From Yale University
Growth of cities endangers global environment
New Haven, Conn.—The explosive growth of cities worldwide over the next two decades poses significant risks to people and the global environment, according to a meta-analysis published today in PlosOne.
Researchers from Yale, Arizona State, Texas A&M and Stanford predict that by 2030 urban areas will expand by 590,000 square miles—nearly the size of Mongolia—to accommodate the needs of 1.47 billion more people living in urban areas.
“It is likely that these cities are going to be developed in places that are the most biologically diverse,” said Karen Seto, the study’s lead author and associate professor in the urban environment at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “They’re going to be growing and expanding into forests, biological hotspots, savannas, coastlines—sensitive and vulnerable places.”
Urban areas, they found, have been expanding more rapidly along coasts. “Of all the places for cities to grow, coasts are the most vulnerable. People and infrastructure are at risk to flooding, tsunamis, hurricanes and other environmental disasters,” said Seto.
The study provides the first estimate of how fast urban areas globally are growing and how fast they may grow in the future. “We know a lot about global patterns of urban population growth, but we know significantly less about how urban areas are changing,” she said. “Changes in land cover associated with urbanization drive many environmental changes, from habitat loss and agricultural land conversion to changes in local and regional climate.”
The researchers examined peer-reviewed studies that used satellite data to map urban growth and found that from 1970 to 2000 the world’s urban footprint had grown by at least 22,400 square miles—half the size of Ohio.
“This number is enormous, but, in actuality, urban land expansion has been far greater than what our analysis shows because we only looked at published studies that used satellite data,” said Seto. “We found that 48 of the most populated urban areas have been studied using satellite data, with findings in peer-reviewed journals. This means that we’re not tracking the physical expansion of more than half of the world’s largest cities.”
Half of urban land expansion in China is driven by a rising middle class, whereas the size of cities in India and Africa is driven primarily by population growth. “Rising incomes translate into rising demand for bigger homes and more land for urban development, which has big implications for biodiversity conservation, loss of carbon sinks and energy use.”
The paper, “A Meta-analysis of Global Urban Expansion,” can be viewed on the PlosOne website at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0023777.
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We have to learn to all live in tree houses like the Ewoks http://tinyurl.com/3ot2muf
.. or at least stop paving over so much land.
I live in Hong Kong, which has a very concentrated population, yet 70% of the city is left to nature. The diversity of wildlife, birds, butterflies etc is amazing. I frequently hike in the hills near where I live in Kowloon. Recently I had an encounter with a huge snake and a few months ago I came across a porcupine on the Peak. Much wildlife with thoughtful planning can adapt to human settlements. Only 2% of those who live here own a car and public transport is fast and cheap. Cities like HK are making very efficient use of resources per capita. Furthermore I understand that population growth has stabilized.
Actually,
we likely have two choices:
1. “decrease the surplus population” – preferred choice of the clueless, self anointed ones
2. step off this rock – what China is doing but we have abandoned (EOL – space shuttle)
But then, “those that can, do, those that can’t, tell others what to do”
LOL in Oregon
As mentioned in posts above, it looks like the theme of this paper is that we need to control population. I have a suggestion. It might be mean, but it would kill two birds with one stone. My suggestion is that all the liberals, progressives and greenie/environmentalists all stop breathing. This would reduce the CO2 exhaled by them, thereby reducing CO2 emissions. And their elimination would reduce population pressure on the planet.
This is a very timely story for me after viewing a PBS story last night about the Atchafalya Basin.
The Atchafalaya Basin is a huge swamp near here which presently takes about 30 percent on average of the annual flood waters of the Mississippi River.
Native Americans once thrived on this rich fishery resource.
A family of Cajuns settled in an area of the basin known as “Crook Chene” after their exile from Nova Scotia. In the mid 20th century there was even a post office and a school in Crook Chene, even though there was no road to get there. All transport was by boat.
The residents of Crook Chene thrived there for about 100 years until the Corps of Engineers surrounded the Basin with levees and began controlling the annual flood of the Mississippi River by selectively diverting water from the Mississippi through the basin. The levees were built about 80 years ago, and since that time sediment has filled this huge area such that the ground level has risen 20 feet in many places.
The result of the levees was that the annual floods were catastrophic to the Crook Chene community, and by the end of the 20th century only a few camps were left, and there were only two continuous residents. The rest had moved to the city.
