Painting Bill Clinton’s “white roofs” into reality
By Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza The opnions expressed are his own.
If you’ve been outside recently, you probably realize that this summer is hot. With the latest heat wave now spreading across the country, it’s worth pointing out that many Americans are unknowingly contributing to the soaring temperatures. How? Millions of rooftops in America are made of black tar; and they absorb and trap an enormous amount of heat during the summer months. It’s also worth pointing out that there’s an easy fix to the black roofs problem that people of all political stripes can get behind: paint the black roofs white.
Painting black tar roofs with a white, solar-reflective coating is a low cost, quick and tangible way to reduce the risk of power grid ‘brown-outs’, save millions of dollars in energy costs, and curb climate change. The statistics are as simple as they are staggering: A roof covered with solar-reflective white paint reflects up to 90% of sunlight as opposed to the 20% reflected by a traditional black roof. On a 90°F day, a black roof can be up to 180°F. That heat has a major impact on interior building temperature, potentially heating your room to between 115 – 125°F. A white roof stays a cool 100°F. Plus the inside of the building stays cooler than the air outdoors, around 80°F in this example, reducing cooling costs.
White roofs also reduce the “urban heat island” effect in which temperatures rise in dense urban areas because of the proliferation of heat-radiating, black tar surfaces. For example, the Urban Heat Island effect causes New York City to be about 5 degrees warmer than surrounding suburbs and accounts for 5 to 10 percent of summer electricity use.
In New York City alone, 12% of all surfaces are rooftops. It’s estimated that implementing a white roof program in 11 metropolitan cities could save the United States 7 gigawatts in energy usage. That’s the equivalent of turning off 14 power plants, and a cost savings of $750 million per year.
Recently, former President Bill Clinton wrote in Newsweek, “Every black roof in New York should be white; every roof in Chicago should be white; every roof in Little Rock should be white. Every flat tar-surface roof anywhere! In most of these places you could recover the cost of the paint and the labor in a week.” The former president regularly touts the white roofs as one of those win-win scenarios that could also help create jobs and stimulate the economy.
The folks at White Roof Project agree. Last year, a progressive group of young people got together to found the project and get it going at the grassroots level. When 150 volunteers showed up to coat the historic Bowery Mission in New York City (our first project) it was a watershed moment. Volunteers saw that all it takes is a paint roller, some solar-reflective white coating and a little hard work to start curbing climate change. Since then we’ve been educating and activating our neighbors around the white roof movement that Bill Clinton has called on someone to build.
Obama, Moses and exaggerated expectations
-Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own-
President Barack Obama is close to the half-way mark of his presidential mandate, a good time for a brief look at health care, unemployment, war, the level of the oceans, the health of the planet, and America’s image. They all featured in a 2008 Obama speech whose rhetoric soared to stratospheric heights.
“If…we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I’m absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last best hope on earth.”
The date was June 3, 2008. Obama had just won the Democratic Party’s nomination as presidential candidate. He was also winning the adulation of the majority of the American people, who shrugged off mockery from curmudgeonly Republicans who pointed out that the last historical figure to affect ocean levels was Moses and he had divine help when he parted the Red Sea.
Obama took to the campaign trail again this month to help Democratic candidates for the mid-term elections on November 2 and he would need divine intervention to prevent his party from losing control of the House and possibly the Senate.
The vote is in part a referendum on his first two years in office and the adoration has faded, not least because it would have been difficult for anyone to actually meet the high expectations he raised in dramatic speeches.
There is a certain symmetry between next month’s mid-terms and those four years ago, when Democrats took control of both houses of Congress (and consolidated it in 2008). The result stemmed from dissatisfaction with the economy, with the Republican Party and with President George W. Bush. Now there is dissatisfaction with the economy (much more troubled than in 2006) with Democrats, and with Obama.
