Strike Up The Drum

For Marlowe fans, no, I’m not going to suggest we all go marching courageously. Instead, I’m going to venture into the political arena; specifically, the subject of the current wave of strikes by UCU over changes to pensions for academic staff. Neither am I going to rehearse what the actual changes are or bang the drum vigorously for one side or the other[1]. That’s happened rather a lot all over the internet.

What I’m very much not going to be doing here today.

Instead, I’ll talk a bit about where I stand and why we’ve got to this mess in the first place. So, as a PhD student, the strikes put you in a fairly difficult place. On the one hand, you (probably) want to show solidarity with your supervisor, lecturers, etc; certainly if you aspire to an academic career. On the other, whatever the outcome of the current dispute, you can pretty much guarantee that by the time you start paying into any academic pension scheme, it won’t be a Defined Benefit (DB) one, but a Defined Contribution (DC) one[2], so the end result of the dispute will probably not impact you that much, in a sense. You could say it’s academic. No, I’m not apologising for that terrible joke. There’s also the matter of, if you go on strike for pretty much three weeks, you’re probably going to be a bit behind on your PhD work. And if you don’t get your PhD, you certainly won’t have an academic career, and then it really doesn’t matter what the pension scheme is. And, ultimately, the university isn’t paying you for your labour, so the whole concept of withdrawing your labour by going on strike isn’t really applicable anyway – you can’t very well hurt your employer by striking if you don’t, in fact, have an employer. So, yeah, a bit of a grey area.

You might argue that you can show solidarity by avoiding university facilities and just doing your work elsewhere for a few weeks, but what about if you need to visit a library? That’s a university facility, which, in theory, you should be boycotting. Sure, you can probably do a lot of the stuff you need online, but if you’re using the library’s search functions or catalogue, is that not breaking the spirit of the rules, as such? In my case, this isn’t so much of a problem – instead, my problem, which is one that will affect a lot of science students, is that I need my computer[3]. Which is very much non-portable and in a very definite place in a university building. So I really can’t do very much without using university facilities. And, to some extent, isn’t the internet network a university-provided service, so should I avoid that too? I’m mentioning this to illustrate the point – as a PhD student, you’re not really personally involved in the dispute, but you sort of should be, but you can’t really be without jeopardising your own future.

My own personal feeling is that refusing to teach or stand in for striking lecturers is fine and an important show of solidarity, but expecting PhD students not to work on strike days is a bit excessive. Whatever the eventual outcome, we most likely lose, so it would seem the lesser of two evils to not mess up your degree whilst doing so. Other people will hold different views, and that’s fine – I’m just saying how I see things.

So that’s where I stand. But, also, how did we get here? It’s hardly a surprise that there are moves to reduce the academic pension pot – in the private sector, nearly all pensions are DC rather than DB now. So, whatever career you’re in, you’re not going to get as good a pension deal as your parents or grandparents. Sorry. Fundamentally, the cause of this is a demographic transition: put bluntly, there are now too many old people living too long and (relatively) not enough young people working for long enough to pay for them. See also what’s going on with the NHS, which is basically the same problem. When the welfare state and pension schemes were set up postwar, people didn’t tend to live that long after retiring – the average life expectancy in 1951 for men was 66.4; for women 71.5. In 2011, the same figures were 79.0 and 82.8, so your average pensioner is living 10-15 years longer than 60 years ago. The retirement age has also gone up in recent decades, but not by that much – from 60 to a projected 67 for women, and 65 to a projected 67 for men, with a rise to 68 for both sexes for people of my generation. The fertility rate has also declined, so older people make up a larger proportion of the population. So, pensions have to pay out for longer whilst receiving relatively less money from those still working. Unsurprisingly, the result is that pretty much all large pension schemes are in deficit and have had to reduce their generosity to new entrants.

