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.
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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