People are getting fatter. The human race has expanded its numbers as well as its waistlines, up to more than 6.6 billion according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Humans are literally covering a larger percentage of the Earth and absorbing more sunlight, thus contributing to global warming in the most direct manner possible. What if we were to dress everyone from head to toe in bright white clothing? Imagine if everyone dressed like the owners of Saudi Arabia, in flowing white robes. More of the sun’s light would be reflected back into space. It wouldn’t be enough to cool the Earth, but it would help stop the acceleration of global warming.
Speaking of obesity… it is becoming ever-more difficult to get an accurate appraisal of one’s health and size from a medical doctor. If you’re not diabetic and morbidly obese, you’re above average, so the doctor probably won’t come down too hard on you for carrying 10 or 20 superfluous pounds. To whom can we turn for an accurate appraisal of our bodies? Veterinarians. The average Labrador Retriever loves to exercise and is in great shape. A vet who sees fit Labs and Goldens all day is likely to be much more critical of human body weight than an American medical doctor.
Phil,
Obesity is predicted to become our number one killer in the next quarter century.
My girlfriend chastises me for doing this, but I am amazed at the numbers of grossly overweight folks I can count on any visit to public places. And the problem seems destined to only worsen with the advent of more and more cute and fun things to do indoors, i.e. the internet becomes more of our daily life.
If I am fat, there is no way that you are going to convince me to wear an all-white outfit. Black is a slimming color, thus I must wear as much black clothing as I can drape over myself. But I am ready to do my part to fight global warming: I’m thinking of expanding my tinfoil hat into something more like a tinfoil sunbonnet. I can prevent the CIA from controlling my brain, promote global cooling, and look sharp. It’s win-win-win!
Maybe we should all take our tinfoil hats off and use the saved metal to create reflectors to cover some of the unused areas of the earth to reflect the sunlight back out into space so less solar radiation falls on the Earth.
Second solution: planned nuclear winter. I am not sure which continent will volunteer to be the target, but I do know that sand will settle out of the atmosphere to quickly to use the most obvious target.
🙂 (emoticon supplied only if necessary)
Wow. This is a great idea. The federal government should immediately mandate that each citizen maintain a minimum area of high solar reflectivity and establish a branch of the Department of Energy to enforce the new Personal Reflectivity Index Codes – PRIC.
MIT can undertake the effort to come up with a comprehensive measurement standard that will represent the actual energy being reflected back into space. This is a complex issue and I’m sure it will take $10 or $20 million just to assess what long-term research needs to be conducted.
Requiring white clothing is not nearly ambitious enough. Remediation should be based on how much globe-warming absorption we each cause. So people with dark cars or roof shingles will need to come up with more offsetting surface area. Suburbanites with lush green lawns are going to finally have to pay for the damage they are causing. I expect many people will need several hundred square meters of reflective surfaces. Of course, most won’t be able to mange this goal on their own.
Here is where the real benefit of the new law comes into play – reflectivity credits! People who lack sufficient reflectivity can pay people with open land to setup reflective surfaces on their behalf. In this way, someone living in a trailer on a piece of desert in Arizona can become a millionaire. Better yet we can setup international credit trading so citizens of wealthy developed countries can pay rural peasants in Sub-Sahara Africa or Mexico to setup solar fields for us. Think how beneficial this industry could be to the third world, not to mention web entrepreneurs who will run online trading and local companies that offer on-sight inspectors, etc.
Impractical you say? Absolutely not! …Just read about all the carbon credit schemes.
P.S. Many people who own what use to be nearly worthless marsh and swamp land (“wetlands”) have discovered that they can make a fortune by putting a state easement on it to preserve it forever and then selling what amounts to a credit to a land developer who is seeking permission to fill a wetland somewhere else.
For obesity, there’s a simple yet elegant solution that is tailored to the cause.
The cause, of course, as mentioned before, is the long hours demanded by industry, which is largely composed of sitting behind a desk or in front of a computer.
Just as an employer is required by law to allow employees to take time off for maternity, illness, etc, people should be allowed to get doctors’ notes prescribing a certain number of hours for physical exercise.
Then, when someone needs to step out of the office for a quick walk (or jog or swim), he can simply claim that he’s following the doctor’s orders.
Some may argue that exercise should be undertaken on one’s own time, and that is separate from work time, but for practical purposes, we all know that we often sacrifice that time when we need to stay caught up with work. The simple fact of the matter is that the boundary between worklife and homelife has been blurred.
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In terms of wearing white clothing – it’s not a bad idea, but it’s unclear how big an effect it would have. The sunlight would simply get absorbed elsewhere before leaving the atmosphere.