The annoying thing is that all this was entirely foreseeable – this demographic trend has been evident across most of the developed world for the past 50 years. But, it’s a long-term issue, so most governments have tended to stick their heads in the sand and ignore it or only half-heartedly deal with it, meaning that we’ve now reached the point where some schemes are having to implement deep cuts to stay afloat and drastic policy action is needed. But, que sera sera – what could we actually do about it?

To put it mildly, there are no good options. Either you have to reduce the outgoings or increase the inputs. So, you could:

• Kill all the old people. Very unpopular, but would work. On a more serious note, you could achieve a similar effect by suddenly raising the pension age by a decade – that way, you’d pay less out and would also get more contributions from people working longer. This would mainly affect old people and, remember, old people tend to vote Conservative. And the current government is Conservative, so that’s not going to happen. And, to be fair, this would really mess up a lot of people’s lives, but the retirement age really could do with rising faster than it currently is.
• Encourage immigration. Immigrants tend to be young and economically-productive, so are a positive boon for pension schemes. However, this would probably be even more politically unpopular in the current political climate than mass gerontocide, so we can forget about this anytime soon.
• Encourage families to have more children. A longer-term policy, but would shift the population distribution away from the old. However, rather difficult culturally and also hamstrung by a) possible lack of resources (say, houses) and b) the fact that regimes that tend to advocate this sort of policy also tend to advocate, say, invading Poland or marching around in leather uniforms.
• Increase National Insurance and private pension contributions and/or reduce the generosity of existing schemes. Realistically, the most likely to happen, because it shifts the burden from the state to the individual, as the current government is very fond of, and also impacts younger people more. And they won’t vote Conservative anyway, in the main. However, this isn’t exactly free of consequences – doing this effectively leads to more savings[4], which means less disposable income, less spending and consumption and, thus, lower tax revenues. And lower economic growth, which tends to end badly in a capitalist economy. So, everyone loses. Even the OAPs. But sufficiently gradually that you don’t lose the next election and it’s someone else’s problem next decade[5].

So yeah, anyone under the age of 50 is probably not going to get a good pension deal; certainly not compared to the previous generation. And it seems unlikely that any government is going to do anything that might substantially alter that anytime soon. Hooray.

And on that happy note, I should probably stop. Back to lighter material next week.

[1] Though, in fairness, I should probably state that my sympathies lie more with the unions than the management. If you hadn’t guessed that one already.

[2] I’m not going to explain in detail what those mean, because it’s a bit dull and that’s also not the purpose of this post. Suffice to say that they’re the two main divisions of pension schemes and the former is generally better than the latter, but also costs more money.

[3] Replace ‘computer’ with ‘lab’ if that’s more relevant to you.

[4] Either directly, if you increase contributions, or indirectly, if you reduce generosity, because people will be incentivised to save more elsewhere to make up the shortfall in their retirement funds.

[5] OK, so I’m being really rather cynical here, but, still, you’ve got to admit that perennial political myopia is a real problem in any democratic regime.

Reach Out, Touch Me….

No, I’m not going to be talking about my own personal Jesus[1], but, instead, outreach, something else I end up doing quite a lot of as part of my PhD. Well, not literally – unfortunately, I still have to actually write the PhD – but, it’s something that should be part and parcel of anyone aiming to get into academia. It’s all very well being incredibly clever and knowing all sorts of things that will solve all the world’s problems, but if you can’t communicate it to someone who doesn’t also have umpteen degrees, you’re not going to achieve much. As witnessed by every undergraduate ever when they have THAT lecturer whose lecture is worse than useless. So, outreach is quite an important thing to do.

I suppose I should probably start by defining my terms. ‘Outreach’, in this case, generally refers to doing some sort of public engagement activity outside the direct requirements of your position. So, lectures are not outreach – you’re required to give them and the audience are specifically students – but, giving a talk to some sort of club or society, visiting a school to try to enthuse kids about whatever it is you do, setting up some sort of experiment at an open day; all of these would count as outreach. It’s a good way of practising your public oratory skills, and trying to work out how to explain something quite complex to a five-year old turns out to be a very effective method for making you think about and understand it properly. It’s also one of the few opportunities you get to unashamedly tell literally everyone in a room about something you’re incredibly interested in at great length[2], so it’s quite fun too.

