President Obama's energy adviser has suggested all the world's roofs should be painted white as part of efforts to slow global warming.Why stop there? Let's eliminate everything dark! Dark animals, dark leaves, dark dirt, it's all got to go!
Professor Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary, said the unusual proposal would mean homes in hot countries would save energy and money on air conditioning by deflecting the sun's rays.
More pale surfaces could also slow global warming by reflecting heat into space rather than allowing it to be absorbed by dark surfaces where it is trapped by greenhouse gases and increases temperatures.
Paint! Paint is the answer! Paint for all you're worth!
10 comments:
I accidentally put my cell phone in the wash over the weekend. That, to say that I'm so glad I was not eating or drinking anything when I opened this page.
One less piece of electronics to be purchased this week.
Link forthcoming. Probably tomorrow morning.
If he would only content himself with similar low cost proposals, rather than ones that will wreck the economy.
The nuclear ambitions of North Korea and North Korea may be a blessing in disguised: Nuclear winter with a perpetual cover of snow. :-)
That should read North Korea and Iran, of course . . .
Actually, I think he has a good point. Having spent some time helping my Dad build various roofs in the summer, I can confirm that the color of roofing makes a huge difference on whether or not you get heat stroke up there. The black asphalt roofs got sweltering hot the minute the sun came up, while the light-colored sheet metal roofs were about as cool as being down on the ground (aside from the fact that the light being reflected back *up* from them sometimes gave me sunburn on the *bottom* of my nose). And being in an attic under a black roof is about the same as being in an oven, while being under a white roof is, well, not.
Dad has spent many hours railing about the stupidity of building design, with so many things that are done the way they are because that's the way they've always been done, not because they actually make any *sense* or anything. Black asphalt roofs made sense in the old days, back when there were pretty much no other materials available that could cheaply be made leak-proof. But, we have alternatives these days. Why not use them?
Here in San Diego, I'm convinced that Kearny Mesa is about 5 degrees hotter in the summer due to the asphalt on the ground. Having said that, this is still a crackpot idea.
"Having said that, this is still a crackpot idea."
Why?
It's a crackpot idea because of the mammoth amount of toxins required to implement it as well as the cost. How do you paint slate roofs? Cement roofs? Tar and gravel ones? What happens when the paint peels and falls off because it's on a bad foundation and exposed mercilessly to the elements.
It's the kind of idea you'd come up with in a University. It's brilliantly impractical.
"It's the kind of idea you'd come up with in a University. It's brilliantly impractical."
I wonder how many folks said that when he talked about trapping individual atoms with lasers.
Well, you got me there. And here I was just outside, trapping individual atoms, not appreciating who came up with it.
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