Dartley: I, too, wrote to Columbia U. about the “heat-island” issue. Except that I wrote 39 years ago (I kid you not), around the time of Earth Day. My concern was more local than global, but otherwise similar to yours. I never heard back. I’m curious what the Earth Institute wrote back to you … but I suspect that heat emissions from car engines are small potatoes on a global scale.

James & Streetsman: You both brought up asthma, and I know asthma is a major concern, particularly in poor communities, and justly so. But autos, esp’ly late-model ones, are so much cleaner (tailpipe-wise) than they used to be, that their emissions are almost certainly no more than a minor contributor to your or other asthma sufferers’ health problems.

Gecko: You wrote, Read in NY Times some time back that the amount of heat put out by a car in a few minutes is the on the order of that required to heat a house just to give an idea of the wasted heat. I can’t imagine what you’re talking about. A home furnace running at capacity processes around the same amount of Btu’s as an urban auto — around 30,000 Btu an hour. So your assertion appears off by an order of magnitude if not more — not helpful!

All: I encourage everyone concerned about cars in NYC to take a good look at the “Cost-Benefit” worksheet tab within the BTA (my original post has a link to the BTA spreadsheet). You’ll see that, apart from the revenue generation, by far the biggest category of congestion pricing benefits is the time savings to drivers and other road users. Focusing on these isn’t just intellectually honest; it’s probably the best way to communicate the meaning and benefits of congestion pricing to the public and policy-makers.

It is not clear what you mean by absolute temperature. Yes, differences in temperature can cause wind and convection and exist naturally in various forms.

From what I understand high sea surface temperatures along with high sheer winds tend to produce conditions conducive to tropical cyclone formation, another natural wind or kinetic energy amplification system. The distributed kinetic energy or heat is converted to the highly concentrated kinetic energy of winds 200 miles per hour and more; producing a net modest cooling effect. The cooling effect would be much more dramatic if the winds (high kinetic energy) could be prevented from being converted back to heat by frictional effects. In effect, tropical cyclones would be giant air conditioners if the high winds were not converted by to heat by friction which is normally the situtation.

Please note that wind, including tornadoes and hurricanes, is caused by differences in temperature rather than by absolute temperature. It is not possible to structure or concentrate heat in a system of uniform temperature without adding more energy. This thanks to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Because of this principle, it is not possible to create a “reverse heater”, which sucks heat out of your house and converts it into electricity.

Heat is just distributed kinetic energy (energy associated with movement) and there are natural systems that can concentrate this kinetic energy. Winds are one form where tropical cyclones (hurricanes) and tornados are extreme cases of extremely concentrated kinetic energy and harnessing this terrific energy are very interesting design problems with potentially some very elegant solutions. Sailboats, windmills, and wind turbines are well-known examples on much smaller scales.

Read in NY Times some time back that the amount of heat put out by a car in a few minutes is the on the order of that required to heat a house just to give an idea of the wasted heat.

Regarding thermal pollution in places like New York City, the heat island effect contributes a huge amount and raises the local temperature by about ten degrees. Local lore amoung sailors on Long Island sound has it that for every acre of concrete added to New York, the afternoon winds coming from the city were delayed (or moved forward; can’t remember) by a measurable fraction of a second. Cynthia Rosenzweig might be a good contact person at Columbia’s Earth Institute and she was one of the contributors to “Managing the Megacity for Global Sustainability: The New York Metropolitan Region as an Urban Biosphere Reserve” published by the New York Academy of Sciences.

About 6,000 times the amount of solar energy hits the earth each day that is required for our energy needs; so it seems that the heat given off by cars probably does not have much of an effect accept locally. There would be a net cooling effect if all the coal power plants were converted to solar but, from what I understand it would not be large.

We just should not be burning stuff to produce energy; that is for heating our homes, producing electricity which is also used for air conditioning, or transportation.

1. That small increases in pricing can discourage unnecessary auto trips, meaning the fundamental theory behind congestion pricing works

and

2. That the currently untolled crossing options can and do encourage suburban commuter traffic to travel through the local streets of residential neighborhoods like the Harlem and the South Bronx, where the asthma rate is the highest in the country

It’s amazing to me that politicians in these neighborhoods came out in vehement opposition to congestion pricing. Either they don’t get it or they don’t care.

The cordon around NYC is an interesting proposal, although it still give a free ride to the majority of car commuters who drive from the outer boroughs to Manhattan. This would drive Westchester and Long Island politicians nuts, making it harder to get through state senate and assembly but easier to get through city council. Seeing as NYC passed the original congestion pricing, it seems unlikely that the state would pass an entire city cordon.

Here’s a better idea. NYC secedes from New York state. We bring in the most taxes for the state, yet receive the least benefits. I know Larry Littlefield has brought this up many times. We’d get bus cameras, congestion pricing, and two US senators. We could tax the hell out of Ed Fay for insisting on driving into Manhattan. We’d lose, uhh… upstate and Long Island.

One thing I do wonder is why a congestion idea proposal that cordons off the entire city (rather than just Manhattan) was never floated by Bloomberg. Put the cordons at the Bronx/Westchester line, the Queens/Nassau Line, and at all river crossings to Jersey. This would pit the parochial outer borough pols against their suburban counterparts and reinforce the fact that the outer boroughs are part of the city and not just inner suburbs (which is how a lot of outer Borough residents believe the Manhattan elite perceives them). It would also remove the incentive for people like this guy to use neighborhood streets as cut-through routes to the CBD.

I guess my specific question is, is the thermal pollution I’m talking about a global–rather than local–issue? Does it contribute to actual global warming?

And by the way, I love Charlie’s article.

And then there is the basic quality of life impact of that heat on anyone outside or without a/c.

And the added heat by all those parking lots in new residential developments, required by NYC zoning instead of traditional front and back yards . . .

Everyone knows that cars contribute to global warming by putting heat TRAPPING gases into the atmosphere. But my worry is that cars heat the earth even more directly than that. If you walk past a running car, especially during the summer, you feel a large, constant, extremely hot wind shooting at you (and the bigger the car, the bigger the blast). Cyclists of course will know exactly what I’m talking about, they feell it more often and more directly since they share closer quarters with cars. Stop at a red light on your bike among a bunch of stopped cars and you feel like they’re actually trying to kill you.

So my concern is that that heat amounts to real thermal pollution that directly contributes to global warming. I mean, I’m not a scientist but I know that heat energy doesn’t simply go away.

I don’t know how to draw attention to this (or, as hinted, whether it really calls for attention). Someone (Aaron N., I think) once suggested to me that I write to the Columbia Earth Institute about it, and I did, but they didn’t seem interested.

Anyone know anything about the environmental effects of this particular huge source of heat energy, or whether it requires action?

He not only demonstrated the necessity of congestion pricing in New York (and pretty much anywhere else with a concentrated CBD), but that the worst case scenarios Streetsblog and other warned of will actually occur through people as selfish and idiotic as Fay.