I wonder what sort of reactions will occur when the CO2 police come knocking on individual doors saying “you need to turn off your heater, you are killing the planet”? A video follows.
From Arizona State University:
Study maps greenhouse gas emissions to building, street level for US cities
Project to help overcome barriers to an international climate change treaty
TEMPE, Ariz. – Arizona State University researchers have developed a new software system capable of estimating greenhouse gas emissions across entire urban landscapes, all the way down to roads and individual buildings. Until now, scientists quantified carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at a much broader level.
Dubbed “Hestia” after the Greek goddess of the hearth and home, researchers presented the new system in an article published October 9 in Environmental Science and Technology. Hestia combines extensive public database “data-mining” with traffic simulation and building-by-building energy-consumption modeling. Its high-resolution maps clearly identify CO2 emission sources in a way that policy-makers can utilize and the public can understand.
“Cities have had little information with which to guide reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – and you can’t reduce what you can’t measure,” said Kevin Gurney, an associate professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences, and senior scientist with the Global Institute of Sustainability. “With Hestia, we can provide cities with a complete, three-dimensional picture of where, when and how carbon dioxide emissions are occurring.”
The research team collected data from a wide variety of sources such as local air pollution reports, traffic counts, and tax assessor parcel information. The data is then combined within a modeling system for quantifying CO2 emissions at the level of individual buildings and street segments.
So far, scientists have applied Hestia to the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, and work is ongoing for the cities of Los Angeles, California and Phoenix, Arizona. They hope to ultimately map the CO2 emissions in all major cities across the United States, which accounts for nearly one-quarter of all global CO2 emissions. The Hestia research team believes this type of detailed emissions information can help determine what we as a society, can do locally and globally about climate change.
“As a community, we must take a leadership role in sustaining our relationship with the environment,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “This research, and its implications for global engagement regarding climate change, is an exciting step forward. Hestia gives us the next tool we need to help policy-makers create effective greenhouse gas legislation.”
“These results may also help overcome current barriers to the United States joining an international climate change treaty,” agreed Gurney, Hestia’s lead scientist. “Many countries are unwilling to sign a treaty when greenhouse gas emission reductions cannot be independently verified.”
According to researchers, Hestia’s increased detail and accuracy will help cities, and possibly even other nations, identify where an investment in energy and greenhouse gas savings would have the greatest impact.
“Leading in sustainability is not easy; however, as Mayor, I am committed to doing so,” Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said. “Undoubtedly, Hestia will be a good tool to help us make more informed decisions as leaders in Phoenix and the Valley around issues of air quality, health and a sustainable future.”
Although climate change presents society with tough challenges, Gurney believes this new system enables concrete, positive steps towards mitigating the problem.
“Hestia offers practical information we can use to identify the most cost-effective ways to reduce emissions and track progress over time,” Gurney said. “Scientists have spent decades describing the seriousness of climate change. Now, we are offering practical information to help do something about it.”
Purdue Showalter Trust, Knauf Insulation, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology funded the three-year Hestia project, which involved researchers Bedrich Benes and Michael Abdul-Massih from Purdue’s University Department of Computer Graphics and Technology.
Note:
Hestia is part of a larger effort that combines information about emissions with ground and satellite-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. It is now part of the INFLUX experiment in Indianapolis and is expected to complement NASA’s planned December 2013 launch of the Orbital Carbon Observatory satellite, which will measure the concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
ASU’s School of Life Sciences is an academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
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If I have an all-electric home do my CO2 emissions show at my house on the map or as an increase in CO2 emissions at the nuclear generating station where my power comes from?
Map that, Ralphie-baby!
They wasted their time and money on this? I was hoping they’d first perfect that ‘trap-a-ghost thingamajiggy device’ from Ghostbusters.
It is an insufferable, foul scorn and calumny against Hestia.
By 2019 every home in the UK will have a smart meter, it won’t be too long after that when the CO2 police will come knocking on peoples doors. All for your comfort and safety you understand.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/tackling/smart_meters/smart_meters.aspx
I see little utility in tracking us carbon breathers at the street level. I think it would be more interesting to track CO2 emissions from satellites, where CO2 emissions could be studied on a much larger scale.
