Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Urban Heat Island in Pictures part 5

This will be the last of the urban heat island posts. Tonight we will look at Vancouver, Beijing and London. Below is Vancouver in 1986. Notice that the hottest (reddest parts of the city are rather limited in this photo.

By 2004, the red has spread. Compare how much larger the hottest areas now cover.

The urban heat area has grown and the temperature risen over the 22 year difference. Placing a thermometer in the middle of this for that period of time will make it look like the world has gotten hotter, which it has because Vancouver has gotten hotter because it uses more energy today than it did in 1986

London also shows the hottest temperature in the central city area. Urban areas are hot and putting thermometers within the boundaries of major cities is guaranteed to make it look like the globe is warming.

Then one of my favorite spots on earth, Beijing, China where I lived two wonderful years. The urban heat island once again rears its ugly heat, yet the IPCC crowd, like Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit, published that there is no urban heat island effect in China. What hogwash that is.

It is the height of scientific incompetence for the AGW global warming hysterics to claim that waste heat from the cities don't matter. As long ago as the 1970s, climatologists knew that waste heat would heat cities up mercilessly. The modern hysteriacs ignore this.

“By the year 2000, experts estimate, the urban megalopolis of Bosnywash—the continuous city covering 11,000 sq miles from Boston through New York to Washington, D. C.—will be pourint out manmade heat equal to 50 percent of the sun’s heat in winter, 15 percent in summer.”
“The climate will be warm, as anyone knows who lives in a big city—from 1 to 3 deg C warmer than if the city were not there.” Asphalt streets and concrete pavements soak up sunlight.” Lowell Ponte, “Global Cooling, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), p. 27

Even Stephen Schneider knew this.

"The urban heat island is a phenomenon well known to city dwellers, even if most haven't heard the name. Because of their intense energy consumption and unnatural physical characteristics, as pointed out earlier, cities are often hotter downtown (especially at night) than the surrounding countryside. The heat island is most noticeable at the center of cities, and the mean annual isotherms (lines of constant temperature) of Paris, for instance, are as much as 2° C (3.6° F) warmer at the city center than out of town (Figure 21). Very similar conditions can be shown for other cities, as summarized in an excellent article by Helmut Landsberg, a noted senior climatologist at the University of Maryland."Stephen Schneider, The Genesis Strategy, (New York: Plenum Press, 1976), p. 154

Yet, James Hansen only gives 0.3 deg correction for the urban heat island

J. Hansen et al, “A Closer Look at United States and Global Surface Temperatures,”
J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23947-23963
available at
The magnitude of the adjustment at the urban and periurban stations themselves, rather than the impact of
these adjustments on the total data set, is shown in Plate 2l. The adjustment is about -0.3°C at the urban stations and
-0.1°C at the periurban stations. In both cases these refer to the changes over 100 years that are determined by
adjusting to neighboring “unlit” stations.

available at http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/...ansen_etal.pdf p 6

And the IPCC guys correct city heat even less.

Accordingly, this assessment adds the same level of urban warming uncertainty as in the TAR: 0.006°C per decade since 1900 for land, and 0.002°C per decade since 1900 for blended land with ocean, as ocean UHI is zero. Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis” IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007

A look at any of the urban heat thermographs that I have posted show that the IPCC claim is absolute, utter rubbish. Yet they claim that they are the ones with the truth. Of course, they want more research funds for their labs and maintaining the myth that they are actually doing something right is necessary to obtain that grant money, as they live high off the backs of the tax payers.


  1. In your last paragraph you say: "...the IPCC claim is absolute, utter rubbish. Yet they claim that they are the ones with the truth. Of course, they want more research funds for their labs and maintaining the myth"

    I'm curious how much research IPCC actually does. Why would IPCC need "research funds"?

    Considering that the IPCC says: "It does not conduct any research...." (you can find that on their website), and in fact many of the thousands of scientists who contribute do so on a voluntary basis, I'm curious how much "research funding" such an organization could need.

    The IPCC itself has a core staff of 10 people. So granted it does require some money to run the program, but "research funds"? I don't know why they'd need or even solicity research funding, let alone "maintain their labs".

    I also don't see how the thousands of scientists who _volunteer_ their efforts to the IPCC are "living high off the backs of the tax payers".

    Interesting view of the subject, though.

  2. Here is how the IPCC works. From Wikipedia

    "The IPCC receives funding from UNEP, WMO, and its own Trust Fund for which it solicits contributions from governments."

    Now, where do the UN and WMO get their money? from the governments, mostly the US government in the form of UN assessments.

    Where do the governments get their funding? From the hard working taxpayers, who can ill afford things right now.

    The IPCC has spent 94 million CHF since its inception. http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session29/doc3.pdf

    Their budget has been as high as 16 million and is now around 6 million. in 2007 the governing body spent 3 million CHF,on what they don't say. The secretariat spends 770,000 CHF (that sounds like a pretty good salary, even if divided by 10)

    Admittedly, that isn't a huge amount given the Trillion Dollar Spending Spree Obama is on, but it all adds up.

    Now, the labs I was ultimately referring to are the labs of the individual scientists. There are knock on effects of volunteering. The scientists volunteer to IPCC so that they can gain stature and then get other funding for their personal projects for their labs from the taxpayers. This other funding comes from places like the NSF, NASA etc, all of whom get their money as well from the tax payers. How much this comes to is anyone's guess.

    A quick look shows that the warming hoax is taking $18 billion for the US tax payers alone. That is a lot of large living off the tax payers.

    "Between FY 2008 and FY 2011 the federal climate change budget more than doubled, from $7.4 billion to $18.1 billion. As a result, the gap between federal spending on military as opposed to climate security was cut more than in half. In 2008 the U.S. budgeted $94 on tools of traditional military force for every dollar spent on climate. That ratio will narrow to $41 to $1 in the 2011 fiscal year."

    Further looking shows that Obama is asking for $5.5 BILLION for 2010, NCDC is getting $6 million, I have no idea what NASA spends on climate crap, and what about the universities, most of whom get NSF funding.

    Hell,the above doesn't count the state spending on this idiocy. New Jersey alone was spending $65 million on global warming, http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/science-updates/christie-cutting-65-million-for-global-warming-prevention

    Hell, that ought to keep 65 climatologists living large on a million per year!

    Yes, I would love someone to give me $18 billion of other people's money.

    We are going broke in this country. Our debt now equals 1 year of our work and it is still rising. This debt is in addition to the debt for your house, assuming you own one. Given all this, doesn't it seem that we should cut out all the nonsensical spending?