I find it funny though, that this study (full PDF here) mentions urban warming related to CO2 only. The terms “Urban Heat Island” (and variants including UHI) are not found in this study at all. The image from the study below, looks roughly like the CONUS nightlights image I provided for Dr. Roy Spencer’s latest essay on population versus temperature. – Anthony
Urban CO2 domes increase deaths, poke hole in cap-and-trade proposal
From Stanford University via Eurekalert
Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem. Now a Stanford study has shown it is also a local problem, hurting city dwellers’ health much more than rural residents’, because of the carbon dioxide “domes” that develop over urban areas. That finding, said researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, exposes a serious oversight in current cap-and-trade proposals for reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases, which make no distinction based on a pollutant’s point of origin. The finding also provides the first scientific basis for controlling local carbon dioxide emissions based on their local health impacts.
“Not all carbon dioxide emissions are equal,” said Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering. “As in real estate, location matters.”
His results also support the case that California presented to the Environmental Protection Agency in March, 2009, asking that the state be allowed to establish its own CO2 emission standards for vehicles.
Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford, testified on behalf of California’s waiver application in March, 2009. The waiver had previously been denied, but was reconsidered and granted subsequently. The waiver is currently being challenged in court by industry interests seeking to overturn it.
Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone, as well as particles in urban air.
In modeling the health impacts for the contiguous 48 states, for California and for the Los Angeles area, he determined an increase in the death rate from air pollution for all three regions compared to what the rate would be if no local carbon dioxide were being emitted.
The results of Jacobson’s study are presented in a paper published online by Environmental Science and Technology.
The cap-and-trade proposal passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009 puts a limit on the amount of greenhouse gases that each type of utility, manufacturer or other emitter is allowed to produce. It also puts a price tag on each ton of emissions, which emitters will have to pay to the federal government.
If the bill passes the Senate intact, it will allow emitters to freely trade or sell their allowances among themselves, regardless of where the pollution is emitted.
With that logic, the proposal prices a ton of CO2 emitted in the middle of the sparsely populated Great Plains, for example, the same as a ton emitted in Los Angeles, where the population is dense and the air quality already poor.
“The cap-and-trade proposal assumes there is no difference in the impact of carbon dioxide, regardless of where it originates,” Jacobson said. “This study contradicts that assumption.”
“It doesn’t mean you can never do something like cap and trade,” he added. “It just means that you need to consider where the CO2 emissions are occurring.”
Jacobson’s study is the first to look at the health impacts of carbon dioxide domes over cities and his results are relevant to future air pollution regulations. Current regulations do not address the local impacts of local carbon dioxide emissions. For example, no regulation considers the local air pollution effects of CO2 that would be emitted by a new natural gas power plant. But those effects should be considered, he said.
“There has been no control of carbon dioxide because it has always been thought that CO2 is a global problem, that it is only its global impacts that might feed back to air pollution,” Jacobson said.
In addition to the changes he observed in local air pollutants, Jacobson found that there was increased stability of the air column over a city, which slowed the dispersal of pollutants, further adding to the increased pollutant concentrations.
Jacobson estimated an increase in premature mortality of 50 to 100 deaths per year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the contiguous 48 states.
“This study establishes a basis for controlling CO2 based on local health impacts,” he said.
Current estimates of the annual air pollution-related death toll in the U.S. is 50-100,000.
What is it with all these fools who see a temperature change and immediately want to attribute it to CO2?
Is that the only way they can get funding?
Is this study “PEER REVIEWED” like the others?
“His results also support the case that California presented to the Environmental Protection Agency in March, 2009, asking that the state be allowed to establish its own CO2 emission standards for vehicles.”
I am sure this “modeling” study supports EPA’s claim. It was an EPA grant that funded it.
I am sure it ignores all the other factors that cause urban heat islands. The objective is clearly to generate more CO2 alarmism.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if his colleague Stephen Schneider help push such a study to help create more CO2 alarmism that Schneider advocates..
Trap heat ? This work is very scientific.
I have a problem when Climate science violates rules of experimental design and fudges data.
This makes me angry. The crooks and cheaters have no reason to get into epidemiology. They are far too stupid to deal with health and death issues.
1 example. As rural folks age, they move to the city and retire sometines even in an urban nursing home. That would alone skew the data.
Their study doesn’t treat variables such as smoking and other influences.
Actually one of my fields we used identical twin studies as often as possible.
There is one expression used in medical studies and it is called a blind control group. Can’t set up climate experiments the same way.
Want me to give some greenie weenie Hansen a temp chart and have him tell me where in the world the graph was taken from? He couldn’t do it.
“…Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone, as well as particles in urban air…”
Hmmm…seems as if their conclusions rest upon a correlation between local CO2 output and mortality. But if CO2 emissions are high, so generally are emissions of true pollutants. You have CO2 emissions from cars – with associated emissions of particulates, benzene, etc. you have CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants – with associated emissions of particulates, mercury, etc.
I’m curious as to how they accounted for this (especially considering their claim that warmer temps cause the concentrations of these to be higher).
I just have a hard time believing that a highly localized difference in CO2 concentration measured in ppm can create a measurable temperature difference.
Show me the data.
Repeat after me “CO2 is not a pollutant”….
if EPA ges through with their nonsense, increased poverty would kill a lot more americans. a stanford professor should know that.
I wonder if he is aware that CO2 levels indoors are regularly much higher than outdoors? I suppose it is just a matter of time before California prohibits houses too.
Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem.
Oh no we don’t.
Jacobson estimated an increase in premature mortality of 50 to 100 deaths per year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the contiguous 48 states.
That’s got to be lower than measurable. Models again.
“This study establishes a basis for controlling CO2 based on local health impacts,” he said.
Well, that’s what he was paid for. Make the system more complicated, more expensive, more bureaucratic, more controlling.
When they start out with a false truism, why continue reading?
good lord these people are getting desperate. Next they will blame CO2 for male pattern baldness.
Big metro areas have been known deathtraps for centuries – think various plagues, crime, wars, mountains of pollution of all kinds, etc., etc. CO2 domes are the least of a city dwellers worries.
My first reflexive response was a sad one: I don’t trust scientists anymore. Let’s have someone replicate their results who are not in the “CO2 is bad” camp.
It would be difficult to peer revue this study without application of severe head trauma.
This study suggests that automotive CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions from residential and commercial space and water heating equipment are of greater local consequence in cities than emissions from power generation facilities, with the possible exceptions of municipal power plants and co-generation facilities, since IOU power generation facilities would generally be located remotely from the cities. That should raise a few eyebrows!
Does the study look at the other side of the equation, the number of lives saved from a warmer city? The last I saw, more people died from cold than heat.
Are they seriously implying that CO2 is the cause of these deaths and not any of the other REAL pollutants?
At what concentration does CO2 need to be to be poisonous to humans again?
An interesting paper but purely computer modelling with myriad assumptions. Where are the actual measurements? Virtually every factor mentioned in this paper has been or can be measured from atmospheric pollutants to ER admission rates and cancer rates.
Carbon dioxide itself is effectively harmless to human beings at concentrations found in the atmosphere. Nitric and sulphur oxides and hydrocarbons are toxic. It’s not the CO2, it’s all the other pollutants that usually accompany it.
It seemed to be suggested that the CO2 bubbles affected ozone levels, they may be associated but I’m struggling to see chemically how CO2 can affect ozone levels.
… on the order of 50-100 deaths/yr … [CO2] increased the [population weighted] air temperature by about 0.0063 K …
Give somebody a grant and a computer with enough decimal places, and he thinks he’s a comedian. Well, dying is easy, comedy is hard.
“The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so that’s the problem.”
— Will Rogers
There may well be health impacts related to living in a city, but CO2 is not a significant driver. Ozone, particulate etc. have little to do with CO2, and are related to industrial output, not Co2. This is realy a bad science issue
“Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem. ”
Uh, no. Its only a problem in the realm of computer models. Despite the house of cards falling down around them, some still cling the the “concensus” mantra.
A better idea might be to regreen cities and urban areas by planting more faster growing trees, like the eastern Larch whish responds very well to increased CO2 levels and acts to Sink the Carbon. These trees could be turned into lumber for construction materials and then replanted to sink more domed CO2
They must be using E. O. Wilson’s model that claims climate change will cause 17,000-100,000 species to disappear every year.
Plant more trees in Urban areas, might help lower the temp and soak up that nasty CO2.
How many more people and businesses do you want to drive out of California?
They seem to be calculating tiny changes due to CO2. I really can’t see the point they are making. Cities have higher temperatures more NOx Ozone etc, but this is little to do with CO2. Maybe I have missread the paper but it seems designed to make a headline rather than enhance our understanding. There is a good reason why AGW is assumed to be a non local effect. That reason is the fact that it is a tiny effect. If it has any impact it is because it effects the whole of the worlds surface. If one just looks at the column of air over a big city it must be negligible. Yes there are heat islands but there are numerous reasons for that (change of albedo, building airconditioning and heating etc). I do not understand how these things get published.
Tying everything to CO2/global warming/climate change is getting ridiculous. Yes CO2 is probably higher in urban areas…
1. more fuel (transpo, electric generation, heating) is being burned,
2. more people are exhaling,
3. fewer plants sucking it up.
I have to think #1 is the major contributor. But what about all of the other things that are spouting out of tail pipes and exhaust stacks? To say the CO2 is causing higher death rates seems ludicrous. How about more particulates, polyaromatic hydrocarbons from incomplete combustion, et cetera? Throw in additional stresses and generally less-healthy lifestyles in urban areas with the NON-CO2 pollutants and you might just have somthing causal to point towards that ISN’T CO2.
Maybe it’s just me, but I would not be at all surprised to find that stressed out people that don’t live very healthy lifestyles breathing in more junk sitting in traffic jams are probably gonna die more frequently than people that can sit on their porch, look out at their pristine back 40, breathe some fresh country air, and go to their “happy place” with relative ease.
I grew up in Southern California. Back in the 60s and 70s, on smog days my lungs would burn. The air is amazingly clean now compared to then.
Is this the essence of environmentalism? Finding new things to scare people about? I guess with warming alarmism collapsing, new excuses for seizing more control over us all have to be played up.
“This study establishes a basis for controlling CO2 based on local health impacts,” he said.
There you go. We Californians will stand up and fight for the right to pay people to regulate CO2, and we’ll do it even at the expense of teaching our children. Remember, we’re doing it for our …. errmmm …. children ?
http://www.insidebayarea.com/timesstar/localnews/ci_14680683?source=rss
Jacobson estimated an increase in premature mortality of 50 to 100 deaths per year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the contiguous 48 states.
………………………………………
Jacobson establishes the death rate increase using “Equation 1”, which comes from his reference (23), a 2001 study by Thurston, G.D. & Ito K. Epidemiological studies of acute ozone exposures and mortality.
(no free access to that study, so no equation to look at).
CO2 dome => ozone => pre-mature death rate increase =>
“This study establishes a basis for controlling CO2 based on local health impacts,” he said.
Wow, lets get started on local CO2 control, before it’s too late.
I haven’t even read it yet and I can already think of 10 ways to drive a Mack Truck through it… Going to read now, here comes 20.
