Turns out all we may need to stop climate change is 139 billion gallons of super-duper white paint::According to one professor, we may be able to stop climate change if we used a new super white paint to cover the entire United States
I assume at least half of this needs to go down the throats of oil tycoons in order to have any real effect.
Terrible article. It even leads with a photo to mock the idea.
The benefits of painting a home’s roof with any white paint are enough to justify making it the standard. The article doesn’t even mention that the super white paint can reduce indoor temperature by 8 or more degrees. That’s a lot of energy not needed to cool the home. Even more effective is placing a second white roof above the roof on posts to shield it from solar heat. It would make sense to make a secondary roof solar panel ready. It would also extend the lifespan of the original roof.
"The paint’s properties are almost superheroic. It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up to 19 degrees cooler at night, reducing temperatures inside buildings and decreasing air-conditioning needs by as much as 40 percent.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/climate/white-paint-climate-cooling.html
The article sounds like a hit job to ridicule a simple and effective idea.
according to this the total land area of built up human development and infrastructure is also around 1%, seems a hell of a lot easier to mandate every building have a white roof. Especially considering most buildings have black roofs, it will be even more of a difference. Also will reduce energy consumption from AC because, as said in the article buildings panted with it have reduced need for cooling.
Roads could also maybe be painted or have a whiter material used, might make it harder to drive though
I think white roads could be a problem with snow, usually the only good way to find the road in a snowstorm is to look for the darkness, no darkness and you can’t tell the road from the ground covered in snow.
Oh yeah that’s a good point too. Probably not actually practical. Also the super special paint almost certainly would not take being driven on by thousands of vehicles very well.
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Even glossing over the more complex problems with the idea, sooner or later we’re going to run out of things to paint white.
It’s another dead end idea thats being wheeled out by neoliberals so they can keep their snouts in the trough a little longer.
Reminds me of the Mr Bean episode where he wanted to paint his apartment white, but had no paintbrush, so he stuck a huge firecracker in the can of paint instead, lol
Considering the recent advance in transmitting power from orbit to the surface in the form of microwaves, if I remember right, I think it’d frankly make more sense to set up an adjustable solar shade that would turn some of the sunlight into electricity up there. This could then be directed elsewhere and used.
Venetian blinds for the Earth, basically. Except solar paneled.
Until then, carbon capture is likely a better idea than painting things white. Hell, cloud seeding would be a better idea than painting things white.
IIRC that was one of the catastrophic events in sim city. Microwave power plant had a chance for the angle to get messed up and essentially laser tornado lines of your city
Yeah we gonna need more carbon capturing bio reactors
Imagine keeping all that surface clean.
Invest in sunglasses
Yes, any high-tech barely tested solution rather than change our life-destroying habits please!
i mean, what’s a more realistic solution? a small group that finds a high-tech development which can help us, or getting the majority of humanity to cooperate on what should be an obvious and necessary goal?
my bet’s on the tech, at least with A.I. assisted research.
something has eroded my optimism towards the reliable and cooperative nature of our species. if we’re putting our money on that, i consider us all doomed.
