UPDATE: have a look at Clinton’s house below. Yep, that’s the big plan. Paint your roofs white. From the Atlantic:
I have no problem with saving energy, especially in the summer when power drain is excessive due to A/C load. California now requires most flat-roofed buildings to be white. As a testament to the potential cash savings, Walmart has installed white roofs on 75% of its stores in the United States. Roofs comprise over 20% of urban surface, so while painting them all white in a city, there’s still a lot of asphalt.
But paint roofs white has a downside as well as an upside. It depends on where you live. If you live in a mostly warm climate, say Miami or Phoenix, you’ll realize energy savings. But if you live in Minot,ND or International Falls, MN your white roof will not absorb as much sunlight in winter, thus requiring more energy for heating.
The point is, painting roofs white natiowide, willy nilly, without regard to the local climate, average temperatures, the number of days of sunshine etc. won’t be a full solution.
An idea like Cool Angle, might work, but is far more involved than a paint job.
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UPDATE: Reader John provides this image link to the former president’s home. Goose, gander, and all that. We look forward to seeing Bill lead the way.
Source: http://www.zillow.com/howto/FamousPresidentsHomes.htm
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They will be able to look down with Google Earth and see who is the good greenie with the white roof, and who is the evil, Gaia hating miscreant with a dark roof who needs to be arrested and sent off to Climate Gulag.
To be fair, this is not a bad idea.
Uhhh… basic physics lesson here, white surfaces have lower energy radiation too. So if you have a building which you intend to thermally insulate it’s better to paint it white in any weather conditions.
Sorry but… shouldn’t we paint the roofs black again in winter to retain more heat or something?
Dullard. Makes a bit of sense in the hot areas. No so much in temperate areas. It balances out perfectly. That must be a coincidence.//
Better be careful we might trigger an ice age. Hey I have a question I am hoping someone can answer. I had read this post on 1998 no longer being the hottest year (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/08/08/1998-no-longer-the-hottest-year-on-record-in-usa/) and then clicked on the link to NASA’s data. I noticed that now all the numbers are different, but what’s really strange is the anomalies for 1998, 2006, 1999, 2001, and 1990 all got larger, but the anomalies for 1934, 1921, and 1931 all shrank. What is this about? I sorted the data in an excel spreadsheet and they have the temps ranked 1) 1998, 2) 2006, 3) 1934. Are they now calculating with respect to a different baseline period? But why are all recent years getting boosted and the years in the 20s and 30s smaller? This sounds fishy and I’m hoping someone can explain why 1998 is now the hottest year on record and why 2006 has displaced 1934.
Tony, a retired Australian electrician, has been trying to point out a single and massive energy saving measure that cannot fail. Because his thinking is rooted in such antiquated Australian virtues as make-do, thrift and commonsense it does not filter through to the commentariat.
Whether you object to CO2, particulates or crummy energy supply, this is the one big thing to do now.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/co2-emissions-reduction-a-radical-plan/
There is at least a little bit of logic to the proposal.
With even some evidence based on the Walmart experience. Real world measurements.
Of course this won’t be accepted by anyone until some computer models are put together. Shouldn’t run more than $100 million or so.
This is a reasonable thing to do, especially in hotter areas that use a lot of A/C for cooling. If the balance falls the other way (ie most energy use is heating) then it might be counterproductive.
Give the guy a little credit for pointing out something obvious and cheap that will make a difference to energy bills, at least in some places.
Keynes said that it was better for an economy to pay someone to dig a hole and fill it in again, than to just let them be unemployed.
Regardless of the value of the work, if people work they pay taxes and more importantly get into the habit of working (you should see the youth over here in the UK they don’t want to work).
The US is in big trouble and you need to galvanise your nation to get back to doing jobs that are practical rather than services (the same problem we have here) otherwise you’ll be a post empire economy just like most of Europe and the UK 🙁
The USA is a great country (I’ve enjoyed many visits) and you have a great “can do” attitude, however if you don’t pull your socks up you will become risk averse like the UK and all innovation will disappear.
Forty years ago we could walk on the Moon and ordinary people could fly supersonic across the Atlantic now we can’t do either 🙁
It seems that nobody knows “cool color” paint. It is not the visible color which is responsible for the heath absorption, but the IR absorption.
Keep your roof cool with black “cool color” is possible due to modern technology.
Keep the color and keep cool.
I think this is just a conspiracy to increase the sale of sunglasses. 😉
Interesting, Anthony. Stephen Chu first popularized this idea, adding the claim that it would change the climate. Bill Clinton doesn’t go that far.
According to the GAEZ, urban areas comprise some 0.4% of the US area. The US is generally more urbanized than the globe as a whole, which is only 0.2% urban areas.
However, this includes roads, freeways, parking lots, and the like. Assuming that the actual buildings are 20% of that, we get 0.08% of the US covered by a roof, and about 0.04% of the globe covered by a roof.
So obviously, the claim made (not by Bill Clinton but by Stephen Chu, our charmingly naive head of the Energy Department) about painting roofs is untrue. Here’s Chu on the subject:
I’m sorry to inform Dr. Chu that painting 0.04% of ANYTHING won’t make a damn bit of difference to the temperature of that thing, including the globe.
