Let's work from Parise's estimate that direct heating from US
automobile traffic could be counteracted by 0.7% of the area of Texas
or roughly 1900 sq mi. That is that counteracting all direct US energy
consumption could be balanced by about 25000 sq mi = 65000 sq km for
29000 TWh.
Divding by the number of hours in a year, the total emissions must average
3.31e12 W over a surface area of 6.5e10 m^2 or 50 watts per square meter.
I have to admit if the stuff were free and worked this well it would
be better than white paint.
One problem is that anthropogenic greenhouse forcing is much more
effective than direct heating.
Leaving aside capital costs, to counteract global warming due to 550
ppmv CO2 equivalent (4 W/m^2 global) would require 1/12 of the earth's
surface to be covered in this stuff. Or about 1/3 of the land surface
area.
Then you have to consider whether it would work in the daytime or
under cloudy conditions or (as described briefly in the white paper)
in humid conditions. Accounting for various inefficiencies and
practicalities, then, we essentially have to pave the earth in Parise
devices to preserve life as we know it, which seems a bit
contradictory.
That all said a device that could passively generate 50 watts of
infrared per square meter would surely be enormously useful for other
reasons. Perhaps there are some other problems with the design?
mt
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