4 ms·

I suspect roofs are about 0% of the Earth's surface.

• rbanffy 7y ago
  It'd reduce energy consumption for air conditioning. Also, while rooftops are a small part of the global Earth surface (75% of it is not really a good place to put roofs on), the figure is much higher in cities and urban areas where, and it's not a coincidence, we spend a lot of energy keeping things cool. Let's not forget cellulose is mostly made of CO2 removed from the atmosphere, which also helps a bit. The only way it'd be better is if it were also a good material to build PV panels with.
  • megous 7y ago
    It will not make much difference if it's reflected to space or not, though.
    • antepodius 7y ago
      Climate vandals throwing pots of black paint on people's spacewood rooves with hacked amazon drones
      • xwdv 7y ago
        Don’t climate vandals typically commit acts of vandalism to destroy things that harm the environment??
        • veidr 7y ago
          those are the whitehat climate vandals, I think...
    • ricardobeat 7y ago
      Of course it will. This is the idea behind space mirrors - reflecting 1% of sunlight is enough to completely counteract global warming. The radiation has to leave the atmosphere though.
      • HillaryBriss 7y ago
        as far as reflection goes, whenever I see a satellite photo of Africa and I look at the bright, sandy Sahara Desert, I always wonder: does it help? or does it hurt?
        • rbanffy 7y ago
          You should see it in infrared
          • HillaryBriss 7y ago
            ah! that would be interesting!
        • ip26 7y ago
          It helps, which is why global warming scientists are concerned about the destruction of desert crust and so forth.
      • megous 7y ago
        No, this will not help. Earth surface area: 510 000 000 km2 1% is 5 100 000 km2 I don't know how much this material reflects back, say it's 50%. So you need 10,2 mil. km2 to reflect back 1% of energy Total USA land area 9,147,590 km2 You'd need to put roof over the entire USA with this material. Also currently used materials also reflect something, so that would have to be accounted for, further increasing the needed area.
        • lucideer 7y ago
          I don't know whether this will help or not, but your post seems to support the point of the commenter above, and make a good argument that it would help. The comment said 1% would "completely counteract" climate change. You posit that we'd need to cover an area equal to that of the US to reach that 1%, which would mean covering a small % of that area would have roughly that level of positive impact. Am I extrapolating wrongly?
• Eric_WVGG 7y ago
  Urban Heat Island — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
  • Eric_WVGG 7y ago
    I should have mentioned, it is my impression that this has as much or more to do with asphalt than rooftops, but anyway...