend on "campaigns, education and public awareness" (£8.7million). Woking council alone gave WWF (£683k) nearly twice GWPF's income.
If you want a group capable of securing funds then its the likes of WWF you need to ask for advice, not the impoverished GWPF.
I heartily second those who applaud Ross's efforts. As I had concluded a post on my own blog a few hours ago:
Get the data? Download the numbers? WOW! What a concept, eh?! Totally anathema to the likes of the IPCC or Mann, Jones, Gleick and the late, great St. Stephen of Stanford et al and, of course, their respective bands of admirers, no doubt. But, not unlike Red Rose Tea ….
http://youtu.be/KAtDXOnmqiM
Poor [former Environment Minister and failed PM wannabe] Stéphane Dion, eh? If only he’d had access to such a resource as McKitrick is developing for us. Perhaps he would have been somewhat less determined to tie the mast of his political future to the non-evidenced based “policies” of what has come to be known as “Big Green”.
I don't know if the issues alluded to in this (Guardian sponsored but now pretty much defunct) "public data" blog have been resolved - but in the case of The Environment Agency I suspect not.
"Free our Data" is moribund ... surprised it doesn't re-direct to the Guardian's data blog - strapline = "Facts are Sacred" which seems rather rich coming from GMG. They are presently wittering there about proselytising children and gender issues - surprise eh?
I have had a quick look at the data for Alert and Goose Bay, and like the idea of using average Monthly daytime highs, assume because it ameliorates the potential for UHI?
For those who are maybe not aware, Clive Best has created a useful graphical interface for global temperatures (using 'value-added' HadleyCRU data) here.
And the UEA / MO recently worked with Google to produce a layer for Google Earth, using CRUtemp grid data, which Dana explains all about
here. Here's the link to the kml file if you don't want to see Dana's mugshot so soon after breakfast:
CRUTEM4-2013-03 in Google Earth.
Colour me stupid, but I have just clicked on a few of those CRUTEM boxes… Surely, the “anomalies” should be those above or below the average? There are some, such as 17.5N 2.5W (Burkina Faso/Niger), with a lot of blue below the line (“normal”?), and others, such as 7.5S 37.5E (Tanzania), with a lot of red over it. All of which has to beg the question – just what is the base line from which to measure “anomalies”?
It would be good to get the raw, hourly data safely archived (i.e. not in the hands of such as CRU who have some previous here for losing the stuff). The shocking practice of declaring daily means to be the mean of daily max and min might then be studied, and other investigations by concerned citizens might also be facilitated and encouraged. Data such as offered at this location (or this one) by the UK Met Office are better than nothing, but more would be better.
Examples of such work in Australia can be found on this blog, one which has sadly not been active since 2011: Gust of Hot Air
Ross, in the event that not too personal and no longer a risk to your kid's academic future, it would be interesting to have a little more detail on the school system's handling of dissent.
Did you have some entertaining parent - teacher meetings?
£40K funding for "open data" competition here ....
Looks like a candidate?
PJ
I was thinking much the same thing. Ross's closing remark is quite chilling.
PJ, at the elementary level (private schools) the anti-energy, we're-all-choking-on-smog, we-need-renewables rhetoric began in Grades 5 and 6. I contacted the teachers in question and offered to do a classroom talk. Each time I was invited to do so, but being a professor in the field it would have been pretty hard for them to say no. I've shown air quality data (including some really long term Ontario stuff back to the early 60s), climate data, forest cover data, etc. and explained about what was really under debate on the climate side (namely feedbacks and so forth). That usually sufficed to get the classroom discussion balanced, as I typically found the teachers were well-meaning and didn't have an axe to grind, they were just following the material they'd been given, and appreciated me giving them good quality material with a broader perspective.
At the high school level (publicly-funded) the problem was that the teachers were more aggressive in their proselytizing and would not even allow students to present rebuttal material, much less have outside experts come in. So I told my kids that if all else fails, just tell the teacher what he or she wants to hear, but if they have a chance to present actual data in an assignment then I can point them to the sources.
A big part of the motivation for getting this website running was the hope that students with smart phones could now start to challenge their teachers with basic data, and in most cases the pontificating teachers will not even know the data exists, much less have any idea what it shows.
Thanks Ross, this is a great idea.
I work as an environmental engineer in Ontario helping companies and government agencies comply with environmental regulations (particularly O. reg 153/04 as amended by O. reg 511/09). I am sick and tired of hearing the media and environmental groups claim that Canada does not do enough to protect the environment, some even claim Canada has the worst environmental regulation of all developed countries. Invariably, the people who make these claims know nothing about the soil, water and air pollution regulations which are in place in all Canadian provinces. These regulations incorporate the most up to date research and are strictly enforced for both public and private sector entities. The publicly available data for soil/water/air pollution doesn't even scratch the surface of the quantity of data which is collected across Canada. Hopefully your website will make people more aware of the important work (on contaminants which really matter) that is being done on a daily basis to protect Canadian environments.
Ross McKitrick:
While I'm guessing that you and Mark Steyn don't have much in common, I can only stand back and applaud the contributions that Canadians such as you guys (and, of course, Steve McIntyre and Donna Laframboise, among others) are making to raise the honesty of public debate.
Go the Maple Leaf!
Makes me proud to be a Canadian.
(When one has to deal with the realities of a minus 40 C winter temperature and a summer high of 30 C then the threat of a 1 degree rise in average global temperature is a joke)
Kilroy - Amen. The compliance burden on industry for environmental issues is far greater than people realize, and some of the rules, like the newest O.regs governing soil cleanup, risk wiping out construction activity without doing any measurable good for air and water quality. I'd love to get soil quality data out there as well, after I have the water data up.
I'd also like to emphasize for people in other countries thinking of taking something like this on, it was not that difficult. Although I've been talking to people about this idea for years (never managed to convince anyone else to do it) once it became clear it was down to me I started work in mid-January. I wrote Stata programs to read all the data and generate the graphs, built a very simple website at Yola.com and had my RA post the content in the latter half of Febuary. The first step is to learn your way around the existing government data archives.
yourenvironment.org.uk would be extremely simple
"FOLKS! THE NORMALITY FOR OUR CLIMATE IS THAT IT CAN RAIN, SHINE, BE CLOUDY, CLOUDLESS, SNOW, BE A DROUGHT, COLD, MILD, WITH THUNDERSTORMS, DELUGES, TIDALLY SURGE, SCORCHED, WINTRY, AND/OR BE MONSOON-LIKE.
AND THAT'S FOR ANY ONE DAY."
Ross,
What plans do you have for giving this worthwhile initiative some publicity?
Do you have any indication of interest from Environment Canada or the Provincial ministries?
A worthwhile Canadian initiative.
Oh, well. I was hoping to be neither obscure nor dull, you know.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/103844/really-really-important-canadian-initiative
"The Kukla report is cited by F. Kenneth Hare of the University of Toronto, a leading climatologist, who says the big ice expansion preceeded the coldest Canadian winter yet recorded.
"In the winter of 1972," Hare said in an interview, "temperatures were below normal for the entire year over the entire country. This never happeed before."
Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore., Wed, May 29, 1974.
<http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19740529&id=sq1VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OeADAAAAIBAJ&pg=6533,7703630>
(Yes, I appreciate the semantic "tension" in the quote.)