[decad]

I have always thought it would be interesting to see what affect painting all the roof's of all the buildings on earth white would have on global warming. I doubt there is enough buildings in the world for it have any affect though.

[DennisP]

> For the northern hemisphere summer, they found that increasing the reflectivity of roof and pavement materials in cities with a population greater than 1 million would achieve a one-time offset of 57 gigatons of CO2 emissions (31 Gt from roofs and 26 Gt from pavements). That’s double the worldwide CO2 emissions in 2006 of 28 gigatons. Their results were published online in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2010/07/19/cool-roof...

[tomelders]

It has been suggested (by people smarter than me) that lighter surfaces have the effect of reducing cloud cover, which allows for more sunlight to reach the ground which suggests it would only exacerbate the problem.

Some suggest using solar panels instead, which comes with many of the same benefits as painting roofs white, but absorbs the light as opposed to reflecting it, and thus wont reduce cloud cover.

Im not a scientist, just a casual observer, but my gut feeling is that the only way to halt or even reverse climate change is to stop producing as much carbon. Any other approach is more likely to come with unforeseen problems.

So get to it! Pop down to your local Tesla showroom and do your bit.

[InclinedPlane]

Scientists don't really understand how clouds affect climate (some clouds cause localized cooling, some clouds cause localized heating, it's complicated), mostly they just include an empirically determined fudge factor to account for it.

[jsmeaton]

Solar panels should be mandatory for all new homes - at least in the developed countries to begin with. Imagine how much carbon we'd reduce by effectively killing off the majority of power generation facilities.