1y ago

Turns out all we may need to stop climate change is 139 billion gallons of super-duper white paint

www.businessinsider.com 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

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

Futurism @lemmy.ca

Turns out all we may need to stop climate change is 139 billion gallons of super-duper white paint

www.businessinsider.com /global-warming-purdue-white-paint-climate-change-2023-7

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Futurology @lemmy.ml

Turns out all we may need to stop climate change is 139 billion gallons of super-duper white paint

www.businessinsider.com /global-warming-purdue-white-paint-climate-change-2023-7

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59 comments

I assume at least half of this needs to go down the throats of oil tycoons in order to have any real effect.
- Oil isn't the problem, it's an amazing part of nature that has many uses, burning it is fucking stupid though.
  
  Literally a miracle soup that can do almost anything.
  "Burn it!"
  
  It fucks me up that we have this limited substance that can produce an amazing material with so many extremely valuable uses for technology and medicine... And we burn most of it and use it to make disposable shopping bags.
  Especially the shopping bags. We already had those. They worked fine. Why?
  
  Got me in the first half ngl

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
- We need to reverse climate change by taking carbon out of the atmosphere as well as mitigate what's already happening
  If the world’s soils stored just 0.4% more carbon every year, it could offset all human C02 emissions
  https://www.eitfood.eu/projects/regenag-revolution
  
  Yep, that's a great thing we need to be doing too. There is no silver bullet for climate change, we need to be doing everyb possible thing at once. Cutting all carbon output/using green energy, better agriculture and farming practices, etc.
- Might not make it harder to drive per se but it would definitely mean I would need to wear sunglasses while driving at all times (during daylight).
  
  Yeah thats basically what I meant by harder to drive, definitely would have to wear sunglasses all the time in the day
- 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.
  
  If we dont do something soon, snow wont be a problem much longer.
- 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.
  
  There is no one solution to climate change, but requiring lighter roofs for all new builds/replacements would be a simple step to start with. It doesn't just increase the amount of light reflected back out to space, but it also significantly reduces cooling requirements, meaning less power required during peak hours.
  When it comes time to change my roof, I will be considering lighter shades.

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.

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
- Welllllll... did it work? 😂
  
  Lol, it did, but some drunk guy opened the door to get his hat from beans apartment (start of the episode) and so there was an outline of him reaching for his hat on the wall 😂

The only thing that will stop climate change is if we reduce the beef industry and eat billionaires instead. Every billionaire will chop 0.1° off the warming trend.
- Not enough supply to meet the demand unfortunately, and if you do it carelessly you might end up being the next billionaire. I'm sure there ought to be some wagyu billionaire out there, just be careful charging the premium for it.
  
  A perfectly logical & comical response to the proposed idea of cannibalism. I like it!
- Take one bite now, come back for more.
- Best I can do is ultra bright, white cows.

I’d much prefer a giant mirror in the sky. Not like anything can go wrong with that.
- flashbacks to that Futurama episode
  
  https://youtu.be/0qksm5cRtcU
- Diamondylium or diamondium?
  
  WERNSTROM!
- I mean it literally can't. You wouldn't build a giant one. Your built thousands. With material from the moon if you want them cheaper.
  And then you park them in orbit. If you don't need them, set them to slant and let light pass. And so on

Yes, any high-tech barely tested solution rather than change our life-destroying habits please!
- As far as untested tech solutions to climate change go, I'll gladly take artificial albedo over the "let's blot out the sun" that they've been floating the last few years.
  
  Orbital mirrors. Artificial mangrove islands covering the southern Atlantic. Algae bioreactors in every commercial building.
  There's lots of things to try, and... Ones a hell of a lot easier to throttle or reverse, and don't involve making the air more toxic for humans by nature.
  Can we please start trying things, but not the one hard to stop where we purposely pollute the skies?
- 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.
  
  I don't care about high tech solutions, because we already have the solutions.
  transports: trains & cycles instead of Hyperloop or what not
  Agriculture: biological agriculture combined with meat consumption reduction, instead of farming robots, lab grown meat and GMO crops ...
  
  I don't care about high tech solutions, because we already have the solutions.
  transports: trains & cycles instead of Hyperloop or what not
  Agriculture: biological agriculture combined with meat consumption reduction, instead of farming robots, lab grown meat and GMO crops ...

Has Anish Kapoor tried to trademark it yet?

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

Invest in sunglasses

Imagine keeping all that surface clean.

Isn't water already reflecting the sun back anyway?
- Liquid water reflects less light than land does.
  
  Then we just need to put ice cubes in the ocean. Plus that would help us cool the earth down

59 comments