@efes: Yes, some Americans are like that. And so are you and your countrymen. Perhaps your country hasn’t developed yet to the point where you can indulge yourselves in such banal things, but you will. I love when non-Americans criticize Americans, as if they were any better. You are not. Get over yourselves. And thank god that the USA has the power it has, and not some other government, like yours…
Business must take the lead on carbon management
Léo Apotheker is CEO of SAP. The views expressed are his own.
Most people who followed the Copenhagen climate talks in December will have been disappointed.
While the agreement brokered by the group of countries that included the United States, Brazil, China, India and South Africa and ratified by most of the attending countries is being touted as a success of sorts, it fell far short of the expectations that had built up, and achieved very little in concrete terms.
Now with the World Economic Forum approaching, the issue of climate change and sustainability will once again dominate discussions among the business and political leaders who attend the annual gathering in Davos.
Ever since the 1968 publication in Science of Garrett Hardin’s article “The Tragedy of the Commons,” it has been regarded as virtually an article of faith that only strong national and international regulators can be trusted with the proper management of public resources.
A clear regulatory framework is necessary for businesses to act in competitive environments and maybe at least some pieces of such a framework will be provided in the future. But it was not provided at Copenhagen.
The United State’s forward thinking progressive types want to lead the World in green sustainable energy. This drive was put in park by the last 5 out 7 administrations. It’s no wonder why the Dems finally got mad and elected Barack Obama, and why the Rupuglican’ts are reeling so spastic-ally. But leading the World in Green technology in the near future is going to be other countries like Germany, China. So we had better get cracking with government incentives to build up our
manufacturing base with solar cell factories, hydrogen cell factories, wind farm factories, Algea farms, Alpaca farms, Organic farms, etc etc. First Obama has to be re-elected in 2012 or it’s going to be 6 out 9 “backward not-green” administrations that our beautiful country has had to slog through year after year instead of 5 out of 9. I hope the rest of the World will support Democrats in 2012, for the Planet’s sake I pray.
from The Great Debate UK:
Beyond Copenhagen: sub-national solutions are now key
- Julian Hunt is visiting professor at Delft University and formerly director general of the UK meteorological office. Charles Kennel is distinguished professor of atmospheric science, emeritus and senior advisor to the sustainability solutions institute, UCSD. The opinions expressed are their own. -
The non-legally binding "deal" agreed at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen among the U.S., China, Brazil, South Africa and India, has brought to a conclusion what has proved an extraordinarily complex set of negotiations.
The outcome has been criticised on numerous grounds and, in U.S. President Barack Obama’s own words, “We have much further to go”.
In effect, the agreement may ultimately amount to no more than a long-term climate change dialogue between Washington and Beijing. While global action to tackle emissions of carbon dioxide must remain a priority, the fact remains that we may be heading towards a future in which no long-term, comprehensive successor to the Kyoto regime is politically possible.
One of the chief flaws in the Copenhagen negotiations was the fact that the overly-ambitious political deals being discussed were not realistic, nor framed to inspire people to act and collaborate with each other across the world on both a local and regional level. Going forwards, national governments will need to be more honest about future likely emissions and also of future temperature changes. In this crucial debate, scientists must be free to state their estimates without political bias.
In the absence of a new global deal, it is now crucial that the centre of gravity of decision-making on how we respond to climate change moves towards the sub-national level. This may also have the effect of re-energising future global climate change talks as environment diplomacy could certainly be furthered by policies decided at the local and regional level.
The need for such a paradigm shift from a "top-down" to a "bottom-up" approach is becoming clearer by the day.
It is a matter of enormous satisfaction to many people that this juggernaut of dubious science, commercial interest and politics has hit a stumbling block. As a scientist and the owner of a scientific software company I have been appalled by the grandiosity of the ‘colleagues’ who have used every dirty trick known to bad science to promote themselves, damage their opponents and pull the wool over the eyes of the public.
The world has gigantic problems which need to be addressed directly: the population explosion, general pollution, the shortage of clean water, grinding poverty, lack of medical care etc. Money needs to be spent on these and not channelled into the pockets of the carbon kleptocrats.