There are a number of camps in the basin, but overall it is now a wild place.
Here is the connection to the thread. The program initially covered the downfall of the Crook Chene village (with a soundtrack of a sad and haunting cajun fiddle) despairing over the loss of culture caused by man. Then toward the end, they issued a plea that the basin never be “taken over” by man, since it is such a beautiful wild place (with a soundtrack of a cajun two-step),.So what is the message, are we sad or glad, that man left the basin?
The point is, these professional environmentalists are must get very dizzy from all the spinning in circles. An example being that windmills that chop up birds are environmentally sound and “sustainable”. Their gyros have obviously tumbled.
Out of habit it seems, it’s never a positive message, always sadness and despair, regardless of the issue. Professional whiners.
Some say I am an optimist. That may be but someone has to counteract the sad moaning emenating from all of the “Debbie Downers” out there.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=debbie+downer&view=detail&mid=7E9283AB29723F0593977E9283AB29723F059397&first=0&FORM=LKVR
The alternative, since population is going to grow in those parts of the world for the foreseeable future, will be much more land intensive settlements by rural communities. The pure living space of rural communities, especially when combined with slash and burn style agriculture, is much more devastating to the environment than the more efficient use of land in cities and modern agricultural techniques, for the same amount of people. So really when people say that cities are bad for the environment, what they really mean is that “too many people” are bad for the environment.
“Seems like yet another scare mongering attempt. I am old enough to remember when research grants were given for looking at ways to make life better for everyone.”
Our governments, universities and the press have created this largely by throwing money at people with the biggest scare story. If funds for the Hansens and Gores of the world were to dry up, they would sober up quickly enough.
Solve global warming by taxing energy use to the point where we return to the horse and buggy age is not a solution. It is economic disaster and starvation for billions. If that is all the Hansen and Gore can come up with, isn’t it time to fund plan B?
“Urban areas, they found, have been expanding more rapidly along coasts. “Of all the places for cities to grow, coasts are the most vulnerable. People and infrastructure are at risk to flooding, tsunamis, hurricanes and other environmental disasters,” said Seto.”
Boop-boop-boop! Red herring alert! They like to pretend to be “concerned” about people and infrastructure, as a way to throw the unwary and gullible off. It is a common ploy of the eco-greenie scaremongerers. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from turning around and screaming “billion-dollar+ disasters are on the rise, another “proof” of CAGW, we’re doomed unless we stop using fossil fuels”, etc.
Jim says:
August 20, 2011 at 4:30 am
“Why should the government guarantee water’s-edge insurance? Why should the government be in this business at all?”
Because federal bureaucrats surf!!!!
Or think they do. Or hang with the people who do. Or think they hang with them.
Jim says:
August 20, 2011 at 4:30 am
Right you are, we (aka our government) should not be in the business of insuring anyone.
(SarcOn)Wouldn’t it be so nice if the Mob that thinks Global Population Growth is Killing Us would seperate themselves from the Anthroprogenic Global Warming Mob (and all the Other Mob’s on the Planet)? Really, they do tend to confuse the issues just a little and their messages are rather mixed too. Oh, if the World were just a little simpler things would be so much more peaceful. We really should enjoy the relative calm, there’s always another Kaiser, Hitler, Tojo, Etc., just waiting in the shadows; and he(she?) is a might overdue. The World is ripe for mayhem, pillage, rape, and murder, once again, and here we are arguing about nice warm days in Moscow and clear skies over London, Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Berlin, Cairo, Jerusalem, and New York. True, we do have a little Depression to deal with at the moment, but the last one didn’t stop the Big One a’tall. You know, if people didn’t kill each other so much maybe they wouldn’t have to breed so fast and heat everything up so much. Go figure.(SarcOff)
Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists
Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/18/aliens-destroy-humanity-protect-civilisations
and
http://kleinverzet.blogspot.com/2011/08/climate-changes-causes-spave-alien.html#disqus_threa
d
coasts are the most vulnerable
=============================================
only to morons…………………….
Snow storms, ice storms, tornadoes, drought, flood, fires, earthquakes, wind storms, etc
At one time I searched for a safer place to live…………nada there’s not one
Disappearing carbon sinks? At least where I live, in California, mature towns and cities have many times more trees than existed when natural. But I know that will vary place to place.