But I don’t think such CO2 imager satellites exist (correct me if I’m wrong). It’s strange because the NOAA GOES-14 satellite is well known for its abilty to track and make images of that “other GHG”, water vapor:
http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/goeseastconuswv.html
Looking at this imagery (GOES Channel 3, infrared 6-7 micron band) you can really see the so-called “Green House Effect (GHE)” in action, driven here exclusively by water vapor. Sunlight is absorbed by water vapor and re-emitted at various wavelengths, including 6-7 microns, a clear channel for water vapor emissions. This heat is radiated back into space and detected by the GOES Channel 3. Dark areas in the imagery are areas which are dry and expose the ground below. The whiter regions show the heat radiated from water vapor.
But why no similar channel for watching CO2? There are two main bands 15 and 4 microns. The strongest is 15 microns but is shared with H2O, but 4 micron band is a “clear channel” for CO2, so should provide an informative heat map of CO2 sources and sinks.
So,are there any satellites currently in orbit that provide such “CO2 vapor” imagery? I’ve searched and found none. Unless I’ve missed something, there is no equivalent “proof of GHE” for CO2. If there was I would think we would be flooded with images of the biggest emitters by the AGW/CAGW groups.
Can anyone provide more information on why such satellite CO2 imagers don’t seem to exist?
ROFL. This guys do not need to measure, do not need data, they can model it. It is like real data but better. It always behaves and shows the numbers it should show.
Generation SIM City playing as scientists: …and 12 times did the poles melt and we are now in the year 3075 and only about 400 million can barely survive…
Meanwhile in the real world… Amazing what bureaucracy developed based on the CO2 scam. All these regulations, studies, research, data gathering, adjusting, publishing, taxing … for no real thing, could be scrapped in an instant and nothing would happen, except costs saved.
temp says: October 9, 2012 at 11:06 am
“I’m confused… outside of simply shutting down CO2 producers. What exactly will this knowledge be used to improve?”
I suspect it will be used to improve tax revenue, which of course will mostly be used to fund the (insert city_name) Department of Climatology staffed by an army of green drones.
How much did this cost the taxpayers and for what reason was it even done? Is there any real justification for spending it on this? What are you going to do with the information, create a CO2 police?
temp said:
October 9, 2012 at 11:06 am
I’m confused… outside of simply shutting down CO2 producers. What exactly will this knowledge be used to improve?
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It will be used to improve the government’s money extraction techniques.
H.R. said:
October 9, 2012 at 1:41 pm
If I have an all-electric home do my CO2 emissions show at my house on the map or as an increase in CO2 emissions at the nuclear generating station where my power comes from?
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Both. Mapped twice and taxed twice. It is CO-TWO after all…
Do they model how the vegetation absorbs and emits CO2 at different times?
Do the model how animals (dogs, cats, birds, rats, etc.) emit CO2. Maybe the cities should start a campaign to eliminate rats, roaches and other vermin so that they will not be producing CO2.
If I had money to waste and put solar panels on my roof, would the model show that I cause less CO2 to be emitted. What if they were dirty, old, or unconnected? Could the model show appropriate levels of CO2 activity.
Will the model show the effects of large wind turbine farms in slowing the dispersal of pollutants.
Ed of Mesa, AZ using by WordPress account
golfnewsmag says:
So, folks, are you saying either there is no global warming or there is, but it’s not a serious issue?
Uh, right now we are saying that this modeling/visualization exercise is not what it is advertised to be. Try to keep up.
There are some things as a society we have to tackle as a society; issues so pervasive individuals alone can not solve them.
Like ferreting out perniciously bad science from public policy debates? When do you start?
Global warming, whether you like it or not, seems to be one of them.
Seems. Ain’t.
I am not about to believe I am smarter that hundreds of …
If you don’t believe that you are smart enough to judge their work as being wrong, then you should also believe that you aren’t smart enough to decide that it is correct, either.
… the finest scientists in the world….
LOL.
… that say global warming exists, it is alarming and they give factual, physics to back it up.
Only a few say things like that, and them that do, don’t back it up.
