Deadly collision? Really? This must be before they remove all the automobiles from London per the recent edict from the EU/EC. The author must have suffered through too many “BBQ summer” heat waves in the London tube.
Here’s more:
“We are seeing how urbanisation is growing – we have passed the threshold of 50% (of the world’s population living in urban areas),” he told BBC News.
“There are no signs that we are going to diminish this path of growth, and we know that with urbanisation, energy consumption is higher.
According to UN data, an estimated 59% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2030.
Every year, the number of people who live in cities and town grows by 67 million each year – 91% of this figure is being added to urban populations in developing countries.
The main reasons why urban areas were energy intensive, the UN report observed, was a result of increased transport use, heating and cooling homes and offices, as well as economic activity to generate income.
The report added that as well as cities’ contribution to climate change, towns and cities around the globe were also vulnerable to the potential consequences, such as:
- Increase in the frequency of warm spells/heat waves over most land areas
- Greater number of heavy downpours
- Growing number of areas affected by drought
- Increase in the incidence of extremely high sea levels in some parts of the world
The first two are effects of UHI, especially downwind of city enhanced precipitation effects. The last two have nothing to do with city growth at all.
But who are you to believe, the UN or the lying eyes of the satellites and the data they produce?
Anyone can measure their city UHI effect themselves. It makes a great science fair project.
Of course, my friend Jim Goodridge, former California State Climatologist, had this nailed in 1996 with his study of surface temperature in California:
The full BBC scare story is here h/t to a bunch of people, you know who you are.
Paul says:
March 29, 2011 at 7:22 am
2% sounds like a hell of alot of landmass. Are there any geographers out there who can verify this figure?
I live in Colorado, where one of our Metropolitan Statistical Areas is Colorado Springs. There are two real cities there, some small towns–and a lot of farmland. You would consider most of that area rural. The City and County of Denver is all urban, but the Metro Stat Area includes mountains and other very rural places.
My guess is the 2% figure is correct, as charted by mapmakers. The actual area of housing, including lawns and streets, is surely much less.
Terrific article Anthony. I suspected this sort of thing was going to be part of the new marketing campaign this year. I fear this year will bring some of the most specious and sensational claims seen yet. It appears the groups peddling this agenda have amassed a significant media fund for an all out blitz. Prepare for attack.
Incoming!
Could I ask a question please out of curiosity? Is there a temperature below which UHI has no effect? Would a metropolis be warmer than the surrounding countryside if the temperature falls below say minus 20, 30 or 40 degrees.. or is there always an UHI effect no matter what the temperature? Thanks 🙂
The UN should obliterate those arrogant cities and its citizens inmediately. How do they dare to eat junk food and generate so much heat! 🙂
Well someone better notify the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) who say
Per capita energy consumption in New York is among the lowest in the Nation due in part to its widely used mass transportation systems.
http://www.eia.gov/state/state-energy-profiles.cfm?sid=NY
The main reasons why urban areas were energy intensive, the UN report observed, was a result of increased transport use, heating and cooling homes and offices, as well as economic activity to generate income.
Don’t want these people earning any money after all, they should just be on the dole.
The UK government seems determined to deprive us of a cheap and reliable electricity. The EU wants us to stop using cars. Now, presumably, the UN wants us to relocate to the countryside. Year Zero, here we come.
Query:
Has Goodridge added the next 14 years, or is the data available?
Randomengineer says –
“Urbanisation is an aggregate; i.e. rural dwellers generally are contributors to the food supply whereas urban dwellers are 100% consumers. You don’t usually have cattle in the next apartment in a city. Energy for urban life needs to also factor in trucking EVERYTHING into the city plus the load taken up by the rural dwellers to create/grow/raise that which is consumed in the cities.”
Are you suggesting that all city dwellers return to the countryside and grow their own food? Also, who will then produce all the things farmers and rural people need?
Not for nothing do we call ’em the “British Brainwashing Corporation”.
Actually, given the current regime, I would think they would cut off funding for Cities instead! Kill 2 birds and all. But then hypocrite is not an unfriendly term when talking about this administration.
Those bleedin’ alarmists just don’t get it, do they. The so-called global warming they are all jumping up and down about, tearing their hair out about, ranting and raving about, and ostracising the rest of us about, is nothing more than LOCAL warming.