And, believe it or not, California has done a marginally-respectable job in cleaning up it’s own air while preserving the economy. The current downturn aside, the insane restrictions on auto-emissions in California have worked wonders at cleaning up the air in the Los Angeles basin, where ocean air flow butts up against tall mountains and prevents pollution from easily blowing east. In this time the California economy has had a steady stream of manufacturing jobs leave, however, it was not destroyed by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s this argument that should never have gotten lost in the fraud that CAGW is, the argument that local populations should be allowed to self-determine on what level of pollution is acceptable to them.
Hmmm … ‘domes of CO2’ … not well-mixed throughout the atmosphere after all …
.
.
I think the point they are going to try to twist this into is that even if the data on global warming isn’t really correct, we should still do cap-n-trade because the local effect of these CO2 domes is killing millions of innocent people. They are not going to give up on controlling people one way or another.
Being that most of that urban CO2 comes from polluting sources isn’t more logical that the sources are causing both the increase CO2 and the increased pollution. Not increased carbon dioxide concentrations…cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants
Jacobson needs to return to flipping burgers along with everyone who gives credence to this yahoos ramblings.
This guy publishes a paper that just so happens to support a radical political agenda that he has been championing, and we are supposed accept it.
“Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem”.
Like they are living on another planet or what?
What a load of total trot.
Hmmm…
A model of temperature response to local CO2 increases.
A model of pollutant response to local temperature response.
A model of health impact response to local temperature response.
Nothing could go wrong here, could it?
No context that this modeled temperature response is a trivial part of urban heating. No context that heating might ameliorate other health issues.
“He’s a “Big Picture” kind of thinker, focused on finding large scale, but practical, solutions to the problems of climate change. For example: a few months ago, Jacobson co-authored a cover-story in Scientific American sub-titled, “Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels.””
http://tinyurl.com/yfqknub
Wow, he should move to Spain. They could use the help.
One teensy problem-as CO2 emissions have risen, air quality in our cities has improved.
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/aqtrends.html
Go figure.
See it does make sense for the USA and GB to trash their economies and lower CO2 emissions even if India and China don’t!
Just moving the playing field folks!
Move along.
Nothing to see here.
We have always been at war with Eastasia!
From the article;
“The cap-and-trade proposal assumes there is no difference in the impact of carbon dioxide, regardless of where it originates,” Jacobson said. “This study contradicts that assumption.”
I thought CO2 was supposed to be a very well mixed gas so how can this study contradict the stated assumption. Have I missed something?
tonyb
The alarmists are now starting to make more than enough rope with which to hang themselves.
The more of this type of unmitigated drivel they produce, the sooner the day that the public at large see this scam for what it is.
So what we need to do is put a huge tax on gasoline, dig up freeways and plant trees in there place, build subways and underground cities. If we could find the money it could create full employment. On the other hand, if CO2 is not the cause of the heat island, then it would be a huge waste of resources that would not save any lives.
Wow just wow….
They are “estimating” deaths for CO2 exposure?
This is insane. I expect the EPA will follow suit with an impact study estimating the number of deaths from dihydrogen monoxide vapor – with the understanding that not all dihydrogen monoxide is created equal.
The news story overstates the conclusions of the published paper. Keep in mind, this is another of those “correlation” studies. It isn’t physics-based, although the logic is mildly credible. Having examined the underlying health effect assumptions, remember, they are extreme estimates, not “most likely” estimates, so you are looking at the tail, not the best estimate of impacts.
All that notwithstanding, it is a means to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act, but under a much different scenario than that currently proposed. It would cause most cities to be viewed as “not in attainment”, and states would have to figure out how to reduce the CO2 levels in order to reach attainment.
This would still require EPA to begin with a National Ambient Air Quality Standard, but it would not be based on climate change “science”. Rather it would be based on traditional health impacts (seeking zero risk levels). The allowed CO2 levels would probably be less than historic (pre-industrial) CO2 levels.
If this moved forward on a traditional CAA track, it would require the elimination of automobiles (and buses and trucks) in cities, and when that was not enough, it would require closing major industrial facilities, or require CO2 capture (if that could be done in a cost-efficient manner).
None of this would happen on the current President’s watch (just takes too long, regardless of whether he gets one term or two). Lots could happen between now and then, including congressional action. In any case, for those of you subject to further fear mongering, you are now on watch to be more fearful.
Oh, I almost forgot. They will have to ban carbonated drinks too. And, they can have mine as long as they understand they will have to pry it out of my cold dead hand.
Cheers,
d.
I can have fun with this. Back when I studied medicine, we took delivery on a new bypass pump and did blood gasses outside the heart lung machine. Now the sensors are built in. As an engineer, I suspect Jacobsen has no clue regarding medicine
Several questions
1. Has he taken blood gas measurements in rural and urban people?
2 How do they compare?
3 Does Jacobsen know what CO2 concentration is in an exhaled breath?
4 Just a thought. Exercise is a factor relating to cardiovascular disease. How did he control for that?
Trivia. GE bought out the old OHIO brand anesthesia equipment. An anesthesia machine has several cannisters of gases including Nitrous Oxide, Oxygen, and used to have cyclopropane and CO2. I suspect an arm chair engineer has no clue why CO2 would be adminstered when a patient was under a general anesthetic.
Was the CO2 canister there to poison the patient?
It is crazy how they get on an alarmist tear and look ignorant when they get into a field they don’t understand and look stupid.
Has Jacobsen read a single autopsy report and found “cause of death air pollution” I suspect that he pulled the 50,000 – 100,000 out of the air.
He is also acting a little ignorant in that he comingles his thinking about CO2 and other polution in general including aerosols. He thinks he is clever since people do often carry a general fear of dying. Obama says people without insurance are dying. Last time I checked, there wasn’t a reference on autopsy reports either that said lack of insurance was the cause of death or even if they had insurance. I am sure Obama’s white coats can look at people in the morgue and tell whether they had insurance.
Embarrasing. These people are insane.
I’m looking at the article, and, he’s using a cartoon for the US outline. Who knows what maps where. Also, that map isn’t CO2 domes, it is: “For the U.S. as a whole, the correlations between increases in CO2 and increases in O3 and PM2.5 premature mortality were also both visually apparent (Figure 5) and statistically significant (r = 0.31, p < 0.0001 for ΔCO2 vs ΔO3 mortality; r = 0.32, p < 0.0001 for ΔCO2 vs ΔPM2.5 mortality)." In other words, it's his calculations of association of both CO2 & O3 with "premature mortality", which he doesn't define in the article. Nice!
His epidemiology data comes from the EPA, which is then fed back to the EPA in a classic echo chamber effect. This PM2.5 measurement is highly speculative to begin with. It's laughable to attribute hospitalizations to ozone. That's not even a diagnosis. The whole journal is alarmist crap.
This is another great quote: "The relationship between ozone exposure and premature mortality is uncertain; however, ref 19 suggests that it is “highly unlikely” to be zero. Similarly, ref 20 suggests that the exact relationship between PM2.5 exposure and mortality is uncertain but “likely causal”. Cardiovascular effects of PM2.5 are more strongly “causal”. " What does causality mean to these guys?
His belief that CO2 warms the air over Los Angeles in the summer is precious. How do you suppose the CO2 gets up there if not through heating of a huge urban heat island? One precedes the other, and as you can see, he has trouble with his definition of causality. He also doesn't look for counter-examples. That would go against his special interest. This whole article reads the deconstructionist movement.
That’s the way to do it…constrain your model so as not to resemble reality. Is there really any area that will have no local carbon being emitted…anywhere. Am I wrong in that assumption? I don’t think so. Also, his death additions are within the margin of error, which is quite enormous at 50-100,000 per year. I guess there was no concensus on that number.
Also, why does he use “ppbv” instead of the properly used “ppmv”? Since he is using the larger scale, wouldn’t the addition at the top only be 100 ppmv after adjusting?
Death Domes…..riiiiggght.
This raises a serious scientific issue though. If an increase in atmospheric CO2 is causing an increase in temperatures we should see a spatial correlation between delta CO2 and delta T. We know now from the satellite data that CO2 is not uniformly well-mixed.
This appears to be an attempt at supplying further argument for the EPA’s finding that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It still seems a bit of a stretch, however. It looks more like CO2 can be a marker for higher concentrations of air pollutants so it is guilt by association. You could take away the CO2 and still be left with dangerously high concentrations of harmful air pollutants, as well as more potent greenhouse gases.
If Democratic party leaders can force their members of Congress to abandon all ethics and normalcy to pass the Health Care Bill, look for them ramming through a number of contentious bills, including Cap and Trade, before the November elections. They will be counting on the Republicans not being able to win a veto proof majority, leaving the Obama administration to apply the new legislation as it sees fit.
How do you control a study like this? Almost all pollutants are concentrated near cities–how can you isolate the effects of CO2 (which is not a pollutant, BTW)?
Lots of the verbiage in this report conflates the effects of pollutants, CO2 and UHI. How can they tell how much temperature increase is due to UHI and how much to CO2? How can they tell which health effects come from temperature or pollutants or simply socioeconomic factors? These things sure make it seem like a piece of questionable research at best.
Study sponsored by the EPA?
Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone, as well as particles in urban air.
“Domes”? Really?
REALLY?
The domes are just spacial/temporal manifestations of all the CO2 emissions that go on in a city due to transportation, residential, and commercial use of diesel, gasoline, natural gas, etc. Cities are, i.e., manufacturing hubs for CO2 because of this. There is no evidence, to my knowledge, to demonstrate that these are properly described as “domes” or that it is the CO2 vs. other known UHI drivers that is responsible for the temperature difference that they propose (again, without any evidence to my knowledge) that is responsible for “trapping” other pollutants that ultimately is their justification for linking mortality rates into their equation.
In the Economics world this is called “fantastical thinking” – the stringing together of a series of unlikely events (in this case relationships) to support a preconceived, desired, and ultimately highly unlikely outcome.
…but I guess we should look on the bright side, if taken seriously this kind of stuff will help kill cap and trade schemes so (/sarcon) Go Stanford Go!!!! /sarcoff
“This study establishes a basis for controlling CO2 based on local health impacts,” he said.”
I would like to see the whole paper, but I have a pretty good idea that it does not establish a basis for that. Except, of course, to someone who wants it to do that very badly.
The CO2 obsession is going to prove far more dangerous than CO2 ever could be.
One important symptom of CO2 obsession, as this article demonstrates seems to be a greatly diminished reasoning ability.
“EVERYONE knows that carbon dioxide etc…………” ????
I suggest than NOT everyone knows. In fact, some people have suggested it, but no-one knows for sure.
Unless of course the Stanford study knows something that the rest of us don’t but they’re not telling us.
And as for “Not all carbon dioxide emissions are equal etc..”
Speechless.
ROFLMAO
Any essay which begins with a sentence like “Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem” is hardly worth reading. If the author crams four gross errors into that one sentence, there is little hope for the rest of the writing. Of course, the errors are:
1. “everyone knows” Acually, only those who are misinformed believe it. There is ample truly scientific data to disprove the allegations.
2. “main greenhouse gas”. Carbon dioxide is a trivial greenhouse gas. Water vapor is far and away the main one. Carbon dioxide may not even be capable of changing the climate
3. “driving climate change” There is no climate change. The climate gets warmer and cooler, but no period in the last hundred years has deviated beyond previous limits of temperature. Carbon dioxide has clearly failed to drive any change, since it is not happening.
