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Painting The World's Roofs White Could Slow Climate Change
Hugh Pickens writes "Dr. Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white. Chu said at the opening of the St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium that by lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the color of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world's cars off the roads for 11 years. Pale surfaces reflect up to 80 percent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20 percent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed." (Continues, below.)
"An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning. Since 2005 California has required all flat roofs on commercial buildings to be white and Georgia and Florida give incentives to owners who install white or light-colored roofs. Put another way, boosting how much urban rooftops reflect would be a one-time carbon-offset equivalent to preventing 44 billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. 'For the first time, we're equating the value of reflective roof surfaces and CO2 reduction,' says Dr. Hashem Akbari. 'This does not make the problem of global warming go away. But we can buy ourselves some time.'"
Makes me wonder why roofs and not pavement. There's a lot of roads and parking lots around the world. Seems like there's more surface area of those than roofs.
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I can imagine plane pilots with Rayban's... and.. first post! :P
Everybody grab a spray can, time to save the world!
Black is beautiful
White is right!
Let's also dump enough white paint to make a 1 inch cover of the oceans.
shock horror, doing the infeasible will save the planet
Let's also paint all the Grizzly bears white. That will address the problem of disappearing polar bears.
I've patented the idea. My 'RoofSheet' technology for drying your bedding on your tiles is about o be put into production....
Everyone should hang their bare white bottoms out the window, in order to reverse the global warming trend.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
and make all the birds blind. we had a man in the neighborhood who had a white roof and it was filled with dead birds. birds fly towards white objects for some reason as if it's the sky, and splatter to death.
Wasn't there a study a year or two ago, which was loudly trumpeted by NPR, CNN, MSNBC, etc, that concluded that manmade global warming (or "climate change") was already a sure thing, and it was way past too late for us to do anything about it now.
So, uh... What happened to that? Was that fake, or is this guy ignorant? Or do climate-change types believe stuff whenever it's convenient for them?
Unfortunately, producing the massive amounts of white paint needed to paint all these surfaces and maintain them produces about as much CO2 as was saved by starting this excellent project.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
If white roofs are good, maybe we can put down aluminum foil and that will be even better.
I know that when it snows, my eyes are really messed with by all the white reflecting everywhere. Having roofs on buildings all white might cause similar problems.
That said, I have noticed UPS trucks have long since been doing this with good results. Perhaps snow blindness might not be an issue to anyone but pilots and perhaps not even to them. I know I would like to see my electric bill reduced and I'll bet that is a good way to accomplish it. I wonder if those home-owners associations would do anything to interfere with someone making their roofs white?
It some cases this may make sense, but on large scale I see problems with it. I roof painted white, or with white shingles would, fairly quickly lose its high reflection [Albedo] as dirt/grim turns it from white to brown/black in just a couple of years. In addition, the solar insolation in areas north 40 degrees north, would have a much less of an affect.
it's short term medicine, but should help until the world's car fleets find some alternatives.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Let's use solar shingles.
Now all we need is white tar...
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I wonder if he calculated the amount of green house gas and other pollution would be created by manufacturing all this new paint. If they were you make roofing tiles and shingles white, what would the pollution cost from people throwing out their old roofs to bring in new white ones? Same with roads. My favorite roof solution, and something I plan on working on this summer or next summer is to turn my garage roof in to a natural garden by placing a protective tar paper over the shingles, a couple of inches of dirt and then grass or moss seeds. I'll let nature reclaim my man-made structure. Inch for inch, it would be just like grass growing on the ground, except not.
and, the original source: Powerpoint presentation from LBL: "Global Cooling: Increasing World-wideUrban Albedos to Offset CO2," Hashem Akbari PDF file
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Whitewash also absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere and turns into Calcium carbonate to get that milky white look, so in addition to reflecting sunlight, we also remove some CO2 from the air. On the downside, whitewashed walls look butt ugly.
Anyone know what the environment/economic cost of making all that whitewash is?
Amazing, isn't it? Two to three degrees in temperature reduction in a major city just by resurfacing, repainting, and planting trees. Yeah, sure, it's not sexy. But the cost savings ... staggering. Add in the health benefits of reducing smog, plus the reduction of human misery from over-heated citys, and you wonder why we haven't done this years ago.
I know this is going to sound like a self-serving political statement from a hardcore Democrat -- but well done, President Obama. You picked a scientist to run an agency. You gave him a mission to better humanity through reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption. You gave him a platform where he would be heard. Well done indeed.
You can get that in Afghanistan.
green roofing would be even nicer
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Can't we genetically engineer crop fields, to make the them white?
This is not entirely a joke, there's a similar idea in the original Gaia Hypothesis, even if only as a thought experiment.
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
So, nobody is worried about even worse light pollution from this? The night sky is already obfuscated in most cities, even in smaller cities and suburbs. I do agree something needs to be done, but the negatives seem to outweigh the benefits here (from the few comments I've read)
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That's nice for the hot countries. What about cold countries? Maybe we like having black roofs and roads to melt the snow faster if there's a little opening?
We just up our deforestation, if that becomes a problem.
"Hello, loan department? Stephen Chu just told me that I need to get into the roof-painting business pronto."
Well, okay, it's news but it's OLD news - I heard this idea from a number of climate researchers back in the early 1990s. I suppose there's a possibility it might gain more traction in today's climate (no pun intended), but I'm skeptical.
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White paint CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING by reflecting light into the atmosphere! http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_032609/content/01125110.guest.html
Anything you say will be held against you.
well done, President Obama. You picked a scientist to run an agency. You gave him a mission to better humanity through reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption. You gave him a platform where he would be heard.
Heard, but will he be heeded?
Cynic says no.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Why use paint? If you view the video of Dr. Chu's speech in the actual article, he does not say to paint anything. Simply using white or light colored roofing materials on new or replacement roofs does the trick.
more cowbell
Or we could put solar panels on roofs and convert the sunlight, that would ordinarily be
converted to heat, into electricity which I am sure we could find a use for.
We could just throw money into a giant hole.
if only we could balance that out by somehow making some of those things dark. Its a shame that once you paint something white you can never paint it black again.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I we could develop a cheap solar panel for paving our roads and parking lots, we could solve two problems at once.
According to Yahoo answers there are 61,000 square miles of pavement in the US. Assuming about 750 watt/meter, with about 2 hours of sunlight per day, and 10% efficiency, that works out to an average power of 1000 Gigawatts. That should put a real dent in our power consumption.
What if we just poured a bunch of white paint in the ocean? Would that work too? Man we'd have to make a lot of paint for his plan to work. Good thing paint doesn't pollute the earth more than carbon. Oh wait. It does.
Step 1: Dig a hole
Step 2: Climb into hole
Step 3: Bury yourself
Step 4: Earth saved!
Paint roofs white? With the efficiency increases in photo-electric technology, why not put solar panels on every roof? Not only would we reduce the amount of heat being re-radiated back into the atmosphere but, if done on a global scale, we'd eliminate one of the primary reasons for climate change in the first place : the burning of fossil fuels. And before you respond with "but it will cost too much and generate more CO2 than it eliminates" let me give you one word : Bootstrapping. That's right -- Use the power from the existing global infrastructure for solar energy capture to build more global infrastructure for solar energy capture; That way, you would generate a minimal amount of greenhouse gases in the manufacture of new solar panels while at the same time creating a self-sustaining positive feedback loop wherein the more energy we can capture, the more energy capture infrastructure we can build, resulting in our ability to capture more energy.
I didn't RTFA but the summary sounds retarded.
jdb2
But, check out this article: http://www.businessweek.com/
It says painting everything white is better than solar!
and sea levels, but not for the pH balance of the oceans, which are acidifying as they absorb additional carbon from the atmosphere.
I remember reading about green roofs (growing plants etc on the roof of buildings) and the effect it had on temperatures when done in urban environments:
Reduce heating (by adding mass and thermal resistance value) and cooling (by evaporative cooling) loads on a building â" especially if it is glassed in so as to act as a terrarium and passive solar heat reservoir â" a concentration of green roofs in an urban area can even reduce the city's average temperatures during the summer.
The Fairmont Hotel, here in Vancouver BC does this, growing herbs for the hotel kitchens.
It seriously sounds like an idea Hitler would have.
It turns white in the summer in California, and black in the winter in Vermont?
A great use for those new, flexible displays . . . wallpaper your car with 'em!
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So what you're saying is....
Once you go white, you never go back?
Go look at google maps. Zoom in on a major city like San Francisco. The percentage of man-made dark surfaces are very tiny. I'd be stunned if it equaled a fraction of a percent world-wide. And personally I'd like to see some actual numbers on this before we start strip-mining for the titanium compound that makes white paint.
