Saturday, April 25, 2009
White paint
Almost two years ago I stumbled across a study that seemed to show that painting rooftops and pavement white would so increase the reflectivity of the earth's surface that it would compensate for a substantial amount of the increased average global temperature due to anthropogenic global warming. Well, others are now asking why that solution is not on the table today.
14 Comments:
By 
CDR J, at
Sat Apr 25, 11:17:00 AM:
Well, I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the US many houses are in neighborhoods that have homeowners associations. Homeowners associations have Rules that dictate, among other things, the color of the roofs of the houses. They do not allow white roofs. The earth can burn up for all they care, the associations are not going to allow white roofs.
Of course, the surface area of all the roofs in the world is such an insignificant portion of the surface area of the world that this won't make any difference at all.
By Kinuachdrach, at
Sat Apr 25, 11:27:00 AM:
You start with two very substantial assumptions:
1. That global warming (however defined) is occurring.
2. That the posited global warming is anthropogenic.
Both of those assumptions are rather tenuous, especially the latter.
Since we know from multiple sources that the climate of Planet Earth has always been highly variable, it would require very strong evidence to assert that whatever warming is supposedly occurring today is anthropogenic instead of being a continuation of natural variability.
Further, evidence shows there has been no correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature, either in geological time or historic time. Correlation does not prove causation, but lack of correlation disproves the CO2-mediated anthropogenic warming hypothesis.
Since your premises are questionable, further discussion is pointless.
By 
, at
Sat Apr 25, 11:53:00 AM:
The answer, of course, is that none of the democrats (especially, members of the black caucus, Feinstein, Pelosi, Murtha, Dodd, Frank), their relatives or friends, own or are funded by white paint interests.
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 01:22:00 PM:
Link:
There's another angle to an idea like "white roofs." If we want to do things to decrease global warming, there may be ways that we haven't tested or figured out yet that may be effective. But if Obama & Co write their solution into stone, these other things will never get supported.
This is an example of why concentrating power in DC, and having Congress write top-down specific edicts is sub-optimal. Would we really commit to ethanol for cars if we had to do it over again? ... but try getting rid of ethanol now that the Iowa farmers have become a lobby.
Here are some other examples of this:
Phone companies like AT&T had a lot invested in big switched networks -- as an organization they had difficulty seeing that TCP/IP could improve to the point where it would undermine the need for switched networks -- even if AT&T itself had helped develop this technology -- even if individuals at AT&T could foresee this. If AT&T had continued as a monopoly we never would have seen the many radical improvements we've seen in telco service over the last 25 years.
IBM gave away the PC market to Microsoft and Intel, famously. They couldn't or wouldn't extrapolate Moore's law. IBM gave away other markets as well to the like of Oracle and EMC. If it wasn't for start-ups, we'd still be in an IBM mainframe world.
... so if big bottom-lined driven organizations with the smartest specialists won't develop unexpected opportunities, how do we expect huge unaccountable government bureaucracies to do better.
Worse still Obama & Co are insistent on making big commitments on things we know won't work today.
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 02:19:00 PM:
I don't think this is needed. But assuming it is:
Don't overlook is the loss of existing reflection.
Roofs already reflect much of the sunlight falling upon them. So the net gain in reflection may not be much.
But the net gain can be calculated so I'll move along.
I have also seen white covering proposals for desert. Especially desert near the equator. The rationale being that deserts are often uninhabited and cheap land.
But deserts are not black, they already reflect rather well.
And any such scheme placed on Earth will not work at night.
Putting an umbrella in space would be enormously expensive. But it seems the better bet. The efficiency would be total day and night with no incovenience to people on Earth.
And the umbrella could be designed to beam down electric power if that made economic sense.
K
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 03:24:00 PM:
Ok, let's set aside for a moment the fact that solar collectors, which provide a substitute for the burning of fossil fuels, are dark.
And maybe we can ignore the fact that white *sloping* roofs will have us all wearing sunglasses, and reduce visual acuity because the contrast range in scenes will make it very hard to see detail in the shadows.
And we can ignore the fact that white roofs are energetic as opposed to calming which may be very undesirable in many situations, like residential neighborhoods.
What the heck, let's ignore also the fact that you can make a building with a dark roof that is energy efficient, even to the point that no external energy or only a tiny amount is needed to heat and cool it, and that in some climates a roof that absorbs heat will be more energy efficient.
The real problem here is that it is completely ridiculous to talk about engineering climate change before we understand how the climate really works. Is the earth the right temperature now or should it be a little cooler or a little warmer? And what will the sun be doing five years from now?
It is unbelievably ironic to me that these notions of engineering climate alterations arise from within the environmental movement. This is the movement that screamed to high heaven (with my assistance) about earth engineering projects (dams, urban renewal, high density public housing,) which claimed only good outcomes would occur. This was the movement that said, "you're mucking around with complex, inadequately understood systems--- more study is needed because you may get totally screwed by unintended consequences."
In my opinion, we should embrace energy efficient building designs and alterations because it is an economical and wise idea that commands respect from all corners, and eschew completely the notion that buildings should be designed to somehow change the climate for the better.
M.E.
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 04:54:00 PM:
Scientists at UCI looked into this years ago and it will make a positive impact, which is why our decades old policy of red roofs gave way to white.
