Cities expand by area equal to France, Germany and Spain combined in less than 20 years
Urbanization choices to be fundamental to environmental sustainability, say experts; Equivalent of a city of 1 million needed weekly given population growth trend; Four-day Planet Under Pressure Conference in London attracts 2,800 participants Unless development patterns change, by 2030 humanity’s urban footprint will occupy an additional 1.5 million square kilometres – comparable to the combined territories of France, Germany and Spain, say experts at a major international science meeting underway in London.
UN estimates show human population growing from 7 billion today to 9 billion by 2050, translating into some 1 million more people expected on average each week for the next 38 years, with most of that increase anticipated in urban centres. And ongoing migration from rural to urban living could see world cities receive yet another 1 billion additional people. Total forecast urban population in 2050: 6.3 billion (up from 3.5 billion today).
The question isn’t whether to urbanize but how, says Dr. Michail Fragkias of Arizona State University, one of nearly 3000 participants at the conference, entitled “Planet Under Pressure”. Unfortunately, he adds, today’s ongoing pattern of urban sprawl puts humanity at severe risk due to environmental problems. Dense cities designed for efficiency offer one of the most promising paths to sustainability, and urbanization specialists will share a wealth of knowledge available to drive solutions.
How best to urbanize is one among many “options and opportunities” under discussion by global environmental change specialists today, Day 2 of the four-day conference March 26-29, convened to help address a wide range of global sustainability challenges and offer recommendations to June’s UN “Rio+20” Earth Summit.
Other leading options and opportunities being addressed include green economic development (Yvo de Boer, former Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), securing food and water for the world’s poorest (Bina Agarwal, Director, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, India), and planetary stewardship: risks, obstacles and opportunities (Georgina Mace, Professor, Imperial College, London). For a full list of “options and opportunities” conference sessions and topics, see conference website.
Cities responsible for 70% of CO2 emissions
Shobhakar Dhakal, Executive Director of the Tokyo-based Global Carbon Project, says reforms in existing cities and better planning of new ones offer disproportionately large environmental benefits compared with other options.
“Re-engineering cities is urgently needed for global sustainability,” says Dr. Dhakal, adding that emerging urban areas “have a latecomer’s advantage in terms of knowledge, sustainability thinking, and technology to better manage such fundamentals as trash and transportation.”
Over 70% of CO2 emissions today relate to city needs. In billions of metric tonnes, urban-area CO2 emissions were estimated at about 15 in 1990 and 25 in 2010, with forecasts of growth to 36.5 by 2030, assuming business as usual.
Addressing climate change therefore demands focusing on urban efficiencies, like using weather conditions and time of day-adjusted toll systems to reduce traffic congestion, for example. Congestion worldwide costs economies an estimated 1 to 3% of GDP – a problem that not only wastes fuel and causes pollution, but time – an estimated 4.2 billion hours in the USA alone in 2005. Estimated cost of New York City’s congestion: US$4 billion a year in lost productivity.
An “Internet of things” is forming, he notes – a fast-growing number of high-tech, artificially intelligent, Internet-connected cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines and more — in total about one trillion in use worldwide today.
High-tech ways to improve the efficiency of urban operations and human health and well-being include:
- Rapid patient screening and diagnostics with digitalised health records;
- Utility meters and sensors that monitor the capacity of the power generation net-work and continually gather data on supply and demand of electricity;
- Integrated traveller information services and toll road pricing based on traffic, weather and other data;
- Data gathering and feedback from citizens using mobile phones;
“Our focus should be on enhancing the quality of urbanization – from urban space, infrastructure, form and function, to lifestyle, energy choices and efficiency,” says Dr. Dhakal.
Care is needed, he adds, to avoid unwelcome potential problems of dense urbanization, including congestion, pollution, crime, the rapid spread of infectious disease and other societal problems – the focus of social and health scientists who will feature prominently at the conference.
Says Prof. Karen Seto of Yale University, who with colleagues is organizing four of the 160 conference sessions at Planet Under Pressure: ”The way cities have grown since World War II is neither socially or environmentally sustainable and the environmental cost of ongoing urban sprawl is too great to continue.”
For these reasons, “the planet can’t afford not to urbanize,” says Seto. “People everywhere, however, have increasingly embraced Western styles of architecture and urbanization, which are resource-intense and often not adapted to local climates. The North American suburb has gone global, and car-dependent urban develop-ments are more and more the norm.”
How humanity urbanizes to define the decades ahead
Fragkias notes that while there were fewer than 20 cities of 1 million or more a century ago, there are 450 today. While urban areas cover less than five per cent of Earth’s land surface, “the enlarged urban footprint forecast is far more significant proportionally when vast uninhabitable polar, desert and mountain regions, the world breadbasket plains and other prime agricultural land and protected areas are subtracted from the calculation.”
