Climate change is becoming more and more evident. The Earth is now absorbing more energy from the sun instead of radiating it or releasing it into space, a few causes of this is the inability for heat to exit as CO2 in the atmosphere increases/ the greenhouse effect, the other causes are all the man made infrastructures and machineries that either help create more CO2 or because of their composition are able to absorb color -dark objects absorb all light/energy from the sun. A way in which we can help limit the amount of energy and heat stored in mother earth is by creating or exchanging darker infrastructure into lighter one. For example green roofs to help the dispersion of heat around a city and cool it down, or even to change the color of the pavement and roads, imagine all the roads in the city and out of the city, they are all of color black and because of this they absorb all the light. Multiply this by every other city and you have an enormous amount of black infrastructure which is dedicated into absorbing heat. If we start changing the color of the roads we can improve and minimize the amount of energy that is absorbed by mother earth and in term help prevent or postpone global warming even further.
2 Responses
Changing darker colors to lighter ones does sound like an interesting idea. One thing I am curious about is how this would be implemented. making all roads a different color so they reduce the amount of heat absorbed does sound as though sit will help. In order to do so would it be something as simple as putting on some kind of paint or a complete rebuild of the roads. The former seems it would be easier to do, but maybe it is too easy. if the roads are paint over then over time the paint may get chipped and lose its effectiveness. Although this may create more jobs, the main concern is the overall reflection of light and heat and with this some places may be absorbing more than we know of.
On the other hand, completely redoing the road structure is a massive scale project. To start off, what type of material should be used? We can use the same materials as now with different colors but the absorption rate may still be high. using a less absorptive one may help but with the risk of breaking under pressure from vehicles. Then to map out constant detours all across the country may result in mass dissatisfaction from people.
All in all it does sound promising and if it has success in a trial run of maybe a small town, it can be expanded upon.
Quite an interesting suggestion, with the advancement made in clean/alternative energies today, it is not impossible to imagine an innovation that can transform our city streets or roofs into a surface that can reflect and/or absorb the shortwave energy received from the sun. Having a reflective road surface will be a good way to combat the radiated imbalance. Other Urban cities can take a page from Los Angeles by slathering its streets in white sealant to combat the effects of climate change; their approach is expected to reduce temperatures in these streets by 15 degrees with the lighter “cool pavements” able to reflect radiated energy by 30 to 50 percent compared to new asphalt. Concerns right now are if the greenhouse gases used in the manufacturing and procedure of laying the sealant, could end up impacting the environment for the worse in the future.
Another possible option for Solar Roofs is University of Cambridge’s Sam Stranks “solar tarps”; made from much lighter perovskite as supplement to solar panels silicon and equally adept at collecting sunlight and turning it into usable energy. The perovskite has been redesigned to the right amount of light and humidity for it to overcome its flaws when it was first introduced years ago. Of course, to know how viable an option this will be, more tests, weathering and research still needs to be done, but for now it seems promising and cheaper.
A Canadian start-up invented a new system for making concrete that traps CO2 emissions forever and reduce the need for cement at the same time. The system called CarbonCure takes captured CO2 and injects it into concrete as it’s being mixed; upon hardening of the concrete, the carbon becomes sequestered forever even if the building is torn down; the carbon will stay put because it reacts with the concrete and becomes a mineral which even improves the compressive strength of the concrete (Christie Gamble).
If we can trust doctors to make treatment recommendations borne out of effective scientific theory, why can’t we trust the same scientific evidence from scientists equally based on fact; rather than trust the opinions of someone who can’t adhere to a script, spreads conspiracy theories or hold a coherent conversation. There’s a saying “If you want to perform in the circus, you can’t screw the Elephant” – meaning one has to be objective. We need to be able to set aside our politics and be objective in our analyses/choices/decisions or be screwed.
Works Cited:
Dailymail.com, Hannah Parry For. “Los Angeles Painting the Streets to Combat Climate Change.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 10 Aug. 2017, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4780306/Could-PAINT-answer-global-warming.html.
Deaton, Jeremy. “To Guard against Climate Change, Los Angeles Is Painting Its Streets White.” Popular Science, 6 Sept. 2017, http://www.popsci.com/la-is-painting-its-streets-white-to-keep-city-cool.
Jones, Brad. “Cheaper, Lighter “Solar Tarps” Could Be an Alternative to Tesla’s Solar Roofs.” Futurism, Futurism, 7 Sept. 2017, futurism.com/cheaper-lighter-solar-tarps-could-be-alternative-to-teslas-solar-roofs.
Lord, Bronte. “This Concrete Can Trap CO2 Emissions Forever.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network, 6 June 2018, money.cnn.com/2018/06/12/technology/concrete-carboncure/index.html.
Lord, Bronte, et al. “This Concrete Traps CO2 Emissions Forever.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network, May 2018, money.cnn.com/video/technology/2018/05/31/concrete-traps-co2-emissions-global-warming.cnnmoney/index.html.
McMahon, Jeff. “9 Things You Can Do About Climate Change.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 6 Aug. 2018, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/01/23/nine-things-you-can-do-about-climate-change/#57b1271e680c.