Outreach in a very literal sense. Academic on right; general public on left.

There are a couple of concrete examples I’ve recently done that illustrate what you might consider the two end-members of the outreach spectrum. First: last Tuesday, I helped out at Twilight at the Museums. This happens every year on one evening in February half-term and is when all the university museums in Cambridge stay open into the evening and put on some sort of set of special family events to entertain all the kiddies. And I do mean kiddies. It’s aimed very much at nursery- and primary-school-age children; less so at teenagers. In practice, what this means is that I could be found standing, for the best part of three hours, in a dimly-lit Polar Museum[3], clutching a cuddly-toy penguin[4], trying to explain to a constant succession of families with children of undefined age, but very defined snottiness, about penguins. Occasional breaks were provided by going outside in the cold drizzle to entertain the queue, and, when no one was soliciting me, conversing with my fellow volunteers, playing with the penguin and humming the Pingu theme tune. Sometimes all at once. Now, obviously, I don’t study penguins, but it’s quite easy to tell a six-year old something they don’t know about penguins, especially when you’re brandishing a cuddly one as proof of your authority[5]. Even if some of them were surprisingly knowledgeable on the subject. And the point is, it gets them interested in the Poles and, eventually, maybe that’ll lead to them becoming Polar scientists – realistically, you can’t do much more than that, at that age.

The whole event was enlivened by several of the volunteers also dressing up for the occasion – we had Captain and Kathleen Scott, and Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin. The kids seemed to respond well to this, even if some of them persisted in telling Lady Jane that her husband was just over there, so she could stop searching; and refusing to believe that Captain Scott was really there, because, obviously, he’s dead. When the last diehards were herded out at 19:30, after we’d had somewhere in the region of 600 people through the doors[6], we relaxed by consuming gratuitously-large quantities of pizza. So, outreach has its rewards. And it was quite fun, even if repeating the same 1-minute penguin-facts spiel a gazillion times got a little wearing.

At the other end of the spectrum, this morning, I delivered a talk at Selwyn to about 30 Year 12s on the subject of my research. This was just short of an hour long and was, essentially, a half-hour lecture, plus a few bits of audience interaction to get the students to think a bit more, rather than me just telling them things. I started off with the basics – what the cryosphere is, why we study it, etc. – then moved on to explaining the basics of software modelling, before giving them a very condensed version of what I do and what I’m hoping to achieve. At that sort of age, outreach becomes more about trying to genuinely inform people about current research, rather than simply trying to kindle a general enthusiasm for the wider subject area.

The talk went well – the pupils seemed engaged, even if it was all a bit doom-and-gloom when I told them about how much sea level might go up by…. And one of the teachers was particularly complimentary about my dry sense of humour. I think the bit where I pointed out the myriad ways to die when trying to get observations of the calving front may have been what he had in mind…. But yes, I certainly had fun, and I think the audience found it entertaining and informative. So, definitely, reach out – you’ll probably quite enjoy it!

[1] See, I can make popular culture references. Even if they are from the 80s.

[2] I find doing this at, say, dinner parties or in the pub tends to produce much the same effect as not washing for a month. Everyone gives you a wide berth. It’s almost as if they don’t want to be lectured at length about the naming practices of various dynasties of Middle-earth and how they compare to real-world monarchies. I can’t think why.

[3] It’s called Twilight for a reason – all the lights are turned down and the kids bring torches to look round. We also had lots of glowing blue ice cubes scattered around the place to give some mood lighting.

[4] Penelope. Though I did also have to resist the urge to act like Rimmer in that episode of Red Dwarf where he turns psychotic and has a penguin glove puppet called Mr Flibble. That would not have ended well.

[5] Perhaps one of the stranger authority symbols I’ve come across. As the saying goes, it’s not what you’ve got, but what you do with it that matters.

[6] Which made it a fairly quiet Twilight!