Oh my, the libertarian in me is up in arms at this one. Any actions taken on the basis of such a model should send the charlatans that take said actions to prison for the rest of their lives for civil rights violations. There can be no unlawful search and seizure based on remote sensing in the US by the constitution. You can surveil the public roadways and public spaces all you want, but once your camera strays to private property you have committed what used to be a shooting offense in a rougher time in our history.
Also as has been stated before, there is no there there. No data exists in the entire report as nothing is measured. Numbers are not data unless they represent an actual real world honest to goodness measurement of something. Interpolation of conditions in areas between actual measurements is likewise NOT data. The level of assumptions that go into stating that conditions 500 km north of the last reporting thermometer is the same as that at the location of that last thermometer is laughable. If there weren’t Billions (US or European definition are either applicable here) of dollars of economic losses tied up in this I’d be on the floor laughing my tail off at the foolishness of these charlatans.
These are not hard scientists, these are political scientists pretending to be hard scientists to gain attention.
A few years ago there were some rather excellent satellite based videos produced of global CO2 levels. Can anyone remember them? These were rather neat to watch.
The global picture is dominated by the seasons (the temperature dependence of solubility of CO2 in the oceans) with highest CO2 occurring in the summer (a steady increase in the hemisphere during the season) and levels dropping rapidly with the onset of winter. Consequently you could observe a big annual shift in CO2 from northern to southern hemispheres. You could watch also watch plumes of high CO2 concentration swirling out of China and Indonesia and the equatorial forest belts and being absorbed over the oceans.
The videos made it quite clear where the largest amounts of CO2 are generated. I’ll give you a hint. It isn’t in developed countries. In fact North America showed up as pretty much a CO2 sink as did Europe. The vast majority of the CO2 appears to come from seasonal burning of equatorial forests. China also seems to generate a lot.
The videos got taken down. Was that because they were “off message”? Nobody looking at those videos would think there was a problem with CO2 produced from developed countries. Instead they pointed the finger mostly at forest burning mostly in undeveloped countries.
So now we have these new satellite maps which avoid looking at unfortunate truths on the global scale. Instead we have a focus on CO2 production within a single cityscape. Much more useful for the cause.
The real data s simply the energy used per building.
The CO2 emission rate is a fiction and wholly unnecessary since they simply assume a given amount of CO2 emissions from units of energy consumed.
The CO2 emissions actually occur at the power station providing the energy.
What is the point of this study ?
As someone who earned a graduate degree in engineering from Arizona State some forty years ago. . . . . it’s sad to see such a waste of computer resources by my alma mater.
I wonder what sort of wisdom will come out of this — prohibiting too many people from assembling in one location, such as a football stadium, because the concentration of CO2 in that area would be too high?
I think we had an in-flight-on-launch error on a CO2 research satellite several years back.
It was “The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)”, a NASA satellite mission intended to provide global space-based observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).
Wiki says: “The OCO launch failed because the Taurus-XL launcher payload fairing failed to separate. A payload fairing is a clamshell-shaped cover that encloses and protects a payload on the pad and during early flight. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory
So …
.
I smell a lawsuit if modelling of this nature is obliquely used to reduce the valuations of commercial buildings.
I think they misnamed their computer model. It should have been named hysteria.
How hard could it be. Shot down the power generator plants like stopping the “death trains”.
Without electricity almost all CO2 producing will end. Only wood stoves and candle light might survive as long as the stocks are available. You could start stopping the supply to EPA offices, so they could lead the way.
Ah Big Nazi Brother, here we come. Remind me to buy ammo for my ancient rifle.
The point about greenhouse gas emissions reductions is CO2 created from fossil fuel usage. Unless you can separate CO2 generated from fossil fuel from CO2 created from say burning wood or ethanol, this exercise is pointless. Of course trying to reduce CO2 is a bad idea in itself, as more CO2 would actually be better for the planet.
[at] Art Horn and other “Big Brother” comments…
First, Art Horn:
3) Freeze in the dark.
D Böehm says:
October 9, 2012 at 1:12 pm
This is the point…
That’s a variation in temperature of about 0.25%! Of course the original poster to whom you were replying wouldn’t know that.
Not that temperature is even a valid metric for global energy retention.
DaveE.