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Cities' Heat Can Affect Temperatures 1000+ Miles Away
Living in dense cities makes for certain efficiencies: being able to walk or take mass transit to work, living in buildings with (at least potentially) efficient HVAC systems, and more. That's why cities have been lauded in recent years for their (relatively) low environmental impact. But it seems at least one aspect of city life has an environmental effect felt at extreme distances from the cities themselves: waste heat. All those tightly packed sources of heat, from cars to banks of AC units, result in temperature changes not just directly (and locally) but by affecting weather systems surrounding the source city.
From the article:
"The released heat is changing temperatures in areas more than 1,000 miles away (1609 kilometers). It is warming parts of North America by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) and northern Asia by as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), while cooling areas of Europe by a similar amount, scientists report in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The released heat (dubbed waste heat), it seems, is changing atmospheric circulation, including jet streams — powerful narrow currents of wind that blow from west to east and north to south in the upper atmosphere.
This impact on regional temperatures may explain a climate puzzle of sorts: why some areas are having warmer winters than predicted by climate models, the researchers said. In turn, the results suggest this phenomenon should be accounted for in models forecasting global warming."
It says "more than", and it is obvious from context that it doesn't exclude an effect for less than 1000 miles (actually, the absolute biggest effect of a city is at 0 miles distance for sure). Therefore it cannot be an exact number.
Also, how probable is it that a natural phenomenon agrees to four significant digits with a completely arbitrary length unit not based on that phenomenon?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Not really. The overall temperature difference is the same. This is just affecting how the change is distributed. It's notable, and explains a known issue with the models, but it doesn't in any way invalidate the overall predictions, i.e., things are getting warmer.
Seriously, the entire waste heat production of humanity is nothing compared to solar heating. Solar heating is ~170 petawatts. The total energy production of humanity isn't even a tenth of a percent of that. Closer to a hundredth of a percent, really.
The heat island effect has always been taken into account for purposes of observation - when some of your data points are located in cities, you need to either discard them or compensate in some manner. This study shows that the effect covers a far wider area than previously thought. A few minor revisions to the models are needed. That doesn't mean previous predictions are suddenly all wrong - just that they are not as accurate as they will be once these revisions are implimented.
It's a bit rich to go on about "the other top nations" refusing to join in when the US flatly refuses to join the climate change accords that the rest of the developed (and much of the developing) world have established.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Unfortunately tipping the balance is all that is required to mess it up.
When questioned with PR company lies that answer is a fairly obvious response.
When one "side" pretends that if the other is not omniscient then everything they say can be rejected and replaced with a handy PR lie that's when you get assertions of certainty in response. Certainty is possible in general terms even if unreasonable levels of precision is not.
There is a website called "google scholar" now so there is no longer any reason to pretend there is no rigorous testing just because you can't be bothered to ever set foot in a library before making these wild claims. What is this bullshit about flooding the net with noise to try to shout down anyone with a clue? Do you realise that your anti-expert bullshit is having fallout in other fields, and if you are good at anything at all such a line is going to backfire on yourself if it catches on?
I think it's about time to graduate from the childrens dictionary Bongo if you are attempting to be credible.
It's a bit rich to go on about "the other top nations" refusing to join in when the US flatly refuses to join the climate change accords that the rest of the developed (and much of the developing) world have established.
So what? Those accords haven't done jack shit in the past, they are largely a symbolic gesture and none of the nations who did agree to the last ones managed to live up to what they promised. You seem to think that not sitting down at a table in a room full of people is the same thing as doing nothing, which is about as far from the truth as is possible. There is a large and active environmental movement in the US, and we are actively taking steps to reduce emissions. Just because we're not willing to give up our sovereignty and bind ourselves to the whims of a foreign political body doesn't mean we are ignoring the problems.
Meanwhile, as the parent already mentioned, China is pumping out a fucking shitload of pollution at an ever-increasing pace and all you dicks can do is say "But the US did something kind of like that 100 years ago!" Fuck off.
Isn't this comment more or less an archetypal example? Veiled and nonspecific allusions to error, uncertainty, and weakness? No actual substance? Nonspecific accusations that could be leveled at any piece of research? Let's look at the issues you raise.
"The question is always, how do they know? What did they do to arrive at that result?"
It's in the papers. And countless popular accounts.
"...does not sound like a high standard."
That's why your rhetorical scenario is not the standard to which climate science is held. If you're interested it's... in the papers, and in the countless popular accounts.
"Where's your rigorous testing for that assertion?"
It's in the papers, and countless popular accounts. Assuming, of couse, you do not set an arbitrarily strict limit for "rigorous" that excludes them.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The environment is only a major issue during a Republican administration.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Something doesn't have to be scientific to be truth. Philosophy, history, mathematics - all have means of determining "truth" without relying on the scientific method. The problem is that "science" is increasingly taken to mean "rational", when that is not true - science is a subset of rationality. Stating something is not scientific is not necessarily an attack against it; it's purely descriptive.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face