Sarah Palin has kindly provided a link to a very interesting article, albeit in a snarky tone:
In the meantime, read this: Energy Secretary Chu wants to REGULATE roof, road color to slow global warming... http://tinyurl.com/q5ad59 (twit)
We all know that Sarah Palin is the foremost energy expert in the country, while Professor Chu is a mere Nobel prize recipient, so the governor's rejection of Prof Chu's ideas could generate a very exciting debate... the second runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant takes on the Nobel laureate!
Times online reports:
Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President 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 sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.
Professor Chu said that this approach could have a vast impact. By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.
Pale surfaces reflect up to 80 per cent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20 per cent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed. An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning.
Professor Chu said that his thinking had been influenced by Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission, who drove through tough new building rules in the state.
Dr Rosenfeld is also a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, of which Professor Chu was director. Last year Dr Rosenfeld and two colleagues from the laboratory, Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon, calculated that changing surface colours in 100 of the world’s largest cities could save the equivalent of 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide — about as much as global carbon emissions are expected to rise by over the next decade.
Sarah Palin doesn't believe global warming is caused by man, so she won't go with the idea that man can do anything to improve matters, specially if it involves REGULATION.
Sarah Palin only approves of more regulation when it concerns what women can and cannot do with their own bodies.
Full article: Times online
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