Seems to me environmentalists have been encouraging us all to live in cities, in denser housing, to lessen sprawl.
Here in the sierras, animals seem to adapt pretty well. I have, for example, a mountain lion nearby (lots of houses around here) that ignores us all and goes about his business of eating deer (and a goat if you tie it to a stake for him)
Even in the SF Bay area, there is a lot of open space, and some of the local planning over the years will pay off. And about Detroit, proves it doesn’t take long for nature to reclaim.
Some of these people need to chill.
Part of the problem is that since 1870 real income per person in the U.S. has increased by a factor of 12. One example of the harm that this growth in prosperity has caused: As recently as the 1940’s my wife was living a truly eco friendly life as a child cotton picker in east Texas. No electricity, rooftop water collection, bath weekly or less in a wash tub. Now she has become acclimatized to a more luxurious lifestyle and lives in an urban area with numerous amenities. She doesn’t measure up to the standards of the celebrity who recently stated that a person should limit toilet paper by using “only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required”.
Land use and population questions are interesting. These folks have only scratched the surface. I did some work to try to understand how much of the land area of the earth (about 29.2% is land – the rest is water) is presently “urban” so that I could decide whether the surface temperature measuring sites were representative of global climate trends. All definitions of land use are somewhat controversial but methods of defining and determining these concepts are rapidly improving especially with access to satellite data. Anyway the CIA Factbook states that only 1.5% of land surface is urban. My research indicates that it is more likely to be 2.4% with a conservative number being 3%. Arable land is generally agreed to be about 10.7% of land surface with almost half of it (4.7%) in annual crops. Permanent pastures cover 26%, Forests and woodlands 32%, and Other 29% (deserts are about half of “other” with the rest being permanent ice, tundra, mountains, steppes, saltly bogs, coral atolls, etc).
A sidelight on US forests that the person from Detroit touched on is the fact that eastern US forests are in a remarkable recovery mode due to early “contact” (begins in 1600s) eastern farms rapidly reverting to forests. The 19th century took a toll on US forests in general but since the 1920’s they have been in an amazing recovery mode to the point that they have stabilized and expanded to where they are now more than 70% of the original “European contact” extent.
Anyway I concluded that the vast majority of temperature measuring sites (probably over 90%) were in an urban setting which are probably mostly urban heat islands that represent less than 3% of the land surface. Another interesting study (can’t find it right now) showed that 2% of the global land surface was roads. I assume that the majority of those roads are included in urban land area. All these values must be regarded with some skepticism but I heavily cross referenced my effort here to the point that I can see some convergence (and I expect the next 10 years of effort to get us very close to the reality of these subjects). Also these are very complex and interactive variables that are hard to baseline.
The population part of the question (especially as it relates to land use and carrying capacity) is also very interesting and VERY controversial. We could probably double the amount of “arable” land without destroying the planet if we did it with some thought and planning. And as Zorro from Hong Kong notes, even urban development can be done with the environment in mind. Also it is a well known fact that arable land productivity has increased very rapidly over the past few decades and continues to do so. Carrying capacity depends on the type of diet with the so called Dutch diet (meat etc.) carrying the least, the Asian carrying more, and subsistence (near starvation) carrying the most. Dutch = about 9.3 billion. Asian = 15.8 billion, and subsistence = 157 billion. The vast majority of the world diets are probably covered by the last two diet types.
Population growth rates are rapidly dropping – from just over 2% in 1970 to close to 1% now (and continuing to drop). Population is expected to peak at 10 billion (maybe as much as 12 billion) toward the end of this century.
This is a very interesting subject. My notes alone covered quite a few pages and only took a day or two (over several weeks) to compile. Zero cost because a lot of other folks put some serious effort and money into it. I would say much more effort (if not money) than this group did. This seems pretty light weight and agenda driven.
Bernie
The solution is obvious (at least from the enviro point of view) – Kill all humans. See, you can’t spread them out because they will just spread their evil Gaia-detroying works with them no matter where they end up or in whatever concentration. That leaves only one solution. And of course we all know who will be in charge.
“Of all the places for cities to grow, coasts are the most vulnerable. People and infrastructure are at risk to flooding, tsunamis, hurricanes and other environmental disasters,” said Seto
C’est la vie! So what, that’s their choice.