Glaciation in Middle-earth

It’s kind of inevitable I’d end up writing this sooner or later. Actually, I wrote it about two years ago, but it seemed worth digging it out again. No knowledge of glaciers required, but you might find a map of Middle-earth useful. Here’s one, just in case you don’t have one to hand/don’t have it memorised.

Middle-earth in the Third Age.

Glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets are not a prominent feature of Middle-earth outside the peripheral and little-described regions of the far north. However, I intend to demonstrate that such features must have existed and how these can potentially explain some characteristics of Middle-earth. First, I will review what evidence there is for glaciated terrain in Middle-earth, then suggest how widespread glaciation might have been outside the far northern regions, before looking at how this would have impacted Middle-earth’s inhabitants and landscapes.

There are several mentions or clear implications of glacial features in Middle-earth. First and most obviously is the Helcaraxë, the Grinding Ice, which Fingolfin and his followers have to cross when leaving Valinor. This lies far to the north and, from descriptions, would seem to be an area of sea permanently covered with sea ice. Second, and similarly northerly, is the Icebay of Forochel (and the adjoining region of Forodwaith), the home of the Lossoth, the Snowmen of Forochel, and the scene of Arvedui’s shipwreck. The Bay itself would seem to be seasonally sea-ice-covered, with indications that Cape Forochel itself might well be glaciated, whilst Forodwaith seems to be most likely some sort of Arctic tundra environment. Further south, there are the Mountains of Moria, the description of which certainly seems to imply permanent snowfields at the very least. Further south again, there are the White Mountains. Little information is provided about them, but the name “White Mountains” clearly implies that they have year-round snow cover, if nothing more. It is therefore clear that glaciated terrain exists in the far north of Middle-earth, but a little less straightforward in the populated and narratively-relevant regions of the map.

For glaciation to occur, two things are needed: sufficiently cold temperatures to ensure not all ice melts every year, and sufficient solid precipitation (i.e. snow) to replace losses and build glaciers. A glacier begins to form when fresh snow falls on top of older snow – over time, the pressure caused by the weight of new snow compresses the older snow into ice. Once enough ice has been formed, it can start flowing. The glacier will continue growing until the mass melted off it each year (usually in summer) is equal to the mass added to it each year by fresh snowfall. Glaciation therefore happens preferentially in cold, wet places[1], such as the windward sides of mountain ranges. As altitude increases, temperatures drop due to reduced convection from the earth’s surface[2]. Mountain ranges also force air masses blown towards them to rise, which, as the temperature drops, reduces their ability to store water vapour, leading to condensation and precipitation[3]. Therefore, mountain ranges tend to be colder and wetter than the surrounding land[4] and, as such, are a preferred site for glaciation to occur.

Given this, where might glaciation be expected in Middle-earth? It is reasonable to assume that the climate is similar to that of NW Europe, with a westerly prevailing wind. This is borne out by work on modelling the climate of Middle-earth undertaken by the University of Bristol, which shows the Shire having a similar climate to Leicestershire and Mordor being hot and arid[5], with westerly prevailing winds from Eriador southwards[6]. It may have been noticed that NW Europe is not, currently, underneath several hundred metres of ice, with glaciation restricted to mountainous areas, so it seems reasonable to expect something similar in Middle-earth. As such, and confirming the earlier conjecture, the White Mountains seem likely to be glaciated – from a latitudinal point of view, they’re more-or-less equivalent to the Alps, which are glaciated, so it seems reasonable to take the name at face value[7]. What about the other mountain ranges of Middle-earth? The problem here is that we have very little idea of the heights of any of them[8] – given the latitudinal range of Middle-earth, mountain ranges under 1500-2000m are unlikely to exhibit significant glaciation as temperatures will simply be too warm. Let’s look at each of the major mountain ranges in turn and consider whether they seem likely to be sufficiently tall to generate glaciers.

