I was thinking about global warming the other day, when I came up with what I believe to be an easy (but expensive) solution to our problems.

First, some background:

It is believed that ice ages are more likely to start as a result of cool summers than overly-cold winters. The theory being that snow falls in winter, then melts in summer/spring. If summer and spring are both cooler than normal, then the snow takes longer to melt, meaning more of the sun’s rays are reflected off of it rather than helping to warm the ground. This results in continued cooler temperatures, which in turn encourages more snow fall. This sort of thing can snowball rather quickly resulting in year-round snow, meaning you’ll have to bundle up.

If you take a peek at satellite photos of inhabited areas, you’ll quickly notice that a very large percentage of the land-mass is covered by black heat-absorbing asphalt. I’m not going to claim that rampant asphalt use is responsible for our climate warming, but it certainly isn’t helping. I was thinking that if we were to paint all the asphalt white it would reflect more sunlight away from the earth, thus lowering temperatures and fixing global warming once and for all. The only problem with this, though, is that if the ‘snowball’ theory actually works, this could result in another ice age pretty quickly.

So, my refined solution is to pave all our roads not with inexpensive asphalt, but with some sort of heat-responsive color change substance, meaning that while it is warm, the color will lighten, and when it’s cold the color will darken. Perhaps something like this hyper-color shower tile?

Defined tags for this entry: climate change, global warming, I solved it, science