Climate skeptic: We are winning the science battle
- Dr. Fred Singer is the President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project and Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. The views expressed are his own -
The International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) charter states that the organization’s purpose is to look for human induced climate change. The Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) does not have this problem. If we find support for human induced climate change, we say so. If we do not find support for human induced climate change, we say so. In fact, the first NIPCC report, of which I was a lead author, was called ‘Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate’.
We see no evidence in the climate record that the increase in CO2, which is real, has any appreciable effect on the global temperature. IPCC relies heavily on the surface temperature data, which is distorted by a deletion of a number of surface stations. The ‘best’ stations were kept – the ones around temperature islands and by airports.
Now the Climategate leak has shown that the surface temperature data that IPCC relies on is based on distorted raw data and algorithms that they will not share with the science community. The scientists implicated in Climategate have misused peer review and pressured journal editors to prevent publication of research that questions their research. They have taken control of the IPCC process and they have smeared opponents personally, rather than critiquing the research.
IPCC’s mandate states that its role is to assess the science in a comprehensive, objective, open, and transparent manner. Unfortunately, the process has been anything but comprehensive, objective, open, and transparent. Climategate exposed this flawed process, and now it turns out that global warming might have been ‘man made’ after all.
I have traveled around Europe for a month now, talking to colleagues and people who are concerned about the draconian policies being put in place. But we are winning the science battle; the alarmist has no evidence.
The World Meteorological Organization (UN-WMO) wanted to set the tone for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen by releasing a statement that says that the past decade has shown some of the warmest tempratures on record, based on the 160 year of instrumental data we have. Intended or not, the statement created the impression that anthropogenic global warming is the cause of increased temperature and that the IPCC was correct after all. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Human-activity-induced-climate-change is no longer a scientific theory. It has become a doctrine, and we’re all losing something because of this.
Science has always survived political ideologies, simply because it’s a system built on rational criticism, not faith, interests, and sticking to the party line.
I’m positively surprised that Reuters published this article – Good job!
from The Great Debate UK:
John Reid on climate change and global security
- John Reid MP, formerly UK Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Defence, is the Chairman of the Institute for Security and Resilience Studies at University College, London. The opinions expressed are his own. -
Barack Obama’s announcement that there will be no all-encompassing protocol agreed at Copenhagen underlines that climate change is perhaps the most complex issue facing the world today. In part, this is because it involves long-term thinking and modeling which our existing political, financial and economic institutions and governance frameworks are ill-designed and configured to grapple with and resolve.
With uncertainty building over what, if anything, the Copenhagen Summit can still achieve, now is therefore the time to remind ourselves about some of the larger stakes in play next month at what has been billed by some as the most important environmental summit in world history.
We know already that climate change will impact upon our quality of life and have potentially profound consequences for future generations through, for instance, the impact of rising sea levels, and more extreme weather. In the medium-term, the Stern Review estimates the overall impact on GDP could be 5 to 20 percent from 2050.
This alone should alarm us all.
Moreover, while all will be affected, it is the most vulnerable countries and populations which will suffer earliest and most -- even though they have contributed least to the causes of the problem. This is injustice on a truly global scale and should, in itself, be sufficient reason for all sides to move closer at Copenhagen so that a comprehensive climate change deal can be agreed in 2010 or 2011.
However, there is an additional factor in this equation that should compel our action out of enlightened self-interest. Because climate change also has major geopolitical and security implications for the UK, the EU and the rest of the world.
from The Great Debate UK:
A freakonomic view of climate change
Ahead of a U.N. summit in Copenhagen next month, scepticism is growing that an agreement will be reached on a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.
The protocol set targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to be responsible for the gradual rise in the Earth's average temperature. Many scientists say that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is key to preventing climate change.
But authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argue in their new book SuperFreakonomics that humanity can take an alternative route to try and save the planet.
"If the goal is to stop warming then geo-engineering solutions are worth considering because they are far cheaper, probably much more do-able and easily reversible," Dubner told Reuters before a talk at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.
