Painting Rooftops White Would Slow Global Warming
Study: If we painted every rooftop in 100 major cities white, it would offset the entire planet’s carbon dioxide emissions for one year. That’s nearly 44 metric gigatons.
It makes sense. We all know white reflects heat (that’s why we wear white shirts and dresses on hot days), and we even knew that painting rooftops white lessens the need for air conditioning. But until now, we didn’t know that changing dark-colored surfaces to white would help fight against global warming.
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The news broke yesterday at California’s Climate Change Research Conference. Hashem Akbari, attending the conference from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, announced that replacing dark shingles on an average-sized household rooftop with a lighter color would offset 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide—comparable to taking two mid-sized cars off the road for a year.
Speaking of roadways, they’re part of the problem too. Because of its cheap nature, most roads are paved with black asphalt instead of light grey concrete, which causes roads to absorb an inordinate amount of heat. Repaving roads with lighter-colored materials would have a similar impact to painting rooftops.
California already mandates that newly-built large buildings have light-colored rooftops, but the law was intended to decrease air conditioning costs. Akbari hopes to enlist the United Nations in an effort to convince major cities to make their roadways and rooftops more pale.
Read a full summary of the report here.
Photo Credit: Robert Whitlock on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
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Painting rooftops white would reduce carbon emission | Deliggit.com…
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A simply tax credit would go a long ways to making this happen and it would create some jobs as well. Fantastic idea, I think.
Do the skeptics above, prowl the Eco sites, to post rants against what is scientifically proven? All you global warming deniers should read this post.
http://www.twilightearth.com/2008/08/how-to-talk-to-a-global-warming-skeptic/
Adam
Can increasing ground-level albedo by coloring rooftops accomplish the goal of reducing the effects of global warming?
I’ve been saying the same thing for years… and fully plan to go to a lighter colored roof next time.
For the myth that that there’s no evidence of global warming or that 7 of the last 10 years are colder see:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn14527-climate-myths-global-warming-stopped-in-1998.html
As for environmentalists loving Kyoto & Gore etc…I’ve be working in business for 28 years, don’t wear sandals or have a beard. I don’t think “business” is bad. I think Kyoto sucks, as do many so-called “tree-huggers” and I’ve never seen the Al Gore movie.
Growing awareness of things I saw around me made me go out get educated in the facts ( I did a Master’s on the subject in my spare time out of interest).
However I do understand that change to current living methods isn’t necessarily bad. Change drives innovation and new industries and will be hugely advantageous to those countries that embrace it.
Much climate change denial comes from a) ignorance of the mechanisms and the facts and b) a co-dependency relationship with the advantages of modern western living. To deny any change means to be continue in the current vein is acceptable.
Wow, people like Caz are so wrong. Gee it would be nice to think that mankind couldn’t possibly affect climate change. Unfortunately Caz, we have. And if you’d been doing your homework you would know that global climate change, grossly attributable to carbon emissions, is real.
Wise up dickweed!
Dude, we CAN make it rain on Mars. That’s what terraforming is. I don’t think eco-engineering to change the climate is good, but painting roofs white ISN’T eco-engineering anyway. It’s just a white roof. If that’s playing God, then wtf does God even do?
And in response to the article:
This ONLY offsets warming, not carbon emissions or pollution. So it’s not a full solution, and the erratic weather like the recent increased frequency of hurricanes will continue.
or maybe metalized mylar
If we wanted to, with present day technology, we could make it rain on Mars … and while global climate change was started by warming, it doesn’t mean that warming is the be all and end all of it. Most models predict that we will see a wider range of temperatures, hotter, colder, wetter, drier … there’s this beautiful thing called homeostasis, where systems end up being balanced … throw a system as complicated as a global climate out of balance, and we’ll see a whole range of things.
My question, though, is at what latitude would the logic of painting one’s roof white stop? While it’s nice and all to increase the albedo of the planet, in northern climates, where colder temperatures prevail, having a white roof will result in higher heating bills in the winter. And at what latitude should we paint our roof grey?