To compensate for the harm from Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, scientists are proposing to paint the Earth white.
Donald Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Thus, they will relieve themselves of the obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - that is, they will contribute to global warming. But the Americans are already among the leaders in warming the environment - they are second in the world.
It will not be possible to fully compensate for the harm from the American initiative, but you can try partially. I have an idea. In the journal Nature Climate change it was presented by the British scientist Richard Tol - Professor of Economics at Sussex University. The professor suggests painting the hottest places on our planet white. Namely cities. Then they will intensely reflect heat into space. And not so much heat up. In the meantime, temperatures in cities - especially large ones - are about 4 degrees higher than in rural areas. In whitewashed ones - it will be only 2 degrees higher.
Professor Tol is not joking, as it might seem at first glance. His predecessors, who have long been hatching plans to whitewash at least the roofs, were not joking either.
Steven Chu - Nobel laureate, US Secretary of Energy in 2009-2013, as if having a presentiment of the current situation, 10 years ago, suggested repainting almost the entire Earth in white. But he's not an innovator either - Chu borrowed the idea from friend and colleague Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission. He has campaigned for whitewashing since 2005.
Paint the whole Earth white - save from overheating to spite Trump
For reference: black coating reflects only 5 percent of solar energy, brown - about 10, green - 20. And white - up to 85 percent.
For every square meter of the Earth's surface, about 240 watts fall from the Sun. This is to help global warming. White paint will remove about 200 watts from it.
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In addition, white roofs will reduce air conditioning energy costs. Only this will make it possible to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Chu and Art figured it was possible to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 44 billion tons by whitewashing the 100 largest cities in the world. The effect will be as if the world had given up car traffic for 11 years.
BTW
Mountain slopes were painted white in Peru
In 2009, the World Bank allocated $ 200,000 to paint the slopes of the Peruvian Andes. The challenge is to give them a natural white color - the color of the ice and snow with which they were previously covered. The cover has melted as a result of global warming. The slopes stopped reflecting solar heat, on the contrary, began to attract it.
Four residents of the local village of Licapa and their "foreman" - self-taught inventor Eduardo Gold, the author of the Andes lightening project, volunteered to be the painters. Its purpose is to cool down specific mountain peaks. And thus return to them the snow cover, which has disappeared completely over the past 20 years. Chalon Sombrero is the starting point.
Enthusiasts managed to whitewash two hectares of the 4756-meter Chalon Sombrero peak. We used whitewash of our own production - based on limestone and egg white. It seems that this paint is environmentally friendly. No brushes were used - they just doused the surface.
Eduardo Gold managed to paint only a few hectares of the Andes. But if people like him give free rein, they will whitewash the Earth..
At one time, Eduardo managed to captivate the jury of the competition “100 Ideas to Save the Planet” with his project. Became one of the winners. I received some of the money and started working. But he soon died.
The experiment remained unfinished. But who knows, he will suddenly be picked up - especially after Trump keeps his promise.
In the meantime, it will probably not be superfluous to start dressing in white - at least in white pants, as was customary in Rio da Janeiro at the time of Ostap Bender.
THERE WAS STILL CASE
Sheep are to blame for global warming
In 2007, New Zealand scientists from the Institute of Veterinary Climatology announced in a local newspaper that the cause of global warming is not because carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere. And the fact is that - especially in New Zealand itself - herds of sheep are decreasing. They say that sheep are white, reflect sunlight well, preventing the planet from heating up. And the fewer there are, the correspondingly warmer on Earth.
Further, scientists drew a very gloomy picture: the temperature rises, the need for woolen sweaters is falling, the number of sheep - suppliers of wool - becomes even less, they no longer reflect anything … As a result, the Earth turns into red-hot Venus. The people were naturally worried. And I didn't immediately guess that the sheep hypothesis was an April Fool's joke.
The more white borans, the less global warming. Even this joke has some truth.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY
