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On my recent searches through the Internet for some kind of news concerning interesting things happening in science, I came across something very interesting. Now, I do tend to skip right to the funnies when I grab the paper in the morning, and I have never been much for CNN, but you’d think I would have heard about this global warming thing before. I mean, why hasn’t anybody said anything about this until now?
No, I mean literally, why hasn't anybody said anything about this? As in, why hasn't anybody actually attempted to explain just how global warming is supposed to work? There is a great lot of talk about how carbon emissions are going to destroy the earth and how we need to cut down on our carbon emissions, but actually finding anything that explains just how the heck carbon (or, more correctly, carbon dioxide) is going to heat up the earth and just what the chemical and thermodynamic mechanisms are is darn near impossible. This means that one of two things is happening with the idea of carbon dioxide as a global warmer: it doesn't bear close scrutiny or scientists got together and agreed, "We don't get it either." Unfortunately, getting scientists to say the latter has, experimentally and scientifically, proven to be impossible.
Anyway, I decided to learn a little something about this warming globe thing. And with what I found out, science has truly made some wonderful progress to put together all these facts in order to come up with carbon dioxide as an agent of global warming.
Now to understand global warming, we have to understand the Greenhouse Effect. Now I’m sure you’re thinking, "Aren’t those the same thing? I mean, greenhouses are hot, right?" Yes, greenhouses are hot, but the Greenhouse Effect is different than global warming. Allow me to explain.
According to Wikipedia and several other science websites that I can't remember, the earth is warmed by the sun and cooled by emitting heat into space (Aren't you glad I'm hear to tell you these things?). This is because objects can both absorb heat and radiate it. For instance, on a warm, sunny summer day, your car absorbs heat from the sun and gets really hot. But if you then drive your car into the shade, your car will then radiate the heat that it has absorbed, allowing it to cool off.
The earth is the same way. The day side absorbs heat from the sun, while the entire earth radiates heat back out to space -- on both the day and the night sides.
Here’s the interesting part: the radiation rate of any body is determined by two things: the temperature of the body and the temperature of the area that is receiving the heat. Thus, the warmer the earth gets, the faster it will cool down.
This means that as the earth receives heat from the sun and radiates heat back out to space, eventually the earth will reach a temperature at which it is at equilibrium. And this average temperature that the earth will reach entirely depends on the energy it is receiving from the sun and the energy it is radiating into space.
Yes, there are equations for this. For a black body with a heat transfer per unit time (q), a temperature (T) in degrees Kelvin and a surface area (A), the black body radiation will be the following, assuming that space is at absolute zero (which is not entirely true, but it’s close enough for our purposes):
q = σT4A
Where σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann Constant. Which is equal to: 5.6703x10-8 (W/m2K4)
The sun’s radiation reaches the earth providing energy at the experimentally tested and proven value of 1366 W/m2. The earth, in total, will receive an amount of heat from the sun equal to 1366 W/m2 times its cross-sectional area. It will emit radiation evenly across its entire surface. Assuming the earth to be a sphere (for the sake of simplicity), that means that the equation for the earth’s theoretical temperature is:
πr2 * 1366 W/m2 = σT44πr2
Where r = the radius of the earth, πr2 is the cross sectional area of the earth and 4πr2 is the surface area.
To determine the theoretical temperature of the earth, the two πr2 bits cancel each other out. Then we juggle the numbers around to:
T = ((1366 W/m2)/4σ)(1/4)
Which leads to an average worldwide temperature of about 278 K (5 C or 41 F); which is pretty darned close to the observed average surface temperature of 287 K (14 C or 57 F).
Unfortunately, the problem is that the earth reflects about 30% of the light that hits it right back out to space, so the earth only absorbs 70% of the radiation. Thus, when using this smaller number and keeping the black body radiation of the planet, it changes the equations to:
0.7 * q = σT4A
This results in a theoretical earth temperature of 255 K (-18 C or -1 F). Which leaves quite a lot of heat to account for in order to raise the temperature to the observed value. Though, personally, I would have assumed that you should use both gray body radiation and absorption equations rather than just gray body absorption, since that would explain the way that light is sent back out to space. This is important because gray bodies do not absorb as much heat, but they do not radiate it as quickly either. Thus, with the new equations:
0.7 * q = εσT4A
Because we are assuming a gray-body emissivity of 0.7 (since that is the gray-body absorption we were using), the absorption and emissivity cancel each other out, leaving:
q = σT4A
And we end up right where we were with the black body model and not that far away from the earth’s actual temperature. But, apparently the earth absorbs energy as though it were a gray body and emits energy like a black body, which doesn’t make any sense to me and runs entirely counter to experimental evidence, but it is considered to be good science and is, therefore, true.
