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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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).