Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Los Angeles is spending $40,000 per mile painting asphalt streets white to try to prevent global warming.
Los Angeles painting city streets white in bid to combat climate change
By Travis Fedschun | Fox News
California officials are hoping their latest attempt to stem the rising tides of climate change leads to a more socially conscious — and cooler — summer.
Officials in Los Angeles have been painting streets white to reduce the effect of urban “heat islands” and combat the effects of climate change.
…
The LA Street Services began rolling out the project last May, which preliminary testing shows has reduced the temperature of roadways by up to 10 degrees. The project involves applying a light gray coating of the product CoolSeal, made by the company GuardTop.
…
While each coasting could can last up to seven years, they are also pricey, with the estimated cost of $40,000 per mile, the L.A. Daily News reported.
…
Outsiders might be tempted to suggest that Los Angeles has more pressing problems than the color of their streets, such as soaring rates of homelessness, drug abuse, crime and financial distress for poor people.
Obviously we outsiders have got it all wrong – the solution to Los Angeles’ horrendous social problems is taxpayer funded truck loads of white paint.
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Maybe they should just paint over skid-row.
/smh
LOL
Sounds like they’re spending $40,000 per mile to create the perfect canvas for their rampant gang graffiti artists. Any bets on how long it takes for the first tagging to happen?
It’s what you call a whitewash. Still, they’re a couple of weeks late for April Fool’s Day.
Now the global warming fanatics are white washing the streets, to save us all from mythical anthropogenic global warming.
A modern Mark Twain tale of juvenile guile? No – pathetic, beyond surrealism reality.
You have to wonder what future historians will write of this period.
I think its distinctly racist.
Whitewashing the blacktop, indeed.
3×2 – they will refer to it as the Dark Green Ages or the New Mediaevel Warming Period.
This exercise basically proves that it is not CO2 that is causing the thermometers to read higher, it is all the gazillions of tonnes of bloody concrete and asphalt we have accumulated over the past century or so in particular and did not bother to move the bloody thermometers. The ‘climate scientists’ have been measuing HUHI !!
Only in California (or South Australia).
That was my first thought. Komrade.
It’s at the point where I’ve stopped making sarcastic jokes about what eco-loons will do next, because if one person can think of it, the marching brooms will do it.
Just follow my thinking for a moment.
6500 Miles of road….
229 days a year (21 rainy weekdays subtracted as bad for painting).
7 Years between coats.
(6500/7)/229=4 Miles of road need to be painted or repainted everyday, in order to maintain this.
Cost $160000 for paint alone… Imagine the paint being the cheapest part of this…
But, I could not resist this…. City of L.A. is home to about 1.3M cars. which, if I use 19′ per car covers about 4670 miles (one lane of course). Would assuming that all roads in Los Angeles are four lanes minimum… so maybe one quarter of all roads covered in cars, at all times? OK… I’m just kidding… probably way more than that… Traffic.
I love the photo. Part of the paint already in the shade of a tree… Plus 35 days of rain that is part of about 80 days overcast… And shade from buildings… and parked cars. And streets worn dark. So much of it will be missing, covered or shaded, that the expense seems destined to be a political liability.
What is the point of this paint? For that Money spent every day, plus labor and equipment, four miles of road blocked off (Towing all cars that didn’t move), cleaning, repairing, painting and restriping. This is all a fools errand.
– And more to-the-point:
Painted asphalt has much less traction than the normal, unpainted stuff; they better hope “it never rains in Southern California”, because if it rains in L.A., they’re in for some doozalicious traffic pile-ups on those painted streets!
But of course, Seattle doesn’t salt icy streets to prevent saltwater run-off into the (saltwater) ocean, and they don’t seem to mind all the traffic accidents that result… Youtube’s your friend!
When they repair pot holes, do they have to send out a separate crew to repaint?
Maybe they could also require tyre manufacturers to make white tyres so the streets are not marked up requiring their repainting more frequently?
You know it makes sense because white tyres matter.
Apologies for my Australian spelling of tyres and also for the state of nibs of anyone who takes this idea seriously.
State of nibs = State of minds
“When they repair pot holes…” Ha! LA repairing pot holes? Good one, MarkW!
the paint will wear and particles of it will fill the gills of the little fishies when the storm sewer delivers it to the ocean and a whole new crisis of concern will blossom and feed on subsidy and grow fat and breed more bureaucracies!
nobody thinks about the guppies!
