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Energy Sec. Chu: Paint The World White?

Mike

Well-known member
Obama Energy Secretary: Paint World White to Fight Global Warming
The Times (uk) ^ | May 27, 2009 | Mark Henderson, Science Editor


As a weapon against global warming, it sounds so simple and low-tech that it could not possibly work. But the idea of using millions of buckets of whitewash to avert climate catastrophe has won the backing of one of the world’s most influential scientists.

Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white. A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.

Speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, Professor Chu said that this approach could have a vast impact. By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.

Building regulations should insist that all flat roofs were painted white, and visible tilted roofs could be painted with “cool-coloured” paints that looked normal, but which absorbed much less heat than conventional dark surfaces. Roads could be lightened to a concrete colour so they would not dazzle drivers in bright sunlight. “I think with flat-type roofs you can’t even see, yes, I think you should regulate,” Professor Chu said.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
This sounds like bunk. This guy needs a lesson in Thermodynamics

Heat transfer always occurs from a higher-temperature object to a cooler temperature one as described by the second law of thermodynamics. Where there is a temperature difference between objects in proximity, heat transfer between them can never be stopped; it can only be slowed

If a cooler object absorbs the heat, does that not make the overall temp lower?

It might cut down on air conditioning, but what about those trying to heat their houses?

Will a white person do more for taking vehicles off the road than a brown person? Should we all shave our heads and paint them white?

Are KKK members doing more for the enviornment than Amish?

Some good theories, not sure if we'll get many scientists to back them up.

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