4. “Global problem” The non-problem is known by many countries, India for example, to be a scam created by a small group of Government scientists, and distributed by the Indian, Mr. Pachury of the IPCC
I thought it was a well-mixed gas?
The only thing new about Jacobsen’s views are the hysteria. There are several errors including the claim about increased stability of the air column over a city. In fact, there is increased instability because the heat island is equivalent to an adiabatic bubble with circulation within as the air rises at the warmest point usually the Central Business District (CBD) and is held in by the inversion at the top of the bubble so it spreads out creating a general circulation within the bubble. During the day the bubble like an adiabat rises from its own buoyancy although it may also be displaced downwind.
Jacobsen predicts increased deaths due to rising CO2 levels but he needs to look at the levels at which it is considered a problem. In mines for example, the usual level at which miners are advised not to stay more than 15 minutes is 5000ppm. Can he cite a location in any city where levels reach above even 1500ppm and then can he cite any death to increased levels anywhere in the world.
Increased water vapour levels, because of increased evaporation from impervious surfaces, and increased cloud cover, (Atkinson) (http://www.jstor.org/pss/621493) are a much bigger factor than CO2 in amplifying the warming.
CO2 is not a pollutant, despite the Supreme court ruling that gave the EPA control. Higher levels in the city are conducive to more vigorous plant growth. I had the privilege of speaking to the first urban forest conference in Winnipeg a few years ago and identified the value of trees in the city. In greenhouses CO2 levels are often pushed to 1000 -1200 ppm to enhance growth.
Maybe Jacobsen’s time would be better spent studying the impact Enron and its carbon reduction plans had on California’s economy. The way it is heading there will be dramatically fewer cars in the very near future because of economic collapse.
How in h*** does he differentiate the heat from all of the energy usage from the supposed CO2-trapped heat? He certainly has a bloated idea of CO2’s abilities.
He is also assuming high levels of air pollution (non-CO2), which can be dealt with appropriately. I believe that there are a lot of people out there who think that smog is just as bad today as it was in the 1970s. There has been some significant improvement, but we can always do better.
Wow- you just have to shake your head after a while–100,000 US deaths a year from air pollution? #
CDC says in 2006 Chronic lower respiratory diseases accounted for 124,583 deaths of which some link 80% to smoking and then we have any number of other causative factors.. CDC outlines two minor air threats indoor pollutants and work place pollutants– absent is ambient air pollution. Do they just make this stuff up?
While car emissions may increase ground level ozone in an urban environment the largest ozone precursors are NOx from soil bacteria and isoprenes from trees. EPA’s proposed ozone regulations are flying under the radar because of all the attention on cap and trade– the ozone regs are going to be onerous in their own right…. So how does EPA intend to deal with the natural precursors of ozone (the same ones that gave the Smoky Mountains their name)? They are only going to put ozone monitors in urban environments. Sound familiar?
No comments showing up yet. Delet this if it’s already been posted please.
Moneywall version of the paper is at:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/es903018m
Is this what passes for science these days?
Notice that the graph of (delta) CO2 is in ppbv (parts per BILLION volume). Why didn’t they just add another three zeros and use units of pptv (parts per TRILLION volume); that would REALLY have accentuated the problem!
The atmosphere’s CO2 volume could double or even triple with absolutely no impact to human health. Consider the following:
Basic Information about Concentrations of CO2 in Air
1,000,000 ppm of a gas = 100 % concentration of the gas. Therefore, 10,000 ppm of a gas in air is a 1% concentration.
At 1% concentration of carbon dioxide CO2 (10,000 ppm) and under continuous exposure at that level, such as in an auditorium filled with occupants and poor fresh air ventilation, some occupants are likely to feel drowsy.
The concentration of carbon dioxide must be over about 2% (20,000 ppm) before most people are aware of its presence unless the odor of an associated material (auto exhaust or fermenting yeast, for instance) is present at lower concentrations.
Above 2%, carbon dioxide may cause a feeling of heaviness in the chest and/or more frequent and deeper respirations.
If exposure continues at that level for several hours, minimal “acidosis” (an acid condition of the blood) may occur but more frequently is absent.
Breathing rate doubles at 3% (30,000 ppm)CO2 and is four times the normal rate at 5% (50,000 ppm)CO2.
Toxic levels of carbon dioxide: at levels above 5%, concentration CO2 is directly toxic. [At lower levels we may be seeing effects of a reduction in the relative amount of oxygen rather than direct toxicity of CO2.]
I can well imagine the university needed a quick reply to the Hoover Institute’s Peter Berkowitz’ “Climategate was an Academic Disaster Waiting to Happen”, published in the Wall Street Journal March 13. It was only of their “most-read / most e-mailed” articles in the Saturday edition.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704131404575117314262655160.html
Its comments about universites-turned-breeding-grounds for boutique classes and fuzzy thinking is right along the lines of “postnormal” discussions here.
“Core curriculum” may make eyes glaze over, but it’s the problem at the decaying root of educational systems in U.S., in my not-so-humble opinion.
I tried to read this paper, and noticed: “The CO2 increases in California increased the PW air temperature by about 0.0063 K, more 16 than it changed the domain-averaged air temperature (+0.00046)”. 0.0063 K?? Give me a break!
So what’s the real deal in this paper? As far as I can tell, they’re using some models to show that there’s a correlation between CO2 emissions and real pollutants, which is really not very surprising. But then in the conclusion they say: “The results, combined with those in (14), suggest that local CO2 emissions should, in general, increase local ozone and particles due to feedbacks to temperatures, atmospheric stability, water vapor, humidity, winds, and precipitation. Thus, CO2 emission controls are justified on the same grounds that NOx, HC, CO, and PM emission regulations are justified.”
Maybe I should read the paper again, and more thoroughly, but I really can’t see how the 0.0063 K of warming would create all that. Are they making up a causal chain where there’s just covariation?
I think AGW hysteria is more likely to create deaths in urban areas, both from cold in winter and heat in summer – because of insufficient energy supply (or so expensive that many people, especially the poor and elderly, don’t buy air condition or proper heating)
Correction to my own phrasing above:
I know this to be true at middle and high school levels. I assume it pertains to higher ed as well.
Amazing…
All that steel.
All the concrete.
The paved highways.
Tarmac.
Buildings.
Cars.
All the heat gathering medium in an urban environment and the temperatures from UHI generally show a 1-2°C warming compared to surrounding areas.
Now tell me if CO2 concentrations are supposedly as high as the worst case scenarios in urban areas right now why aren’t they 10°C warmer than surrounding areas over the course of the year? Does the IPCC not say land areas will warm some 8-10°C by 2100 under such high concentrations of CO2?
Did the good professor look into how the local increase in temperature caused by the CO2 perhaps affected the death rate in winter due to cold?
Looks to me like this is a step down the same road, or possibly cul-de-sac ,as ‘health effects of low level radiation.’
Can we have a human biologist tell us what the maximum levels of CO2 in the atmosphere the human body can cope with.
Is the problem, if it exists, more due to particulates and other pollutants in the urban atmosphere or even the water? And what is the contribution of urban stress to motality rates.
Surely you cannot look at CO2 in isolation? There must be plenty of other differences between a rural and urban environment to take into account.
Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases
This is pure nonsense: even if there is near three times more CO2 (some 1,000 ppmv) in the first 1,000 m (above a few hundred meters, most of the differences in CO2 levels are leveled out) inside the town boundaries, that has negligible impact on local temperature. The difference is 0.3 W/m2 (according to Modtran), giving a local offset of not more than 0.1 C. Hardly measurable in the rest of the UHI effect!
Uh, yeah.
And “All pollutants are equal.”
Was it National Lampoon who said that some people are impossible to satire?
It will be interesting to read the Idso’s response to this since they’re the first two references cited by the study.
Anthony, if there are typos in this comment, please forgive me. I am laughing so hard that I it is likely with a real-life ripe dead certainty (in IPCC terms) that finger trouble will cause typographical errors!
CO2 causes urban warming! Not concentrations of people and services and central heating and power and motor vehicles and (so on and so on) but CO2! Heewack!
OK, if this is not an example of rice-bowl science, I’ll eat my old floppy hat.
http://www.herkinderkin.com/2010/02/climate-change-rice-bowl-science/
Cause … or correlate with?
Did he make any attempt to falsify his thesis, such as imagining tests that would do so?
Holy cherry picking Batman! Yes, it is truly funny they have decided to ignore Urban Heat Island effect. This study is aimed at getting more funding for their research. :o)
Occam’s razor: Deaths due to pollutants other that Co2. Deaths due to summer UHI other that Co2 warming.
So, not only is Mark Z. Jacobson the director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford, he is also a ‘Human Biologist’ able to estimate using models,/b> the number of future deaths,/b> related to Co2 warming.
The IPCC say that C02 is a well mixed gas:
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/016.htm
The IPCC says CO2 is long-lived in the atmosphere while most others say it is much more short-lived:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800581r
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N31/EDIT.php
One giant, glaring omission: How does CO2 cause these deaths? How did they eliminate the effect of all other pollutants?
All these studies seem to have the same obvious flaw. In the case of CO2 warming, they make a model that predicts less warming and then conclude that all the extra warming is caused by CO2 and CO2-enhancing effects. Same here. More city deaths = CO2 is the cause.
It’s outrageous.
The more calories daily intake, the more trash food, the more carbohidrates the more CO2 through EVERY WAY OUT to the atmosphere…this is not peer reviewed but an empirical fact.
if no local carbon dioxide were being emitted, then all local citizens are dead or missing.
This is fairy tale stuff. Anybody here know anyone who has died from air pollution? Has regular air pollution ever been listed as the cause of death on a death certificate? Probably not since London did away with its deadly sulfuric acid smogs of the early 20th Century.
Certainly, air pollution can impact health, but people who are seriously impacted have medical problems that would likely cause their demise sooner than later. The number of deaths caused by air pollution is a fictitious number made up by overzealous policy bureaucrats with Napoleon Complexes. It has no real meaning.
In order for this to begin to be legitimate, one would also have to analysis the health benefits of all of those things that generated the CO2 in the first place, plus add the direct benefits of increased CO2. Using the same kind of ‘logic’, one would find that air conditioning and heating, which filter indoor air and allow people to keep their windows closed, SAVE thousands from premature air pollution deaths. If the infirmed are forced to open their windows because they can not afford the high cost of air conditioning, it would be an air pollution slaughter.
Imagine if the infirmed could not drive their cars because of the high cost of gas, and were forced to walk everywhere, constantly exposed to the deadly pollution. Another slaughter would ensue.
Globally, increased CO2 increases crop yields, keeping food prices affordable and saving untold thousands from starvation; perhaps millions if we feed the ‘proper’ assumptions into our model.
My rudimentary model indicates that for every emCO2 related death, there are 5,492 lives saved by using CO2 producing devices, plus 3 who are actually raised from the dead.
It is a sad day when sarcasm is actually more legitimate than that which it lampoons!
A very good point indeed.
Here are some cold related deaths in the UK.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=574
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=10805
What about the effect on polar bears and glaciers in L.A.? What about that?
Tim Ball (13:41:26) :
Good points! I had to scratch my head at the notion that the additional heat over cities created atmospheric stability! Is there any legitimate atmospheric research coming out of our universities?