They should make cheap (or better, free) white camping tents. This way, the economy decay will automatically generate more white surface on Earth and we have a feedback.
Here in Portland, OR, ‘skid row’ has been moved right up into the main street business districts.
Businesses are literally beginning to vacate because the city won’t move the homeless camping (sleeping, defecating, urinating, pan-handling, etc.) right on their front doorsteps.
Well at least they are acknowledging the phenomenon of “Urban Island” warming.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
The urban heat island effect is due to the lack of evapotranspiration. Not sensible heat effects but due to the fact water vapor has a molecular weight of 18 while air is 29.change. Meaning no matter what the temperature, water vapor rises. And cools greatly.
Dry convection, like that from concrete and asphalt concrete, is trivial in global energy balance. Painting roads white does nothing. Convection cells arising from such tomfoolerly only mix the lower troposphere because without the bouyant effects of water vapor, no heat transfer to the stratosphere can occurr.
“Painting roads white does nothing.”
I don’t know, it wastes money and fools a lot of people, that’s something.
“Painting roads white does nothing”…well it doesn’t do much in the grand scheme of things, but UHI is not solely due to reduced evapotranspiration.
and besides- screw trees, right? every parking lot has to be shade free too
We’ll begin to see in 5 years time if it does nothing or if it offsets the effect of UHI in that area. There is an area of southern Spain, along the Mediterranean surrounding San Agustin, that is white from plastic shrouded greenhouses. This area is more than 1C cooler than adjacent areas.
it’s gonna make traffic jam hell all over the place.
maybe that’s the real goal.
I don’t know about asphalt but concrete is a porous material. Concrete floored basements can have issues with humidity and even mold. If the ground is wet, the concrete will be wet. And that is why they make concrete sealers.
This is a study done by Frostburg State University on that very subject which covers the additional factor of specific heat of materials. That is important. I am a bit leery of the exact temperatures they report because they used an infrared thermometer. Infrared thermometers do not measure the actual temperature of a surface, they measure the emitted “heat” as it were. The actual temperature is derived based upon the emissivity of the surface. I wish they had used something else. Either way, they do a good job of defining the factors.
https://www.frostburg.edu/fsu/assets/File/clife/mscenter/FinalPapers/2008/Heat.pdf
Mark:
You make a good point re: infrared thermometers. These are used by satellites to measure global temperatures; but as you rightly say are they only measuring Heat Emission and, as far as I know they don’t really know what the Emissivity of the section they are measuring is.
OK. They fine it down by looking just at the Oxygen molecules; but when these are right next to water molecules the temperature doesn’t really mean very much; as the phase changes taking place in water are at constant temperature so the relationship with radiation flux is compromised.
No doubt they will have an answer for this; but I doubt we shall hear about it. Seems to me that water is the joker in the pack when it comes to the Greenhouse Effect and all that nonsense.
“Does nothing”? It absolutely shows how much politicians CARE about “doing something” (and how they love to spend other people’s money.)
“Painting roads white does nothing.” Incorrect. Try walking across an asphalt paved parking lot, and then one that is concrete. There is a substantial difference in temperature.
Yes, it’s pretty amazing. Not only acknowledging it but acting like a negligible act on what they claim is a negligible warming effect is of significance. Sort of like two negatives make a positive.
Actually, the formula is “Two negligibles make an inconsequential.”
We made some difference by replacing black, rock ballasted membrane flat roofs with white self-adhered roofs at the college where I was a facility operator. The top floor stayed signifigantly cooler.
It may have been cooler, but it also has the unintended side effect of creating added moisture penetration due to a lack of solar forced drying.
Strange how you think you are clever, and nature has a way of ‘grading’ you on your efforts.
Will the painted roads have a side effect?
I certainly hope they have put enough grit in the paint to make it slip resistant when it rains – otherwise there may be law suits coming due to injury and death from vehicles sliding off the roads.
This is nothing but crony capitalism, The paint company is making a fortune at $40k per mile and the bet is that the lifetime of the paint is much less than stated, which means more paint, please.
Idiots are fun because they have no idea that they are idiots. They are joyful in their delusions and gleefully go about their idiotic deeds. It will be fun to see them rationalize their behavior when it is pointed out that the planet is indeed cooling, well beyond their stupid efforts.
I forgot to mention the kickbacks probably involved, hidden as taxes and permits to do the painting.