Now, should it be done? Should building roofs be painted white? That is a very complex calculation that, inter alia, relates to such things as:
• Hours of sunlight at the location.
• Current color of the roof (most homes in Phoenix and
• R-value of the existing roof insulation.
• Existence of an attic.
• Nature/timing of the two loads (heating and cooling)
• Type of heating/cooling
• Cost of labor and paint
• Cost of heating/cooling
• Slope/orientation of roof (little gain in painting steep north-facing roofs)
In some cases it’s a no-brainer, flat black tar roof in Arizona with no attic. But google earth shows most roofs in Arizona aren’t flat black, they tend towards a light gray or tan or light brown.
For less obvious cases, an analysis based on the info above will determine the payback time for the investment. Which may be a while. I remember old adobe houses in New Mexico, with an adobe roof a foot thick. Painting that puppy white would make precious little difference. (Nor, given the dust, would it stay white long …)
Finally, should we have spent stimulus funds painting roofs as Clinton suggested? For me, if I had to spend, it would have been far better to paint roofs than some of the other things the stimulus money was wasted on. Hire the homeless, give them a bucket of whitewash and a brush, put them up on a hot tar roof, it’s the Tom Sawyer stimulus plan …
Best to all,
w.
In some parts of the world painting the town white is already a tradition. And, no, it isn’t done just because the people living there are particularly jovial or that the white looks pretty to the blue of the sea:
“Many homes in the West Coast of California and the East Coast of Florida are built using Mediterranean architecture, because these states have the same climate as the Mediterranean region. The climate in the Mediterranean is hot, with temperatures soaring up to 40 degrees Celsius in the summer. So in these regions, houses are built so that the indoors of the house always remains cool. The houses have to be built taking the weather and environmental factors, such as sound, into account. The weather includes wind, rain, sunlight and temperature. Thus, the houses have to be built to enable the protection of the people inside, from the scorching sun, by using insulation to keep the heat out. This is done by giving a stucco finish to the wall surfaces. The houses are painted white and even the floors have white tiles, so that they reflect heat rather than absorb it.”
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/mediterranean-architecture.html
Have you worked out the CO2 used in the manufacture and environmental damage of all this paint? It would need a lot of algaecide in it for instance [or you’ll have green roofs], and would need to be oil based. It’s absolute lunacy.
Finally a sensible idea that will save the planet and the economy. [\sarc].
In my neck of the woods, roofs turn white all by themselves, at certain times. And, sure enough, this causes it to get cold, so we know it works!
I’m up for painting roofs and roads white, but what I’m really looking forward to are the mirrored sidewalks!
Best,
Frank
Well I don’t know what the suburb Mr Clinton is in looks like but the houses around here with white roofs often have (compulsory) black solar water heaters or (heavily subsidised) black solar PV cells on them. Does he want home owners to take them off? Has he worked out how much global warming a city of solar PV roofs causes? Maybe he should install nice hockey stick causing matt black solar PV right next to all the Stevenson Screens in the country to power them and save some CO2 emissions.
A lot of places in winter, the roof is covered with snow. you can see which houses have poor insulation in the attic if the roof is bare. Painting roofs white is a good idea to keep things cool in summer, in winter it mostly doesn’t make any difference.
13 deaths in Midwest tied to heat wave – Weather
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43790899/ns/weather/
Shows US 412 pavement buckling in the heat. So much so that some of the traffic was detoured. 1930’s redux? Solar wind is slamming in, so no relief this week.
Nah. Sod them. Grasses and shrubs are a much better cooling/insulating force than white paint. They even “eat” CO2, not that that’s a good thing.
White is the new black
“Yep, that’s the big plan. Paint your roofs white.”
Your little bit of sarcasm here is misplaced. When people ask me if I’m against global warmists, I say yes and then counter with applying the wasted money for real, often common sense practices. Clinton’s suggestion is a small win-win for improving green practices and supplying jobs. Must you clown everything that is suggested by a liberal? I’m against alarmism but I’m for good common-sense green ideas. A good idea is a good idea, no matter who suggests it.
Seems like a reasonable idea – but it is not possible.
The UK government will need mankind’s entire supply of whitewash for years to come for the dozen or so “independent” investigations into the phone hacking scandal (this, from the same folks that gave you climategate).
At least the “snow-job” king knows that black objects absorb heat & white objects tend to reflect it!Many european domestic properties,in Spain, Portrugal, & Italy, where light-weight reinforced concrete is the norm for construction, as is so in southern France, the roofs are covered with light colour water-proofing finishes anyhow! Insulation on the outside utilizes the thermal mass/store of the material, all you then need to do is address interstitial condensation issues & you’re done! On a negative note, with cast-insitu RC frames the infill is with hollow core clay type blockwork, unfortunately this is rarely properly bonded in courses nor back to the frame, is rendered almost immediately in searing temperatures, after blockwork is finished & you end up with significant thermal shrinkage & cracking externally! They look nice from a distance but awful close up!