None of this actually matters, however, since black/gray/white body radiation equations affect only the surface of a body and not the interior. You may think that this is what we’re talking about with the earth, but that is a little problematic. After all, the surface of the earth is not the actual surface between space and the planet in question. Why?
The earth’s atmosphere, it would appear, stores some of that heat energy. This is very similar to the way that a greenhouse will soak in solar radiation and hold it in place. Thus, the name Greenhouse Effect. The mechanism is slightly different in a greenhouse, since greenhouses store heat by turning radiation (heat transmitted in wave form through photons) into heat that is conducted (heat transmitted by molecular motion). However, the heat inside a greenhouse is trapped because there is no convection (heat that is transferred to molecular motion, whereupon the molecules are carried away -- such as happens with wind) to carry away the heat. Thus, a greenhouse can be cooled off by simply opening a window in the roof.
There is some sort of explanation as to how this is different than the earth, but it seems to involve a lot of quantum generalizations that are not altogether satisfying to me. The best description I have heard explains that bodies tend to absorb different wavelengths of light at different temperatures according to certain laws whose names I cannot remember (possibly having to do with Stefan and Boltzmann again). This describes the way that the earth's atmosphere is opaque to infrared radiation coming from the sun, but allows visible light to come through.
But, of course, I am not a scientist, so I cannot understand how the fact that the atmosphere absorbs a great many infrared photons but does not absorb that many visible light photons would warm the earth. After all, if the atmosphere is absorbing all these infrared photons, it would also emit them back out into space, only it would do it higher up in the atmosphere, and not close to the surface of the earth. So the earth would actually need to emit more infrared photons than it receives from the sun in order for infrared photons in the atmosphere to have a net positive balance of infrared photons in the lower atmosphere that will warm the earth. I have the feeling that the person who penned that bit is putting together some conclusions that he/she is not explaining. This is not even to mention the fact that, like a greenhouse, the convection of the earth’s atmosphere has an upper limit at the edge of the atmosphere and space. And the same photon activity described for the earth's atmosphere would be happening in a greenhouse as in the earth’s atmosphere, since the atmosphere in the greenhouse would be absorbing infrared photons at the same rate as the rest of the atmosphere. And it is also ignoring the fact that it is still possible to have convection within a greenhouse, just not between the greenhouse and the outside air – much like the earth’s atmosphere. And, unless there is a way to turn off gravity, there is no way to "open a window" at the top of the earth’s atmosphere to test whether it is a lack of convection into space that is keeping the earth cool. So the analogy may be closer than present thought allows.
Anyway, the earth’s surface is warmer than expected because, of course, the earth’s solid/liquid surface is not, as far as I can tell, the surface of the earth-system of solid, liquid and gaseous matter. Thus, one could say that the radiation equations aren’t even valid at all at the solid/liquid surface level, since it is below the space/atmosphere surface. Unfortunately, neither is it all that clear where the atmosphere stops and space starts, since even some satellites in low orbit around the earth are slowed by atmospheric drag.
As an aside: Were one so inclined, one could define the edge of space as being the area where the observed temperature equals the theoretical temperature. I have no idea whether anybody does this, but I would think that it is safe to assume that someone does this very thing. And if not, I will count myself as the first. That’s just what I do. Then you only have the minor problem of figuring which atmospheric altitude to choose, since the temperature moves up a down a great deal, depending on the layer of the atmosphere.
Anyway, in the earth’s atmosphere, heat is radiated into the atmosphere and down toward the earth, where it is either reflected back out, or it is absorbed by the earth and is turned into heat that is conducted and convected around the atmosphere. And some of it is radiated back out to space. Eventually. And now the whole system is heating up because of global warming.
Carbon dioxide thrown into the atmosphere. Blah, blah, blah. All life on earth ends. And it’s all our fault because we’re giving the Middle East money for oil. And this is where it all gets interesting.
Observationally, it seems that there is a connection between carbon dioxide and global temperatures. The more carbon dioxide there is, the warmer the temperature. And, of course, the obvious connection is that carbon dioxide causes the earth to heat up. Obviously, I’m not an expert on geology (or anything else for that matter), but I assume that there are certain rock formations that form differently based on the temperature of the air and these same rocks also store the gasses in the atmosphere in a form of million/billion-year time capsule of atmospheric and temperature information. This is an assumption on my part, so don’t make conclusions on this. But I will, for now, assume that -- however this information has been determined -- these people are correct in their conclusion that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere matches higher temperatures on earth.