What's up with this box everyone has to think inside of or outside of? Why does there have to be a box?
on parking and road usage would wreck part of the paint. Remove it after a while. On roof there isn't much except temperature difference to "use" it up.
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In other news: Being stupid now rewarded by society more than ever before! Government offering tax breaks.
^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Uhmmm, even painting the all the cities in the world mirror silver won't achieve anything. The world is much, much larger than the cities. Three quarters of the globe is covered in water. A miniscule part of the 25% that is land mass is covered in cities.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I find the color 190 190 255 quite "sexy", and it's almost white. Open up an image editor and try it. It would be good especially for roads I imagine.
So it's been 5 years, has anyone heard how well this Ecopaint stuff worked out?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Whys it gotta be white dawg?
Since when did Tom Sawyer have a doctorate degree- or any college education for that matter?
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This brilliant "idea" fails to take into consideration the fact that in the winter, sunlight falling on a roof does add to the heat inside the house. If the roof were a light color, that heat would have to be replaced by burning some sort of fuel. So unless you're in a location that never needs heat, the idea doesn't work.
Personally I don't believe there is such a thing as anthropomorphic climate change, but if I did, I would still keep my roof a dark color.
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So we'll paint the water white. Like, duh.
I have white rocks on my roof! and before anyone asks... Yes, I live in California. It NEVER snows here.
I'm totally shocked that a self-professed hardcore Democrat is congratulating his Democrat president and supporting whatever his appointee says. Let's paint an entire city white based on a computer simulation. These are the kinds of ideas that people laugh at ten years from now.
The moment my government is telling me what color to paint my house is the moment I know my freedom is gone. If I want less smog, I'll move out of L.A.
it could be possible that the global climate change is just part of a natural cycle, and is actually a good thing. But hey, let's just ignore that possibility and try every idea no matter how stupid that we can possibly think of to "fix" it.
Seriously, if science has taught us *anything* it's that tampering with things we don't understand almost always makes them worse. Even when - actually, maybe that should be especially when - we're trying to "correct" a "mistake we've made".
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
There's snow on my roof perhaps 2 weeks tops during the winter. But I have to run my heat for over 6 months of the year. I topped 5000kwh on a 2500 sq ft house at a cost of $450 this december. Nice try, but...
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The colour of a surface effects immision equally to absorption (this is a fundimental of physics, if it didn't it would violate time/parity symmetry), therefore when your building is net loosing energy (ie when you are trying to keep it warm by heating it) it looses less energy, and when it is net gaining energy ...OK the exact nature of the relationship in terms of net loss/gain is only true for a specific wavelengh but the general point stands: less absorbant surfaces are also less emissive.
The heat energy may reflect off the roof but it won't be bleeding out of the atmosphere. It's bullshit.
I know this is going to sound like a self-serving political statement from a hardcore Democrat -- but well done, President Obama.
My cynicism knows no bounds, which gives me to think what the Democratic response to this might have been if a Bush Administration official had proposed it. I'm betting something to the tune of, "Oh those damned Republicans they want to use band-aid technological fixes so they can go on driving their SUVs over baby polar bears for another ten years!"
I think this is a good idea, and if Chu can make it happen (again, colour me cynical) it'll be a good thing, particularly because of the reduced energy demand aspect, which will help with the whole peak oil deal.
But I can't help thinking about how mindless partisans (not necessarily you) would have reacted if the Offence rather than the Defence had suggested this (both parties are ultimately on the same team, of course, representing the plutocrats united against the people.)
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Although this change the earth's albedo noticeably, it doesn't deal with the problem, and leaves some nasty side-effects, such as:
1. Acidification of oceans. If atmospheric CO2 doesn't decrease, neither does CO2 dissolved in oceans. This means coral still dies etc etc.
2. Rising sea levels. In fact, it makes it worse. Because the albedo is only change in temperate and tropical zones (there are no roofs or roads at the poles) and because the greenhouse effect continues unabated, the temperature at the poles continues to increase even though the temperature at the equator drops. Cue melting ice-cap apocalypse etc etc.
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Obviously someone doesn't know the planet hasn't been warming for a decade.
Hey, I love trees. They're green, provide shade, and help increase the property value in a city. What's not to love about them?
Life is not for the lazy.
Does anyone else love this idea simply due to the fact that it will make roads visible at night? I, for one, am sick of driving on unlit country roads and only having the fogline to navigate by. Oh, and on roads with heavy chains usage you might as well be driving blind at night, you can't even see the edge of damned road because the chains tear the fogline paint up so bad. Bring on the paint, it would be a nice change.
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Hey, it worked for Hobbits.
They ALL speak with one voice. You'll NEVER hear one say that 2+2=5.
Sometimes, an answer is right and that everyone says it means merely that it's right and not that there's some vast conspiracy.
Now, climate change is a lot like diets. If you eat a LOT MORE calories, you will, if you don't exercise, get fat. All medical practitioners in dietary disciplines will say that. Is that a conspiracy too? Now some may say that you'll die young because of it. Some will say that you may be lucky and have a metabolism that will negate it until age slows it down. And others will say something in the middle of those two.
But none of them will say that if you ate less it wouldn't be better for you, or if you ate more it would be no problem.
I am a fan of lavender.
Yes, in localized environments like a city it can make a difference. It won't make a lick of difference to the planet as a whole though. The energy in the system will remain in the system. If anything reflecting that light/heat energy back into the atmosphere will raise the air temperature of the upper atmosphere. Maybe it will go from -30 to -29.8 or something. Now, at that level of atmosphere a half degree difference may very well impact weather systems. Problem is we have no idea how they will affect them. It's another kneejerk response with unknown consequences. Not a good way to play with our climate.
Duh.
Wouldn't it be better to simply plant grass instead? Ignoring the problem of having to reinforce roofs that is...
The problem with painting everything white, is that very shortly we're going to have cheap and durable solar cells. The nanotech is on its way, and we will soon be paving our roads and shingling our roofs with solar power. And it will be black.
So the big question is whether we want to reflect all that energy away with white, or collect it for energy with black.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
As almost all foliage is green, wouldn't it make more sense to paint rooftops Green instead of white?
-Oz
This may work great for southern California, Florida, and the like, but what about places like New York? Sure, you'll lower the temperature in the summer, but you'll also lower the temperature in the winter. How will that effect carbon emissions from the need to heat more?
Does this go along with the plan to put steel mills in everyone's backyards? Is this the role of our government? Have the scientists whored themselves out so badly that this is all they have left?
My cynicism knows no bounds, which gives me to think what the Democratic response to this might have been if a Bush Administration official had proposed it.
This same poster would have crucified the article simply because he is, as he stated, a "hardcore democrat". What do we think of when we hear hardcore? Hardcore sports fan, and a hardcore music fan. Neither would take too kindly to the other "team" coming up with something good.
So as a fairweather conservative, I'll say I hope the SoE can make it work! Seems like the cost would be minimal and maybe it will help. If nothing else it makes the hardcore people feel happy about the "team" with which they've so fully aligned themselves.
It's all good and fine, except for the side-effects of producing all that white paint.
And Al Gore will be happy to sell you the paint.
Right, and (just see the replies) therefore it's not gonna happen. See, here at /. we have a lot of people that ... let's just say we are a bit above average. Still, there's people like bonch with a low UID saying "If I want less smog, I'll move out of L.A." - basically, that means "I don't care a f\/ck."
It is this one planet we live on that we destroy and render inhabitable, and we don't have a backup. Still, stupidity and ignorance and lazyness and greed will keep us from doing the right thing, even if it is as easy as "Paint stuff white, it works!".
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
I already have issues with the rubber/whatever directional signs when they are wet as I ride a motorcycle.
Painted surfaces are better but not much more than the rubber ones. Now if they dye the road surface when it is mixed it won't have adverse effects on two wheelers, let alone four wheelers will also retain their full traction. Plus it won't wear like a surface coat and lose the benefit
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Looks like just another plan by the man, to try and whiten Homie d' Clown up.
Maybe we could selctively paint them to form graffiti. That would at least make global warming more entertaining on Google Maps. You could use multiple roofs to form dot matrix ASCII characters, then at a larger scale use those ASCII characters to form nudes. The first pr0n visible from space! Finally, a welcome that would truly impress aliens!
one-time carbon-offset equivalent to preventing 44 billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
That doesn't mean anything to most people. Is that a lot? Is it how much the average cow belches?
Here's about how much it is; 44 billion tons of C02 is about how much CO2 a modern coal-burning power plan turns out in 44 years. China is bringing a new coal-power plant online every week to 10 days.