First, the big one: the Misty Mountains. The impression we’re given of the Misty Mountains is that they are the most important and largest orographic feature of Middle-earth, at least on the scale of the White Mountains, with which they merge. It’s also clear from the account of the Fellowship’s attempts to cross the Redhorn Gate that the upper parts of the mountains are permanently snow-covered, which suggests that the conditions to initiate glaciation are present. As with the Andes, another north-south-trending range, it is likely that glaciation would be much more widespread on the wetter, western sides of the range than the drier eastern slopes. Glaciation would also theoretically be much more widespread in the northern, colder part of the range, but it seems likely that the entire range has some degree of glaciation – if the more southerly White Mountains do and the Misty Mountains are at least as tall and wet (which seems very likely), they must be at least as glaciated. It thus seems overwhelmingly likely that the Misty Mountains are glaciated.

Secondly, the mountains of Mordor (the Ephel Dúath and the Ered Lithui). These are another relatively well-described region, but there seems no indication of glaciation. The impression we’re given is that these are relatively low ranges of bare rock – high enough to be an effective barrier, but not on an Alpine scale – with no mention of ice or snow in any of Frodo and Sam’s wanderings. Combined with their more southerly and therefore warmer location, I think it very unlikely that the environs of Mordor exhibit any form of glaciation.

Third, the Iron Hills. We are given very little information on these, but the fact they’re called “hills” suggests they’re relatively low, perhaps on a Scottish or Welsh scale. Given their latitudinal position is broadly similar to northern Britain, which is not (currently[9]) glaciated and their position in the drier east of Middle-earth, it seems very unlikely that they show any significant degree of glaciation.

Completing the eastern side of the map, we have the Grey Mountains. As with the Iron Hills, we are given virtually no information on this range, beyond that it has lots of Orcs in, which, while useful to know, is not terribly helpful for this article’s purposes. However, they are “mountains”, not “hills” and lie in a very northerly position on the map, so there would seem to be the potential for glaciation to occur. Countering this is their position east of the Misty Mountains, which would make them relatively drier. The name “grey” also suggests large areas of bare rock, which militates against extensive snow or icefields. The most reasonable answer would seem to be that there could be a limited amount of glaciation on the higher peaks, but that the majority of the range is ice-free.

Turning to the western portion of the map, the only major range[10] is the Blue Mountains. Again, these are “mountains”, suggesting a substantial height. With their westerly, coastal location, they are also going to receive high levels of precipitation[11]. And, being relatively far north, colder temperatures will prevail. All told, this would seem to make glaciation very likely. However, this does not fit well with the descriptive evidence we have – large cohorts of Men of the First Age seem to have been able to cross the range (admittedly, further southwards) without great difficulty and there is no suggestion in any of the descriptions of the Shire and its environs, Lindon, or the region’s Dwarvish holds that there was a notable degree of snow or ice present. The range, at least in its southern portion, was also largely submerged at the end of the First Age. This suggests that the Blue Mountains were rather lower than the name implies – given the rather subdued topography of eastern Beleriand and western Eriador, “mountains” seems likely to have been more a sort of honorific than a real description. It simply indicated they were the biggest prominences around, rather than that they were on the same scale as the Misty Mountains[12]. As with the Grey Mountains, perhaps limited glaciation on the highest peaks existed, but the evidence points to the Blue Mountains being relatively low and, thus, ice-free.