Where’s Mel? Time for another sequel.
Mad Max Beyond CO2 Dome.
Oh great. Now, in addition to the usual run of fears, I have to fear a Giant Invisible Dome of Death surrounding my city. And there is a GIDD surrounding every city, so I can’t even run to somewhere else.
Fear the GIDDs.
He is what is wrong with California. They create false problems and apply bogus solutions. Thousands of immigrants came to California and are now retirement age. As they die, we have had this clown unable to recognize 2 things among others. What influenced their health over decades ago when they lived elswhere, how did that impact longevity?
In the case of Baja Norte, how much of this “pollution” comes from an increase of frijoles in the diet CH4 and CO2. I know it is popular to blame cars. No one in the wet season brings up forrest fires. Burning makes the air very dirty. But no, it gets more research to blame cars and human drivers.
In healthcare research, we do longitudinal studies. He may not know what those are.
Willie Soon discussed the “co2 dome” in Salt Lake City in this PPT.
http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork09/PowerPoint/Willie_Soon.ppt
I am so relieved because I thought a lot or respiratory problems were caused by pollutants such as Nitrogen Oxide, Carbon Monoxide, low level Ozone, diesel exhaust particulates and of course smoking. This study makes it perfectly clear with its uncomplicated and jargon free explanations that once again it is our friend CO2 that is the main culprit. On top of that the way air heats up over cities and is dragged downwind is shown to be wrong by the excellent models quoted in this study, and air actually stays in neat domes over urban areas. All we have to do is lower the CO2 in urban areas and it will be cooler and all the other pollution will be resolved at the same time.
Fanatastic.
Did anyone stop to think that cities have higher CO2 levels because of all the breathing? Just get rid of all the people and their polluting exhalations and then the urban environment will be healthier!
Seriously, I thought urban areas were warmer because the steel, concrete, asphalt, etc., warm more from the sun and keep that heat longer than the natural vegetation they replace. Add to that the heat from internal combustion, air conditioning, electric motors, etc., etc. and you get an urban heat island.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co2 looks pretty factual. Normal outdoor concentration less than 0.04%, some people start having trouble at 1%, but humans can adapt to higher levels. (I’d love to be able to track levels in this office.)
I’ll bet that carbon monoxide is a much greater problem.
Jacobson’s claims do not pass the sniff test.
I suspect this guy is a shill for the EPA. Any bets on where he gets his funding?
Somebody’s probably already mentioned it, but there was a report in the last couple of days from some high up mucky-muck in UK that there are something in the order of 40,000 additional deaths in cold weather (i.e. winter). Makes the paltry 1000 USA-wide from CO2 domes look pretty insignificant. Which it probably is, statistically speaking.
“Espen (13:51:29) :
I tried to read this paper, and noticed: “The CO2 increases in California increased the PW air temperature by about 0.0063 K, more 16 than it changed the domain-averaged air temperature (+0.00046)”. 0.0063 K??”
Thanks for sharing. This guy has a good thermometer.
There seems to be some misunderstanding of the paper in the comments here. The experimental design is quite neat – run the climate model once with uniform CO2 concentrations, once with higher urban CO2 concentations. In principle, any difference between the two model runs can be attributed to urban CO2.
I have a number of concerns with the paper
1) The vertical profile of CO2 is not well described. Extra CO2 warms the planet by increasing the hight at which longwave radiation can be lost to space. So extra warming is only expected if the CO2 dome extends to about 10km.
2) The results seem to be based on a single run of each case. An ensembly of several runs would give far more robust statistics.
3) The predicted temperature change with local CO2 emissions is so small that other policies – for example painting roofs white – are likely to be far more effective. (Their effectiveness could be modelled using the procedure developed here).
I am reminded of R J Mitchell (WWII Spitfire aircraft designer) who advised a test pilot: “If you read a document that you don’t understand, it’s no good”.
It might have been: If you read a document that you don’t understand, it’s no bloody good”.
According to the Death Records report of the Department of Public Health, State of California, there were 236,220 total deaths in the state in 2005. Attributing 50 to 100 deaths a year to the specific cause of CO2 levels at total mortality of this magnitude might be difficult.
I would love to know how CO2 induces ozone formation.
Hang on a tiny fraction of a second there. We are talking about a maximum overall difference of 100,000 parts per billion (funny how they like to use that as the measurements get oh so much more scary looking). That is 100 parts per million. Or 0.1 parts per thousand. Or to put it in more clear terms, 0.01%, or one part per 10,000.
So an extra CO2 molecule in every 10,000 molecules of air is going to have any kind of health impact on anyone?
Has anyone even looked through this paper to check any of the conclusions before publishing it, or was it just a “It says global warming is bad, publish it!” decision?
This “study” proves that it is all about the control of lives, not about science. Of course, Stanford U. is a hotbed of Post Modern Science, so what would one expect.
I keep thinking, it’s just all so sad, watching formerly great institutions wither and die from intellectual fraud.
“Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone, as well as particles in urban air.”
But none of this affects the thermometers in cities of course…
If someone tried to pass this through our court system it would be tossed as frivolous and they would be fined. If only that could be applied to climate research we might eliminate this kind of nonsense.
Anthony,
Are you sure that you should have published this at this time?
From what I read it seems like it probably comes with an embargo on publication for another couple of weeks or so. Very early next month would be perfect timing.
Voodoo-science!
The study says the CO2 domes cause urban heating which in turn causes all the deaths. But another factor that can raise a city’s temperature is latitude. If this study is true, all the city folk south of the Mason-Dixon line are already dead men walking. The only sane response is for the government to evacuate all urban dwellers in the South and South West.
“Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem. Now a Stanford study has shown it is also a local problem, hurting city dwellers’ health much more than rural residents’, because of the carbon dioxide “domes” that develop over urban areas. ”
He’s an alarmingly alarming alarmist!
Hu Duck Xing
Department of Redundancy Department
“Richard Telford (14:45:35) :
There seems to be some misunderstanding of the paper in the comments here. The experimental design is quite neat – run the climate model once with uniform CO2 concentrations, once with higher urban CO2 concentations. In principle, any difference between the two model runs can be attributed to urban CO2”
Thank you Richard! The entire time i was thinking: Anu, Wren, Sou, Richard, Joel, they usually defend everything done with climate models. So they MUST defend this mindless drivel as well. They have to. They can’t back out.
And there you are. Defending a guy who argues with a temperature difference of 0.000… i forget how many zeores. ….63 K.
You are making a fool out of yourself but you have to… you’re in the Jacobson trap.
How much longer do we have to put up with tripe from Stanford. If it’s not Condoleezza Rice’s nonsense, it’s Paul Ehrlich or Stephen Schneider making some wild unsupported claim or other. Left/right, conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat, in the 21st century they just seem to have a lock on silliness. Honestly, if I produced this kind of drek when I was a PhD student I’d have been drummed out the department.
Can’t somebody remove their accreditation?
ahh snip me….Who cares anyway.
Has anybody measured the CO2 level in the House or Senate chambers? The atmosphere there certainly appears to be toxic.
Some real smart climate scientist have discovered that we will not need a sun to survive in the future LOL!
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2010/03/even_a_long_period_of_low_sun.html#comments
This is a great thread. Jacobsen has made an outrageous conclusion and seemingly hasn’t actually performed an experiment. Just think how ignorant people are that feed him research funds.
They told us eating eggs would kill us. Then on bad smog days, stay inside. I guess we now have numbers for people that went outside. For a few dollars, we could put the fence to exclude California like Mexico from our territory.
Califoirnia produced some great thinkers like Anthony Watts and others on this board and Jacobsen must be an intelligence offset.
Something isn’t sitting right with this. There is nothing about the effects of temperature (i.e, heat waves) inversions, high winds (known to increase asthmatic symptoms)… I could go on. Did Jacobson go looking for his conclusion before he started?
It’s simple, really
Pollution causes excess deaths
CO2 is a pollutant (according to the EPA)
Ergo, CO2 causes excess deaths
Add a bit of epidemiology into the mix, and you get some precise figures – plucked, quite literally, out of thin air.
Urban Heat Islands tend to disappear when the wind gets up, I guess they will have to factor in a wind factor charge as well. And of course if the prevailing wind for a city blows all of this CO2 to another location, say out in the country, then people there will have to pay more because of the higher starting concentration and consequent risk from increased death rates
I am sure they can ramp up the taxes and excuse for control in other ways as well.
I have just cut our the hedges back today and the amount of growth I have had to remove convinces me that CO2 is definitely a pollutant
hell_is_like_newark (12:25:32) :
good lord these people are getting desperate. Next they will blame CO2 for male pattern baldness.
I knew it! my ancestor that had MPB was a sea captain- in the early days of Steam!
Jimmy you got Co2 Poisoning from th coal-fired smoke stack! should’ve stayed with
Clipperships…
So let me see, a little reasoning. If the CO2 dome trapped heat, and since the ppm measurements are so much higher than that required to cause runaway global warming, then why isn’t it thousands of degrees by now in NY City? OK, that was only a little sarcasm, but still doesn’t it say there may be a problem with the CO2 forced theory?
And why couldn’t these high CO2 cities just plant more trees. Our city just won some sort of award for trees, maybe the cities with the most CO2 could get in the competition. I hear trees love CO2 and grow big and strong with lots of it.
Junk.
I can drive 500 miles from here and find a place that is at least 1-2 deg warmer on average. Funnily enough I don’t drop dead when I’m there. I guess we humans can handle a range of temperatures after all.
I would have thought that higher mortality rates in urbanised areas would be from:
– increased crime
– increased traffic deaths
– increase in ‘urban’ problems like drug overdoses, death of homeless people, etc
I cannot possibly see how you could filter out the noise of death rates and attribute it to any one variable, unless you were counting deaths directly attributable to that cause (like stabbings or pedestrian accidents)
They mean life expectancy has decreased in developed cities?
File them under Crazies.
Do the words “Criminally Insane” have any meaning these days.
It is not so long ago that a combined Stanford/Lawrence Livermore study “showed” that arboreal forest were a global warming hazard, because they replaced the nice snow, that could otherwise occupy those far north latitudes and help cool the earth by raising the albedo. The northern forests in contrast absorbed solar energy instead of letting the snow reflect it harmlessly out into space.
Oddly enough it was Prof Steve Running (think I have that right) at Montana U, who suggested they might need to retract that assertion.
Seems like somehow the very bright Stanford researchers; maybe this same Jacobson and the equally bright livermore scientists aka Energy Secretary Chu’s disciples, apparently had no idea that all that solar energy being absorbed upo there instead of reflected out, was actually turning atmospheric CO2 into Wood; aka trees and elaves; and wasn’t being converted into waste heat that cooks the planet.
Yeah, you can find rocket scientists in some of the strangest places.
What R. J. Mitchell actually said was: “If anybody ever tells you anything about an airplane which is so bloody complicated you can’t understand it, take it from me, it’s all balls”.
I hope the relationship between this quote and the study here is understood.
Can’t we banish these berks to planet deltoid? They’ll be very much at home there. Wouldn’t more CO2 make our valued inner city green spaces greener and less water dependent?
brc, I guess you could find a link between CO2 emissions per square mile and pedestrian accidents. ^_^
.0063K
wow.
