In a Climate Quest, the Roof as White Knight. By John Collins Rudolf, NYTimes, July 21, 2010. "Since he took over as energy secretary last year, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics, has urged Americans to help cool the planet by painting their roofs a lighter color that reflects sunlight...Now he is following his own advice: on Monday, Dr. Chu directed all Energy Department offices to install white roofs during new construction, when replacing old roofs and wherever an installation is cost-effective over the lifetime of the roof. The secretary urged other federal agencies to follow suit. 'Cool roofs are one of the quickest and lowest-cost ways we can reduce our global carbon emissions and begin the hard work of slowing climate change,' he said in a statement... A study published this year by researchers with the Berkeley lab used global climate models to determine the cooling benefit of increasing the albedo, or reflectivity, of both roofs and roadways in large cities. The study found that increasing the reflectivity of those surfaces in urban areas with a population of over one million would offset the heating effect of 1.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide emission annually, the equivalent of taking 300 million cars off the road for 20 years."
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