Overall, then, it would seem that significant glaciation outside the far northern regions of Middle-earth, where the Snowmen lived and the Helcaraxë ground its teeth, was probably limited to the White Mountains and the Misty Mountains. Other ranges were too low, too warm or too dry to sustain large-scale ice formation. What does this mean for the environment and inhabitants of Middle-earth? Firstly, it means the White and Misty Mountains probably look much like the Alps[13] – the Misty Mountains might be a little taller, perhaps approaching the scale of the Caucasus. Secondly, it means that most of Middle-earth’s rivers are at least partially glacier/snow-fed[14] – nearly all of Gondor’s manifold rivers rise in the White Mountains[15], whilst the Anduin and its tributaries derive from the Misty Mountains[16], as do the Isen, the Greyflood, and their tributaries. In fact, the only major rivers not to have their sources in either the White or Misty Mountains are the Brandywine and the Lune, and the rivers feeding the Sea of Rhûn[17]. What this means is that it is extremely unlikely that anywhere west of Anduin experiences seasonal water shortages, with snowmelt in the summer and rainfall in the winter ensuring strong river flow all-year-round. This means farming and settled agriculture (with strong irrigation potential) would be an attractive lifestyle for the inhabitants, allowing the growth of cities and states, which might otherwise have been slowed or prevented. So, Gondor might owe its very existence to the glaciation of the White Mountains. Thirdly, it would confirm that both the Misty Mountains and White Mountains would be significant barriers to movement, which supports the narrative of largely separate development between Eriador and Rhovanion that the books present and explains Gondor’s apparent isolation at the end of the Third Age, with only sketchy knowledge of events, places and peoples to the north.

To conclude, it seems likely that there was a degree of glaciation in Middle-earth in the Third Age and that this would have played a key role in allowing the formation of large, settled states and in determining their geopolitical interactions.

[1] Hence why Siberia is not generally glaciated. It is very cold in winter, but also very dry, so not enough snow survives the short-but-warm summers to generate widespread glaciation.

[2] The rate at which this happens is called the altitudinal lapse rate – it’s usually something around 6°C per kilometre of altitude.

[3] This is called orographic precipitation.

[4] They can also create a rain-shadow effect behind them (from the prevailing wind’s point of view) – by forcing precipitation to occur on the windward side of the range, air on the leeward side becomes very dry, resulting in much reduced precipitation compared to the windward side. This can be seen in South America – the western side of the Andes (the windward side – the prevailing winds are westerly) tends to be very wet (1000s of mm/year of precipitation); the eastwards side is much drier (a few hundred mm/year).

[5] Given it’s on an equivalent latitude to Iberia, Italy or Greece, that’s hardly surprising.

[6] For those interested in more about the climate of Middle-earth, I recommend the article by Brown (2013), which can be found at the below link:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/university/media/press/10013-english.pdf

[7] This also means that the White Mountains must be more-or-less the same height as the Alps – the equilibrium line altitude (i.e. the height above which there is more snow accumulation than melting, allowing glacier genesis) is about 3000m in the Alps (rising all the time with global warming), so the White Mountains have to have large areas above this elevation.

[8] You can try to compare the height of the symbols on the map, but that’s so vague, you may as well not bother.

[9] Go back 20,000 years, however, and things were a whole lot different. Cambridge would have been around the southern edge of the ice sheet covering northern Britain….

[10] Barring the various downs around the Shire and Eriador, which are certainly much too low to be glaciated.

[11] Perhaps explaining why they’re “blue”.

[12] In the same way that various areas of large hills in Britain are termed “mountains”. Admittedly, there is no hard-and-fast dividing line between a hill and a mountain, but there are only a few areas of Britain that could truly be called mountainous – Snowdonia, the Lake District, the Cairngorms and the Grampians being the most obvious.

[13] And, for those interested, means you could probably go skiing there.

[14] Indeed, the Morthond is described as being icy cold, as is the Silverlode.

[15] The exception being the Poros. And the Anduin itself, obviously.

[16] Except the Greylin, which comes from the Grey Mountains, and tributaries of the Entwash, which flow from the White Mountains.

[17] And the Harnen, but that’s less important.

Time To Reflect

Last week, this website was pointed out to me by one of my fellow inmates at SPRI. It suggests that we should paint or cover everything with white to increase the planet’s albedo, i.e. how reflective it is. A higher albedo would be one way to reduce global warming, by reducing the amount of incoming shortwave solar radiation absorbed by the planet’s surface, which is then re-emitted as longwave radiation that can be trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

At first glance, it looks a bit insane. Especially when you come across photos such as these:

 

Despite appearances, these hats are probably not made from toilet paper. If they are, it’s certainly clean toilet paper, for which we can all be thankful.