If it turns out that the earth is actually cooling, the color of the roof is relatively easy to fix.
I guess most eco-pols don't like this idea because it doesn't drive enough companies out of business, or something.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Apr 25, 06:46:00 PM:
A couple of notes.
1) Even big time "consequences skeptics" like Richard Lindzen and Bjorn Lomborg believe that there is some AGW effect. They just do not believe in the positive feedbacks that the models say are necessary to cause disaster. I've done enough reading to put myself in that camp, FWIW.
2) White roofs are just fine once you are used to them. Ever been to Bermuda, or Greece?
3) Agreed that local regulation and homeowners rules would be a problem. I have previously argued that real conservation will require that we preempt many such regulations and contractual provisions at the federal level. Intrusive as that is, it is substantially less intrusive than the direction regulation of greenhouse gases.
4) I agree with tyree -- the thing I like about painting everything white is that it is really easy to reverse if we all conclude that today's indisputable consensus was, er, wrong.
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 07:01:00 PM:
Even if this is true, and I have many reasons to doubt it, it wouldn't give environkooks the control over our lives that cap-and-trade and EPA regs would.
By , at
Sat Apr 25, 11:20:00 PM:
Maybe it would be simple to just paint roofs white and if that proves unnecessary or ineffective later, we could undo it with a new coat of paint.
We could assume that no harm would be done.
If we encouraged, as opposed to mandating, white roofs as an energy conserving alteration to buildings, and the goal was to save energy, then I do not see great harm because the result could be measured. Still if the goal is energy conservation, a more flexible approach may be better and that would entail aiming for a level of performance rather than a particular method to achieve it.
If we encouraged white roofs as a way to combat AGW, however, I'm not sure that no harm would be done. My doubt derives from a concern that buying into the idea that we can engineer climate change (which is what altering current climate trends would amount to) may in itself be harmful---at least at this stage of our understanding of how the climate works.
If we are going to engineer climate change, who is going to decide what the program will be? Are we going to have our little climate change project, the Chinese theirs, the French theirs, and so on? Who's going to make sure we are not working at cross purposes? What happens if their engineers don't agree with ours? Who will design the program, our scientists or our politicians or our generals or our economists? How will we measure the results if we do not yet have a clear enough understanding of cause and effect to design models that work and actually explain things? Once we start to engineer climate change will we really be able to honestly question the science that propelled it? Will politicians really be able to say, "Whoops, we sure got that wrong!"
From where I sit, there's a hell of a lot of harm that could be done.
The aesthetic effects of white are less important and I should not have made a big deal about them, though in my heart of hearts I think people should be able to paint their house whatever color they want unless there is some very solid reason why they should not. Greek towns are beautiful too. It may be worth noting though that one of the reasons they are so beautiful is that their character arises from the nature of their climate and the materials and technology of construction available to them--it is an authentic architecture. The US is, of course, climatically far more diverse, as are our building technologies.
M.E.
By , at
Sun Apr 26, 10:13:00 AM:
You disappoint me TH, I find it curious that you profess to be for freedom and liberty until a pet cause of yours comes along like the putative AGW or reducing gas demand with massive tax increases. In those cases it is suddenly OK for the heavy hand of government to intervene and dictate behavior to the masses, eh? Because the only way all the roofs and pavement will be painted white is if it is mandatory.
By Kinuachdrach, at
Sun Apr 26, 10:20:00 AM:
"Even big time "consequences skeptics" like Richard Lindzen and Bjorn Lomborg believe that there is some AGW effect."That sounds like a major misunderstanding of Lomborg's analysis.
In the 'Skeptical Environmentalist', Lomborg accepted in-toto the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming and all the model-predicted consequences thereof. Then he demonstrated that, even taking that as given, the costs of mitigating anthropogenic global warming were far greater than the benefits.
Put it differently, the finite resources expended on reducing anthropogenic CO2 would do much more good for the human race if expended elsewhere -- for example, clean drinking water or sanitation.
In reality, there is a large & building body of real scientific information which casts increasing doubt on the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.
By , at
Sun Apr 26, 11:45:00 AM:
I read the article "Why Doesn’t The Stimulus Include Money For Painting Roofs And Roads White?" and it doesn't seem to be requiring that roofs and roads be painted white. The author is asking why some of the stimulus money hasn't been set aside to encourage this practice.
As Tigerhawk say "...it is substantially less intrusive than the direction regulation of greenhouse gases." Exceptions could be made for hardship cases, but if AGW is real then at the very least all new roofs in the southern latitudes should be white asphalt shingle, white rock or similar materials. They don't have to be painted white. My neighbor hood in Orange County, Ca. was built with white rock roofs in 1950. Those ancient architects knew a few things about heat gain.
The fact this is not a significant part of the President's program leads me to believe he might be involved in politicizing science. After all if its cheap and it works, how can he use the "crisis" to force change on Americas energy supply?
By , at
Sun Apr 26, 11:55:00 AM:
The first Anonymous probably has the right answer.
We has further evidence that President Obama is politicizing science because he closed the nuclear fuel storage facility in Nevada. Nuclear energy doesn't produce nearly the greenhouse gases as most other methods of generating electricity, so we should be building a new nuclear power plant every year, at least. It is enough to make one loose their faith in The Won.