So, IF we could paint all of the roofs in America white by, say 2012, we could reduce the global carbon footprint to 2010 levels (about).
Seems to me this is the type of thing no one ought to be compelled to do. If any laws are made about the issue, it should be no more than to grant the right to paint your roof white, without regard to homeowners rule, city zoning laws, etc.
Now you know, a white roof might save you money, knock yourself out. Leave me out of it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Run away Whitehouse
True, but I think they all get a little heady at the start of the first term.
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According to the recent NYT piece on aging yet brilliant physicist Freeman Dyson:
Dyson published a paper titled "Can We Control the Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere?" His answer was yes, and he added that any emergency could be temporarily thwarted with a "carbon bank" of "fast-growing trees." He calculated how many trees it would take to remove all carbon from the atmosphere. The number, he says, was a trillion, which was "in principle quite feasible."
You can disagree with his math, but he does raise an interesting point. Sometimes the best ideas are also the simplest.
As an aside, I noticed that a lot of his critics seem to focus on what happens if you extract too much carbon from the atmosphere - which begs the question of how can Global Warming be an irreversible, extinction-threatening process if it's so 'easy' to fight.
http://dwarmstr.blogspot.com/2005/06/plants-in-near-infrared.html
As the pictures in the above link show, plants are white (ie. highly reflective) to near infrared light.
Hey, I love trees. They're green, provide shade, and help increase the property value in a city. What's not to love about them?
If you're referencing the situation in LA, I'd say that was a good question. Utility and maintenance companies hate them because they add work and cost. Homeowners can be generally stupid, so most opt for the bare landscaping with an palm tree here or there.
Amazing, isn't it? Endless miles of concrete in a city where the heat is pervasive, smog is a given, and air-conditioning is a must, and no one thinks to plant a few trees.
Yeah, all you have to do is repaint, resurface, and plant a whole lotta trees. It's so simple, I don't know why no one thought of it before. All it costs is lots of money, time, energy and materials...
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An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning.
Don't believe them, It's all part of an evil plot to get Slashdotters to leave the basement and go outside.
a hardcore Democrat
Some day you useful idiot loyalists will realize that any statement along the lines of "I am a hardcore $POLITICAL_GROUPING" is, to truly intelligent folks, the sad, wailing call of the truly fuckheaded.
You know all the middle and high level Democrats in the Party laugh their asses off at people like you, right? I did an internship during college in D.C. in the 1990s. I saw it first hand, and it's what woke *me* up to the pointless of the Parties. But live in happy, rose colored denial all you like.
How is this a free lunch? Looking at just the money - do you really think that the government can honestly repaint, resurface, and grow 3 shade trees per house for less than $100 per house? Paint isn't free, maintaining road surfaces isn't free, trees aren't free, and labor isn't free. Throw in government overhead and incompetent program management, and you can't make a "think of the cost savings" argument for it anymore. Other reasons, sure, but not cost.
can cool down LA by an average of 2-3K
Holy crap! Two to three thousand degrees of cooling? Wait! Won't that take use below absolute zero? Augh!
You know what? It's nice to finally see "climate change" being less of a parareligious asceticism movement and more results-oriented. About time.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
... by painting all the solar cells on my roof white. But I'm gonna have to do this all over again because these solar cells aren't making any electricity.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Beavis and Butthead creator has a new show airing on ABC. It should be funny.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I think it depends on the context of the suggestion. If you say that here's a relatively easy first step towards sustainability, I'd say good for you, let's go for it. On the other hand, if you say, here's a quick easy fix to our global warming problems, so stop worrying about coal plants, then you're just going to piss me off. Not only are you not solving the problems, but you're treating me like a little kid that you think doesn't know any better.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I'm socially liberal and despise the GOP, and my response to Bush proposing something like this would have been pure dumbfounded shock.
You just didn't get good sensical ideas like this out of his administration.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
How much water they use if you're in an arid area, and as the other poster noted idiots tend to place taller species of tree near power lines.
I like trees too, but they're not suitable everywhere.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
how about white clothes, and white wings attached to our backs and little golden rings on the head, wait a minute.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Sounds great and all, until you realize there is a reason roofing materials are what they are. Sun damage to building materials is a very, very serious problem. This is why you have to re-roof your home as often as you do. Painting them white isn't going to help.
I appreciate that this guy is a really smart physicist, thus I'm sure he's got the math right on the effect of changing the albedo of structures.
However, I seriously question the environmental economics of this. It seems that this needs a very well-scoped Cost Benefit Analysis.
We are talking about replacing or altering a vast surface area of global structures. This alone has a massive environmental impact - even just in the trucks needed to transport materials alone. Not to mention the retooling of factories, mining or manufacturing new materials and disposing of waste products, as well as disposing of the old surfaces and excess stock of the same. Not to mention also that shifting to whiter concrete roads, for example, will significantly increase noise pollution, and may result in the need for more salt/grit use in Winter (a serious environmental impact), as well as a higher risk of accidents from glare, reduced ability to see ice patches, etc.
Obviously this would take generations to complete, even in the US with a huge amount of money and resources at its disposal, even if there was a massive construction program that started right now.
It would take far, far longer in countries like India or China. It may never happen in Africa, or take many centuries. Surely the time taken for the deferred benefit of making these changes to kick in, would barely offset the significant short-run environmental impact of making those changes long-run, if at all. The carbon issues are far greater in developing countries, they cannot afford to make these changes, some developing countries are vast in geographic size and population, with a large number of structures. They carbon impact will increase, while not being able to afford to offset it by utilizing this method. For it to work fully and effectively the world world's structures need to be painted white. There really aren't that many in the US compared with other nations.
The environmental costs listed above are probably only the tip of the iceberg, just off the top of my head without thinking too hard. With a fully-scoped Cost Benefit Analysis there will be many, many additional costs to those listed here. He's really only examined the benefit. I do not believe the benefit exceeds the cost in this case.
Surely there is a quicker, better way to achieve the same benefit.
I'm a private pilot and routinely see cities from the air. Numbers like this really don't surprise me much - it is simply amazing how much of a city consists of roads, parking lots, and rooftops. Especially parking lots....
But painting roads and parking lots white seems impractical. But what if we covered them with solar panels? Then we'd all have cooler cars to get into at the mall, a 15% heat reduction (converted to electricity) and most importantly, a clear profit motive to do it in the first place.
Not only would this generate cash for mall owners while keeping their patrons' cars cool, it would also help economies of scale push PV prices down further! It's a win-win-win situation for all involved, and the only thing we need to do is change a law for the CA PUC to allow micro-electric plants to feed the grid!
Why we aren't doing this already just baffles me....
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
My cynicism knows no bounds, which gives me to think what the Democratic response to this might have been if a Bush Administration official had proposed it.
That's easy. The Republicans would accuse the official of being a RINO (Republican In Name Only). For example, the Republicans for Environmental Protection were accused by their party of being closet-Democrats because they opposed oil drilling in environmentally sensitive locations and fought for reduction in fossil fuel use. It's an interesting distinction too. While most other Republicans were shouting, "reduce dependence on foreign oil", the REP was shouting, "reduce dependence on oil." But that distinction made them RINOs. Go figure.
The Democrats have their DINOs too... and perhaps a Democrat can respond and dig those up..
It could just have a _similar effect on global temperatures_ as reducing emissions. Nitpicky, I know.
That's not entirely true- every now and then, particularly at the end of his second term, Bush's administration tossed out a few measures that were out of character for them. It was typically done with little fanfare and about equal media coverage, including the occasional pundit or blogger who expressed cautious surprise and happiness. Some of these things are also only coming to light now, when the partisan smog has finally thinned out for a bit.
I'm not sure what I'd count as when it comes to political leanings, but my opinion is that if it had come out during the Bush administration, I'd be skeptical of its truthfulness, yet cautiously optimistic that it might work- assuming you could get it to be implemented on a large enough scale to have a real effect.
Ultimately my feelings are that the Bush administration managed a few, occasional good deeds, but these were largely occluded by the massive boneheaded errors and and outright scandals that were their stock in trade.
And which direction is this "climate change" thing heading again? In the sixties they scared us with global warming of catastrophic consequences. In the seventies they scared us with catastrophic global cooling. Then they again started with the warming. At which point of the brain-mincing propaganda cycle are we currently? I'm sorry, I'm not following the news recently, and this new "climate change" terminology doesn't help, either.
This is already common practice in many tropical locations with flat roofs (as seen in TFA in the video). The problem is keeping them clean -- mildew grows pretty fast in warm moist climates. Biennial cleaning is necessary at a *bare minimum*, and even then the roof will still be largely covered by the time it's due for cleaning.
