Well, hold on a second. How much does this reduce the amount of energy absorbed? I didn't hear this in the News reports. You'd think that if this is coming from the Secretary of Energy himself, it's be a lot, right? I mean, he wouldn't just be wasting everyone's time, right?
Err, no. Seems like someone actually calculated the number:
We'll knock it down to 40% for the first set of factors and then cut that by half for the long-wave radiation, leaving us with 29.2% of the surface times 2% targeted times a 40% adjustment divided by 2, leaving us with 0.01% of the Earth's albedo changed.OK, not so much. But paint is cheap, right? Well, we'll need a lot of paint:
How much painting? Well, after just buying 7 gallons of paint for work around the home, one can get about 50 square meters of coverage per gallon of paint. The semi-gloss, high quality paint I just purchased was almost $30 for a gallon. Let's say that [Energy Secretary] Chu and POTUS Obama actually give taxpayers a break to encourage this and the special albedo painting prices is $15 per gallon. But to ensure good coverage, we need to apply two coats. Doing the math, we're left with 119.15 Million gallons of paint required at a cost of $1.787 Trillion per application.The good news is that it should last at least 5 years before we have to do it again. A trillion bucks to reduce Mother Gaia's albedo (how much it absorbs energy) by 0.01%.
A trillion here, and a trillion there, and pretty soon you're spending real money.
From the Gormogons, who are not only all scientific-like, but have a sense of humor, too:
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3 comments:
I get to ride around in one of those enviro-friendly cars on campus for a video shoot next week. People really have bought into the crap machine.
I'm your huckleberry.
Although its direct effect on climate might be negligible, a white roof would keep your building a bit cooler, and there is something to be said for that.
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