Analogy: a smoker is found to have an early lung cancer.It is pointless to debated whether he should either (a) stop smoking or (b) have the cancer excised.He must do both. We must Both decarbonise our economy (which will itself deliver a much wanted boost to the world economy by creating jobs in energy conservation and renewables)and sequester the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.It’s a bit like walking along and chewing gum at the same time. Some cannot do this, but most, with a little application, find that they can.
Change the climate narrative
– Nancy Birdsall is the president of the Center for Global Development. Arvind Subramanian is a senior fellow at the Center and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a regular columnist for the Business Standard, India’s leading business newspaper. The views expressed are their own. –
Efforts to cut emissions of the heat-trapping gases are gridlocked over a misunderstanding about what is fair. This misunderstanding is hindering climate change legislation in Congress and threatens to torpedo international negotiations in Copenhagen next month.
We propose a new way of thinking about climate fairness that focuses not on emissions cuts but on meeting developing countries’ energy needs in a climate-friendly manner. This simple narrative can provide a framework for U.S. legislation and open the way for international collaborative efforts to avert climate catastrophe.
At present, many people in the United States focus on the large and growing emissions of the developing world, especially China, which in absolute terms is now the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases, and India, which is growing fast and like China relies heavily on coal. They argue that it would be unfair to force emissions cuts at home without similar cuts in developing countries. A recent poll found that 60% of Americans believe that in any climate agreement China should cut its emissions the most.
It is true that developing countries already account for roughly half of all greenhouse gas emissions, and that their large populations and rapid economic growth are boosting emissions fast enough to create a planetary crisis by 2050-even if today’s rich countries had never existed.
But meanwhile a quarter of humanity — including millions in China and India — live without any electricity, and one-in-three people on the planet rely on straw, brush, charcoal and animal dung for their cooking needs. The resulting indoor air pollution kills 1.5 million people a year — about 4,000 per day — mostly children. Power for small businesses, irrigation networks, clinics and schools is sorely lacking.
Developing countries point to these unmet energy needs and to large disparities in per capita emissions to argue that the rich world must move first. They note that the 20 tons of CO2 that Americans emit annually is five times the world average, well above both China (5 tons per capita) and India (below 2 tons per capita).
Casper in order to exercise logic one must first be able to comprehend what they read. I stated CO2 has increased 20 percent. 300 ppm in 1960 to 370 ppm currently. Oxygen on Earth is currently around 19 percent at sea level and steadily decreasing. The higher the elevation, the lower the oxygen. Thinner air. Fifteen or sixteen percent oxygen content are the limits for large mammals generally though not always.You are correct that humanity has burned up the planet and that the time for debate has passed. I am not so sure that the people of my country have the stomach to do what is required.
from The Great Debate UK:
We Need a Fresh Approach on Climate Change
- Bjorn Lomborg is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He is the organizer of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which brings together some of the world's top economists, including 5 Nobel laureates, to set priorities for the world. The opinions expressed are his own. -
In this blog, I would like to share with you some of the best – and worst – ways to fix climate change. This is important because the Earth is warming up, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide are contributing to this warming, and humankind is dumping ever-increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Of course, this is a point that is made by many campaigners, politicians and the media every single day. But I think that in our discussions on global warming, we actually often miss a really important question: not if we should do something about global warming - but rather how best to go about this. Just like with any other problem we face, there are many possible remedies, and some of them are a whole lot better than others. Not just cheaper (although cost is one very important criteria), but more effective, more efficient and - crucially - more likely to actually happen.
We need to focus on the cost of the solutions and the real-world benefits we should expect from them. Why? Because I believe it is nothing less than morally unconscionable to spend enormous sums of money making a minor difference to long-term global warming and human well-being, if we could achieve a lot more impact – and leave future generations better-off – with a smaller investment through a smarter solution.
