That urban heat island canard was debunked decades ago.
Urban heat islands[edit]
This point contends that weather station readings are affected by their proximity to cities, or "urban heat islands." See the article on Patrick Michaels, a notable proponent of this argument, for a treatment of this point.Urban heat islands are real, and they can appear on climate maps even in the absence of climatic change outside the heat island. The proof of global warming is not that giant cities are getting warming, which is a local and limited negligible effect on a worldwide scale. Although an urban heat island can mitigate cold waves (generally a positive effect to people in giant cities) and intensify the harmful and even dangerous effects of a heat wave in a giant city) their influence does not extend deep into rural areas where the agriculture goes on. The urban heat island effect in a city such as Philadelphia has no influence upon the ecology of rural areas even a few kilometers outside Greater Philadelphia. Global warming implies that the climates of the rich agricultural area surrounding Philadelphia is also warming, with or without (and largely independent of) the urban heat island of Philadelphia. Global warming, if real, would appear also as warmer temperatures where the farms and forests are and the asphalt and shingled-roofs are not so common.
Warmer climates are attested in rural areas far from any great population centers. Although urban heat islands may cause the reclassification of local urban climates into warmer classifications, the climatic zones have been moving poleward and into higher elevations in surrounding rural areas. Mitigation of the effect of the combination of an urban heat island and warmer temperatures within giant urban areas is a desirable end in itself for reducing deaths from heat waves in those areas. Changes in climate zones as identified by the Köppen Climate Classification, climate zones and heat islands are real.[129]
