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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“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!