Obviously, Jonah Goldberg's going to find something to object to here because environmentalists approve of it, and his only mission on the climate change front is to bash environmentalists, but he's circling around the topic of green roofs, which are good for the environment in a variety of different ways as well as looking cool.
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Green Roofs
08 Jun 2007 02:58 pm
Comments (15)
And I messed up the hyper-link so here it is:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/12/MNGGTPPKM01.DTL
I'd like to note Jonah's final point:
"...as someone who believes that geoengineering and adaptability rather than Rousseauian back-to-nature romance is the path to solving global warming,..."
It is only in the fevered minds of Goldberg and his Republican ilk that some sort of Puritan/Luddite/Marxist urge motivates progressives with regard to their energy independence and global warming policies. Their brains are impervious to facts.
Progressives could literally write until the end of time about how new energy/environmental policies will create jobs, boost productivity, enhance our economies, and otherwise improve our lives and morons like Goldberg will insist that we are advocating some "hairshirt" policy.
There is some warped gene in the GOP brain that prevents them from distinguishing between a smart rhetorical attack and reality. Yes, it was smart to attack Jimmy Carter for allegedly advocating that we all just wear more sweaters. No, it is stupid to believe that that was an accurate description of the conservation beliefs of either Carter or the rest of the progressive world.
I think all of you are missing the point here.
Little Jonah thought of this all by himself! Lucianne was right -- he is a genius!
Mayor Daley and the City of Chicago are all about green roofs. City Hall is one of the finest examples.
http://www.asla.org/meetings/awards/awds02/chicagocityhall.html
Hobbitat for Humanity.
Neat-o.
I am no scientist and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. However, painting all roofs white would increase the amount of light reflected and cause more radiation to be trapped by greenhouse gasses.
In my (un)professional (un)scientific opinion, this would cancel out any benefits.
I am no scientist and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. However, painting all roofs white would increase the amount of light reflected and cause more radiation to be trapped by greenhouse gasses.
In my (un)professional (un)scientific opinion, this would cancel out any benefits.
yep:
A certain percentage of that reflected light would escape through the atmosphere, hence a smaller percentage of the light entering the atmosphere would remain trapped under/in the atmosphere in the form of heat. Light trapped does remain as a source of energy as with the absorbed light ala Einstein's E=mc2
Yep, the greenhouse effect works because light in the visible spectrum passes through "greenhouse" gases, while reradiated infrared is absorbed. To the extent that light in the visible spectrum is simply reflected, retaining it's spectral range, it will pass back out of the atmosphere.
Thus painting roofs white does indeed reduce, to some extent, global warming. During the day.
At night, the story is somewhat different; Surfaces radiate infrared, and it's not *all* being stopped by greenhouse gases. That's why it gets colder at night. White pigments normally have reduced IR radiation at a given temperature, and so the same white roof that is reducing global warming during the day, is, to a lesser extent, increasing it during the night, by retaining heat more effectively.
Ideally, you want your roof to be white during the day, and black once the sun goes down. Or at least to have radically different properties in the visible and IR spectrum. Neither is a technically impossible goal, but you're not going to achieve them by randomly picking a white paint, it would take some careful evaluation.
The City of Austin is either encouraging or requiring new development to install reflective roofing which would have the impact that Brett Bellmore is talking about.
Where are the progressives using Solar Powered air conditioning?
Most CA, TX, & FL gov't buildings should be getting surveyed about solar panel installation. Rather than reflective roofs (better than what is now), conversion to energy roofs would be better.
CA should be budgeting millions every year, with results being posted (installation & maintenance estimates and real costs, plus energy costs).
Austin is big into green roofs. I live four blocks away from this one. (Sorry I can't find a picture.) I brag on this because it's close to my house and I know the woman in charge of the development, so I'm providing biased free publicity.
I'm pretty certain living roofs aren't going to be all that practical for residences, but couldn't this be adapted for things like malls? Surely increasing the amount of vegetation would mitigate development somewhat?
Hi. The Jane Galt comments on this one is closed, so I'll repeat here my comment that would have been posted on this one.
I am astonished, since we discussed this here before, that you haven't understood the basic idea of a white roof.
Which is, that you lower the *air conditioning* load of the building in which you live. And therefore, the AC load of the buildings around you (and the cars) which don't suck in your hot air.
Note half the world's population now lives in cities, and many of them in cities that are fast becoming air conditioned (Mumbai, Shanghai, Beijing).
I would guess 3/4 of Americans use their air conditioning in summer. Most US utilities have a summer demand peak. And Americans are 25% of the world's entire energy consumption (and a roughly similar fraction of electricity consumption). The estimate is, if fully implemented across the US, white roofs (taken broadly) would reduce electricity consumption by about 10%.
And yes, this effect works in New York City: because you lose a bit of heat energy in the winter, but the sun shines less often in winter, and at a lower angle. (the energy saving is about 12:1, even on a New York roof, according the National Energy Efficiency lab).
All of this we discussed the last time [this subject was discussed in a Jane Galt thread]
The Earth's albedo has nothing to do with this. Nothing. The total human roofspace is vastly too small.
Yours perplexedly
Valuethinker
Comments closed June 22, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Matt:
Jonah must be pissed because this is big in Europe, NYC and SF. In fact SF is making the roof of their renovated natural history museum in Golden Gate Park with a undulating green roof (to mimic the hills of SF) Kinda cool looking too.
Posted by jk | June 8, 2007 3:20 PM