In a December 9 article at Politico Magazine, Erica Peterson went after Louisville's "urban heat island" problem, where "a city’s center experiences significantly hotter temperatures than its less-developed surroundings."
In doing so, Peterson rolled out some very questionable statistics. But it's her contention that "As pollution and stagnant air bake in the sun" in the city's heat island, "air quality worsens" that was really over the top. If that statement were true, Louisville's air quality should have deteriorated as its heat island problem has grown. The truth is, as Powerline's Steven Hayward demonstrated yesterday, that the Derby City's air quality has significantly improved.
Hayward backed up the evidence truck, which poured out the following four charts based on data at the EPA (click on each chart to enlarge in a separate tab or window):
The respective charts show that:
- Carbon dioxide is down by about 80 percent since 1990.
- Sulfur dioxide is down by over 80 percent since 1990.
- Ozone is down by about 35 percent since the late-1990s.
- Particulates are down by about 40 percent since 2004.
Hayward believes that "Apparently it is too difficult for Politico reporters to check the data." Perhaps, but I'd argue that Erica Peterson "just knew" what she really didn't know, and therefore didn't see a need to check a supposedly obvious assertion. Oops.
Here's what happens when the "heat island" phenomenon occurs, Erica: The air gets warmer. That's an issue which may need to be addressed, but not because the air also gets dirtier. It clearly doesn't.
Peterson also tried to scare people with the following implausible contention, exhibiting an almost Alzheimers-like memory in the process (bolds are mine):
The (heat island) problem is acute in Louisville. A 2012 study from the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that 39 people die every year in Louisville from heat-related causes. That means that a city with .2 percent of the U.S. population experiences roughly 6 percent of heat-related deaths every year. The problem is only likely to get worse. Unless Louisville’s warming trend is reversed, the cumulative death toll could reach 18,000 by the end of this century—a projection that far exceeds that for any other city.
Such a harebrained stat — not the 18,000 (i.e. about 210 per year), which is so absurd I don't even know where to begin, but the 39 cited current deaths per year per NRDC — should have been cause for Peterson to wonder if the NRDC's number is truly comparable to the national heat-related death figure she disclosed earlier in her writeup of "658 people (who) die every year because of exposure to excessive heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." It's not — and she acknowledged as much in her very next sentence which followed:
But that doesn’t take into account people who die of conditions like cardiovascular disease, which is exacerbated by the heat.
But later, in citing the NRDC statistic, Peterson proceed to "forget" that it is in no way comparable to the CDC's nationwide figure, which is based only on cases where heat was specifically cited as the cause of death.
Hearkening back to a post I did yesterday which was also critical of Politico, there's a good word to describe Erica Peterson's slipshod work: "Fringy."
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