However, the causation relationship is only one relationship that can be attributed to the carbon dioxide-temperature relationship. Let us enumerate them.
Of the four relationships listed, only the first three are really worth getting fired up about. If the relationship is coincidental, then there is very little way to prove it if both carbon dioxide and high temperatures are always found together, according to current science.
This leaves us with three other possible explanations. The Causation relationship between carbon dioxide and high temperatures is, obviously, the most popular and therefore does not need my commentary.
The Result relationship in which high temperatures cause carbon dioxide is interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t have much to back this up. Honestly, I’ve never been much for chemistry, so a chemist would have to comment on this. One might think that the higher temperatures would make oxygen more reactive and it might be more inclined to bond with carbon, thus forming carbon dioxide. But considering that my knowledge of chemistry is very thin, this is not much more than idle prattle on my part.
The Result of Another Cause relationship, in which high temperatures and carbon dioxide are both caused by a third, yet-unnamed factor is also very interesting and could have wonderfully complex and interesting results that are, to my knowledge, not yet explored. Can you guess which option I favor?
The third cause in this little environmental stew is the problem. When attributing events to third causes in science, you’d better have a damn good idea of what that third cause might be. Which is why I would like you to consider:
You like the title? Me too.
In 2005, the world produced approximately 443.1 quadrillion BTUs of energy, according to the Energy Information Administration’s Energy Annual 2004 (updated July 13, 2006). The vast majority of this, of course, was created by fossil fuels, though there was still quite a bit created from hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, wind, etc. power. Much of this was, of course, converted into electricity, kinetic energy and the like, but much of that converted energy was also thereby converted into heat through electrical resistance, friction, and other mechanisms that I’m sure are there, but I can’t think of right now. Remember, that is 443.1 quadrillion BTUs, which translates to 4.675 x 1017 kilojoules.
The earth’s atmosphere has a total mass of approximately 5.15 x 1018 kilograms. For simplicity’s sake, we will use a model of the earth’s atmosphere that has consistent pressure so that we have the equation:
Q = m * c * ΔT
Where Q is energy, c is specific heat, m is the mass and ΔT is the change in temperature.
This translates to:
ΔT = (Q/(m*c))
The value for c for air is 1.012 kJ/kgK (kilojoules per kilogram Kelvin) at normal room temperature conditions. The variation for this is fairly small across temperatures, and this is the higher number I saw on Wikipedia (there’s that name again!), so we’re going with it. Always make things more difficult, that’s my habit. Erm... credo, whatever.
This means that, taking into account no other considerations (radiation into space, etc.), the energy created worldwide in 2004 would increase the temperature of the atmosphere by .08765C. Which also means that, in 12 years, there is enough energy produced to increase the temperature of the earth a little over 1 degree Celsius. Compare that with the observed increase of approximately 0.6 degrees Celsius from 1900 to 2000 and you’ll start getting my gist. In fact, from 1980 to 2004, according to that one thingamajigger up there that I referenced earlier... you know, that one that wasn’t Wikipedia... oh, anyway, apparently the world created a total of some 8.772 quintillion BTUs -- that’s 9.255 x 1018 kilojoules -- in the years 1980-2004. Which is enough to increase the temperature of the earth 1.74 degrees C. And we’re sweating 0.6 degrees Celsius over a century.
Yes, I know that the energy produced is enough to make not one teeny-tiny goddamn difference in a black body radiation model. But, if one considers the idea that the energy produced near the surface of the earth is created as conducted energy that must then be somehow moved up into the area where it can be turned into radiation that can then be transferred into space, then we’ve got some good stuff going. And, because I can’t find any information on how much heat is moved across the tropopause (the so-called interface between the lowest level of the atmosphere, the troposphere, and the next level, the stratosphere), I can’t quite figure out some equations that might help me figure out just where all this heat is going.
The numbers are interesting. But they are more interesting when one considers some entirely insane concepts. Concepts that are so insane that a former vice president of the United States disagrees with them.
So, with enough energy produced worldwide to raise the air temperature by about one-tenth of a degree Celsius every year, we can explain the observed air temperature increase. So what the hell is going on with all that carbon dioxide?
Has it occurred to anyone that carbon dioxide might be part of the solution to the problem of global warming? Because it may very well be that very thing.
