Friday, May 29, 2009

A simple solution is the equivalent to removing the cars off the road for 11 years

Times online --

Professor Steven Chu, a Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by the Obama administrations energy Secretary, speaking at the opening of the St. James Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, claims that it would be possible to cut carbon emissions to the equivalent of taking ALL the world's cars off the road for 11 years.

His suggestion... paint the roads and the roofs white.

The theory is that the brighter services would reflect up to 80% of the sunlight back into space.
"Now, you smile, but he’s done a calculation, and if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly . . . it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years"


I wonder if sleepy Ted is not going to run down to the Home Depot and start painting everything from green to white?

2 comments:

OregonGuy said...

Evoked was a line from "Spaceballs."

"Ludicrous speed? Sir, we've never gone that fast before!"
.

Gary said...

I would like to see Chu's math on that. I think it's a little fuzzy. It's what we called in the Army, a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess). I might help the Global Warming/Climate Change if he stayed home and quit flying around the world as a way to lessen his carbon footprint. That's what Video Conferencing was made for.