The real and larger problem that will result from increased urbanization is that most of these city dwellers will be helpless, just like those of today, and expect others to take care of their needs leading to more and more socialism and less and less people working to support a more and more dependent population. The proof is in the election statistics in the US. Rural areas vote right and urban areas vote left. Living in the Rocky Mountains we see tourists who cannot change a flat tire and are significantly spooked when they need to drive 50 miles between populated areas and see nowhere to stop for “help”. Too many folks in the cities is not good for society, aside from any potential environmental consequences. The European financial situation is a good example and the US is headed down the same road..
More like Universities endanger the planet.
A little learning is a dangerous thing!
The comment about coastline development is particularly devoid of common sense.
Urbanic culture as we know it only developed after the stabilization of sea level 7000 years ago when the glacier melt largely stopped. Of course people will congregate on the sea shore, it provides access to food and commerce, unless the sea shore moves. Until the sea level stopped rising our ancestors could not build near the coast. We were nomatic, not urbanic.
During the next period of glaciation sea level will subside as it has in the past, as water is accumulated in new ice. It is doubtful that we will see any significant sea level rise until that time since we are nearing the end of the current interglacial period. There is no reason to fear coastal development today.
Well, you know what they say….
“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
The more people who live in cities, the less people in the country-side which means that there is more room for nature.
Add to this more efficient farming methods that have made yields jump exponentiatlly recently, and you have the perfect recipe for increased environmentalism in general. This study should be considered a good thing because the fact is progress and society has made man use less land then they did in the 1900’s. The farming yields in question along with advances that made huge cities possible is what accomplishes this. Even though human population is so much larger then it was in the past, we use less land! This should be a good thing.
But alas, we get propaganda that always shows human progress of any kind to be a hinderance as opposed to a blessing.
If these trends continue at even a similar pace as in the past, our society in 2050 or 2100 will use less land, consume more energy and will do all of this while using less natural resources. We will also be wealthier, and will enjoy a higher standard of living while our progress on the environment will undoubtably advance.
That is unless we let greens dictate policy to us. In their world, we go back to the 1900’s, use more land, have less humans and in general de-industrialize and the effect of this is a terrible back-lash in ecological development and understanding over the last 100 years. Its a backwards step for environmentalism as well, and yet these same self-described environmentalists tell us this is the step forward in the “green fashion.”
i recieved the latest issue of Scientific American in the mail the other day. this issue is devoted more or less to population centers and the theme of one of the lead off articals is that large numbers of people living in cities is much more “effecient” than a more agrarian lifestyle.
my first thought is “not with the current crop of idiots running the show”.
i cite as a prime example the city of detroit. it has been administrated by “politically correct” individuals for what 40 years now and is considering returning large portions of the cities acreage to farmland because it has been ABANDONED.
a secondary example is the current proposal of the los angeles mayor to force more businesses out of the state by increasing their property taxes. the adage “when your’ walking on eggs , don’t hop.” comes to mind. there are already several outfits in nevada and texas making very good money facilitating businesses moving out of california to their states already.
C
As far as I can tell from reading the “Methods “ section of the paper, this study used a search of English language literature to obtain data to construct a model of city growth. They did some statistical analysis on 292 “unique geographic locations” using data obtained from the literature search. However, the study covered only 48 of the current 100 largest urban areas, since that’s all they could find in the peer reviewed literature.
There was little detail about the actual data analysis, just a lot general statements about what they did. It is a little bothersome that they dropped 14 cases where there was a negative urban expansion rate or which were largely rural locations. Also, negative values of both population and economic growth rates were set to zero..
So having left out cities that were not growing and not considering negative values of population and economic growth rates, they went on the calculate city expansion.
Table 2 of their study shows that 100 percent of the North American’s city growth, 90 percent’s of European city growth, 71 percent of China’s city growth, and 53 percent of India’s city growth can be explained by population and GDP (demographic and economic factors). Despite that, in the discussion of their results they say “Although demographic and economic factors capture a fair amount of urban land expansion in China and India, much of the observed expansion in other regions cannot be accounted for by the explanatory variables of the model.”
Thus we have the purpose of the study: to show that other factors are as important as population and GDP in driving city growth. Two of those factors are mentioned in the final sentence of the report: “….the results indicate that many non-demographic factors, including land use policies, transportation costs, and income will shape the size of global urban extent in the coming decades.”
I think I concur with the comment above that it was a pretty light weight study.