OT
Speaking of warmth, or at least the lack of it, we still haven’t any daffodils here in Britain (though there have been crocuses).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258361/Britains-biggest-daffodil-festival-begins-single-daffodil-time-40-years.html
“The gardens have been tidied up, the morris dancers booked and the cake and jam stalls made ready. As preparations get under way to welcome 10,000 visitors to Britain’s biggest daffodil festival, just one tiny detail is missing. After the coldest winter in more than 30 years, there’s not a single golden bloom in sight.”
Domes of CO2? What’s Up With That?
Here was I, believing that CO2 was well-mixed right across the whole atmosphere, homogeneous …. and apparently it is not so !
So, what does this idea of ‘Domes of CO2’ do to the Mauna Loa series? Could it be that the Mauna Loa instrument is at the centre of a massive CO2 dome, fed by the world’s largest active volcano?
Does it mean that all those careful CO2 readings made during the 19th C, rubbished because they were ‘all over the place’, were in fact correct?
If I were a climate-scientist, I’d be very worried about the political implication of this paper.
One of the more dangerous domestic devices is electricity. Stick you finger in a toaster and you might die. There is a greater density of electrical toasters in cities than in the country. To protect citizens, should States be allowed to regulate electricity use for making toast?
The production of toast plausibly correlates resonably well with the ambient CO2.
For heaven’s sake, we have learned to live with the toaster. Why not ditto CO2? It’s far less lethal.
“Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone, as well as particles in urban air.”
So using this theory, we should build all of our cities in Northern Canada and Siberia where the weather is always cold and where the local temperature does not put pollutants in the air. And using this theory, other things being equal, Phoenix is going to be a less healthy place to live than New York City, because it is much warmer and must, therefore, have more pollutants in the air.
Regarding the static air over the cities, could there possibly be a correlation between that and the fact that all those sky scrapers serve as wind buffers.
Sounds like another study that has found what it set out to find. And California government will undoubtedly be in debt to the author.
——-
From NASA:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-196
The IPCC says one thing and NASA says another. The science is settled I tells ya!
David Schnare (13:18:19) – I read your article at Master Resource today and enjoyed it very much .
Sounds more like they mean CO, from which there actually are recorded deaths every year.
On second thought. EPA will soon target H2O as well it seems, and maybe a Stanford study might conclude that breathing H2O for a lengthy period of time will for the most times lead to an early demise.
Maybe what that Mann-schtick really was showing was the average amount of deranged people inhabiting former pretty solid universities.
“… premature mortality of 50 to 100 deaths per year….” How many seconds or minutes? What the heck is “premature”? I want to get facts, numbers – is this meant to be science? Or fiction? Or speculation?
“Richard Telford (14:45:35) :
There seems to be some misunderstanding of the paper in the comments here. The experimental design is quite neat – run the climate model once with uniform CO2 concentrations, once with higher urban CO2 concentations. In principle, any difference between the two model runs can be attributed to urban CO2.”
Your first misunderstanding is that you are believing that computer models can produce empirical data.
Empirical data can only be produced by experimentation. But it seem that lately it is quicker and more comfortable to sit down, run a model, twitch the estimated values until you get the result you want and publish a paper. This is not science. Without empirical data you don’t get science.
And much has been said here about the lack of proof that links the CO2 increase with death. Again, correlation doesn’t mean causation, but, meh… there is not even empirical correlation.
DirkH (15:12:20) :
Please read my whole comment, not just the first paragraph. Then you would realise that I am not enthusiastic about this paper.
John Galt (12:43:36) :
Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem.
“The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so that’s the problem.”
— Will Rogers
Hats off to John and Will. Couldn’t say it better. Now, take a look at what the father of Gaia, green guru James Lovelock has to say:
“I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane — some of them, anyway… They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldn’t be brushed aside. It is clear that the angel side wasn’t without sin.”
Carbon Cult Science from the Department of Silly Talks.
Is there any “science” that money can’t buy?
“New study finds malicious molecule™ correlated with children’s tears”
Junk like this and they still have the nerve to equate “sceptics” with the tobacco lobby. Fortuitous that it comes as the EPA faces challenges to its insane ramblings.
Does CO2 alter the adhesive properties of tar and feathers?
Just asking.
Here are some exposure limits for the dreaded Carbon Dioxide from the US Department of Labor website:
OSHA GENERAL INDUSTRY PEL (Permissible Exposure Limit): 5000 ppm; 9000 mg/m3
OSHA CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY PEL: 5000 ppm, 9000 mg/m3 TWA (8 hour Time Weighted Average)
ACGIH TLV (threshold limit values): 5000 ppm, 9000 mg/m3 TWA; 30,000 ppm, 54,000 mg/m3 STEL (STEL= short term exposure limit)
NIOSH REL( recommended exposure limit) : 5000 ppm TWA; 30,000 ppm STEL
These alarmist claims are getting funnier all the time. This is even better than the recent BBC report about birds getting 1.5 % smaller due to global waming.
I just did my own model calculations and compared 10 caucasians each staying for 10 days in
a) Atlanta with high CO2 levels (above 380)
b) Sahara desert with low CO2 levels (below 380)
c) South pole with low CO2 levels (below 380)
Each group under the same conditions: T-shirt, shorts with $100 in the pockets, sneakers. Each group was controlled after 3, 6, 9, 12 days and the death toll counted. Result: Due to sabotage thinking the Atlanta group did not give in and survived for unknown reasons. This of course indicates that even the low levels of CO2 in Antarctica and Sahara lead to premature death.
I suggest that Jacobson should pick the biggest CO2 bubbles in his data base, and publish (sans naem of course) the death certificate of at least one person in each of those majort bubbles where the medical cause of death was CO2 pollution.
From Drudge & the LA Times the cost of “green” going up in LA:
Consider this:
DWP RATE MAY RISE BETWEEN 8% and 28% TO PAY FOR MAYOR’S GREEN INITIATIVES
The hike would pay for more aggressive conservation programs and a solar plan designed to create 16,000 jobs as well as cover the fluctuating price of coal and natural gas.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dwp-rates16-2010mar16,0,7870063.story
The leaders say the folks will appreciate paying more when they finally learn what it’s being spent on……uh huh. The “green revolution” may be taking shape. “Look out for in your ear”!
The EPA has called Co2 a toxin yet look what I found on the EPA site:
“Despite great progress in air quality improvement, over 126 million people nationwide lived in counties with pollution levels above the primary NAAQS [ National Ambient Air Quality Standards] in 2008.”
Now look at CO2 – number of people = 0.0
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/images/peoplechart2008.jpg
Source:
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/aqtrends.html
These fools keep digging holes all over the place and hope that people aren’t watching.
I find this statement particularly incorrect! “Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change”
Does “everyone” really “know” this?
“Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations ”
I like science articles with no numbers except in the chart which is not clear. 20,000 ppb is only 20 ppm. 400 ppm is a health hazard? Thats BS.
BTW, next time you go to a town hall meeting, a movie or a basketball games, know that CO2 levels are likely 2000-5000 ppm, so prepare to have a heart attack. Also, since you exhale CO2, you are a polluter.
Pretty soon we will need a license to breathe.
“Jacobson estimated an increase in premature mortality of 50 to 100 deaths per year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the contiguous 48 states.”
Is that statistically significant? If not, how could it ever be measured and/or confirmed?
I suggest that this story best fits your Ridiculae category. But just think of the economic opportunities, as we supply everyone with gas masks to prevent premature death by CO2 inhalation.
Actually the CO2 comes from the grave yards of all the ones that passed on.
Dust to dust gives off CO2 and water vapor and some CH4.. The residual is carbon and minerals.
The Los Angeles Times recently did a story detailing all of the NHTSA reports of Toyota “sudden acceleration” fatalities, and, though the Times did not mention it, the ages of the drivers involved were striking.
In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89—and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.
Drinking Geritol and driving a Prious can be deadly. If you live under the DOME, drive the Toyota Hybrid make sure all your papers are in order.
To my comment above I should have added that a cursory reading of the Jacobson PDF left me scratching my head . To what depths of specious reasoning will these people sink ?
http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2010/03/o-wake-effect-das-eolicas.html
Parts per billion??? That’s…uh…real big, right? Oooooooo! Billion!
Only took about 5 seconds for my propaganda detector to peg the needle. I knew warmist propaganda would get crazier and crazier as CAGW implodes, but this was beyond my expectations.
Is this guy PAID for this nonsense?
Does he have ANY idea what it was like for 1/2 my parents lives and 2/3’s my Grandparent’s lives with SOFT COAL as the primary heating fuel in Minnesota.
Excuse me, part of my Grandparents lives were under burning PEAT in Northern MN, for heat.
WHAT A MORON!
Max (breathing CH4+2O2 = CO2 + 2H2O, thank GOD!)
Repeat after me:
Carbon Dioxide is not a toxic gas.
It is a simple replacer of oxygen in the air.
If the EPA moves to put strict limits on CO2, I suggest we file a lawsuit demanding that all indoor air meet the stricter limit. Then all structures will have to leave their windows open year round and my state can sell ten times more coal! 😀
George in KY – thinking ahead.
“tarpon (15:29:34) :
And why couldn’t these high CO2 cities just plant more trees. Our city just won some sort of award for trees, maybe the cities with the most CO2 could get in the competition. I hear trees love CO2 and grow big and strong with lots of it.”
Over a 24 hr period, trees are a CO2 sink. However, trees and plants only utilize CO2 during the daylight hours. Come evening, they release CO2 contributing to higher CO2 levels in the evening.
Trees may also contribute to local warming since the darker leaves and bark absorbs more short wave radiation than more reflective grass, and the trees mass per surface area stores more heat than an equivalent amount of grass covered ground. Also, they break up and reduce wind that removes heat from the surface So while trees might reduce the daytime maximum temperature if you are sitting under a tree, they might just contribute to higher surrounding temperatures.
There is one hypothesis that deforestation caused or contributed to the LIA. Reforestation may have an opposite effect.
“more death” – this is one of the real causes:
attn green groups. you would think the MSM would be eagerly covering The World Biofuels Markets conference in Amsterdam this week, but there’s zilch reporting on this once-touted solution to CAGW! wonder why?
9 March: BiofuelsInternat’l: EU exec sued over secret biofuels reports
Legal charges have been brought against the European Union’s executive as documents linked to biofuels and their detrimental effect on the environment have been kept under wraps.
The four environmental groups responsible for the suing say that these reports will add to a growing portfolio of evidence damning biofuels.
The groups, ClientEarth, Transport and Environment, the European Environmental Bureau, and BirdLife International, filed the suit after first gaining access to the documents on 15 October. They claimed that the European Commission failed to release all of the documents by the 9 February deadline under the freedom of information laws.
Some of the reports discuss the possibility of higher EU farm incomes but allude to the fact that biofuels refineries may lead to food shortages for the world’s most impoverished countries. Other documents suggest biofuels will increase the need for land and result in famers from tropical areas expanding their cropland into easily affected areas including wetlands and rainforests, which would have a negative on the surroundings.