While I am not all that clear on some of the aspects of the global warming theories, I understand that carbon dioxide is supposed to absorb more heat and become a blanket for the planet, keeping all that heat in. Or at least that is the super-simplified version. Which, of course, doesn’t really make sense since the atmosphere is already here and doing that very thing already, but I suppose some license toward simplification is often taken with facts in order to advance a program that people feel is important. Heck, I’m doing it.
My issues with the "carbon dioxide problem" are several. But they are related and they all start very simply. The first and most obvious is, of course, the fact that power plants are not inventing the carbon and oxygen that go into carbon dioxide. Matter doesn’t get created or destroyed and atoms are essentially constant in number and nature. For instance, if you put five nitrogen atoms into a chemical reaction, you are going to have five nitrogen atoms coming out, whether you like it or not.
For instance, let us take methane, since it is a very simple fossil fuel. Chemically, it is CH4. When it is burned you get:
CH4 + 2O2 → CO2 + 2H2O
Which means that, for every one methane molecule, two oxygen molecules will be used in the burning process. Then, upon burning, those three molecules will reform to create one carbon dioxide molecule and two water molecules. Simple stuff, right?
The problem here is that, from what I can tell, everyone is worrying about the heat capacity of carbon dioxide by mass. Usually by the kilogram. My issue with this is the fact that, to compare apples to apples, we need a comparison by the mole.
A mole is a quantity of molecules that has the same number of grams at the atomic mass of a molecule. For instance, a mole of hydrogen molecules would have a mass of 2.0158 grams. This is because, in its natural state, hydrogen atoms are found in diatomic molecules and an H2 molecule has an atomic mass of 2.0158.
A mole of any element or compound contains the same number of atoms as a mole of any other element or compound. Thus, if we take that same methane reaction above with 1 mole of methane and 2 moles of diatomic oxygen, we will get 1 mole of carbon dioxide and 2 moles of water.
Here’s where things get interesting. Let’s say we have a system at a temperature of about 27C/300K. By taking the molar specific heat of methane, 35.711 kJ/moleK (kilojoules per mole Kelvin), and the specific heat of oxygen, 29.38 kJ/moleK, we would need 94.471 kJ of energy to increase our starting brew one degree Kelvin/Celsius. After the reaction, we would have 37.232 kJ/moleK for carbon dioxide and 37.47 kJ/moleK for water vapor at 100 C (which is all I could find for water vapor), which gives us a total of 112.172 kilojoules for that same increase of one degree Kelvin/Celsius for the whole final shebang. Which leads to the conclusion that the resulting amalgam is less apt to increase in temperature for an addition of a given quantity of heat energy.
However, because carbon dioxide has such a high molar mass, it looks like it heats up pretty quick when looked at with specific heat by mass. Carbon dioxide has a specific heat of 0.846 kJ/kgK at 27 C, which looks lousy compared to air, which holds 1.012 kJ/kgK at room temperature, and oxygen with 0.918 kJ/kgK at 27 C. However, compare the molar heat capacities of all three of these and you get air at 29.19 kJ/moleK, oxygen at 29.28 kJ/moleK, and carbon dioxide as a serious heavyweight at 37.232 kJ/moleK. And the oxygen/carbon dioxide ratio is particularly important when dealing with fossil fuels.
Let’s think about the atmospheric system in question for a second.
All right, let’s think about it for a little longer this time. Let’s think about what, precisely, is going on with fossil fuels: we are pulling stuff out of the ground and introducing it to the atmospheric system. For the purposes of our starting atmosphere, fossil fuels don’t exist. Which is to say that they have no effect on anything above the ground until they are pulled out of the ground. And they barely have a chance to do anything before they get set on fire, so their impact on the atmosphere is, for all practical purposes, entirely based upon what happens to them during and after the period of time that they are on fire.
Burning is the result of the extremely rapid oxidation of a substance. Oxygen goes in, it bonds with stuff, which breaks molecular bonds, which in turn release energy stored in those bonds (yes, overly simplified, but a good enough approximation for now). In the case of fossil fuels, this generally means that a lot of oxygen molecules are bonding with carbon atoms and, in the case of petroleum products, hydrogen atoms, creating a great lot of carbon dioxide and, again in the case of petroleum products, water vapor. Each of which has a significantly higher molar specific heat than the oxygen that is being used up in the reaction. Which means that more heat has less effect on the atmosphere, thanks to burning fossil fuels.