In temperate climates, you won't have as much of a net gain because you'll be losing natural heating during the winter.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
As an example, computer simulations for Los Angeles, CA show that resurfacing about two-third of the pavements and rooftops with reflective surfaces and planting three trees per house can cool down LA by an average of 2-3K
Just wondering, but is cooling the city b 5-700 degrees Celsuius really a good idea?
I know this is going to sound like a self-serving political statement from a hardcore Democrat -- but well done, President Obama. You picked a scientist to run an agency.
Oh please. The EPA has been suggesting white roofs, etc, since at least 2007. Possibly earlier.
Also look at California Title 24, Part 6 which have been in place since 2005. http://www.energy.ca.gov/title24/2005standards/2006-09-11_ADOPTED_AMENDMENTS.PDF
Chu is repeating well known information.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
This is a good idea, as far as it goes. I live in Indiana, if I paint my roof white, I pay less to cool it in the summer... but more to heat it in the winter? Is my heater "greener" than my air conditioner? (probably, but does this margin justify the paint?) So often this kind of thing just assumes the whole planet is someplace like Texas or California or Florida... Yeah white roofs make a LOT of sense there, why in the heck would you have a black one? But those places are not the whole planet.
You mean "scientists."
An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning.
What? The AWG hypothesis says that the radiation is being kept IN by the C02 in the atmosphere... thus it matters not that it's reflected back into space by white surfaces on the SURFACE of the Earth SINCE they ARE well within and UNDER the green house gas layers of the atmosphere (not counting the painting of mount everest et. al.)! Dah!
What kind of bizarro world is this where the radiation can be reflected back and NOT be stopped by the VERY C02 (and other) GREEN HOUSE GASES that are the problem?
It is the height of nonsense coming out of Chu's brain as you can't have it both ways there Steve and Al, either the green house gasses keep the radiation trapped in OR they don't! Which will it be?
If the green house gasses can't keep the heat radiation in then it follows that AWG is now proven false.
If the green house gases do keep in the heat radiation then AWG might have some tiny probability of being true AND Steven Chu's been proven an idiot for wanting to paint the world a 1984 gray.
I don't know about you but in Canada we like it toasty thus darker colors for buildings are better to keep it warm in the winter and use less energy for heating.
White buildings in the southern regions closer to the equator make sense to keep the buildings cooler in the heat that is there most of the time.
Santa Monica asked themselves what there is not to love about trees a few years ago. And then went looking for a species that was low maintenance in a dry climate and provided lots of shade.
Now they have lots of ficus trees whose roots like to dig under sidewalks and roads, then swell, breaking said sidewalks and roads. And have been trying to get rid of them ever since.
If you paint everything white it stays lighter at night :(
Do we all want perpetual Alaska summers down here? I know when we get a good snowfall it is almost as bright as day all night long if there is any clouds at all to reflect off of. Not sure i want that effect on EVERY cloudy day for all time. It won't be quite as pronounced as snowfall, since roofs and stuff is only 20% or so of what stays covered in snow, but that is still a lot of light bouncing around.
Not that it matters. Unless someone is going to give us a new roof it is 28 years away for us hopefully. We certainly aren't going to whitewash the pretty (and pretty high-end) green shingles i picked out in 2007. Maybe if someone makes (and subsidizes!) white and pastel roof shingles to sell cheaper than current it would catch in a few decades....
Ovian:
http://www.tvacres.com/aliens_ovians.htm
or one of the 4-eyed vocalists from the alien R&B group in the original BSG
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Anyone in the US who thinks the earth needs to be cooler needs to sleep outside for a year. If you still have the same opinion a year later, give me a call.
White roofs have the double effect of significantly reducing the air conditioning load within the building. This reduction in power consumption will probably reduce global warming by avoiding CO2 emissions as much if not more than the direct reflection effect... The peak power demand days in California are during the summer because of all the air conditioning.
One study found that there was between a 15% and 60% reduction in cooling power use just by applying a white roofing compound.
One problem with this is that high albeido (white-ish) pavement doesn't stay that way for very long because concrete ages and gets dirty.
You can read more about this here.
+++ ATH0 +++
This has nothing to do with science and everything to do with money. The 'scientists' who are proposing this are former colleges of Chu and are looking to feed out of the public stimulus troft.
The democrats owe their political power to people who believe in science. The republicans owe their political power to people who believe in God.
i'm curious; what eventually absorbs all this light that gets reflected from these large expanses of "white?"
Serenity now, insanity later.
I wonder what kind of an environmental impact making, transporting and maintaining all the white paint would have.
The climate science in that makes me want to throw up.
From what I understand:
Yes. Black absorbs solar radiation. But then it re-emits it, at a different wavelength. Greenhouse gases aren't sensitive to solar radiation, but they are sensitive to terrestrial radiation â" due to the wavelengths corresponding to bond energies in the compounds. White will reflect the solar radiation, without changing it's wavelength. Thus, net albedo increase = net temperature decrease.
as bump good as the bump asphalt bump as the concrete bump is a bump slab and the asphalt bump folds to the bump road.
This is my sig.
"colour me cynical" - no friend, but that makes us color you unAmerican. Seriously though, Bush's people wouldn't even allow themselves to nod in the direction of any action that would recognize climate change as a threat.
Also, on the "plutocrats united" thing ... know Plutocrats much? I've known a few. They're far from united. They can be played off against each other. Most of them are no smarter than the guys who've run Wall Street into the ditch. And they're just as divided in their strategies as any group of /. geeks taking sides on coding methods. So do both parties enjoy plutocratic embraces? Sure. But it's largely different groups of plutocrats, and quite often their bread is buttered on different sides.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/25/california-to-reduce-carbon-emissions-by-banning-black-cars/
how much CO2 is in sunlight? and how do dark colors take it out? does reflecting the sunlight into the atmosphere put the CO2 into outer space?
Also I think I would have been suspicious of the science of this if the Bush Admin had come up with it, considering how shamelessly they manipulated science to match political ideology.
I did find myself agreeing with them on things perhaps four times that I can remember, so they weren't 100% nitwits, just approaching it.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Here's the part of the transcript where he leads the caller on, who is really the person who said that, and Rush debunking it.
Try reading the entire FA you link to.
CALLER: I listened to your show last hour, but I don't know who came up with this, but I think they have it backwards. If you want to cool the air or the atmospheric you should paint all cars black.
RUSH: Explain this.
CALLER: Well, black absorbs. I have a black car. It's warmer only on the inside. The air above it is actually cooler. If you want to warm the atmosphere, you're going to paint all cars white. It reflects. It reflects what? Heat and light.
RUSH: Well, but see, we're a little confused on the intention here. Because the story only says that they want to reduce the heat inside cars to reduce automobile air-conditioning usage, and the less automobile air-conditioning usage, the less emissions, the less gasoline used, and therefore the less damage to the planet. Now, what you're saying is --
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: -- that if you're right, if these white cars, if these light colored cars are going to reflect the heat then that's just going to make global warming even worse, right?
CALLER: I would think so.
RUSH: Yeah. And so what you need to do is have every car be black like the old Model Ts were, so that the earth gets cooler.
CALLER: Yes, it will use a little bit more air-conditioning in the summertime than a person with a white car.
RUSH: I bet you don't. I'll bet you that's bogus.
CALLER: Well, no, that is technically true. The car is actually a little bit warmer on the inside, a black car. But, it balances out --
RUSH: Okay, you get in the car in the summertime, let's use Florida.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I have black cars, and I'll guaran-damn-tee you, if I'm playing golf for five hours, and I got a white car or black car, if I get in either one of those cars, it's gonna be an oven because I lock it and keep the windows up, because everybody knows my car, don't want any vandalism, I don't care if it's ten degrees cooler in the white car or the black car, it's still going to be an oven in there --
CALLER: Oh, yes.
RUSH: -- and the AC is going on full blast!
CALLER: It's hot either way.
RUSH: All right. So the whole thing is just bogus.
I find that actually funny. I mean come on, their freakin trees! That's what they do. They grow. What was the city expecting? Smart trees that know when to grow and how far, being ever mindful of man-made objects?
Why is poor planning the fault of supporting the use of trees?
Life is not for the lazy.
Ever been on a running track? they're light red and have awesome traction. trade a little traction for durability and you have the perfect road surface. IIRC, this would also increase the ductility and increase it's lifespan in freeze country.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now I just need a big red button
Experiment: Step 1: Monitor temperature in your attic for several days. And Outside. Step 2: Tack 4-5 space blankets to your roof rather than use paint. Step 3. Remeasure temperature in your attic and outside for several days. Space blankets should reflect light away from the roof. What do you expect?
