Everything Black Needs To Be White...

from Cheat-Seeking Missiles
Posted by: Laer
May 29th 2009

Paint It White

Our Nobel Laureat energy sec, Steven Chu, has been chewing on an idea for a while and finally spit it out: Let’s save the planet by painting all the roofs and roads white!

Chu, speaking at the St. James’ Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, said the calculations are based on work done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he used to work and where three researchers concluded last year that changing surface colors in the world’s 100 largest cities would offset 44 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. (Source)

Who’s to fault the good scientists at Lawrence Berkeley? After all, they’ve scored millions of bucks to study the terrible effects of global warming, so they can be trusted. And besides, the idea is simplistic as can be, right? Just step from a concrete sidewalk to an asphalt street on a hot, sunny day.

But wait. What is the urbanized land mass vs. the global land mass? Factoring in the oceans, the arctic and antarctic regions (which already are white) and the massive amount of undeveloped territory, I’m sure it’s under one percent.

And why hasn’t Chu proposed to dye the oceans white?

And what is the greenhouse gas impact from manufacturing, transporting and applying all that white paint?

And what the heck are we going to do if Chu & Co. are all wrong and the long-anticipated global cooling process kicks off soon?

You see, this save the planet biz isn’t as easy as they crack it up to be
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