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.
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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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Pave them with gold.
After all, they’re trying to create heaven for their eco-religion.
It’s a sealcoating product, and when dry is a matte gray (little or no glare). Like any sealcoating, it is fairly dense, so has to be spread on with a squegee. Just as an example, you can buy Latexite Airport Grade Driveway Filler Sealer at HD for 19.95 for a 4.75 gal. pail, about $4.25/gal. At that price, it would cost roughly $6,600 to cover a mile of 24-foot wide pavement. I’m guessing this stuff is more expensive, perhaps twice as much, so make that $12k for product, meaning about $28k of that $40k/mi. must be for labor and equipment use.
“Officials in Los Angeles are painting streets white”
Since when does it take an “official” to paint a street? Just another participation trophy.
Heeeeeeeeeelp, the lunacy is spreading:
A ‘singing road’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43725796
Cannabis overdose?
Fortunately didn’t last long. (The singing road, dunno ’bout the weed)
Think carefully about those white roads:
Yes asphalt gets hot in the sun – but bitumen is a good thermal insulator.
The heat energy doesn’t ‘soak in’ and asphalt cools very quickly when the sun goes down.
High temp of the daytime asphalt creates strongly rising air currents, lifting the heat out of people’s way and drawing in colder air. At least it moves the air giving a cooling effect to critters made of water. (Me & you)
White surfaces will scatter the light and solar energy onto and into buildings leading to:
….The glare will be horrible.
….UV will be thrown everywhere, a wide brimmed hat will no linger protect you.
….Concrete is what retains heat energy, especially if it is full of rebar
(Try that barefoot walk in the local park after a sunny day if you don’t believe me)
They are going to make the place even hotter and simply unbearable.
It will fail big-time.
You’ve have to use a product that does not become slicker than the unpainted road surface in wet conditions. This truck driver has felt the difference in certain places and conditions. Yes, even a semi driver with all that rubber on the road can feel the slip. This one has multiple times when driving along lines which aren’t textured. I often go right to the white or yellow line when passing.
Each time you hear about a wild environmental idea like this you ask yourself can liberals’ solutions get any crazier? This one surely fits into that catagory. What a waste of money. The next thing we will be reading about is the accidents caused by drivers blinded when the sun is at the right angle to reflect off the pavement. Snow blindness anyone?
Now they just have to give every solar panel in the state a good thick coat of white paint – It’ll make sense to them.
can you imagine doing that here in Maine. would exponentially increase salting tonnage.
Painting roads WHITE reheats water vapor in the atmosphere, promoting global warming. Any normal study of creating a solar sink would look no farther than the trees and paint roads green.
Sigh. No concern for blinding drivers and killing people I guess.
Human life is such a low priority for those saving the planet.
All this faux concern over future generations, I humbly suggest that our primary responsibility is THIS one.
The potential problems with this initiative, as raised by the comments above, will surely be answered in the Health and Safety Assessment that was, (oh surely) carried out by Highway Safety professionals before actual work began.
I assume that taxpaying residents of LA will be entitled to see the document(s) , or indeed anyone planning to visit LA by car for commercial reasons, or on vacation. I am thinking of a visit next year can I see it?
After all California is suing the pants off oil companies for not disclosing the risks to citizens’ health from climate change caused by their products, so LA would not wish to be sued by Gov Brown for not disclosing the risks, if any, of their white paint initiative.
Sauce for the goose , sauce for the gander ?
Well, we’ll see. But I suspect this action is based on an overly-simplistic concept of albedo. Asphalt and concrete pavements are hugely powerful heat-banks no matter what colour they are.
Is this white paint also white and opaque in the infra-red range?
I thought a mirrored surface would be more reflective. Added benefit of turning LA in to one big optical telescope so they can look for another place to live.
This is medieval. During the Ice Age some Swiss villagers had the region’s bishop lead prayers at the glacier front to stop its advance. The only difference is, that would be considered “Christian” in LA.
Perhaps this has been mentioned already but, if they don’t want black asphalt, replace it with concrete.
At $40,000 a mile, it might be cheaper and it would definitely last longer.
How are you going to see a white traffic line on the white street?
It would probably be better to encourage white or off-white roofs than roads, but at least this acknowledges the urban heat island effect and attempts to address it. It’s a better intervention than most of what government attempts.
This frightening it is so dumb.
When the paint degrades where does it go?
Do they realize how slippery that’s gonna be in the rain. They are literally making streets deadly. That is a safety concern that needs to be addressed immediately.
I have to wonder how their slip and skid tests are performed. I ride a motorcycle and I can tell you that the paints they use to put the lane markers (arrows and such) on the roads are VERY slick when wet. Did those pass the slip and skid tests?
I wonder if they test freshly painted surfaces or do they try to simulate what the surfaces will be like after years of cars passing over, leaking oils and other substances on them, bird droppings, squashed animals, etc.
I see lawsuits in the future.
I think we should urge Ahnold to paint his pecs.
I’ve never encountered anyone that liked painted pecs. Tell me, is it the paint or the pecs that turn you on?
Pecs or Pics?
Socialist make work project, comrade.
Thank GOD I moved from LaLaLand back to America. What a bunch of idiots.
Ah, yes. Where they paint the streets white and put alcoholics, drug addicts and psychotics in your neighbor’s back yard.