Many weird ideas come out of California. Painting roads a lighter color to reduce heat in order to combat global warming is a new one. It is well known that paved surfaces are hotter that natural surfaces. So consequentially cities create heat islands through urban sprawl. Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti, is a vocal critic of Trump, especially when Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord. Last June, Eric Garcetti was quoted saying:
“Climate change is a fact of life that people in Los Angeles and cities around the world live with every day. It is a grave threat to our health, our environment, and our economy — and it is not debatable or negotiable,” said Mayor Garcetti. “This is an urgent challenge, and it’s much bigger than one person. With the President pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, L.A. will lead by committing to the goals of the accord — and will work closely with cities across America and the world to do the same.”
It appears $40000/mile every seven years is part of the effort for LA to lead the country in fighting climate change.
The Story
LA DailyNews: ‘Cool pavement’ to cut urban street heat gets first California tryout in Canoga Park
“We’re exploring ways to reduce the heat island effect by reducing the absorption of heat in the built environment.”
Street Services, working in conjunction with GuardTop LLC, an asphalt coating manufacturer based in Dana Point, had first tested the cool pavement seal in the Sepulveda Basin.
Asphalt at a parking lot at the Balboa Sports Complex once averaged 160 degrees in summer. After the seal was applied two years ago, company officials say, surface temperatures dropped to between 135 to 140 degrees.
Now, after rigorous testing for durability and wet skid potential, the CoolSeal coating was being slathered across a half block of Jordan Avenue just north of Hart Street near the headwaters of the Los Angeles River.
If the new seal could boost solar reflectivity —and dramatically cool a street lined with two-story apartments in the hottest region of the San Fernando Valley — it could do it anywhere, city officials said.
The experiment will soon be duplicated in 14 other council districts before the end of June. If successful, city officials hope to encourage manufacturers to help develop cool pavement that could be incorporated into a multimillion-dollar drive to fix a backlog of L.A.’s failing streets.
“I’m thrilled to be here. This is a great day for all of us. We look forward to seeing what the results will be,” said Kevin James, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.
A CoolSeal coating could cost an estimated $40,000 per mile and last seven years, city officials said. But that’s subject to change pending pavement innovation.
“We’re going to try to make Los Angeles as cool as possible,” said Jeff Luzar, national sales director for GuardTop, a privately owned firm that has covered coated mostly playgrounds and parking lots. “We’re going to be the coolest island in Southern California.”
Average temperatures in Los Angeles have risen 5 degrees in the past 100 years on account of the heat island effect produced by miles of asphalt freeways, roads, parking lots, roofs and more, climatologists say. In summer, temperatures have risen an average 10 degrees.
In addition, extreme heat days near 100 degrees have risen from two a year in 1906 to 24, while their duration has increased from a few days in a row to heat waves of two weeks, said climatologist Bill Patzert of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“I’m all for it,” Patzert said of the cooler pavement. “We could certainly stop the rise — and perhaps reverse it.”
Unfortunately, he added, the urban forest across Los Angeles is dying because of insufficient watering during the recent drought. “They can paint the streets gray,” he said, “but when all these trees die, you’ll see a dramatic increase in the heat island effect in the whole Basin.”
My Take
The lack of fiscal responsibility is reason enough that this idea should be thrown out upon arrival. The idea isn’t bad. Reducing city heat does have a public benefit, in the summer. However, $40000 is comparable to a person’s yearly salary. That’s a lot of cash just to paint about one mile of roadway. California has problems and environmental concerns, and these concerns ought to be addressed. But the most pressing concerns are sourced from the fact that California is overpopulated.
California could stand to benefit from more plants as noted in the article. But plants require water, of which California has struggling issues with. California’s booming agriculture requires a lot of water and the entire country would hurt if it went thirsty. This was a foreseeable issue that California is behind on addressing. California should be leading the world in desalinization, thus watering its state and perhaps other states as well. But instead, they would rather focus on high price low reward methods of combating environmental concerns. Environmental policies should keep to a strict cost-benefit analysis. Eric Garcetti needs to learn that unlike climate change, fiscal responsibility should be non-negotiable.
This Article was originally published on NOQ Report by Raymond Fava on April 11, 2018