Yet, here we have an article that clearly states the importance of UHI – i.e., local warming – but they just don’t see it. It’s right under their noses! Just what is it going to take to make them wake up and see the truth.
There is a cute little duplicity in the first paragraph about cities being responsible for 70% of emissions. They slyly forgot to specify which emissions. Sure, majority of the population is located in the cities, so they use more. However, per capita cities are quite modest due to denser population, shorter daily travel distances, greater use of public transportation and centralized deliveries. But it is not even half of the story. The cutest part is that they mean only very narrow part of emissions, the one people can be made feel guilty about: auto fuel and heating. Emissions that are generated, say, by agriculture and loss of carbon from soil (which total twice all the emissions originated from fossil fuel burning over the human history) are not even considered. Its much easier to bully a “sinful” timid city dweller than a “saintly” (and armed) farmer.
For me, urbanization is a result of the minority owning the majority (all or most) of the land (as opposed to: the USA belongs to the people of the USA). Once, citizens are “forced” to urbanize because of ownership, the “economies to scale” become very inbalanced because of the first observation. And the above observations result, because of the again . . . . who is it that says: “Wait for it!”
“Its much easier to bully a “sinful” timid city dweller than a “saintly” (and armed) farmer.”
This is brilliant. Can I use this?
Randomengineer:
I think the study is global and refers to all cities. In 3rd world and developing countries the population tends to move toward population centers to at the energy available. Think of India, Indonesia and Pakistan with large bustling cities but mostly undeveloped countryside. In those places if you live in the country then you have very little access to energy. In western type countries the difference is probably the other way around as far as energy usage goes. And no it doesn’t take much energy to bring food into cities. European cities have very well developed public transportation and in fact the transportation goes between the cities also so individual energy use is less.
Anyway that’s my 2 cents.
Barry Strayer
UHI wouldnt be such a problem if there weren’t so many GHCN temperature records contaminated by it. Anyway. Phil Jones has proved it’s negligable.
“The assessment by UN-Habitat said that the world’s cities were responsible for about 70% of emissions yet only occupied 2% of the planet’s land cover.”
———————————————————————-
Brilliant! Aren’t cities the places where most people live? Isn’t it people who cause the emissions? (I do know that cows and sheep fart – and we in NZ are told that they are our main Carbon Emissions problem for which we will soon be taxed heavily) but otherwise it is essentially people who are the problem.
So when it’s all boiled down, isn’t this really an attack on people. Anthony is right the data being measured is temperature recorded in UHIs – talk about a circular argument – sheesh!
Douglas
I believe the best outcome for mother Gaia, is to remove the vast hordes of poor humans from their present destructive lifestyles scavenging for a living among the worlds wilderness. The best outcome is to have the entire human population concentrated in cities. The demand on the rest of the world would then be limited to existing agricultural belts and resource mining. Gaia is screaming to make it so. Are these people really so stupid, so fixated on the single issue of co2 emissions that they cannot see this simple truth?
Wow, the greens just can’t be pleased. I remember reading just a couple years ago how an environmental group wanted individual home ownership eliminated & people packed into cities with densities greater than that of Hong Kong so as to leave pristine areas as how nature intended it. Now they don’t want this anymore? But here’s a question. If cities occupy 2% of the landmass, but contribute 70% to climate change what is the population differential? Does more then 70% of the population live in the city? I think, yes. Did they factor that minute likelihood in this silly analysis? I think, no. Not only will nothing please them they are beyond being stupid.
Paul says:
March 29, 2011 at 7:22 am
2% sounds like a hell of alot of landmass. Are there any geographers out there who can verify this figure?
3% of Earth’s landmass is now urbanized
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/23/3-of-earths-landmass-is-now-urbanized/
Lilacwine says:
March 29, 2011 at 8:55 am
The UHI occurs mainly because of all the cement and asphalt and other things that absorb heat and retain it fairly well and for longer than the surrounding suburban and especially rural areas. There are additinoal factors, too, but that’s the nutshell version. So, yes, even if the temp of a large geographic area was on average about 30 below, the urban area would probably be somewhere closer to negative 25 (depending on the exact WEATHER conditions of course).
Byz says:
March 29, 2011 at 8:05 am
Err just thought I’d point out that you don’t need “BBQ summer” to get heat waves in the London tube.
