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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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Let's also paint all the Grizzly bears white. That will address the problem of disappearing polar bears.
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.
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.
Maybe there's some legitimate debate over how reversible it is, independently of whether or not it's happening.
No, that was accurate - the climate is changing all the time, and humans have caused various changes to accelerate in ways that are detrimental to the survival of our species (growth of deserts, loss of farmland, etc.)
What this is proposing, is a way to mitigate some of the detrimental changes.
That aside, why the snark? I understand that people of course have personal investment in their enviroment (it's where we live, after all), but for someone proposing a simple change like this that could have multiple beneficial results for our species, I'm not sure why you feel so threatened.
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?
There might be some safety issues with making road surfaces reflect more light. . .things that come to mind:
* Increased road glare on sunny days - good sun glasses could largely deal with this, but if you don't happen to have a pair of sunglasses, you might be having a pretty hard time seeing on very bright days.
* Night driving: harder to see the painted lines and reflectors embedded in the concrete (I'm not sure if this would really be much of a problem or not, but maybe could be)
* Winter driving - In the winter, I'm sure that black pavement absorbing sunlight has some beneficial effect in the form of melting ice off the road sooner than light-colored pavement would. Lighter colored road surfaces might lead to ice lasting longer, or requiring more salt to be put on the roads by road crews.
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, even if we can't reverse the process, there are other good reasons to lower our energy consumption.
Energy isn't free; by polluting less, you often spend less in the long run... It's not only good for the planet, it's good for the economy in general.
Both shouldn't be seen as incompatible things.
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.
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
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.
So what you're saying is....
Once you go white, you never go back?
Is it likely to be reversble if it isn't happening?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
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.
... 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
How could I ever forget good old Lias?
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.