Via Tim Blair comes this gem:
One of the world’s greatest minds comes up with one of the world’s greatest ideas:
Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by US President Barack Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white.
A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more of the Sun’s light and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.
It would be interesting to get Chu’s estimate on the percentage of the earth’s surface that is covered by roofs, roads and pavements.
As Erick posted on Twitter, “When all it takes to solve global warming is painting my roof white, global warming isn’t a serious problem.”
I have to echo that statement, with the simple addition that, if Chu is serious in his suggestion, then the people who promote AGW as an issue are, quite simply, fundamentally unserious.
To Blair’s last sentence, I can only add this: Guess what already reflects sunlight better than white paint?
Water, snow, and ice.
I wonder what the ratio is of the water-covered portions of planet Earth to the pavement-and-roof-covered portions of planet Earth. Certainly Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu has a formula to figure that little problem out, doesn’t he?
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