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Read the full press release here
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Dr. Pielke writes:
This land use change not only affects local and regional climate, but also results in a time varying effect on surface temperatures that have been used by the IPCC and others as the iconic metric of global warming. As we reported on in
Montandon, L.M., S. Fall, R.A. Pielke Sr., and D. Niyogi, 2011: Distribution of landscape types in the Global Historical Climatology Network. Earth Interactions, 15:6, doi: 10.1175/2010EI371
GHCNv.2 station locations are biased toward urban and cropland (>50% stations versus 18.4% of the world’s land) and past century reclaimed cropland areas (35% stations versus 3.4% land).
This bias is only going to increase in coming years as urban areas continue to expand.
Recently, I did an essay about the disparity of warming in Texas, and this IGBP press release along with Dr. Pielke’s commentary lends credence to what I found.
The differences between temperature trends between Texas as a whole (which is largely rural by area) and some of its fastest growing cities, such as San Antonio, is quite striking:
The data from San Antonio:
At 0.41 Fahrenheit per decade, it is four times larger than the statewide trend from 1948 to 2011. The population of San Antonio looks like a hockey stick, especially after 1940:
According to the Wikipedia entry on San Antonio: “It was the fastest growing of the top 10 largest cities in the United States from 2000-2010, and the second from 1990-2000.”. So I suppose it is no surprise to find it having such a large temperature trend compared to other Texas cities and the state itself.
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While not wishing to cherry-pick, this bit caught my eye:
I can’t help but picture the Warsaw Pact concrete-tower ugliness so beloved of certain pan-national types.
So now that the ManBearPig warmists are halfway to fixing climate, it’s clearly time to fix population; and soon after no doubt they’ll get ’round to fixing those pesky little deep space irritants so beloved of that irksome Danish fellow and his mates at CERN and soon after that, our inconsiderate Sun’s dodgy thermostat
Oh goody, hubris and a double bah humbug and it’s not even breakfast
This will fix itself, one way or another.
UHI is a myth, just ask the “Team”. (LOL)
One word: re-wilding. They will not be happy until they’ve herded us all into cities, and the animals into “their” land. GAIA, coming to (currently) private property near you.
Will your property be re-wilded next? Watch out for Agenda 21 and the forcible
reduction of CO2…
I don’t think anybody doubts the existence of the UHI effect; the uncertainty relates to the magnitude of its impact on the surface temperature record. Some people say it’s significant, others say it’s neglible.
Which is why I have to ask… shouldn’t the satellite record (1979-present) give a history that is unbiased by UHI effects? Shouldn’t that help settle the dispute?
I wonder what the spatial distribution of that urban growth looks like compared to the temperature record.
In all probability, especially given the consequences of the ongoing global recession, the world’s population will max out around 2030, and then start falling. By 2050, it could be falling rapidly.
In decades past, couples started their families young, and if a recession caused them to delay the birth of a kid, they still had time. In today’s world, most couples are starting their families much later in life. For these couples, babies delayed often turn out to be babies that will never be born at all.
No way in heck to we get 9 billion by 2050.
Isn’t it interesting how the solution to ever problem is fixing someone else’s lifestyle.
I wonder how many of Gore’s mansions are located in urban settings?
No Anthony, they make the necessary adjustments without any intended or unintended bias creeping in whatsoever. Oh, by the way 97% of climate scientists agree that man-made greenhouse gases caused most of the recent (now stalled) warming. Just go ask the very objective activist Dr. James Hansen of NASA. 😉 Go figure!
Studies of UHI have shown that the UHI effect is, at most, an order of magnitude smaller than the warming trend over the last 100 years (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.21/full). The Berkeley group found it to be slightly negative (http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-uhi.pdf). Satellite data shows the same trends as surface data.
If you disagree, if you feel that the urban heat island effect has distorted the temperature anomaly then show the data. To quote:
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/01/the-highest-temperature-reading-doesnt-necessarily-mean-a-record-hot-day/#comment-1022332)
Dark city infrastructure, such as black roofs, also makes urban areas more apt to absorb and retain heat.
Generally urban areas have a higher albedo than surrounding areas. Dark surfaces aren’t the main cause of UHI. Lack of evapotranspiration and lower humidity is. Although dark surfaces may be important in high latitude cities and where snow is a factor.
For those of us who live in warmer climates, the idea of a house with a black roof is laughable. The house would get unbearably hot.
I’d say urban density is the main determinant of UHI changes, because as density increases vegetation decreases.
http://hokulea.soest.hawaii.edu/ocn435/classes/papers-class12/Taha-10.pdf
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~dalin/jin-zhang-dickinson-urban-clim05.pdf
As an unbiased source of objective data the land-based temperature record cannot be considered to be anything more than than the intaglio of present human existence upon the Earth.
