Submission + - Global Warming Solution Overlooked 3
SheldonLinker writes: "In the global warming debate, the politicians have been ignoring an immediate remedy to global warming. (Note that I'm not claiming that global warming is good or bad.)
Global heat retention is a matter of energy in versus energy out. There's not much we can do about energy in, and most of the Energy Out part of the question relies on atmospheric greenhouse gasses and ground albedo. Atmospheric greenhouse gasses consist of more than carbon dioxide. Two other big constituents are methane and water vapor. Methane is something we can deal with by switching to be vegans. (This would mess up my dinner plans, so let's skip that one.) Water vapor is not something we can easily deal with, on a planet mostly covered in water. And as the debate rages, we see that carbon dioxide emissions are expensive to deal with. So what's left? Ground albedo.
If you work through the numbers, you'll find that something like 10 square meters of aluminum foil per household, planet-wide, would counteract all the global warming we're currently seeing. Do that (albedo offset), and you can barbecue to your heart's content.
When global cooling is the big problem, as it is from time to time, we can take down our foil and replace it with flat-black construction paper."
Global heat retention is a matter of energy in versus energy out. There's not much we can do about energy in, and most of the Energy Out part of the question relies on atmospheric greenhouse gasses and ground albedo. Atmospheric greenhouse gasses consist of more than carbon dioxide. Two other big constituents are methane and water vapor. Methane is something we can deal with by switching to be vegans. (This would mess up my dinner plans, so let's skip that one.) Water vapor is not something we can easily deal with, on a planet mostly covered in water. And as the debate rages, we see that carbon dioxide emissions are expensive to deal with. So what's left? Ground albedo.
If you work through the numbers, you'll find that something like 10 square meters of aluminum foil per household, planet-wide, would counteract all the global warming we're currently seeing. Do that (albedo offset), and you can barbecue to your heart's content.
When global cooling is the big problem, as it is from time to time, we can take down our foil and replace it with flat-black construction paper."