Admittedly, the one problem here is whether the water vapor condenses and causes more rain to fall, which essentially eliminates the water vapor from the "atmosphere only" system I am describing. However, with the reduction in atmospheric pressure from the absence of a lot of oxygen that went into water molecules, we might be able to get that water vapor back thanks to increased evaporation.
The water vapor quandary, by the way, provides less confusion with coal, since it is essentially just carbon; any other substances in the coal are impurities. But petroleum products tend to take the form of CnH2n+2 which, when 1 mole is burned, creates n moles of carbon dioxide and n+1 moles of water while using up (1½n+ ½) moles of oxygen (O2).
Let us assume that water vapor is used to fill in the gaps created by using up oxygen to burn stuff. Which is to say, we will assume that the pressure and volume of the earth’s atmosphere stays constant and, because our simplified system is replacing oxygen with carbon dioxide and water vapor, we have to figure out how much water vapor is going to be needed to replace the suddenly missing oxygen. So, we’ll just get ourselves a nice equation for this. Like that old chestnut, the ideal gas law:
pV = nRT
We’ll say T = 300K, P = 101325 Pa (standard atmospheric pressure), and n = 1 mole. V will be constant and needs to be determined, but we will need to figure that out. R is the gas constant, but the value of that constant will, in this case, vary by which gas we are talking about.
For oxygen, R = 8.313 m3Pa/moleK
For carbon dioxide, R = 8.309 m3Pa/moleK
For water vapor, R = Something I can’t find anywhere, so my efforts on this are useless.
For an ideal gas, R = 8.314 m3Pa/moleK
Fortunately, despite the fact that I can’t run specific numbers, I believe we can safely assume that the sum total of moles of water vapor and carbon dioxide will be about the same as the number of moles of oxygen that were used in burning. The specific heat of the system is dependent upon the number of moles in the system, and the number of moles is dependent upon the gas constant. But because the specific heat of both water vapor and carbon dioxide is significantly higher than that of the oxygen that is being converted to water vapor and carbon dioxide, the small differences in mole count will be more than accounted for by the significant differences in specific heat of the different compounds.
But I’m not too worried about any of this because this isn’t the most important part of my thesis. I am merely tearing down the old structure now, not building the new one. We start doing that in the section called
So we need to cool off the earth, right? I mean, that is the idea, correct? As long as we have things cooled off, even if I’m wrong about everything I just said, we can still do just fine if we keep the earth’s temperature down, won’t we? That is the main idea, if I remember correctly, we need to get the temperature down.
Obviously, the majority of the energy coming into the earth comes from the sun. As in all but a teeny-tiny bit that, I contend, can be used to explain a 0.6 C increase in worldwide temperatures over the last century. And, let’s face it, nobody is going to attempt to decrease the amount of energy created in the world. And so-called renewable sources of energy aren’t as economically viable as we might like. So we’d better come up with something else.
What would be nice would be some way of taking incoming radiation and getting rid of it. The problem is how to do that.
Radiating it back out to space is rather difficult, since anything that radiates a lot tends to also absorb a lot if radiation in the first place. Plus, it’s prohibitively difficult to cover enough of the earth with color-changing panels (or something like that) that will do the job. Plus, the atmosphere tends to absorb a lot of heat too, so radiating might not prove to be very effective.
We can’t try to prevent sun from getting in either, since I don’t entirely trust the idea that heavy cloud cover can prevent the earth from heating up. For instance, Venus has heavy cloud cover, and the ground below the clouds is wildly hotter than its theoretical average temperature. It seems that, rather than keeping the heat out, the clouds are preventing any heat that gets in from getting back out. And I’d just as soon keep the sun available for when we need it.
If there were some mechanism that was able to take the heat of the sun, absorb it, and store it chemically in an endothermic reaction, we might have something. Not only would that take care of radiated energy coming in, the endothermic reaction would also cool down the air around it. Ideally, it would even use the byproducts of burning as a fuel source for the reaction. And if you make it run on nothing but sunlight, even better. But where could we find such a machine?
For those who were not aware, plants, trees, algae, and even euglena perform an endothermic, solar-powered, chemical reaction known as photosynthesis every day. The chemical equation for the overall process is:
6CO2 + 12H2O + light → C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O
Obviously, there are several intermediate steps along the way, but the important part is the fact that it absorbs light energy and stores it in chemical form in glucose. So plants will actually cool down the area around them. And, in case you did not notice this either, they need carbon dioxide to perform this reaction. And here is why carbon dioxide is so important for keeping the earth cool: the more carbon dioxide there is in the air, the more photosynthesis the plants will perform.