Holding your breath will reduce "global warming". Painting your roof white........will you idiotic tree huggin idiots please crawl back under the rock you came from? You're screwing it up for everyone else!
Actually you can observe what the response would be by seeing how people responded to Obama suggesting that people make sure their tires are properly inflated. Lots of people made fun of that. As I recall, however, McCain said it was a pretty sensible idea.
I'm not 100% on that last part.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
I'm a hard core conservative, but I have to say that I like the argument presented. It seems practical enough if presented in the form of incentives instead of regulation, has the possibility of reducing the load on the national energy grid (as well as local and regional grids) and allows the people to spend less money cooling their homes, allowing them to save the money or spend it elsewhere.
My main question is, why is something so simple sounding not already in practice? If painting my roof a lighter color will cut my cooling costs, I'll be buying paint tomorrow (provided the paint costs less than the energy savings).
20th century Marxism is not progress...
Imagine that - lighter colored surfaces remain cooler, while black roofs and asphalt heat up and locally increase the surrounding temperatures, especially in urban areas. Could this be why the rating system for LEED (pretty much the standard in the US for certifying "green" buildings) for years has offered points for minimizing the "Heat Island Effect", for both roof and non-roof surfaces?
Just because it's not common practice yet in the US doesn't mean it takes a Nobel Prize winning Physicist to come up with ideas like this...
Similarly, the claim of cutting carbon emissions by as much as taking all cars off the road for eleven years fails the dimensional analysis test. Having all white roofs for how long makes that equivalence?
Come on people, try to think these things through.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
So do both parties enjoy plutocratic embraces? Sure. But it's largely different groups of plutocrats, and quite often their bread is buttered on different sides.
The analogy I like to use is that of the offensive and defensive lines of an American football team. People who get all partisan about the Democrats vs the Republicans are like people who've missed the point of the game entirely, and instead of recognizing the game for what it is, insist that the offensive line of one team is "their team" and spend all their energy cheering for it while running down the defence of the same team, blissfully unaware that there is a whole 'nother contest going on.
It looks ludicrous to anyone who understands what the game is actually about, to see people insisting, "but they're different people!" as if they weren't essentially the same kind of people, all on the same team, all headed in the same direction (toward more powerful government.)
I understand that if you look closely enough at them you'll see differences, but if you don't think the differences between Them and Us are far larger than the difference between Them and Them, you've been blinded by the dazzle and the hype.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
So what you're saying is....
Black is HOT!
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
And Damn it, it's the best 2 hours of the year.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I agree, that's a serious moderation injustice. Coming from Canada (Edmonton Alberta, the northernmost North American city with a population >1M... woo!), I completely agree... in the dead of winter, a good blanket of snow on the roof is a very good thing. But the summers... jebus, I'd give anything for a nice, highly reflective roof.
Imagine some hot chick in a bikini. Now lets name her Lisa.
Now who is Lisa you might ask. Lisa is that hot chick in a bikini, the one you have a mental image of and that you are drooling all over in your mind. Yuck brain slobber. Well back to Lisa now; Lisa is the mnemonic aide for remembering the composition of standard type 10 Portland cement.
L = Lime
I = Iron oxide
A = Aluminum oxide
S = Silica
Bet you wont forget that one.
I rely on my dark roof for forced air solar heating/heat recover, which incidentally saves me quite a lot on winter energy bills, and thus contributes just the same.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Someone made this observation in Earth Science class in my Jr High School. Except he wanted to paint the streets white as well as make tires that would not live black marks.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Half of the energy from the sun is IR that we can't see anyway. There has been roofing materials on the market for several years which still look dark to us but don't absorb much energy because they reflect the IR radiation we can't see anyway.
Doing stupid things like expecting everyone to rush out and paint their roofs white is both moronic and unecessary.
"...resurfacing about two-third of the pavements and rooftops with reflective surfaces and planting three trees per house can cool down LA by an average of 2-3 (deg C)...."
Wouldn't that then imply that the "great global WARMING" that we're all terrified of, whose data is derived from temperature sensors that have in many cases been surrounded by urbanization, might be caused by localized temperature increases of, I dunno, maybe 2-3 deg C due to the URBANIZATION and not some somewhat-speculative CO2 mechanism that's not even known for sure whether it's a cause or effect?
-Styopa
You're projecting yourself onto others. I would have been freaking ecstatic if the Republicans believed in climate change enough to actually do something about it. But you have to understand that McCain/Palin did not believe in climate change.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Separate story - memory is a strange thing.
In the same organization I ordered an ergo chair through regular channels after I had been there two weeks. It had to be approved by five people throughout the chain. I worked the issue for over a year before I let it go (I had since made a deal with a supply manager for all the good chairs I wanted). Two and a half years later as I was checking out the guy came with the chair. "Put it over there" I told him - "my replacement will need it."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This has got to be one of the most stupid ideas floated by a Nobel winning scientist in recent memory.
Cooling a house or cooling a city with this white roof plan will have NO cooling effect on atmospheric temperature. If anything, the effect will be increasing atmospheric temp. The idea that the heat island phenomenon affects atmospheric temp is ludicrous and not supported by the data or common sense.
Maybe Mr. Chu will next suggest covering the BIG dark spots on Earth--our oceans--with white coverings, because of deep water's low albedo. Because we all know that high albedo=cooling, right? That's how the white sands of Death Valley and the Sahara keep those areas so pleasantly cool.
Go back to cooling atoms with lasers Mr. Chu, you're not a big picture kind of guy.
Maybe that's why the Stones wanted to paint the red door black.
-- Steven Wright
Cars need to be painted anyway, how about painting them all white? I guess the world would be less colorful and a bit boring-looking.It would also make it difficult to find your car in a parking-lot...
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
That is of course false.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
It's an interesting distinction too. While most other Republicans were shouting, "reduce dependence on foreign oil", the REP was shouting, "reduce dependence on oil." But that distinction made them RINOs. Go figure.
Yeah, because reducing the amount of oil we consume is a hard problem. Reducing the amount of foreign oil we consume is an easy problem. With our coal, oil shale and untapped oil reserves, there's no excuse for us to be funding problems in the Middle East.
He must have left his calculator back at the lab (as did everyone else on this thread). Just a real quick calculation: Population of earth ~ 6.5 billion Surface area of earth 5.49e15 ft^2 Half facing sun 2.745e15 ft^2 Concentrated in temperate area, ~1/3, 0.915e15 ft^2. Everybody lives on the sunny side in or near to the tropics! Every family is a family of four and lives in a 4000 ft^2 house, 6.5e12 ft^2 Ratio of roofs to temperate surface area = 6.5e12/0.915e15 ~ 0.007 If the roofs perfectly reflected the sunlight into space without consideration of the re-heating of the atmosphere due to radiation with a participating media, the difference in heat load would be less than 1%. Based on the extremely conservative assumptions, the difference would probably be less than 0.1%. Sure, in a dense urban area, white stucco and white roofs would lower the ambient by a degree or two, but global climatic effect? I think not.
First it was the space mirror/shade, then it was some reflective shit in the oceans, ... finally it will be to wearing silvery hats!
I think this is a good idea, and if Chu can make it happen (again, colour me cynical)...
Nah, I'm gonna color you white. It saves me energy.
no it doesn't, show your math
My cynicism knows no bounds, which gives me to think what the Democratic response to this might have been if a Bush Administration official had proposed it. I'm betting something to the tune of, "Oh those damned Republicans they want to use band-aid technological fixes so they can go on driving their SUVs over baby polar bears for another ten years!"
Tried to think of a similar situation, but the closest I could think of was when Obama pointed out that keeping your tires inflated to the proper psi could save a lot of gas for the whole nation. McCain criticized it because, I dunno, it wasn't as sexy as electric cars? It's actually a perfectly reasonable suggestion that would be effective and easy to do, and as far as I can tell McCain was forced to "fight" it because the other guy brought it up first. I can't off the top of my head think of any things like this going the other way. However, Obama was sort of criticized or made fun of for agreeing with Hillary in the primaries too much.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2008/08/07/tire-pressure-taunt/
Yes it's Fox News, but it was the first google hit and I'm lazy.
My memory may be letting me down here, but I don't believe the Bush Administration did propose it. And I think the probability of a Bush Administration future proposal along these lines is pretty limited.
This may possibly be linked to the low enthusiasm the Bush Administration showed for believing/promoting science in federal agencies. Which I believe was the GP's point.
There are much better stuff than white paint for reflecting the sun light.