The release of this evidence puts the EU 10% target at risk…
Nusa Urbancic of transport campaign group Transport and Environment said: ‘Current EU biofuels policy guarantees that Europe will use lots of biofuels, but it doesn’t guarantee reductions in greenhouse gas emission – in fact it seems likely it will make things worse.’
http://www.biofuels-news.com/industry_news.php?item_id=1853
15 Feb: Actionaid: New Biofuels report shows how Europe is driving hunger
In a major new report ‘Meals per gallon: the impact of industrial biofuels on people and global hunger’ ActionAid estimates that as a result of the legislation, the amount of biofuels in Europe’s petrol and diesel will increase nearly fourfold. It says this will have a disastrous impact on the world’s poor as food prices rise.
Report author Tim Rice said: “Biofuels are driving a global human tragedy. Local food prices have already risen massively. As biofuel production gains pace, this can only accelerate. ..
The majority of biofuels need nitrogen fertiliser, releasing nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Scientists believe that the extent of nitrous oxide emissions has been seriously underestimated…
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/102322/news.html
some hints as to the players here:
16 March: StreetAuthority: How to Turn $25,000 into $3.2 Million
by Andy Obermueller
Disclosure: Andy Obermueller owns shares of DYAI
How to Turn $25,000 into $3.2 Million will draw more than a thousand of the foremost experts together for three days ending Wednesday in The Netherlands. Nearly 300 speakers will talk about the industry’s latest developments.
This isn’t some ho-hum annual confab of the Midwestern Region Widget Alliance going on at some down-market Vegas venue presided over by Wayne Newton. Rather, the World Biofuels Markets conference is a meeting of the men and women who are inventing a new industry, who are using cutting-edge science to harness new forms of energy that could not only reduce the world’s dependence on OPEC but that could help reduce harmful pollutants while opening new markets and creating scores of thousands of jobs.
Among the sponsors: Petroleum giant and clean energy pioneer BP (NYSE: BP), as well as agricultural titan Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM) and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy & Transport.
The guy I want to hear most: Dyadic International (OTC: DYAI.PK) CEO Mark Emalfarb…
http://streetauthority.com/a/how-turn-25000-32-million-1218
the executive director of actionaid was interviewed extensively on aljazeera english this week, but the interview cannot be located; however, actionaid’s tim rice is quoted in this video (btw aljazeera is generally accepting of CAGW):
15 March: Video: Aljazeera: Biofuel use ‘could threaten poor’ http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/2010315113843716570.html
when CAGW proponents talk of saving the poor of the world, send them the video.
Is this guy getting paid for crap like this?
Honest to God – think about this. This LUNATIC “study,” which means less than nothing, is being bought and paid for – by somebody.
The State of California might as well have invested in Bernie Madoff – because Bernie would be far more reputable than the author of trash like this.
I would like to ask the author – Where is the lower limit? What in God’s name is YOUR lower limit? Do you have one?
“Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem”
“Everyone”!!! He obviously hasn’t heared of Climategate, WUWT, Climate Audit etc.
“…carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas…”
So, where does that put water vapour?
“…global problem…”
What the f*&^&%$ Show me how it is a global problem. The biosphere is greening and temperatures have remained relatively flat for over a decade.
Biosphere:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003400/a003451/index.html
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/06/biomass_boosting.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/300/5625/1560
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/06/090624_greeningdesert1.shtml
Temps:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
http://deepclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/ar4-a1b-a2.gif
http://www.ianschumacher.com/img/TempsvsIPCCModelsWM.jpg
Geological perspective of temperatures:
http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/GTEMPS.gif
Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem.
Faulty premise to begin with. It goes down hill from there.
And they walk among us!
kwik (16:17:26) : “Carbon Cult Science from the Department of Silly Talks.”
Carbon Cult. I like it. Feynman would have liked it.
How money did they waste doing this only to come to the conclusion there is more air pollution in cities than rural areas? I already knew that!!!
mmmm bubbles of heat caused by co2 – have they evidence for that other than its warmer in towns at night? Correlation is not causation, especially when there are other more obvious reasons!
He ESTIMATES the numbers of deaths per year, then wants to use this estimate as FACT to form the basis for controlling CO2 levels!!!!
Is there some kind of competition to see how much AGW believers will stomach without actually employing any intelligent thought?
Wow, I think California should clean up Urban Sporadic Lead Particle Pollution before worrying about CO2.
“Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem”
This is a psychological ‘trick’ and it makes me want to puke…’everyone knows’… pathetic.
DirkH (16:18:10) :
“These alarmist claims are getting funnier all the time. This is even better than the recent BBC report about birds getting 1.5 % smaller due to global warming.”
And…the one about people becoming fatter because of global warming.
And, more earthquakes because global warming has melted glaciers which takes the weight of the land.
And, more snow because it’s warmer.
And, if all the ice in the Antarctic melted sea levels would rise loads.
And if all the sea ice melted sea levels would rise.
And more old people will die from Global warming in the future.
And CO2 is a pollutant.
And…
pft (16:44:33) :”Over a 24 hr period, trees are a CO2 sink. However, trees and plants only utilize CO2 during the daylight hours. Come evening, they release CO2 contributing to higher CO2 levels in the evening.”
Source? Link? How much CO2? How much higher?
CO₂
CO₂
CO₂
CO₂
The mantra’s getting old and stale. Reeks of thinking inside the box.
The problem of UHI must be gaining traction and has to be woven into the AGW fantasy world. What better way than to demonize concentrations of CO₂ found in the UHI’s. Don’t even think about concrete and asphalt.
Summing up: Horse Feathers.
Grant: U.S. EPA, Climate Effects on Air Pollution, 2007-2011
EPA pays the money and gets its report to order.
You guys in USA are paying for this junk science.
OK, I like poking holes in bad theories as much as anyone. But I can’t with this one. Really, I can’t. You can’t poke a hole in a hole. Its not even swiss cheese, its an outline of swiss cheese. On a napkin. With a hole in it.
Really, though, he missed the obvious. Its not as much the carbon dioxide as it is the dihydrogen monoxide. Think about it. dihydrogen monoxide is three times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. It is associated with acid rain. A person immersed in dihydrogen monoxide will die in minutes. At low temperatures, dihydrogen monoxide becomes a solid capable of destroying the traction capability of cars, causing tens of thousands of deaths from car accidents each year. When warmed, it is known to release dissolved carbon dioxide, leading to a potential tipping point.
Ban the real danger! Ban dihydrogen monoxide!
“His findings that carbon dioxide domes over cities and carbon dioxide buildup since preindustrial times have enhanced air pollution mortality through its feedback to particles and ozone served as a scientific basis for the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of the first regulation of carbon dioxide from vehicles in the United States (the California waiver).”
Science to order!
Wow! The EPA was right!
Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem.
Global problem?
In my opinion it shows clearly it’s more of a “certain city’s” problem. Funny how Miami and Atlanta and other big cities do not even register, maybe it’s the wind. Seems if you made all of those light blue city’s civilians buy electric cars you would watch those light blue cities turn bright red, not dark blue, without nuclear plants to fuel them. Ever notice how you get about one-third the joules or BTUs per dollar for electricity compared to other fuels. I know some is gained back at the car level but seems not enough to make up the difference, and polluting batteries as they go bad are not the way to go. We would be trading a harmless gas for REAL poisons.
OT – Just weather, not climate:
——–
Now, remember the good old days of “spring arrives early due to global warming. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…”
Innuendo : def; Where it hurts the most.
I think it’s all related to McDonalds and Starbucks outlets. Must be the caffeine in their coffee.
Any idea how long it takes the CO2 dome to re-establish itself after a windstorm?
That study so is staggeringly stupid it boggles the mind.
If they had one.
Which they don’t.
Mildly OT: CO2 as refrigerant
http://co2engineerref.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/refrigerants/
“…Its environmental advantages (GWP of 1, non-ozone depleting, NON-TOXIC, non-flammable) could make it the future working fluid to replace current HFCs in cars, supermarkets, hot water heat pumps, among others…”
CO2 is a Global Warming gas but it is also a coolant. It has been outlawed as a pollutant but is non-toxic.
The ocean has 50 times higher CO2 content. As the Japan current travels past California, the water warms and the higher vapor pressure releases more CO2 from the ocean. Every time a fishy dies in the Pacific off the coast of Baja Norte, it decays and releases CO2 into the ocean and into the air.
Stephen Skinner (17:40:36) :
Cfc’s are NON toxic inert gases.
ScientistForTruth (17:19:05) :
Grant: U.S. EPA, Climate Effects on Air Pollution, 2007-2011
EPA pays the money and gets its report to order.
You guys in USA are paying for this junk science.
I know, the plumbing is well hidden but we are determined to find the spigot so we can turn it off!
Another OT.
Copenhagen climate summit undone by ‘arrogance’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8571347.stm
The “disappointing” outcome of December’s climate summit was largely down to “arrogance” on the part of rich countries, according to Lord Stern.
The economist told BBC News that the US and EU nations had not understood well enough the concerns of poorer nations.
And in the same article is the usual picture of a cooling tower! is the reason cooling towers symbolise sources of pollution because they are big?
RE: Dusty
And with increasing extreme weather events caused by AGW just how long does a CO2 dome stay in place?
Not sure how to bring this to your attention but see the following that I have just seen on the BBC website.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8571347.stm
The arrogance seems to me to belong to Lord Stern.
It’s very hard to be polite about this study. So Jacobson ‘estimates’ that CO2 domes will kill 300 to 1,000 annually. Let’s see, that’s 1 in a million to 1 in 330,000. No wonder he uses the weak word, ‘estimate’. I would like to ask him to ‘estimate’ how many people will die when they can’t afford to use their air conditioners when their electricity bills ‘skyrocket’ (in the word of the anointed one) due to carbon legislation and have to shut them off during a heatwave. How many elderly with heart conditions? How many on modest disability with respiratory conditions? So, Mr. Jacobson, care to ‘estimate’ that? But then they’re not supplying you with research funding, are they.
Sorry about the rant but this is as polite as I can be about such incredible nonsense.
CO2 is not a pollutant, and while not out to bat for genuine particulate pollution I have to say that my wife’s grandmother in Hong Kong died only a couple of years ago at 104, her mother is still vigorous at 82, despite the air pollution. The pollution daily drifting in from the Pearl River Delta is mind boggling, I have been visiting HK now for 25 years. I’m all for tackling THAT kind of pollution.
I have a new bird on my birdfeeder. It’s the very rare [fortunately] Jabcobson’s cookoo.
‘ “This study establishes a basis for controlling CO2 based on local health impacts,” he said. ‘
Good. They can start by banning carbonated drinks.
I must admit I am getting sick & tired of the phrase ‘…there is overwhelming scientific evidence…’ [for AGW].
I want any person saying that to provide a list of 10 pieces of scientific evidence to prove their case, and which can be studied, verified and criticised. Preferably on a blog such as this.
I’d settle for three pieces of scientific evidence.
Even one conclusive piece, with all raw data, programs, calculations, etc., and which is indisputably correct science and beyond criticism.
The population is aging. That is because women spent a lot of time with men once they came back from the war and then THOSE baby boomers had children. Those children are now past their prime (like me) and are beginning to push daisies. The baby boom echo. So we have this large cohort swelling the ranks of the dead. However, now that we are aging, thus dying off rather quickly, any increase in anything can be correlated to increasing death.
Name something that has been increasing, and I can correlate it to increasing death.
