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.
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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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What’s the friction coefficient of paint vs asphalt? I see a lot of additional accidents occuring in LA.
Probably should also mandate that all trees should be white birch trees for consistency.
LA can’t do that! That would be white supremacy!
This is all about the idiotic, virtue-signaling “We Are Still In” campaign, wherein cities, towns, organizations, and various and sundry useful fools “fight climate change” on their own, because Trump refuses to. It is sheer folly of course, and nothing but a waste of money, with likely negative side effects such as glare from the roadways blinding people, and causing accidents. Whatever UHI-lowering effects it has would require many $millions to have a noticeable effect, and the only possible benefit would be a bit more comfort being outside, and very slightly lowered costs of cooling. The cooling effect on the planet would be laughably tiny. But cost is no object to Warmunist morons.
Instead of painting the roads white it would be far simpler to legislate that roof colours must be whites or similar light colours”
yes, but you don’t spend money doing that, no friend make a profit, and so none can pay for your election as a tribute.
lol they are going to blind people who walk the streets
Next CA will limit auto color to white…
inb4 …
#blackroadsmatter
😀
you made my day
If they haven’t figured out that paint can be sprayed on yet a lot faster, then I’d imagine that they think painting them white is a great idea.
I’ll just wait for the warnings…”Walking on these painted streets can cause CANCER.”.
Does this white paint supports nuclear radiation from a Russian bomb exploding above the city ?
Hang on folks! Let’s not allow our prejudices addle our brains.
Consider the science: The Stephan-Boltzmann equation tells us that a reduction of 0.0294 in the global Albedo of Earth will offset any 3 Deg.C threatened by the IPCC.
This means that very roughly if you paint some 1 million square miles white with an Albedo of 0.9 then all will be well. That is roughly achieved by painting Italy white. Not that the the Italians would fancy that.
However this does give credence to the painting of roads white, or for that matter anything else. Mind you if you wait for winter the climate will do it for you.
The science also tells us that if you want to warm the planet then best plaster it with solar panels. Much better than leaving it to CO2. Perhaps the Warmists should take note of that.
It is wonderful what a bit of armchair science can achieve!! /(sarc.
I propose that ALL vehicles should be painted White. There are billions of them. (again ((sarc.)
What is this paint made of and how was it manufactured? Where did the ingredients come from?
China. Cheap as dirt and sold for a fortune.
Who cares? The important thing is that we are saving the planet! For christ’s sake don’t you care about the planet?
I’ve always noticed that it takes about 3-6 mo before the white stripes on the road turn to a dingy gray …… so I don’t see this having any effect at all.
Why, it is only $5,714 per mile per annum. Now. Los Angeles county has 23,142.76 miles of Maintained Roadway.
http://www.laalmanac.com/transport/tr01.php
Therefore keeping them withe in the long run costs only $132,244,342.85 per annum, with an original investment of $926 million. That’s less than a billion, but they have plenty of money, I guess, because they have more than 10 million inhabitants. That is, it’s less than a hundred bucks per capita, a true bargain.
I can bet they buy their road in the million bucks per mile (is is cheaper elsewhere, but, eh, we are talking LA, aren’t we?), and have to do that every 20 years. So this must be like ~10% of their road maintenance cost.
Just paint it a few blocks long in the elitist voting precincts.
So they are putting a giant easel down for the coyote to use to trap the road runner.
Covering decaying infrastructure with an expensive coat of paint. Brilliant.
“Having” to paint all the streets white is just evidence of how serious the problem is to California Person. And hey, isn’t paint an environmental threat?
No cost too high, no scheme too bizarre, no words too strong to combat CAGW or Trump.
Wouldn’t it be much more efficient to commit car owners to repaint their cars in a highly reflective silver and register new cars only if they have a certified minimum solar reflection color? That might reduce the need for painting the streets white to the middle of the road only, because the reflecting cars cover the sides, especially when street parking. It saves a lot of money, too. Except for the car owners, of course.
Who said once that California has 365 Fool’s Days and 366 in a leap year?
That should be 364. April 1st is No Fools Day….
R
This may be costly (*), but for sure is magnitude cheaper than wind turbine, solar panel and the like.
AND
old cities under heavy sun are white for a reason. Seems reasonable to me to turn Los Angeles as white as possible, too, street and road included, except if it is used by plants.
Turn your building white, first. Then install air conditioning, if still need be (but that may be not the case, in fact)
(*) anyway, you can bet the official taking this decision would had wasted it in some other silly way otherwise.
If they did but know it, they are correct. Albedo controls temperature.
Modulation of Ice Ages by Dust and Albedo.
https://ac.els-cdn.com/S1674987116300305/1-s2.0-S1674987116300305-main.pdf
Q. But if albedo controls temperature, then what does CO2 do?
A. Not a lot….
Ralph
Try this link…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300305
R
The original Fox News article said that the paint was applied in two coats, each 50 microns thick. At 100 microns thickness, a gallon of paint covers 407 square feet of roadway. If we assume that a two-lane road is 24 feet wide, a mile of roadway would have an area of 126,720 square feet, and would require about 310 gallons of paint to cover it to a depth of 100 microns.
If the great (?) state of California is spending $40,000 per mile to paint roads white, they are spending about $128 per gallon for white paint, when the average do-it-yourselfer spends $30 to $40 per gallon at a paint or hardware store. Leave it to Governor Moonbeam to charge California taxpayers three to four times the price for white paint on roads!
Governors of colder states (which get snow in winter) would know that there are some advantages to the heat-absorbing properties of black asphalt roads. If there is a daytime snowstorm and the air temperature is not far below 32 F, ultraviolet rays from the sun can pass through clouds and heat up asphalt roadways more than more reflective surfaces such as grass or other vegetation. It is not uncommon for snow to melt on contact with asphalt roads, while nearby grass can be covered with two or more inches of snow. If the roads were painted white, snow plowing costs would increase.
I am glad to see that it is not just the UK that has given the keys of the asylum too the inmates. I wonder how long it will take for this little piece of lunacy to be replicated in good old Great Britain. Don’t think it wont happen, our government has a herd instinct for adopting stupid ideas.
After the painting, can LA afford the water to keep the streets clean and reflective. They probably plan to just suck that much more water out of the delta.
I bet they are going to use chemicals for that purpose instead of water. Some sort of dry cleaning?
Is there a danger of getting something similar to snow blindness if you’re spending a lot of time behind the wheel? (delivery driver etc)
California isn’t the arctic. A hot sun and reflective surfaces, could there be a problem with more sunburn UV damage?