It’s a moose. The white cloth covers up the initials carved into it with a toothbrush.

Beyond advancing the interesting hypothesis that the Ku Klux Klan were unexpectedly environmentally progressive[1] or that covering your head in toilet paper does anything apart from making you look a pillock, it would seem that the authors of the website (who appear to be Finnish) have just lost the plot a bit. And, granted, covering large areas of vegetation in white is pretty idiotic. For a start, you’ll kill all the vegetation, which will put a serious dent in any plans you might have to combat global warming, by reducing carbon uptake and also releasing a whole new lot of it from all the decaying plant matter.

But, is this true in all cases? What about if we painted artificial surfaces white, such as roofs, roads, pavements, and so on? About 1% of the planet’s total surface area is urbanised or covered with various bits of human infrastructure that we could perhaps paint white. The albedo of the most extensive manmade surfaces – asphalt, concrete, etc. – is generally 0.4 or lower. In other words, they reflect 40% or less of the incoming solar radiation. The albedo of white acrylic paint is about 0.8, so painting all our cities and roads white would, roughly, double the albedo of that 1% of the planet’s surface. Which would equate to, roughly again, a 1% increase in the planet’s average surface albedo, which currently stands at ~0.3[2].

The solar constant at the top of the atmosphere, i.e. how much energy the Sun is inputting to the Earth system, is 1368 W/m². By the time you get to the surface, it’s more like 1000 W/m². So, brightening the surface of the planet by 1% would lead to an extra 10 W/m² being reflected before it could contribute to global warming. This might not sound like much, but, locally, this would probably make a fair difference. This article suggests that a change in albedo of 0.1 brought about by a change in land cover (which would be effectively what would be happening here) leads to about 2 degrees of cooling. So, an increase of >0.4 in albedo in urban areas would be a good way of reducing the urban heat island effect and making cities more liveable in a warming world. On a planetary scale, though, it’s less clear. Generally speaking, it’s thought that a 2% increase in albedo would about half the warming effects of a doubling in carbon dioxide concentrations. So, painting everything white might actually not be as stupid as it seems at first….

But, it’s still a terrible idea. Firstly, imagine the glare! Every time a city dweller went outside, they’d be blinded. Traffic accidents would skyrocket as motorists were either also blinded or had to wear shades so dark, they couldn’t see the road. We’d all be really tanned, though…. On a more sensible level, there’s the question of the environmental consequences of producing all that paint and having to apply it – one suspects they’re not negligible. But the real issue is that it’s not dealing with the problem – greenhouse gas levels would still be high, we’d still be burning fossil fuels and so on. If we got fed up of white, then temperatures would start to climb rapidly again. This is one of the main arguments against these solar radiation management mitigation strategies for global warming – they only treat the symptoms. It’s equivalent to taking some painkillers when you have a cold – sure, you feel better for a bit, but you still have a cold. Or, in this case, a fever.

At least painting everything white is probably better than chucking a load of sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere, which is essentially the same idea, but on a bigger scale. It would work, but I hope we all really like acid rain…. That’s why all these versions of geoengineering are very much a last resort – they’re better than nothing, but, if we have to use them, we’ve really messed up. The old adage of a stitch in time saves nine is particularly applicable here.

So, there you have it, painting everything white as a solution to global warming is silly, but probably not for the reasons you thought in the first place. Though, it is a good idea for mitigating extra local warming in the urban milieu.

[1] Apart from the burning crosses. Think of the particulates!

[2] Strictly speaking, this is the top-of-atmosphere albedo. But, to make things simpler, I’m just going to assume it’s all fungible and that this 0.3 value is getting increased by 1%. For reference, the oceans have low albedos of <0.1 and forests and bare ground typically fall in the 0.1-0.2 range, but the number gets boosted by clouds, which are really reflective. Here, I’m just assuming that cloud cover isn’t going to change significantly from its average, because that would make things complicated. The actual surface albedo of the planet, though, is probably about 0.14.