I don’t quibble over the long term effects of chlorine as pertains to human lifestyle…
In salt we find our hypertension…
let the “CFC” threat go…
Complaining about R-12 does you no good…
It’s not worth the Chlorine risk…
pat (16:45:38) :
“more death” – this is one of the real causes:
Most people care for our planet and especially other people but that does not classify them as an environmentalist. I always felt it would be the arrogant, meddling, hard-core environmentalists who would kill this world, not save it, blind to the hidden dangers. With politicians in their pockets they are now actually doing it. But that article in your comment says maybe a few are finally turning their eyes critically on themselves and seeing what they are actually doing, and have the backbone to reverse their actions in time. I hope.
I live about an hour south of LA. The Marine layer pours in every morning and sometimes takes until mid-day to clear.
The water vapor combines with particulate matter (principally from car exhaust, forest fires, and the arid climate) and probably helps to contribute to the “heat island”.
The San Bernardino mountains to the East provide a barrier to about 3,000 feet above sea level (peaks run up to 10,000).
Looking at the mountains from the coast, it a rare day to see them without a cloud of haze. Fly into this area and you drop into the haze before landing (height unknown).
I actually wish this study had been done with real world readings instead of some computer model which makes it to easy to dispute. Clearing the pollution from this area would be great but the water vapor will always remain.
A CO2 dome is pretty tough to prove without actual measurements?
Had to check whether today is 1 April………..
From “rotten ice” to “domed co2”, from “well mixed gas” to “lumpy”, from “2035 glaciers vanishing” to “2350 glaciers vanishing”, from “Earth spins faster” to “Earth slowing down.”
Climate science at its best! Now I know why the IPCC’s reports are riddled with the word “uncertainties” yet they are 90%> certain of AGW.
Things caused by global warming:
WARNING – do not have food or drink in your mouth.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
This definitely brings “human health junk science” to a new level, doesn’t it.
This character has outdone Paul Ehrlich, I believe – Paul can’t top this.
Rachael Carson couldn’t top this.
There’s no “scientologist” out there who can top this.
This is a league of its own, I want a coffee mug with Jacobson’s picture on it. Anytime I see some more junk science, I’ll look at his picture and say, “this is pretty bad, but it still didn’t top Jacobson. Try again.”
Lets see, cars are one of the major killers of people. Factories / industrial accidents too. So we have a very high correlation between risky activities and machinery. Machinery that runs on CO2 produced energy.
So if we swap that machinery to run on non-CO2 produced energy things will become safer how again?
Someone need to learn the mantra:
Coincidence, Correlation, Causality
and the rules for moving from left to right…
For these fools;
repeat after me
“Correlation does not necessarily mean causation”
“Correlation does not necessarily mean causation”
“Correlation does not necessarily mean causation”
Why are we paying these idiots ???
They just won’t stop. 😐 omg, we’re all going to die, in L.A. anyway. 😐 We’re all going to die. We should all commence to wail and gnash our teeth at man’s use of energy sources provided.
Actually, this could work pretty good for me. I live in a rural area. So, we should make it easier for CO2 to be emitted here, just to be fair to the poor saps in metropolitan world. Please be advised, you are to move all of your job producing, standard of living increasing businesses here, IMMEDIATELY!!!
From the office of………..
“Jacobson estimated an increase in premature mortality of 50 to 100 deaths per year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the contiguous 48 states.”
Are the number of deaths statistically significant? If we take California as 75 deaths then can they please list the names of the deceased in 2009?
With all of the CO2 death gas being produced it’s wonder the US population is living longer and healthier lives than during pre-industrialization.
Technology has pluses and minuses. While living conditions generally get better there’s always a downside as well. If we compare, for example, Chicago’s health to Calcutta’s and determine Calcutta’s to be worse is it due to a relative lack of CO2?
Anway I thought that the mechanism of AGW required the CO2 to permeate the upper atmoshere and hold in heat globally, which was supposed to trigger out of control evaporation of water, and the water vapor was supposed to really get the temperature going. now we’re being told that it can occur locally over cities. Has anyone’s city been experiencing greenhouse like conditions?
I would have bet the most common and dangerous greenhouse gas in the wild was water vapor. There’s lots of it, there’s plenty more where it came from, and there’s no place to put the source of it to keep it out of the environment. It thrives in sunlight, hides at night in the grass, and pools it’s resources when we’re not looking. Crafty.
I wonder how many lives could be saved if we just took shorter showers.
16 March: Politico: Lisa Lerer: Bill Clinton rallies Dems on climate bill
Former President Bill Clinton urged Senate Democrats to pass a climate bill this year during their weekly luncheon on Tuesday, arguing that legislation would spur innovation and create new jobs..
And he dismissed the idea of an energy-only bill, a proposal backed by some moderates. A cap on greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to spur new, clean energy investments and jobs, Clinton told the Democratic senators.
“He was very strong about it and that we need to price carbon in the effort to get the money flowing to help to transform the economy,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). “I thought he spoke very strongly.”
Kerry is working Lieberman and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on a revamped version of the climate bill that they hope to release by the end of the month. In hopes of attracting bipartisan support, the three lawmakers plan to include several proposals traditionally backed by Republicans like expanding nuclear power and offshore drilling…
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34523.html
someone should start a “Hands Off CO2” campaign. maybe we can make our own t-shirts…
Climate Clowns like Jacobson know a hell of a lot that ain’t so.
Anthony,
I have no doubt that the people on your site could show scientists how ridiculous most have been with garbage science like this.
Not including other gases? No solar heat reflection and absorption? Humidity?
Population density?
Former “President” Bill Clinton urged Senate Democrats to pass a climate bill this year during their weekly luncheon on Tuesday, arguing that legislation would spur innovation and create new jobs..
And he dismissed the idea of an energy-only bill, a proposal backed by some moderates. A cap on greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to spur new, clean energy investments and jobs, Clinton told the Democratic senators.
Folks, you might as well start learning Chinese, and get used wearing baggy gray linen suits with Mandarin collars, and sandals. After they buy it out for a penny on a dollar, this will be your workforce life, when they start giving out jobs in the country – on their terms
I suppose we still have a number of studies linking CO2 to all kinds of ridiculous things that are going to be published given all the funding dished up for climate change research. Better take a deep breath and reach for the chips and beer – still lots more climate entertainment to be had.
I predict in five to ten years you won’t be able to find any scientists who’ll admit they embraced the idea of CO2-driven catastrophic warming.
Nicholas Harding (17:58:24):
And with increasing extreme weather events caused by AGW just how long does a CO2 dome stay in place?
—-
I have a theory these domes move about in a yet unnoticed manner and there are more than CO2 domes in existence. I’m going to apply tomorrow for a grant to follow up on a theory that there are several types of domes — suburban fresh air domes, rural farm methane domes, forest rain ozone domes, et al. — that get pushed to and fro by the wind and, if I’m right, a follow up study of what happens when these domes move over incompatible geographical areas.
Everyone does know that Steven Schneider also works at Stanford? Don’t you?
REPLY: Dr. Schneider is deceased – Anthony
“I just have a hard time believing that a highly localized difference in CO2 concentration measured in ppm can create a measurable temperature difference.”
And if it can, how can the world wide increase in CO2 NOT lead to temperature increases over the last decade?
“Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem.” Non sequitur. What a crock of pickled of turnips …no, that would be insulting to turnips.
If this post were true, we should all stay away from crowded theaters; the Navy should not have manned submarines, and one should never sleep in a smallish bedroom with the door closed.
Haven’t heard of any mass deaths among indoor concerts goers lately.
I don’t have the link for Prof. Blick, but he shows the following CO2 concentrations:
“…
At present the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is 385 ppm. Historically the amount of atmospheric CO2 has never reached a level where it is “…Sailors in U.S. submarines work in CO2 levels of 8000 ppm with no ill effects. Crowded auditoriums, may reach 10,000 ppm. The recommended threshold level in civilian workspaces for an 8-hour day is 5000 ppm. A typical office has 350 to 2500 ppm. Exhaled human breath is about 45,000 ppm
…” Source: Edward F Blick, PhD, Univ. of Oklahoma
Jimbo (18:41:14) :
From “rotten ice” to “domed co2″, from “well mixed gas” to “lumpy”, from “2035 glaciers vanishing” to “2350 glaciers vanishing”, from “Earth spins faster” to “Earth slowing down.”
It’s all the fault of ARM.
Anthropogenic Rotten Models…
This study is filthy, stinking, methane-producing bilge.
I pity the poor soul who has his name on it for eternity [Jacobson]. There is still time to retract.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I couldn’t help but notice that in the Stanford article, figure 5 of the Jacobson study, that delta CO2 is given in ppbv instead of ppmv. This results in very large scary numbers (as high as 100,000 ppbv) with which to alarm the non-scientist readers.
As far as establishing an increase in mortality rates due to CO2 domes, it is very doubtful that the Stanford study had located a statistically significant number of Death Certificates that listed the cause of death as “Inhalation of air pollution”. To develop a model that points the finger at CO2 domes to account for increased mortality within large cities with CO2 domes, where there are literally dozens of other variables that certainly make a contribution is a stretch. It gets even worse, the overall urban mortality rate doesn’t even correlate with the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels since 1968, in fact metro mortalilty rates have declined at a greater rate than non-metro mortality rates since 1990.
Link: http://www.dailyyonder.com/tracing-rural-americas-mortality-penalty/2009/09/30/2368
F Ross:
I think you’ve hit on something – you know when a person panics and hyperventilates? Medics ask them to breathe into a paper bag to cure their anxiety with CO2. That must be it! Like the world, these clowns are CO2 starved and living a panicked, anxious, paranoid existence. I think they should each one be gifted by one of us with a brown paper bag, and we should slip it gently over their heads whenever we recognize them. I suggest Gore should always be seen in public that way until his delusions are cured.
Rupert (13:56:15) :
Can we have a human biologist tell us what the maximum levels of CO2 in the atmosphere the human body can cope with.
Basically, the maximum atmospheric CO2 content tolerable first depends upon the body being able to effectively get rid of its own excess CO2, which in turn depends upon how much it produces as a result of its activity: base CO2 production from simply vegetating + exercise produced CO2.
The human body likes a CO2 concentration of about 56,000 ppm, or 5.6%, with the body’s pCO2 = 40-44. The brain’s Respiratory Center, located in the Fourth Ventricle, is truely “exquisitely responsive” to any changes in this concentration. It responds to increased arterial blood CO2 concentration, such as occurs with exercise, by increasing the automatic rate and depth of breathing – “ventilation” – which gets rid of the excess CO2 to the ambient air so as to maintain a normal arterial blood pH = 7.41- 7.44 .
Again, the main source of troublesome CO2 is first the human body itself. One calculation I did based upon Comroe’s text, “Respiratiory Physiology”, showed that a heavily exercising human can produce 1 pound = 454gm. of CO2 per hour, which has to be exhaled by increasing the rate and depth of breathing. Whereas an “average” person might only produce about 2.2 pounds = 1kg. per 24 hr. .
The main problem with an increase in ambient CO2 concentrations would be the decreasing concentration gradient or difference between the body’s 56,000 ppm and the ambient concentration, which is currently around 380 ppm, making it increasingly less possible for the body to unload its excess CO2 to the atmosphere per each breath/ventilatory cycle.