No! Emphatically NO!
These idiots are socialist democrats. They are practicing an determined form of crony socialism. The paint company is likely a large contributor to socialist democrat causes and is rewarded with this nonsensical contract to buy their paint at an inflated price, to paint the town white and thus ‘save the planet’. In return, the crony socialist paint company sends even more money back to elect more socialist democrats. It’s crony socialism, all the way down…..
Do you think there might be some sandblasting to remove the paint when that sheets home? Or will there be a year or two of trying to take the credit? They’re melons, after all.
They may affect ‘local warming’ but global? Not so much
True – it probably will not have a measurable effect of atmospheric temperatures per se’ but remember a significant number of temperature measuring stations are close ground level and these stations may record lower temperatures in each locality.
So of course this is what matters. 😉
A bit late for April Fool?
Philip Ward Dawson
Beat me to it mate.
a bit early for Apriñ
That was my first thought.
Mayor Garcetti is a much a panderer as his father, who blew the prosecution of the O.J. Simpson case. BTW, if there were such streets when I was a teenager, my friends would have had contests trying for burnouts and other skid marks.
Seven years? I wonder if it could last seven weeks. I bet even money. Seven months? Ten to one.
the kids out there will start “tagging” the streets immediately !! the white streets will be irresistible to the “graffiti artists” and end up a huge mess of horrible graffiti. sooooo vibrant.
Let’s see… Bidirectional multi-lane streets/roads with no clear lane markers. LA traffic is going to resemble YouTube videos of crazy Russian drivers.
I’m thinking white lane markers will have to be black, and yellow lines will have to go to orange or even red.
And the “tags” will have even less traction than the original white pain.
Ah, but the next law they pass will be that all cars must be electric and equipped with all white tires!
Wouldn’t it be blinding to drivers?
Exactly my thought.
“increasingly hotter heat waves.”
Cali has truly lost it’s mind. Gotta wonder if this is a political payoff of some kind. It’s as least as stupid as the US ‘scrubbing of Havana’ in an effort to stop Yellow Fever. Massive waste of money better spent elsewhere. I think they’ be better served providing ‘free’ shelter or ‘free’ food or ‘free’ A/C to the LA poor – and it might cost less. I mean 40K/mile? how many miles of asphalt are there in LA? Thousands? The concept is staggering
I would suggest it’s more than just a political payoff! Somebody, somewhere is getting mighty rich off this little scam. If you read the specs for the paint, I’m guessing it costs more than $40K/mile after all the surface prep and topcoat stuff……and the fact that it doesn’t adhere well to oily surfaces. Does anybody have any figures on the reflected glare for drivers and the increase in reflected UV for pedestrians…..just saying!
Twenty three thousand miles
Liberals making such claims should be in straight jackets, white ones.
In a white room, with black curtains, near the station.
Black roof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings.
…dates you… 🙂
Well they do say the cream rises to the top, but unfortunately so does the scum.
p.s. Ginger and lads were great, a pity they could not get on together but diacetyl morphine does have some effect.
The U.S. is a melting pot. The slag has risen to the top, and in many communities not enough people know it should be skimmed off and discarded.
They’ve definitely been down to the crossroads.
That’s so white. If I were a diversitist, this would be suspect… Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Hey, it made a difference in weather station white boxes, making a difference in whether Whitewash or Latex paint was used, and the small difference in measured temperatures after converting to the newer latex paint. In fact, this was in small part how the whole global warming hoax was ‘confirmed’ by casting a shadow on the actual temperature records. I still remember the day in 1992 when I got my first computer and the first sciencey article I downloaded (at 14.4 kbps) was about how some obscure meteorologist was making the claim that painting the weather station boxes with new latex paint changed the measured temperature slightly. That was the day I became a skeptic and started thinking for myself.
I think it was Anthony. I too read the pieces and became an immediate WUWTist. Been so ever since. At that time I was visiting Panama regularly. Hot as hell.I told local people that things might improve if they painted their roofs white. As time passed, on my visits I noticed more and more white roofs as the plane landed. People there told me that it worked. Thank you Anthony.
Earthling2
That made me chuckle. I had far less noble uses for the internet until about 5 years ago when I wondered a little bit about the climate change story I had been sold, and had swallowed, hook line and sinker.
