Articles by Joseph Romm

White roofs are the trillion-dollar solution

Part 1 introduced urban heat island mitigation (UHIM). It discussed how lighter colored (or reflective) roofs and pavement, plus urban trees, can save energy, cut CO2 emissions, cool a city, and reduce smog.

But a global "cool roofs" strategy can achieve far bigger benefits -- the equivalent of several trillion dollars worth of CO2 reductions -- since it can increase the albedo (reflectivity) of the planet, thereby directly reducing the absorption of incoming solar radiation and hence planetary warming. The strategy proposed below "is equivalent to taking the world's approximately 600 million cars off the road for 18 years."

(100 m2 (~1000 ft2) of a white roof, replacing a dark roof, offsets the emission of 10 tonnes of CO2.)

This is technically geoengineering, although I'd call it geoengineering-light or geo-reverse-engineering, since we are mostly undoing the albedo decrease caused by all the dark roofs and dark pavement we have covered the planet with.

A forthcoming article in Climatic Change, "Global Cooling: Increasing World-wide Urban Albedos to Offset CO2," [PDF] provides the detailed calculations. A two-page non-technical summary, "White Roofs Cool the World, Directly Offset CO2 and Delay Global Warming," [PDF] has been written by two of the country's leading UHIM experts: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Hashem Akbari and California Energy Commissioner Arthur Rosenfeld (coauthors with me on "Paint the Town White -- and Green"). I have reprinted it below:

'Anti-science syndrome' plagues the right-wing as well as blogosphere

Note: Watts Up With That, one of the web's most anti-scientific blogs, is a finalist for the Weblog award "Best Science Blog." Even more farcically, early voting suggests Watts has a chance of winning (see here). Since the fine science blog Pharyngula is doing well in the voting, I'd now suggest voting for it.

 

In this post I'm going to present the general diagnosis for "anti-science syndrome" (ASS). Like most syndromes, ASS is a collection of symptoms that individually may not be serious, but taken together can be quite dangerous -- at least it can be dangerous to the health and well-being of humanity if enough people actually believe the victims.

One tell-tale symptom of ASS is that a website or a writer focuses their climate attacks on non-scientists. If that non-scientist is Al Gore, this symptom alone may be definitive.

The other key symptoms involve the repetition of long-debunked denier talking points, commonly without links to supporting material. Such repetition, which can border on the pathological, is a clear warning sign.

Scientists who kept restating and republishing things that had been widely debunked in the scientific literature for many, many years would quickly be diagnosed with ASS. Such people on the web are apparently heroes -- at least to the right wing and/or easily duped.

If you suspect someone of ASS, look for the repeated use of the following phrases:

The staggering cost of new nuclear power

A new study [PDF] puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at from 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour -- triple current U.S. electricity rates!

This staggering price is far higher than the cost of a variety of carbon-free renewable power sources available today -- and 10 times the cost of energy efficiency (see here).

The new study, Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power [PDF], is one of the most detailed cost analyses publicly available on the current generation of nuclear power plants being considered in this country. It is by a leading expert in power plant costs, Craig A. Severance. A practicing CPA, Severance is co-author of The Economics of Nuclear and Coal Power (Praeger 1976), and former Assistant to the Chairman and to Commerce Counsel, Iowa State Commerce Commission.

This important new analysis is being published by Climate Progress because it fills a critical gap in the current debate over nuclear power -- transparency. Severance explains:

Is Toyota developing a purely solar-powered car?

An AP report is generating headlines around the world:

Toyota Motor Corp. is secretly developing a vehicle that will be powered solely by solar energy ...

According to The Nikkei, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. The automaker later hopes to develop a model totally powered by solar cells on the vehicle, the newspaper said without citing sources.

Getting some electricity from rooftop PV panels isn't news, though it is a good idea, if only a "symbolic gesture" until panel costs drop sharply. (See also Treehugger's "Solar-Powered Toyota Prius Project.")

But there isn't enough rooftop area to run a car solely on rooftop solar cells. I don't see how it would work even for an ultra-lightweight short-range city car with a really big roof area -- an ungainly, unaerodynamic design. And don't forget, cars are often parked inside.