There are retro-reflectors, which send the sun back into space, while white paint sends most of it to the ground and clouds.
My system can even turn off the reflection, to cool off at night. It is a sun driven air conditioner, or heater, and cheap as well
http://kim.oyhus.no/SunValve/
Kim0
The earth's temperature is 375 degrees kelvin. Reducing that 1% means you reduce it 3.75 degrees.
You seem to think absolute zero is when ice freezes?
Why white? From my physics knowledge, that would reduce the amount of heat captured from the sun, which would cause the electric heaters to work harder to keep my apartment warm.
Please explain how painting *the world* white would help with global warming. The world is more than the air-conditioned equatorial regions.
I drive on the Autobahn every other day, and practically all of it is paved with asphalt.
Also, mean temperatures in Germany (13C) are much higher than in Canada (-8C).
If you want proof, take a look:
1) It's asphalt.
2) The beer is not frozen.
The moment my government is telling me what color to paint my house is the moment I know my freedom is gone.
You must be a real retard if you don't know that there's already a huge mass of building codes and zoning stuff which restricts often in minute detail what, where and how you can build.
Let's paint an entire city white based on a computer simulation. These are the kinds of ideas that people laugh at ten years from now..
The fact that buildings have been white in many hot countries as far back as records go, for reasons directly related to the reasons behind this suggestion makes it somewhat doubtful that people will be laughing at this any time (apart from tards like you).
How much does every roof of every human household account for in terms of the earth surface ?
Er.. 1% ?
So, changing 1% of the Earth's surface will definitely change the planet's albedo ? Right...
Man, this is a brilliant conclusion... NOT !
And as all scientists the ideas generated are entirely impractical. This may work well in Bermuda where house roofs have always been white, but repainting houses is an entirely different problem. I'm sure many of you American city folk with your apartments have never had a 3 month long battle with your neighbour about painting their roof white, resulting in you having to wear sunglasses in your own living room.
Better yet due to the expanding deserts replacing dark green trees with bright yellow sand the situation will solve itself anyway.
Too bad solar cells are dark...
They are dark so they must be absorbing all this evil heat. Cut them all down and pave the dirt with concrete, then paint it white just to make sure.
But they didn't, did they?
keeping your tires inflated to the proper psi could save a lot of gas for the whole nation
This is something that really amazes me about the US. The car is so deeply ingrained in the national culture, but proper maintenance somehow isn't. Standing on the street corner in any US city I've visited, I can hear underinflated tires and engines with incorrect timing. Underinflated tires cause excess drag and excess wear on the tire. Incorrect engine timings mean that some of the energy from each explosion is pushing the wrong way, putting strain on the engine and decreasing fuel efficiency. These are the kind of things that even an incompetent mechanic could diagnose and fix correctly, but they seem to be a problem for a large number of vehicles in the USA.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No. Once you go white, you go blind.
(My apologies to Family Guy...)
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
http://www.ipcc.ch/
Check on the basic science. The report cites all the papers it summarises.
I think it has something to do with our work schedules and how comparatively little time we get off. Most mechanics shops are open from about 8am to about 5pm local, which is also when a large number of us are working ourselves. We Americans are lucky to get two weeks' vacation per year, and a lot of places don't let you have that much.
That accounts for bad timing on the engine, at least (and other ailments requiring a mechanic to fix), but not for the tires.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
The way the media (and Slashdot) eats up statements like this as though there were no question of it's validity while, at the same time, rejecting similiary silly (because it is a silly statement) statements that don't corespond to your world view.
Look for this guy to be gone soon. A half brained monkey with turetts can tell you that the "white roof" concept is only going to be useful in a warm climate area and that excludes much of the US. How about pushing to build more nuclear power plants so we can actually power those electric go-carts Obama will mandate "The Peoples Car Company" (formerly GM) make.
It's exactly this head in the ass mentality that drove me from the Republican party. Look at something as simple as inflating tires. According to some studies, properly inflated tires can save 1% to 2% of the 145 billion gallons of oil we use each year. That savings alone, small as it seems, matches the projected amount increase of opening up offshore drilling. But rather than saying, OK, let's reduce, the Bush Republicans automatically see anything with the words "reduce" or "conserve" as some crackpot liberal policy.
All these makeshift solutions are just temporary workarounds. What we need to do is address the root causes: stop using fossil fuel, reduce heat emissions in everything and so on.
You know what would happen if such a solution would give us 11 extra years? We'd just use those 11 years to put off working on the real thing. Don't imagine for a moment we'd use them to get started on the real problems.
Man is a strange animal in that respect. It loves its vices and won't give them up until it's too late. We love our smoking, big fat cars, wasteful PC's and wasting resources of all kinds, and we'll take instant gratification over long term planning any day. I guess we're all still children, as far as civilization maturity is concerned.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
If republican presidents proposed this sort of thing then all us democrats would be republicans. But they don't. They are republicans.
This person makes a statement like this: "I wonder, when the tide "reverses" because of the Maunder Minimum, will those who cried wolf admit they cried wolf, or will they use the reversal as proof that they were right?" and gets modded insightful? This shows ignorance at best. First, the Maunder Minimum happened back around 1700, so nothing is going to "reverse" because of the Maunder Minimum now. To be generous one may assume that the appropriately named "Obfuscant" was trying to refer to the fact that the sun is currently in an extended minimum, and that he/she (I'm betting on "he") is predicting that the current solar minimum will produce a reduction in temperature. But if we do make that generous assumption that the poster knows what the hell he's talking about and isn't just regurgitating misunderstood talking points, the bit about using the "reversal as proof they were right" reveals this person's mendacity. OF COURSE any reduction in solar output will slow or reverse warming. The greenhouse effect works by trapping solar energy. Anyone who tries to imply that mainstream climate science neglects the importance of the sun is trying to feed you shit. Do not swallow it. So "Obfuscant" seems to be trying to convince you that if solar output reduces, and climate scientists say "of course that slows down warming, until solar output increases again, but it does not change the fact of the additional greenhouse effect from human emissions--at best it masks it for a little while," that you should think they're changing their story and full of shit. But this is they way the story has always run: there are multiple forcings on the total energy balance of the earth--solar output is one, and the composition of the atmosphere is another--and changes in any of those forcings will affect the total balance. Right now we're in a period of (in geological terms) very rapid change because of human intervention in one of those forcings: atmospheric composition. This (obviously, to anyone who thinks it through) does not mean that changes to other forcings will cease to have an effect. Similarly, changes to other forcings will not make atmospheric forcings go away, either. So the only way the solar minimum will "reverse the tide" of human-induced warming is if it continues perpetually, always balancing out the warming from the greenhouse effect with less and less solar output. That is a profoundly unlikely scenario. The parent was the opposite of insightful--the parent was trying to obscure any genuine insight into what's going on.
Umm, when people first started recognizing the problem the issue *was* just a degree or two.
On a global scale, one degree mean temperature increase is a shit load of energy being dumped
into the weather system. Now we're looking at several degrees due to inaction:
http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/gamble/
Were that I say, pancakes?
Do you believe that, or are you just being a troll? If you believe that, and you're open to being persuaded by facts, take a look at the graph at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif and tell me if you see anything in the period from 1998-present that looks inconsistent with the trend over the past 40 years or so.
My cynicism knows no bounds, which gives me to think what the Democratic response to this might have been if a Bush Administration official had proposed it. I'm betting something to the tune of, "Oh those damned Republicans they want to use band-aid technological fixes so they can go on driving their SUVs over baby polar bears for another ten years!"
To be fair, Bush did create the world's largest oceanic preserve and was universally lauded for it. Personally, I think Bush is a war criminal, but at least he did something right.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It may be good for increasing the reflectivity of road surfaces, but production of cement emits a LOT of greenhouse gases.
Because of 1) the tendency for heat to rise, and 2) the low angle of the sun in winter, contributions to your house's heat budget through solar heating of the roof are pretty minimal. By contrast, in the summer, the heat building up in your house is less able to escape via the attic when the attic is really hot. And white roofs really do lower the temperature in your attic. If you air condition even a little, you'd save money with a white roof pretty quickly. But I guess forgoing the savings is a small price to pay to be able to continue to pooh-pooh climate change.
I plan to paint my roof white with lead-based paint. When I'm done, I'm going to host a spotted owl fry for the neighborhood. I also will serve some snail darter 'poppers'. They go great with beer.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
The main effect would be from local cooling of areas that we're now using a bunch of fuel to air condition - if you lighten roofs and roads, you locally cool the houses near/under them. So we burn less fuel. So we put out less CO2. Which does, in fact, help correct the problems you're concerned about. Of course we can't directly cool the planet by painting a few things white - we could only possibly effect a tiny portion of the earth's surface that way, and it would be a negligible change in the planet's radiation budget. But we don't have to reflectively cool the entire planet... just cut down on the heat coming into our buildings, so we can use less energy. This has the happy side effect of saving money, too.