Long story short, I smelled a rat when I asked questions on alarmist’s sites and was howled at. Dipped my toe into WUWT and my questions were welcomed. They weren’t clever questions, just day to day stuff like ‘why is CO2 bad?’ or perhaps ‘when will I be drowned by sea level rise?’
I’m a layman, I need to know this stuff, but no one on WUWT condemned me for asking the questions, they actually gave me answers. Some complicated, some easy. But at least I got an answer rather than an insult.
Since then I have learned a little, thought a lot, and in my own way, reached my own conclusion that AGW is a crock.
I keep saying it, but thank you guys for helping me think this whole thing through in my own simple way.
Lots more voters like me to convince, so keep it simple for the man in the street.
Did they consult any actual scientists about what impact this choice will have on temperatures?
It will be yuge.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t even consult an urban traffic planner. The initial road glare will be far worse, but they’ll alleviate that by painting only shady streets .
The white won’t stay white more than a week. It doesn’t rain in LA and they dare not waste precious water keeping these things clean. There is that pesky drought . So any benefit will never be realized, and BTW how the heck will they know if there is any effect whatsoever?
Now the worst part is that painting will only make driving on these roads far more dangerous. Anyone who has ever driven around LA knows that the slipperiest parts of the roads are the painted crosswalks. They accumulate engine oils and other leakages. So in their wisdom, they will turn entire blocks into early morning dew caused slip-and-slides.
Roof Tops? Now that is a different thing all together. There is huge benefits in A/C savings by putting white UV resistant vinyl roofing onto large flat topped structures. And, neither cars nor bums will be befouling the albedo. Dust and detritus is still an issue as it still doesn’t rain in LA (enough).
The more people that die in accidents the fewer people there are polluting and breathing out CO2. It is actually part of the plan.
I’ve found that dust hasn’t materially changed the temperature after pairing my traditional roof with hydrated lime – three years after initial application the sections painted are 30-40 F cooler than my neighbors roof, which I benchmarked at the same temperature (+- 5F across otherwise identical areas, which I take to be the variations in the experiment).
That said, I also don’t have black rubber dragged across it all the time……
$billw1984
The loss of population is already accounted for. They are stockpiling illegals to make up for the citizens that have called it quits on California and moved elsewhere. Failing that, they could [lose] congressional seats and federal funds.
Choosing white over another shade is “racist”.
They should use rainbow paint – that will please the LGBTIPQRST brigade!
BoyfromTottenham
FFS, no, please.
I refuse to surrender democracy to minority groups.
HotScot
Thanks for surrendering Republicanism for Democracy.
Our nation is a Constitutional Republic with Democratic Process.
Democracies suck, and the more Democratic our nation gets, the more it sucks.
White is ALL THE COLORS THERE ARE..
Black is NONE OF THE COLORS THERE ARE.
This is important.
To someone…
Leo, depends on whether you are talking absorption or reflection.
Let’s start a ‘Black Roads Matter’ action group.
There are Fifty Shades of Grey to choose from.
Too bad you can’t whitewash LA City Hall as easily.
To be followed by a massive increase in traffic accidents the next time it rains.
They claim “Has been shown to meet skid safety requirements”, but no literature on that was evident on their web site.
http://guardtop.com/coolseal-asphalt-sealcoating-product/
Australia uses green paint for cycle lanes at intersections. Motorcyclists know that the paint is super slippery in wet weather. Even dry it’s very dangerous for motorcyclists.
More than once, while pulling away from a light or stop sign, I’ve felt the wheels spin a bit as I crossed over the white lines of the cross walk.
MarkW
THE HEADLIGHTS……….THE HEADLIGHTS……THAT’S WHAT MADE ME DO IT OFFICER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Drat, I missed an exclamation mark!
Another award winning post consigned to obscurity because of a mere detail!
I hate society, it’s so unfair!
Am I a minority group yet, can I stake my claim to painting my street purple with yellow spots.
No?
Another beer then.
Nighty folks.
Obviously it will do nothing about global warming, but it might have some local effects: To whit, smart attorneys will be able to class-action sue for increased incidence of skin cancer and macular degeneration as a result of higher ground-level UV light reflected from whitened surfaces.
LA law will find their silver-lining, even without the cloud. Smart people.
Almost forgot, the city will have to put up sign that the road may contain carcengious chemicals. That stupid law that force Starbucks to put up the same sign also apply here.
As I recall, research on white roofing shingles indicated no effect.
Only a benefit for reducing heat loading into the underlying building and commensurate A/C energy reduction.
