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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
by 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 agoI 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?
- megous 7y agoI'm saying you'll never get even close to 1% by putting this on roofs. Savings are nice, though.
- beatgammit 7y agoYou'd be lucky to cover 1% of the United States, much less 1% of the world. The real world impact of everyone in the US putting this on their roof would be minimal, and you're unlikely to actually get a significant percentage to switch anytime soon. If you're looking for solutions to global warming, look elsewhere. However, that won't stop the marketing team from selling it as such. Evaluate this technology on its merits and take the IR radiation reflection as a bonus.
- lucideer 7y agoI guess my question here is: what's the lifecycle impact of producing this, and is the benefit zero or greater. Fair enough, covering 1% of the US land area would be a big ask, but a .1% positive impact on the climate is non-zero, and provided they're not looking for tax-incentives that could be spent on better things, it could well do no harm.