You're simply not gaining very much heat through your roof in the winter, no matter what color it is. Even if it wasn't snow covered (which it would be much of the winter, especially in upstate NY), the angle of the sun is just too low to heat the roof much. But in the summer, when the sun is beating down from more directly overhead, your attic gets hot, which makes it hard for the interior of your house to lose heat via the roof. If you use air conditioning at all, you're better off with a light roof.
The whole reason you want to do this is the reduction in air conditioning load - the change in the earth's total albedo is so tiny as not to be worth mentioning. Both lighter roofs and roads locally cool the area near/under them, which lets you run your A/C less. And since lighter roofs/roads don't cost any more over their life cycle, you not only save GHG emissions, you save money (in the form of lower electricity bills) too.
If you are sure that mindless partisans are incurable jackasses, then maybe you should concentrate on the opinions/actions of the more reasonable.
Just a suggestion.
Seriously, plenty of people have mentioned the issue of partisanship.
Amazing, isn't it? Two to three degrees in temperature reduction in a major city just by resurfacing, repainting, and planting trees. Yeah, sure, it's not sexy...
Not sexy? Tree-huggers everywhere are having wet dreams about this.
I know this is going to sound like a self-serving political statement from a hardcore Democrat...
No, really?
...what you think it means. Perhaps you meant coincidental, or even if you felt it was a fortunate coincidence you could call it fortuitous. But I see nothing that qualifies it as ironic, much less apparently so. Irony (from the Ancient Greek Îá¼ÏÏνÎÎα eirÅneÃa, meaning hypocrisy, deception, or feigned ignorance) is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does and what one means or what is generally understood. Irony is a mode of expression that calls attention to the character's knowledge and that of the audience. There is some argument about what qualifies as ironic, but all senses of irony revolve around the perceived notion of an incongruity between what is said and what is meant, or between an understanding or expectation of a reality and what actually happens, "when the literal truth is in direct discordance to the perceived truth."
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If we paint all the roofs white, what about the additional heating costs this will incur in the winter in the colder parts of the world? Seems to me we need a way to turn the roofs (and pavement etc.) white in the summer, and black in the winter, no?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Let's see. 70% of the earth's surface is water.
Of the 30% of the earth's surface which is land, 70% is uninhabitable (desert, mountains, arctic, etc.).
Of the 9% of the inhabitable earth's surface, 50% is very low population density - i.e. devoted to agriculture, or simply NOT populated (forests, jungles, etc.)
Of the 4.5% of the actually inhabited earth's surface, most of the population lives within 200 miles of water in some form - on the marge of lakes, oceans, rivers. These areas are relatively very high density with closely spaced buildings and a lot of roads. The remainder are medium density with lots of grass, trees, etc.
It seems as if Mr. Chu is proposing that by changing the reflectivity of no more than (an estimated) 2% of the earth's surface we can affect the climate.
Pretty far fetched to me. I thought it was from the Onion at first.
Amazing, isn't it? Two to three degrees in temperature reduction in a major city just by resurfacing, repainting, and planting trees. Yeah, sure, it's not sexy. But the cost savings ... staggering
Are they? I don't see where you've even begun to attempt to estimate the cost of doing this. To resurface all of our roads would itself have a staggering cost. Until someone estimates the cost of doing this, any claim that the savings would be "staggering" is B.S.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Back of the envelope, if roofs last an average of 20 years, we're replacing 5% of the roofs every year; lets replace with lighter shades. I just did that (they didn't have the good shingles in white, so I chose the lighter possible shade of gray they had). Only about a month in, AC runs noticeably less now (but we'll see when the real Summer is in :)
As mentioned above, there's still a net gain, since there's much more sunlight in Summer than in Winter (of course, it all depends on where you are, but the research says that it works :)
Science has taught us (me? :) many things, but I haven't got that conclusion and can't recall one example; do you ? BTW, this is how we learn in science, we tamper with things we don't understand so we understand them
I don't know the exact numbers, but let's assume you change your roof every 20 years, so 5% of houses will get their roof replaced this year, lets ask/push people to use lighter shades (or white), probably same cost (just replaced my roof, color didn't affect price to me, so I assume doesn't affect supply cost), in 20 years, it's all replaced (not centuries !)
>According to some studies, properly inflated tires can save 1% to 2% of the 145 billion gallons of oil we use each year.
According to other studies, they make a negligible difference. And nobody is arguing that properly inflated tired aren't a good thing. Why not?
The point I was making was that there is a substantial difference between "reducing oil usage" and "reducing foreign oil usage". We can eliminate all foreign oil from our country, with negligible cost, but we don't have the political will to do so.
>>That savings alone, small as it seems, matches the projected amount increase of opening up offshore drilling.
Go back and read what I wrote.
Well, according to google, 100 horsepower = 254 443.358 btu / hour
[That's just deliveryed power].
Engines are not very efficient.
1 gallon of gasoline per hour = 39 kW
1 Btu per hour = 0.293 W
One gallon of gas per hour = 133105.8 BTU per hour.
But on a highway, you are probably going ~60mhps and getting ~20-30mpg. In other words, you are burning double or triple the 133106 BTU/hour I mentioned above...
At 20mpg, this is about 400 000 BTU per hour.
Is that a lot?
http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/modules/ENERGY/ENERGY_POLICY/tables.html
This is a huge pet peave of mine. The numbers given are incomplete, if we paint all the roofs white, after how long does it equal taking all cars of the roads for 11 years? 1 year of roofs painted white? 10 years? I mean, theoretically, if I paint just *my* roof white, it will be the equivalent of taking all the cars off all roads for 11 years with a million years payoff time or something. I'm sick and tired of these incomplete statistics. Yes, I skimmed TFA and saw nothing indicating payoff time. I see these kind of part of the information all the time with energy statistics, and while I agree that it will save energy it is impossible to judge real ROI without the timeframe for the return.
My cynicism knows no bounds, which gives me to think what the Democratic response to this might have been if a Bush Administration official had proposed it. I'm betting something to the tune of, "Oh those damned Republicans they want to use band-aid technological fixes so they can go on driving their SUVs over baby polar bears for another ten years!"
Maybe that's because Bush would have stopped there, had he ever gotten there. Obama has done more (positive) for the environment in 4 months than GWB did in eight years, and this, combined with stricter mileage standards, is a good start.
"Solar Panels"
Why the heck would we choose to only deflect all that free natural energy when we can harness what we need and get the same result?
Either that or use the Green Roof System. Gees, why do people fixate on solving a problem with a solution which creates wasteful results?
Thanks.
I do apply the highest standards that I can to all claims from any source on any topic. As a person committed to minimal belief and maximum tested knowledge in as many areas of life as possible I take it quite seriously.
Unfortunately what is clear is that "climate science", ahem, isn't as hard a science as we are lead to believe nor is it as "settled" as we are lead to believe. Physics has one up on climate science in many regards.
There are many problems with climate science: bad data, limited data, inferred data, statistically - ahem magically - corrected data, bad data collection sites, bad science by scientists, refusals to provide data and programs, political agendas, .... the list goes on and on and on and on.... like the energizer bunny.... (no I don't work for Duracell ;-).
I won't repeat what others are more capable of reporting in depth: http://climateaudit.org/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/ - two excellent sites that work to provide an audit and rational analysis of what is going on in the science and in the actual world. Oh and http://surfacestations.org/ - when you can't trust the sources of the raw data (if you can even get that) how can you trust any conclusions drawn from said data?
I'm not an expert by any means. In fact I'm quite ignorant of much of the climate science science but I'm learning step by step. It's a complicated field with many flaws and whacked out conclusions drawn seemingly from extreme disaster scenarios and good and bad hollywood movies.
I am a computer scientist and as such I do know about simulations. I've written some. I also know about cellular automata and how they can generate their own randomness within their systems. As Wolfram has demonstrated with a number of proofs Nature is a universal computing system that not only includes continuous systems but also discrete cellular automata like systems. It's highly likely that weather and climate systems are systems that generate their own randomness from within their own systems. This means that they can never be simulated with any accuracy. This means that the only way to know how those "natural computations" are going to end up is to watch them run to their conclusions. This means that all computer models for climate are bogus in regard to their ability to predict the future. That is an inherent flaw not due to a lack of human ingenuity but due to a fundamental aspect of Nature. The fundamental notion that "the map is not the territory" has been violated by the climate scientists running simulations WHEN they BELIEVE in their simulations and WHEN they distort the raw input data with statistical games that alter the data so much that fundamentally alter the trends visibly. (See this blink comparator: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/28/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-87-grilling-in-the-cornhusker-state/). Is statistically massaged data that misrepresents scientific fraud? That is a good question that is being investigated and is part of the reason that the likes of Dr. Mann (of hockey stick fame) are so defensive. They don't like their work being scrutinized in depth. Dr. Mann has already been admonished by the NAS.