Who sells the paint . . .?
The company name is GuardTop.
http://guardtop.com/products/
Are they owned by a city councilman?
It’s just pure dumb luck asphalt is dark. I mean it could’ve been white, right?
Um…no. Asphalt is tar (dark bituminous pitch) mixed with aggregate or sand.
I’m sure we could devise a material made from crushed seashells mixed with a durable polyester resin to pave the roads, ….at an order of magnitude far more costly. In the northern climes they try to keep the white off the roads and the dark color helps.
Put all the roads underground and plant grass and trees above them at ground level.
Or, just raise ground level to be above the current roads ala Seattle.
Well then, tar could be white, right?
Sorry, it was just a nonsense proto thought that waft through my head, it’s been a hard day. Garcetti is a pandering jerk. The post was just so LA. I grew up there, have to still go there.
Those of us in the asphalt cement manufacturing business never refer to it as tar.
Sometimes in eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota they use pipestone, a type of pink granite as aggregate, and the resulting road is a nice light shade of pink.
I visited canoga park rocketdyne in september 2001 (from ohio) and the parking lot was a furnace, i could barely touch the car after it sat in the sun, it was HOT HOT.
That sounds like it would be more likely to work than a lot of the OTHER crap they’ve suggested. But why stop there? Change the building codes to require that all roofing materials needs to be white, or at least a light color? Perhaps a requirement that all roofing material must have an albedo of at least 0.7.
Where I live in rural Oz, roofs have to be dark(ish). White/shiny roofs apparently are a problem for airline pilots, but in any case they are a driving hazard at times and can be somewhat unaesthetic [a word unknown to planners in Oz]. Or maybe there were bureaucrats with nothing else to do – like in LA, but less obvious.
White roofs waaaay down there on the ground…those tiny dots, are a problem for airline pilots on the most sun baked mostly desert continent on the planet?
Really?
Not all airlines travel at 30000 feet. Domestic routes may use smaller planes with a lower flight ceiling. Plus private aircraft, freight couriers, etc.
Most airports are near cities. Planes landing and taking off would be just a few thousand feet up.
If the albedo of the roofs is too low, can they just use Viagra?
Won’t that make the streets slipperier, especially in the rain?
I suspect they will mix in a good percentage of sand
Crosswalks are more slippery than pavement.
I spent 13 months on Guam in the early ’70s. The roads were made from crushed coral. When it rained they were slipperier than snot on ice. And they were white. With a full moon, you didn’t need any headlights to see the road. Of course you may not see that coconut crab in the road.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/los-angeles-paints-streets-white-stay-cool
Why not just paint CO2 white?
Better yet… Mix CoolSeal into gasoline, diesel, coal and natural gas… 👍👍
Because we are facing 5.55°C temperature increases in the next seven years…
…like the paint would last that long anyway.
What’s the toxicity of the paint? I mean, it’s going to start chipping and wearing down, and when it rains the debris will get carried away into sewers and eventually the ocean and rivers. Also, what effect will the reflected light have on skin? What about driving?
Did anyone ask any questions before L.A. burned this hole in their pocket? Or did the word “Yes” tremble through the echo chambers of L.A.’s city hall after the proposal came up for a vote?
Low VOC, meets LEED requirements. 12 year resistance to UV degradation.
http://guardtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/CoolSeal-by-GuardTop-Specification.pdf
That’s not what he asked.
“12 year resistance to UV degradation.”
How about SUV degradation?
Tucson spent a bundle of $$$ to paint a rainbow crosswalk to show solidarity with the LGBTQERTY crowd. It was obliterated in short order by the rubber from car tires. Haven’t any of these people watched NASCAR tracks get blacker and blacker during races? This has to rank up there with paving streets with solar panels. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Just use White Tires
…so much more important than dams and water
Whitewater.
Where have I heard that before?
What happens when it gets dirty? Will we wash it with the abundant water of SoCal?
Given that most painted markings on traffic lanes, stop signs and pedestrian crossings in LA have already been largely obliterated with the effluxion of time and traffic, there is indeed a serious need for lots of paint. But painting the entire roadway white is simply nuts, if only for the glare that it will produce.
A joke. Please tell me this is a joke.
https://weather.com/news/news/2018-04-10-los-angeles-painting-streets-white
It’s close enough to April Fools so that’s got to be it. Yeah, good one lol. Had me going!