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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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?