This year, my think-tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, commissioned 21 new research papers – you can read them all here along with summaries and op-eds on them – that examine the costs and benefits of a multitude of responses to global warming. Each research paper carefully examines one response to global warming, and highlights the costs and benefits of that approach.
The research in itself is very important, and is groundbreaking in many respects. It answers such questions as what can we achieve through climate engineering? What happens if the entire world signs up to stringent, immediate carbon cuts? Are we on the right path to achieving the technological breakthroughs needed to shift away from reliance on fossil fuel? How much can we achieve through adaptation? How much global warming damage can be prevented if we focus first on cutting methane or black carbon emissions, or if we put more emphasis on expanding forests?
The papers are written by top climate economists – many of whom are heavily involved in the work of the United Nations climate change panel, the IPCC. I believe we should pay attention to their findings, because these economists are experts in calculating costs and benefits and in looking at the ramifications of different climate policy approaches. Their work definitely fills a void in the climate debate.
There are other problems that you seem to ignore. You do not address the problem of ocean acidification. You do not seem to be aware of depletion of coal or petrolium. A carbon tax would be more helpful to discourage use of limited fossil fuel resources.
What will the climate change bill do to your job?
–- Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-
Next Thursday, just in time for the July 4 holiday weekend, America’s unemployment rate is forecast to rise from 9.4 percent to 9.6 percent, well above rates in other industrialized countries.
Yet today the House of Representatives is rushing to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, even though the bill was incomplete yesterday and congressmen have not yet had the opportunity to analyze it. The bill would send America’s unemployment rate even higher.
The 1,200-page bill, cosponsored by Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Edward Markey, Chairman of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, would increase the price of energy by setting allowances for greenhouse gas emissions and mandating new standards for energy production and use. The bill would raise $846.6 billion over 10 years while adding $821.2 billion to federal spending.
The bill requires that greenhouse gas emissions in 2012 do not exceed 97 percent of 2005 emissions, declining to 17 percent of 2005 emissions by 2050. Meeting these standards now is technologically impossible without radically reducing our standards of living, but Congress is hoping that technology will magically appear as needed.
The mechanism for this is a “cap-and-trade” program under which allowances to emit greenhouse gases would be issued by the Environmental Protection Agency at a steadily declining rate through 2050. When emissions exceed a firm’s allowance, or cap, it would have to purchase allowances from the government or other firms, a tax under another name, driving up costs that would be passed on to consumers.
Electric utilities have been given free allowances to encourage them to support the bill. Oil and gas would be particularly hard hit, because they are responsible for 35 percent of emissions yet are allocated only three percent of the free allowances.
No one can deny the actions of greedy bankers has caused suffering all around the globe. More job loss or higher cost of living will not help the plight of those who still work. Whether or not cap and trade works is moot.
Continuing to burn coal is in no ones interest but mine operators. It is the dirtiest fuel there is and has the highest CO2 emissions. Equally disturbing is the suspension of fly(coal)ash in liquids. This waste is stored on sight at power plants across the country. I find it regrettable that little attention is given by the media to the TVA coal ash spill in Kingston Tennessee.
One billion gallons of ash flooded the town when the containment facility failed. The EPA has kept 45 of the worst hazardous waste sights a secret until last week. The information was released to environmental groups through the “Freedom Of Information Act” with the help of Senator Boxer from California. The Kingston catastrophe is estimated to be 100 time worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill on the Alaskan coast. One can only speculate as to why President Obama while not release the names of visitors from the guest list to the White House. It is rumored coal industry interests have been making frequent visits.
The People of Kingston that were still working no longer do because of this disaster. At some point we must recognize the health of our environment is as critical to our economic well being as finances and manufacturing.
Well, there are some intelligent responses and some not so intelligent responses. But the most important thing to remember is that these hypotheses can all be very easily tested. (except for this malthusian stuff and the climate control on the trains. stay on topic. we’re talking about whether or not to paint a roof white to save on energy costs.) I am going to have mine painted white next week, so I’ll let you know if it helps.