@ur momisugly MarkW says:
July 2, 2012 at 3:21 pm
In today’s world, most couples are starting their families much later in life. For these couples, babies delayed often turn out to be babies that will never be born at all.
No way in heck to we get 9 billion by 2050.
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You really shouldn’t generalize like this (most couples). There are parts of the world where population increase is double that of the USA or other 1st world countries.
This is an interesting topic…as Russ R. says:… shouldn’t the satellite record (1979-present) give a history that is unbiased by UHI effects? Shouldn’t that help settle the dispute?
I wonder what the consolidated impact of all that UHI has on global warming ! Perhaps the satellite data can illuminate this? Somebody out there must know Dr Pielke?
I ask this question: Since 1900 where have the many billions (and billions and billions!) of rubber and asphalt dust gone? The short simple answer is: anywhere and everywhere. This enormous amount of black carbon is probably a major contributor to the UHI effect.
Do this: Dab a Post-It note on the dusty top of a car until it does not stick anymore. Examine the dirty sticky strip with viewer with magnification of about 30-50x. Note the numerous black particles. The flat particles are from rubber, and the more rounder ones are from asphalt..
The opaque sphere are sand from concrete. The small shiny reflective paricles are mica also from concrete.
These are the larger particles. There are much smaller particles about 1-2 microns in dia. that we breath in. Once in the lungs these particles are there forever since synthetic rubber and asphaltenes are not degradeable by the body.
Willis Eschenbach and Anthony, if you have time, we have another job for you. I don’t trust these guys’ areal measurement of the world’s cities. You know that if they can exaggerate they will do it in spades. Since their climate sensitivity is 300% too high, we could start by dividing their figures by 3. You can be sure that, whether it is sea level rise, ice decline, mountain glacier retreat (btw, haven’t been hearing anything about glacier retreat, Kilimanjaro de-icing, Lake Chad continuing to shrink, and the like for 3 or 4 years) they will never underestimate the calamity.
Canada has a surface area of 2.5 billion acres, chocked full of all kinds of goodies except tropical fruit and is essentially unpopulated. We here don’t have to worry about susustainability. Ditto for Siberia.
Metro Vancouver is best since winters are mild and electricity is generated by hydro which is dirt cheap.
I recall Anthony doing drive through temperature urban gradient surveys. It wasn’t until I discovered that the “adjustment” to progressively urbanized collection sites was to lower the temperatures at the rural pristine stations that I understood the true wrongness of the warmist mindset.
KR says:
“Studies of UHI have shown that the UHI effect is, at most, an order of magnitude smaller than the warming trend over the last 100 years…The Berkeley group found it to be slightly negative…”
KR, get up to speed. BEST fabricated another fake hockey stick. You can’t trust Richard Muller, so don’t even try.
One can always spot an article deliberately written to be alarmist when it uses indirect measurements…. like a city of a million every week…. because it sounds, well… alarming. Let’s take the numbers and put them in perspective.
Current global population ~ 7 billion
Projected by 2050 ~ 9 billion
Growth ~ 30%
Exactly what is so alarming about planning for a population increase of just 30% over the next 40 years? By describing it in the terms that they do, it sounds like something monstrous. Itz just about 1% per year. Ohmigosh! 1% per year! What WILL we do?
MarkW says:
July 2, 2012 at 3:21 pm
…
‘No way in heck to we get 9 billion by 2050.’
Mark, just a few years ago, the projection was 13 billion by 2050. The birth rate peaked about 2001, and has been dropping since. You never see this on the news because the Power Elites want us to drop to 1/3 billion or so. They hate people.
The reality is, businesses mostly cannot grow with declining populations, so there may be hell to pay economically.
What I took from the article is that over half of the world’s measuring stations are on less than a fifth of the land. Are stations being deliberately placed in areas that by their nature will get warmer?
Your biologist reports here on the connections to living things:
A couple of summers ago, I took a class in Animal Ecology. Among other things, we had a field day in Colorado’s mountains weighing and banding baby birds. Bird babies are such GOOD children, quiet and obedient. I wanted to take them home, but their parents were doing such a better job raising them than I could…. All the broods we measured were in human-built research birdhouses. It really struck me how popular those were–they were all taken. This shows that humans can affect the well-being of wildlife for the better if we want to.
Other field trips showed that the usual human impact is a big increase in a few populations and sharply reduced biodiversity overall. That is just carelessness and ignorance. By working at it, we will learn how to increase biodiversity.
One of the scientific papers we studied in that class was specifically about UHI. It found a northward extension of the range of Virginia opossums into human-heavy habitat. In the South, the species avoided roads and human structures, but in the North, that is where they were found.
Overall, warming is good for living things. But as long as science in general, and biology in particular, are dominated by warmist shriekers, we cannot make progress on finding out how to be a blessing to the natural world. And it would be so easy…