White roofs fight global warming! ZOMG!

[jason]

Ecogeek points to this article in the LA Times, saying:

Why the eff did we decide that having all the roofs in the world be black was a good idea? I mean, I know, tar is black, and that’s what most roofs are sealed with, but I really can’t imagine a much dumber decision.

Simply painting roofs white in warm climates could decrease air conditioning bills for those buildings by 20%. That’s one reason why California has required all new buildings to have white roofs for the past few years.

But now there’s even more reason to spend the extra dough. It looks like, if all the roofs in the world were white, enough sunlight would reflect back into the atmosphere to significantly reduce the effects of global warming. WTF?! Such a simple change, such a massive effect!

This new study says that if the 100 biggest cities painted all their roofs white, and switched their road materials to lighter colors (concrete instead of asphalt) it would reflect enough light and heat back into space to entirely offset the warming of the last few decades.

Via TreeHugger

So, we paint the roofs white, and anything else we make that is dark, and bounce that energy back into space… er… just like the melting ice caps. Better than some of the things I’m reading about how to combat global warming… but still let’s try it first in Toronto! It should be easy to measure the decrease in heating costs and local heat island effect to see if it works. And we could do it now.