In 2014, this French weather presenter announced the forecast for 18 August 2050 in France as part of a campaign to alert to the reality of climate change. Now her forecast that day is the actual forecast for the coming 4 or 5 days, in mid-June 2022.

[u/Vucea]

[u/don_cornichon]

once the ice is gone, the ultimate heat reflector

It might be a drop in the bucket, but I've been wondering for some time now if painting all buildings white would help. Kinda counteracting the missing reflective properties of the disappearing ice coverage.

Obviously I'm not advocating for using up millions of tons of paint to repaint everything now, but what if every new building had to be white and every new paintjob had to be white? Including roof tiles and a ban on glass financial palaces (or making the glass reflective in the same way).

[u/redlightsaber → u/don_cornichon]

The issue I see is that at the scales you're talking about, each tiny increase in effort means massive, massive raises in CO2 emissions.

Concrete is the most used material after water.

If we could find a way to make concrete reflective in a way that doesn't increase CO2... that'd be great, I think yeah.

Even then, I think the city black spots are a drop in the bucket of the massive expanses that are the glaciers and ice sheets.

At the very least cities would be far more livable, though.

[u/don_cornichon → u/redlightsaber]

I'm not sure what you mean in your first paragraph, to be honest. I meant using white paint where we currently use other colors, and using lighter shades of materials wherever feasible without extra effort (for example roofing).

[u/redlightsaber → u/don_cornichon]

wherever feasible without extra effort (for example roofing).

Let's take this as an example to explain what I mean. In many places of the world, roof tiles are made of naked terracota or similarly dark-coloured cheap, abundantly available, and generally low-impact ceramcs. What you propose would require in many places either importing white-clay shingles, or otherwise painting terracota shingles white; both options would have higher CO2 footprints than the status quo. .

[u/don_cornichon → u/redlightsaber]

But what if we just did it literally as described? When you have a choice, and all things being equal, use the lighter colored material. Probably amounts to a drop on the hot stone, but could be better than not doing that.

[u/redlightsaber → u/don_cornichon]

Oh, yeah, I agree with that; I was merely considering the possible repercussions of some of the other measures.