However, it turns out that there are many such questions with climate science which looks like it's in a big need of a serious revamping of it's peer review process. Also if the claims are as dire as the likes of Gore predict or even 1/50th as bad then it's extremely important that we OPEN the Climate Science to maximal scrutiny by people of all fields to vet it and find the flaws and frauds and correct these mistakes and transgressions and to improve our knowledge of climate science and really find out what is occurring on planet Earth in the dynamic Sol-Earth-Moon-solar-system syste
As a computer scientist who knows about simulations, you should know better than to fall for the "climate is too random to model" canard.
It would be pretty much impossible for me to write a computer program that would predict the results of you rolling a die. There's no way I could get all the initial conditions right, much less predict the complicated interactions going on in your brain controlling your muscles. On the other hand, I can predict with extreme accuracy the average results of you rolling a die many times. It's much the same with climate models. Accurately predicting the weather more than a few days in advance is pretty much impossible, since weather systems tend to be dominated by fluid mechanical properties that are highly chaotic --- extremely sensitive to initial conditions and tiny perturbations that you won't get right in a model. However, the average properties of weather patterns over many years become reasonably predictable. No one can tell you what days it will rain in your city in the year 2011, but they can probably predict the total annual rainfall pretty much spot-on. Global temperature modeling is similar; we can't predict the fine scale day-to-day or even year-to-year random fluctuations, but that doesn't make it impossible to predict longer term (multi-decade scale) trends, including the effects of human impacts on the environment that are slightly "weighting the die" of natural random fluctuations.
As for the accuracy of your "debunking" sites, I don't have time to closely review and respond to all the materials you have presented. However, let me use the first point made in the first article that you linked (Weinstein, "Disproving the Anthropogenic Global Warming Problem") as an example of the type of half-assed deceptive reasoning that you should be more wary of.
Weinstein presents a plot of "Global Average Temperature 1850-2008." He claims that (unnamed) scientists are biasing interpretation by only averaging the temperature rise over the past few decades to show the impact of greenhouse gas warming. Instead, "If the time period from 1850 through 2008 is used as a base, the net increase is just under 0.70C and the average rise is also 0.040C per decade!". Well, DUH! Since human output of greenhouse gases has been increasing with an exponentially growing population using more per-capita resources, one would entirely expect the effects of AGW to be highly concentrated in just the most recent years, so averaging over a much longer period of time, over most of which we were pumping out a negligible amount of greenhouse gases compared to today, one will obviously see a much lower average warming impact. The plot shown is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that current and future levels of greenhouse emissions (which, don't forget, also accumulate over many years) add an underlying trend of > 0.2C/decade to the existing baseline fluctuations in temperature. While this graph would not alone be considered proof of that point (the rise so far is not that many sigma above historical fluctuations), Weinstein is employing extremely flawed logic in trying to use this plot to "disprove" the AGW predictions.
If you ever wonder why there is a lack of anti-AGW voices in peer-reviewed scientific literature, perhaps this is a prime example: this type of thinly veiled ad-hominem attack on 'those misleading scientists' based on flawed logic would get laughed out of the room by any rational set of people. I encourage you to re-read the rest of Weinstein's article with a more critical eye yourself for flawed and deceptive logic. If you can find nothing else wrong with the article, then perhaps you have over-rated your own ability at critical thinking with regards to slick but faulty propaganda writing.
I've not fallen for any "canards" dude as I don't believe nor disbelieve the science being put forward, I need proof, actual open independently VERIFIABLE and AUDITABLE proof - show all the steps of the science from premise to data collection to analysis and conclusions with all raw data, intermediate data and all source code for programs used.
Stories and belief have no place in science. Not that the actual science is driving the pro-disaster crowd who seem to have seen too many science fiction movies like "The Day After Tomorrow" and "An Inconvenient Truth" or "The Day the Earth Caught Fire".
Rolling dice is quite a bit different than weather dude. Thus the analysis is also different.
The NIPCC recently released report (yesterday) should set you on your way to seeing that the science is not settled as you'd believe it to be. http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/nongovernmental-international-panel-on-climate-change-nipcc-2009-report/
Correlation is not proof of causation.
I think you are mischaracterizing the information and painting it in a negative light and getting all confused with your non-science beliefs all of which are irrelevant.
Did you notice the name on the podium in the videos associated with your link, "The Heartland Institute"? Which is a "libertarian/conservative free market-oriented public policy think tank" --- in other words, an entirely politically/ideologically oriented shill group funded by megacorporations and the super-wealthy elite who benefit from them?
In many of your posts, you are adamant that you are a facts-first, science-above-ideology kind of guy. All of this is in vain if the sources you trust and learn from are 100% ideologically driven, with foregone conclusions about climate change that they assemble "facts" to support. This is the very opposite of science. Don't naively accept the dazzling "scientific" articles of such charlatans.
There were many decades when Big Tobacco companies had large segments of the public believing that there were absolutely no credible links between smoking and cancer. During this time, the tobacco industry's own internal research directly contradicted this --- as later came out in court documents. Take note that the Heartland Institute is currently also involved in spreading FUD to downplay health concerns about second-hand smoke. If you are a humanist, it should worry you that you may be being played by organizations that will stop at nothing --- even at the cost of millions of human lives and untold suffering --- to support their corporate overlords' interests.
So because you don't like their "politics" you discount the science that the do? Sounds like you're a non-scientist making a political decision femtobyte rather than considering the actual facts and the actual science. That shows your bias very clearly.
Nothing you've said has anything to do with the actual science femtobyte! Isn't that interesting. It's just peer pressure to not listen to a group of scientists. That indicates that you are in a cult attempting to apply pressure to avoid a factual investigation of the science. So please stop the political pressure and read the darn report.
Read the report. Open your eyes dude. Set aside your bias or at least hold it in check while you reconsider the evidence and the arguments.
Here is a taste related to what I was saying before about forecasting, although they don't make the exact point I was making, their points are essentially irrefutable as they point out the flaws of forecasting or as I put it, Living in the Shadows of Soothsayers ( http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/living-in-the-shadow-of-soothsayers/ ).
http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/nongovernmental-international-panel-on-climate-change-nipcc-2009-report/
The following excerpt from chapter one of the NIPCC 2009 Report is a scathing indictment of the IPCC indicating BAD SCIENCE at the least.
1.1. Models and Forecasting
J. Scott Armstrong, professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a leading figure in the discipline of professional forecasting, has pointed out that forecasting is a practice and discipline in its own right, with its own institute (International Institute of Forecasters, founded in 1981), peer-reviewed journal (International Journal of Forecasting), and an extensive body of research that has been compiled into a set of scientific procedures, currently numbering 140, that must be used to make reliable forecasts (Principles of Forecasting: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners, by J. Scott Armstrong, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001).
According to Armstrong, when physicists, biologists, and other scientists who do not know the rules of forecasting attempt to make climate predictions based on their training and expertise, their forecasts are no more reliable than those made by nonexperts, even when they are communicated through complex computer models (Armstrong, 2001). In other words, forecasts by scientists, even large numbers of very distinguished scientists, are not necessarily scientific forecasts. In support of his position, Armstrong and a colleague cite research by Philip E. Tetlock (2005), a psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at the University of California, Berkeley, who "recruited 288 people whose professions included 'commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends.' He asked them to forecast the probability that various situations would or would not occur, picking areas (geographic and substantive) within and outside their areas of expertise. By 2003, he had accumulated more than 82,000 forecasts. The experts barely if at all outperformed non-experts and neither group did well against simple rules" (Green and Armstrong, 2007).
The failure of expert opinion to lead to reliable forecasts has been confirmed in scores of empirical studies (Armstrong, 2006; Craig et al., 2002; Cerf and Navasky, 1998; Ascher, 1978) and illustrated in historical examples of incorrect forecasts made by leading experts (Cerf and Navasky, 1998). In 2007, Armstrong and Kesten C. Green of Monash University conducted a "forecasting audit" of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (Green and Armstrong, 2007). The authors' search of the contribution of Working Group I to the IPCC "found no references ... to the primary sources of inf