As it is, if someone is absorbing sunlight, he’s not really contributing to global warming as much as his own individual warming.
Wearing white may help the person wearing it feel cooler, but that’s about all.
Ironically, by making _more_ use of sunlight, we would become less dependent on artificial sources of energy, and that is what would really help alleviate the problem of global warming.
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– Jay L.
I would think that quite a few American pets are also overweight. Feline diabetes seems pretty common these days.
Please tell me this blog entry was a joke? It was, right?
White clothing is not going to affect the climate in any perceptible or measurable way. 6.6 billion people may sound like a lot, but their bodies do not represent nearly enough surface area to affect global temperatures through solar reflection. Even if people spent all day in the sun (they do not). Even if white clothing were consistently more reflective than the surrounding terrain (for large areas of the Earth, it is not.) Even if all that energy went straight back into space all the time (it would not; given the angles, most of it would bounce around to other surfaces). I imagine man could build a sufficient number of reflectors to affect Earth’s climate. But Sierra Club is going to be a little upset with the rape of the wilderness to build and position enough of the things.
One of my pet peeves with the global warming movement is the mass perception that the climate is delicate and anything we do impacts it in a major way. Wrong. The only reason climate models suggest a warming Earth in response to increased levels of CO2 is because they are programmed with positive feedback loops. It is assumed a small amount of CO2 forced warming will enable the atmosphere to hold more moisture (the planet’s real greenhouse gas – water), leading to more warming, leading to even higher humidity, more warming, etc. Essentially CO2 is a catalyst in the models, not the direct cause.
That’s a big assumption. If that positive feedback loop does not form in the real world, then we could double current CO2 levels and still not change things significantly. Our breathing would start to become uncomfortable before the temperature did.
An no, the feedback loop (and human induced global warming) is not proven. The temperature rise from 1880 to today is not outside natural variation, and it did not track increases in CO2. CO2 increased throughout the century, and most dramatically post WWII. The Earth cooled between the ’40s and ’70s. Our current climate models would never have predicted that correctly. Most local temperature highs were set in the ’20s and ’30s. I’d say we’re actually closer to proving the feedback loop false than true. The wavelength absorption window of CO2 overlaps with water vapor, and different scientists are now suggesting that this window is saturated for most of the planet, most of the time. If true, then CO2 is darn near irrelevant in a climate model, and not able to throw anything out of balance.
Sigh…I know I’m ranting, but the whole Al Gore / save the Earth / screw in a CF bulb for climate change movement drives me bonkers. It’s not bad enough that we’re hysterical over unproven computer models. No…we’ve got to listen to absurd “every small step counts” type solutions that wouldn’t affect a thing even if the worst case climate models are true. CF bulbs are not going to change a thing. Hybrid cars are not going to change a thing. Slowing the growth in CO2 emissions is not going to change a thing. Reducing CO2 output to 1990 levels is not going to change a thing. Even if the critics are wrong and the UN models are right, reducing CO2 output to 1990 levels is still dumping a massive amount of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. You’ve just stretched the temperature climb out by maybe a decade. You haven’t saved or changed a thing.
And now you too Philip? At least suggest solutions in your blog that could actually cut into CO2 output if you believe CO2 is driving global warming. Converting all global electrical production to nuclear, solar, and wind would be a start. Following up with a 100% electric vehicle fleet (whether battery based or hydrogen based) would be the second half. At that point you can probably plant enough forests and recapture enough CO2 to offset man’s other activities.
But white clothes? Come on. If Al Gore is right, then white clothes is shooting a BB at a battleship.
Hi Phil,
Commenting on obesity, i think it is something which is rampant in the so called first world countries. In Africa i do not think its that prevalent, (you have been there what do you think?)
So, i would blame it probably on the Type of food people eat…… Too refined, the GM Os, Junk Foods, and Fast Foods things like that there are not good for our health. In Africa we could not help it laugh when my cousin from Australia told me that they drink pills for them to go to the toilet.
We need to mind our diet vegetarianism is the best way forward.
By the way, vegetarians on average live long.
Speaking of obesity, my doctor hardly ever advises me to lose weight or get exercise. He is heavier than I am.
With the decreasing supplies of oil, I suspect there will eventually come a time when people will be forced to use bicycles for short commutes and perhaps even for longer ones. You bike to the train station, take a train, and bike to work from the train station. That may eventually force people to slim down as a consequence of biking back and forth (or even walking back and forth). Not sure whether it will happen in our lifetime, though.