The Met Office definition of a “BBQ summer” is a cold one where it pees with rain all the time. /sarc
I am sure someone else earlier in the thread has pointed out that many of the worlds temperature records-which used to be in cool fields-now reside in those very same cities that have engulfed and artifically warmed them.
The effects of UHI have been well known for 2000 years and measures taken to mitigate it. Here are two examples of historic UHI;
Pliny the Elder 23-79 AD noted that Beech trees formerly grew within the precincts of
Rome but it was now too hot for them (and for Chestnut trees)
This was with reference to a comment by Theophrastus-371-287BC who reported the
presence of Beech trees in Rome. The growing warmth of the Roman optimum
combined with the heat engendered by the greatest city of its age caused the Roman
poet Horace, 65BC to 8 BC in Epistles I.7 1-7, to plead health reasons for his
prolonged vacation on an extended trip to the country to avoid the heat.
That it was now too hot for Beech trees in Rome compared to several hundred years
earlier ties in very closely to the entreaties made by citizens of Nero (born AD 37)
following the great fire of AD 64, as noted by Matthias Ruth;
‘The relationship between the built environment and urban climate has been observed
for centuries. Dating back to ancient Rome it was widely noted that ‘parts of the city
became hotter (than others) during the summer…after the streets had been widened
during the reign of Emperor Nero.’ To address this problem it was recommended that
streets be ‘made narrow with houses high for shade.’
The ways the ancients devised to keep cool were many and varied.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/baths/a/KeepingCool.htm
“Even normal Greeks and Roman bought snow and ice imported on donkey trains.
Few could afford private ice houses. Most urban residents bought it at snow shops. In
Rome deep pits were filled with snow and covered with straw. Water melted and ran
through forming a bottom layer of ice that sold at a premium. Snow could be more
expensive than wine.”
In Rome, many urban women sported parasols or what they called umbracula- light
cloth stretched over a wooden frame in order to provide shade.
In more modern times the observations of Dr von Hann concerning UHI in US cities
have their corollary 130 years earlier in a book by William B. Meyer entitled
“Americans and Their Weather” (ISBN 0 19 513182 7) when the Urban Heat Island
Effect was recognized in the American colonial era. Page 29 says in part –
“…. It was a Charleston physician, Dr. Lionel Chalmers, who in 1776 offered the
fullest early explanation of the phenomenon now known as the urban heat
island: the tendency for temperatures to be higher in cities than in the
surrounding countryside. [52] The presumed direct connection between heat and
ill-health made it especially troubling, given the already high summer
temperatures. Jefferson as president urged his territorial governors in laying out
or extending towns to reserve alternating squares of a grid pattern for trees and
open space. Europeans, living under cloudy skies, could “build their town in a
solid block with impunity,” he judged, “but here a constant sun produces too
great an accumulation of heat to permit that.” The extremes of the American
summer demanded a greater spread of “turf and trees.” But the inconvenience
of dispersing settlement and the seeming waste of building lots told too heavily
against the plan. It was not employed in the extension of New Orleans; in the one
southern case where it was tried, the new capitol city of Jackson, Mississippi, it
was quickly eroded, and the reserved lots turned to more productive uses.”
http://www.john-daly.com/
Other studies that predate Dr von Hann by 80 years also recognised the warming
effects of urbanisation, when Howard made some calculations observing that the
urban area appeared to be warmer during the night than the surrounding countryside.
He presented figures in a journal called ‘The Climate of London’ (1820), showing the
results of a nine-year comparison that he made between temperature readings taken in London and those in the surrounding countryside, he commented:
“Night is 3.70° (Fahrenheit) warmer and day 0.34° cooler in the city than in the
country.”
He believed this observed difference to be caused by the burning of fuel in the city.
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/howard.htm
tonyb
Just a few weeks ago some muckity muck was writting about how we were all going to have to move to the city in order to cut our carbon footprints. Now they are telling us that people who live in the city use more energy.
THese guys just can’t make up their minds.
THANKS KATE ! As you Brits says, “good job, well done!”…in an RP accent, naturally. I copied and saved your post.
Years ago I took on our CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, and that was one red tape tangle out of hell, let me tell’ya. And the Beeb is way bigger.