I’m guessing that an ambient CO2 concentration of 30,000 ppm = 3% would necessitate at least a doubling of the respiratory rate to about 32/min. along with increasing the depth of respiration, to keep the body’s pCO2 = 40 -44. That can be a lot of muscle work itself, which in turn produces more CO2
But at some greater level of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration it would not be possible to do anything other than breathe and eat without the body’s CO2 concentration increasing. Even then the body can still minimize the pH effect of an increased CO2 by increasing its HCO3 concentration via the Kidney’s increased HCO3 production: arterial blood pH = 7.4 = pkA + log [base]/[acid] = 6.1 + log [HCO3]/.03 [CO2] = 6.1 + log 20/1 = 6.1 + 1.3.
A body pCO2 = 60 = 84,000ppm., 50% larger than the normal pCO2 = 40 = 56,000ppm., can be tolerated but people usually don’t feel too well and might have some degree of decreased mental function and “obtundation”. At a pCO2 = 80 there’s usually going to be some degree of “narcosis” or “coma” simply on the basis of the CO2 concentration itself. But you never know exactly how any particular person will be affected.
That evil, evil CO2.
I had a load of beers last Friday evening. They all had CO2 in them, and I got drunk. That tells me CO2 makes you drunk.
I also had a headache the next day. That tells me CO2 gives you headaches too!
And now it’s building up in domes over our cities. It’s worse than we thought!
CodeTech (14:30:01) :
Oh great. Now, in addition to the usual run of fears, I have to fear a Giant Invisible Dome of Death surrounding my city. And there is a GIDD surrounding every city, so I can’t even run to somewhere else.
Fear the GIDDs.
Makes you GIDDY thinking about it.
Sorry. OK, I’ll go hide under a rock.
Don’t worry, it’s been peer reviewed.
“Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem.”
I don’t know that, so this statement is demonstrably false. More seriously, this statement is completely contradicted by opinion polls in the US and UK.
But in another sense, carbon dioxide is a huge problem. Because of the AGW delusion, governments around the world are poised to spend trillions of dollars trying to solve a problem that almost certainly doesn’t exist. It will divert funds from real problems such as the provision of clean water and the eradication of malaria. It will increase poverty in developing countries where poverty is the real killer. And in the developed world it will cost everyone many, many thousands of dollars or pounds or euros.
But, particularly since Climategate, there are signs that, against all the odds, the *real* problem may be solved. Fingers crossed….
Chris
So, these so-called “C02 domes” supposedly increase the ambient temperatures by 0.0063 C., while the UHI effect typically raises cities temp. by some 5C. The UHI effect is some 800 times more powerful than this mythical “C02 dome effect”, and yet Jacobson wants people to get alarmed about the C02?
This is beyond PNS. It’s PNS as practiced in Alice’s Wonderland, while puffing mightily on the caterpillars’ hookah.
Jimbo (16:25:48) :
That is not CO2, Carbon Dioxide, it is CO, Carbon Monoxide.
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/carbon.html#conat
It’s another computer model simulation:
From page 2 lines 19-20:
[i]For this study, the nested global-through-urban 3-D model, GATOR-GCMOM (14-19) was use to examine the effects of locally-emitted CO2 on local climate and air pollution.[/i]
Not sure which version of GATOR-GCMOM was used, it got a significant expansion (J09c) in 2009. The cited studies on how the model works (14-19) are from 2009, 2008, 2001, 2007, 2008 & 2008 respectively, so one would assume its not the latest J09c version, but J07b or something earlier???
You can read more about GATOR-GCMOM, and the capabilities, according to its makers, of the different versions, here:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/GATOR/
Back to the study, from page 11, in reference to Figure 1 on page:
[i]Figure 1. Paired-in-time-and-space comparisons of modeled baseline (solid lines), modeled no4, emCO2 (dashed lines), and data (22) (dots) for ozone, sub-10-μm particle mass, and acetaldehyde, from the Los Angeles domain for August 1-7, 2006.[/i]
This is the only part of the study compared to real world data.
So how do the models measure up to the falsification test of real world data? How rigorous is the comparison between the two models predictions and the EPA measured ozone, sub-10-μm particle mass, and acetaldehyde results?
Why no line for the real world data? Only dots? Only one week of comparison to real world data? [b]ONE WEEK!?![/b] The rest of the models run for either several months or the whole year, all without comparison to real world data. Does anybody else smell something fishy or am I misreading something here?
The source for the actually measured data (22) is given only as:
http://www.epa.gov/air/data/ (2006).
That part of the EPA site seems to only go up till 2002. I’m trying to find the LA-County and California State data from the EPA here:
http://www.epa.gov/airexplorer/index.htm
There may be selection/weighting bias issues in the sites that make up the EPA’s LA-County & CA-State data headings as compared to the way the model weighs the pollution levels for the same headline areas (or cells).
More importantly, I can find no real world data for LA-County or CA-State CO2 levels, either from the EPA or in the studies references. There appears to be no empirical evidence for an LA CO2 dome, or for its size/magnitude, in the models time period (2006), only a GATOR-GCMOM modelled CO2 dome.
Without an empirical measurements for LA and CA, how can the models predictions for base (which includes anthropogenic emissions) CO2 dome levels vs no anthropogenic CO2 dome (and hence its modelled v EPA data ill-effects) be falsified? On this count, isn’t the study just more junk and model navel gazing?
“It doesn’t mean you can never do something like cap and trade,” he added.
Thank the Lord! What a relief!
Had me worried there for a minute.
/sarc
Chris Wright
“But, particularly since Climategate, there are signs that, against all the odds, the *real* problem may be solved. Fingers crossed….”
But see my earlier post where Lord Stern (with the ear of the UK Government) says that Copenhagen failed (but not really, because over 70 countries have signed up to something that he thinks important) because of the arrogance of the leading developed nations. I fancy the link below will suggest who the arrogant party actually is.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8571347.stm
Charlie
This study seems to assume that if there is an increased level of carbon dioxide over a city, and also raised temperatures, then a sigificant amount the increase in temperature is caused by the CO2. Has this been established ?
The increased level of CO2 over a city is surely due principally to the burning of fossil fuels. This creates heat directly, along with the CO2. Some may also be due to the concentration of people, but the pricipal is the same – each human being produces heat and CO2 at the same time.
At first glance, this looks like yet another case of confusing correlation with cause and effect.
Unless it can be shown that the extra CO2 itself raises temperature significantly due to IR absorption, then all this study proves is that there is a potential health hazrd involved in living in warm places or in the proximity of other humans. Then again, there are fairly obvious hazard involved in living in cold isolated places.
WE are 20% Carbon-Based… where does that content come from and why would we believe that reducing CO2, an element that without which, life does NOT exist in abundance as we know it, is somehow good for the earth again?
It really pains me to see the effect of gov in our schools ‘teaching’ ‘history’ and ‘science’, the idiot box and sitcoms that provide a fictional account of life–and some actually believe this fiction and alter their behavior to suit the fiction, and the lack of facts being given by the MSM (and even the smaller sources).
Our brethren, the humanoids in our universe (no, I don’t have any scientific ‘facts’ to back up this belief… it is pure speculation based on nothing but extrapolating life on this planet via its conditions, outward), need to come, expose ALL the hidden (good and bad) and expose us to reality once again. I believe in intelligent life more than I believe in economics (trickery/slavery/manipulation), Politics (trickery/slavery/manipulation) and Religion (trickery/slavery/manipulation).
“…Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases,,,”
Every desert camper knows that very chilly evenings are the result of radiative cooling due in the presence of dry desert air. If Jacobson wants to find an example of a GHG dome I suggest he take a trip to Palm Springs. On a recent visit there I experienced 95 degrees and 95 percent relative humidity at 6 AM. This is not an isolated incident, its happening in numerous desert communities. The culprit in the case of Palm Springs? Evaporation from the 52 heavily watered golf courses surrounding Palm Springs.
When will the alarmists get it that CO2 is a minor GHG?
[snip – political]
Mr. Moderator, don’t know if my recent post went through or not, but if it did please fix spelling of blockquote [blockqoute – my very bad] Thanks.
Deleted repost it – Mod
One day these Geniuses will notice that soft drinks contain the dreaded CO2.
“I’d like to buy the world a coke”.
and see what happens.
Has anyone considered how many of those deaths are attributed to high-velocity lead poisoning. That’s one of the most dangerous pollutants in certain parts of these big cities.
That would be the “Urban Heat Packing” effect.
Don’t tell Jacobson, that the majority of Atmospheric CO2’s warming ability occurs with the first 20 ppmv. Since we are currently at nearly 400 ppmv adding more will have an effect so small as to be unmeasurable. CO2 (Plant Food) has been doing most of it’s warming ability for a very long time, ever since the atmospheric volume reached 20 ppmv, and that’s the same as saying CO2 (Plant Food) has always provided near to it’s maximum warming, and cannot do any more of any measurable significance.
However Climate Clowns like Jacobson, keep people like me seriously amused and amazed, and I cannot wait for his next Pseudo Scientific Synthetic.
If you look at a political map , (looks very similar to the above CO2 map huh?), you’ll quickly see that most of the liberal whackos, the people who worship Al Gore, kowtow to George Soros, feed WWF, pick a person who never exhibited any evidence of leadership to be the One to lead the free world, (what’s left of it), etc. – are the very same people who live in these CO2 ‘imperiled’ cities. If these hypocrites are so certain that CO2 is such a big problem then this Jacobson study affords them the perfect opportunity to prove their sincerity and LEAD BY EXAMPLE – stop using gasoline and fossil fuel generated electricity.
I suppose the Y-axis on the CO2 plot was the first clue, using ppb instead of ppm, so it displays a maximum temporary change of up to 100ppm, or 100,000ppb. The desperation is getting silly.
i hope ist bette in the future with the CO2
It sobering to think that all life on earth in carbon-based, and the way this carbon is distributed to and among all living things past and future, is mainly via CO2!
When are these people going to do proper studies on the ACTUAL stuff of life?
Correct Supercritical, All life on Earth is Carbon based, and every Human Being is approximatly 20% Carbon, including Jacobson. Problem is I think Jacobson’s 20% is all in his head, hence with Carbon for brains he suffers from PSS Syndrome (Pseudo Synthetic Science). Good for a laugh but very sad for the advancement of mankind.
Atmospheric CO2 is the giver of all life on Earth, and it is Scientifically correct to describe it as Plant Food, we would all be better of with more of it not less.
I know my eyeballs aren’t calibrated, but from the graphic, figure 5, it sure looks like half the US is at or below 200 ppm CO2 and about 80% is below 350 ppm, Mauna Loa CO2 is at 389 ppm, might be fun to take the raw data and grid it to the whole earth. The magic eight ball says Mauna Loa could spuriously high, and Jacobson might find himself on somebodies S-list for letting that cat out of the bag!
OK! Some reality check! Most of the extra warming in urban areas compared to its surroundings is caused by the urban heat island effect. This is caused by the extra absorption of heat in concrete, asphalts and things like that. Also the amount of CO2 is higher than in surrounding areas. But how much extra warming can this possible cause?
We know that the warming from the urban heat island effect can be several degrees.
But, the extra warming from CO2 based on even the worst climate models should cause a warming in the order of 0.1 or 0.001 degree.
This guy has a PhD degree and work at Stanford.
And some wonder why the trust in climate science is deteriorating. Go figure!