![]() Eventually, it is possible that we will develop economically viable means for sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and burying it in the Earth. Ruan’s white paint can play a role in cutting temperatures, as can techniques for reducing the acidity of the ocean and increasing its absorption of CO2. In any case, there is simply no way to improve climatic conditions, rather than merely constraining their degradation, without some form of geoengineering. But they are (almost certainly) less hazardous than tolerating more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels. Consciously manipulating the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, or the alkalinity of its oceans, are risky endeavors. Nevertheless, Ruan’s invention calls attention to the fact that humanity has the capacity to not just mitigate future warming, but actually reduce global temperatures through feats of engineering. Relying exclusively on reflected sunlight to compensate for the greenhouse effect would be perilous. Rather, you would need to distribute giant expanses of white paint at strategic locations around the planet.Įven if humanity could execute such a quixotic plan, doing so still wouldn’t actually obviate the need for decarbonization. And you wouldn’t actually want to concentrate such paint in a single contiguous area, as this would have severely disruptive implications for the regional climate. You would therefore need to cover a land mass roughly the size of the United States in ultrawhite paint in order to stop the planet from absorbing more heat than it emits and stabilize global temperatures. After all, 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is water. Of course, this is not an especially practical proposition. The substance redirects so much light and heat back into space that, according to one calculation, it could offset the impact of ongoing carbon emissions if we could somehow pour it over 1 to 2 percent of the entire planet. More stunning than these local effects are the paint’s potential global ones. Such paint would thereby enable that building to use up to 40 percent less air-conditioning to achieve the same internal temperature. Now, Ruan’s team has engineered a shade that reflects 98 percent of sunlight.Ĭover a building in Ruan’s white paint, and you’ll render its surface eight degrees cooler than the air temperature by day, and 19 degrees cooler by night. ![]() A researcher at Purdue University, Ruan has spent years trying to develop a maximally reflective type of white paint, one that could bounce upwards of 95 percent of the sun’s rays off of any given surface and then back out into deep space, cooling the planet in the process. This week, the New York Times reported on Xiulin Ruan’s extraordinary feat of pigmentary engineering. Unless we just need to dump 139 billion gallons of extremely white paint across roughly 2 percent of the Earth’s surface. We must build vast constellations of wind and solar farms, lace continents with high-voltage transmission lines, replace all internal combustion engines with batteries, decarbonize heavy industry, increase the energy efficiency of our buildings, expand mass transit, and promote housing density, among myriad other things. To stabilize global temperatures, humanity needs to replace the energy basis of industrial modernity. Photo: Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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