What this means is that, across this wide world, much of the land mass (and even a lot of area in the water, thanks to algae), is dedicated to using carbon dioxide as fuel for a reaction that is cooling the air. By using the plant matter that was buried and turned into coal, oil, and natural gas as an energy source, we are spitting out heat, energy and carbon dioxide. And those same plants that will someday be coal, oil, and natural gas then use the carbon dioxide to get rid of the heat that was produced by their distant, ancient ancestors that are being dug up to be set on fire. Thus, it is a complete circle: you heat up the world by burning things and, through that, you create the carbon dioxide that helps to cool it down.
So, from what I can tell, it seems that not only is carbon dioxide not causing global warming, it is one of the major agents in preventing it. But, of course, that would require scientists to accept the idea that nature has developed in such a way that it is self-sustaining and it can even take care of itself. But considering the modern scientific view that nature and life are incapable of developing in such a way as to sustain themselves, that idea is clearly wrong.
So now that we've discovered the crazy idea that carbon dioxide may be a key component in keeping the earth's temperature about right, what do we do to fix it? I mean, we have that whopping 0.6C difference in temperature over the last century and now we need to make it better. Well, the obvious solution is, of course, marketing.
You like the name? Me too.
The theory I am espousing is not to actually say that the environment can screw off. No, on the contrary, I shall assume that the environment is something I shall, for the moment, worry about. However, I am not actually interested in doing anything expensive or time-consuming to save it because I'm cheap and lazy. And I'm not the only one. Thus, for the most part, people will simply say "fuck the environment, I've got other things to worry about." Okay, they won't actually say that aloud, but they -- and by "they", I mean "we" -- aren't going to do much that isn't cheap/free and convenient.
There is no way I would drive a car full of aluminum cans and old newspapers around town to find some recycling center that is only going to give me 30 cents for an hour of my time. I know because I used to live in a city where that was what you needed to do to recycle... and nobody did, including me. But I'll make sure I use free curbside pickup of recyclables. And so will a lot of other people. And I know this because I live in a city with curbside recycling... and I make sure I separate that crap out every week. I'll even bag it like the good environmentalist I am.
So, we need to make it cheap and easy for people to turn around global warming or people won't do it. This is why "green building" and "green energy" is not all that popular -- it's prohibitively expensive and often difficult to deal with. Well, I've got a few ideas for that.
First off, you need to figure out what kinds of plants churn through the most heat per unit of surface area covered. More than likely this will be algae, so then we need to figure out the next best options that don't involve gobs of stagnant water.
What we do next is find business owners with very large buildings that have a great deal of exposed surface area. Industrial parks, factories, warehouses and the like. We'll need to start with large, flat-roofed structures -- since those are the easiest -- and we will improve as we go on. Eventually, one would hope that the initial outlays, investments and development would allow us to develop economically feasible solutions for smaller structures with slanting roofs -- such as houses -- that could pass on more savings to more people.
Now then, what we would offer these initial business owners is roof tiles with such things as, let's say, turf and potted trees and plants and whatnot (think Prescription Athletic Turf or FieldTurf tiles). We make them removable tiles so that, if the roof starts leaking, it still has easy access. We offer them an inexpensive way to irrigate the plants. We offer them plants that are almost entirely self-sufficient and don't require a gardener to work with them two or three times a week (Do you want to mow the roof? Didn't think so.) And, here's where we get them to buy: we tell them how many thousands of dollars they will save every year by turning their roofs into planter boxes.
Think about it: solar powered, low/no maintenance cooling units placed atop roofs that once got so hot that their tar surfaces would bubble in the summer sun. Rather than having rooftops that are solar ovens, they would have self-cooling rooftops. Throw in some large trees to shade the south sides of their buildings (or north for the Australians) and you've got yourself a self-sustaining cooling system that doesn't cost a darn dime outside of the occasional pruning. You might even be able to get some climbing ivies on the south side as well, giving them that many more free BTUs. Oh, and we need to give these places a payment plan rather high up-front costs because businesses are not going to spend tens of thousands now to save hundreds of thousands later. It's just a fact, deal with it.
For the global warming thing, what will that buy us? Not much. But it's something: trading large amounts of one building's A/C energy requirements for an environmental cooling unit the size of a factory. And if that's not exactly the sort of thing that we're looking for... well... clearly I have no idea what saving the environment actually means.
The following websites were used in the compilation of this article:
Engineeringtoolbox.com
Wikipedia.org
The Energy Information Administration