 Welcome back to Think Tech. It's the 3 p.m. block on a given Monday for Code Green. I'm Jay Fiedel. I'm the guest host today. But our real host is a guest. He's a visiting guest. And that's Howard Wiig, the traditional host for Code Green. Welcome to your show, Howard. Thanks so much for inviting me, Jay. It was an honor. Let me put a title on this. This is an unradical approach to global warming. I mean, I wish I knew exactly what you meant by that. We're going to get into it. And the tagline is no unintended consequences, as opposed to the other kind, which are intended consequences. So let's break this show down into two parts. The first part, I want to talk about geoengineering, the planet. I guess that means engineering the planet. And the planet does seem to need engineering, because despite the views of many millions of people, we aren't doing a whole lot about global warming. It's getting warmer. This summer is a good example of that here and everywhere. And this is changing the world as we know it. It's changing. Of course, it's making animals extinct. It's burning off all the glaciers. You see news every day. There is going to be a horrendous price that humanity will have to pay for this. And regrettable that our governments and our leadership organizations and people don't seem to take it seriously. So we get deeper into it all the time. The next generation will have a terrible time over this. But we have to talk about the macro and the micro. Let's talk about the macro first. Let's talk about geoengineering the planet, which you say may not be as good an idea as it seems to be. Well, let's talk about that. But let me defend the state of Hawaii, first state in the nation, who say 100% clean electrical energy by the year 2045. That was radical, except that California was a copycat. They usually lead in everything. No, they copied a little old Hawaii. And then New Mexico came next. And a whole host of states and cities have followed in our footsteps. But we're taking it seriously. OK, but that's a small part of the country. That's a small part. That's a small part of the world. Now, you were talking about scientists, I guess, and engineers who would like to engineer the whole planet and sort of roll back global warming. How do you do that, Howard? One thing we could do is scrap all the fossil fuel burning power plants in the world and replace them with nuclear power plants. Nothing controversial about that. But the proponents are right. Nuclear power plants emit zero CO2. And they're much, much safer than they used to be. And after Fukushima, we know, don't put them right next to an ocean, especially one with a rift zone. Yes, yes. So that's one solution. But just a wee, wee, wee bit controversial. Yeah, I think so. And I think it's a practical matter of, you know, in fact, that's not going to happen in Hawaii. No, or right. We have a constitution. And people sometimes they make a mistake about the constitution. The constitution does not outlaw nuclear power in Hawaii. What it says is you have to have a vote, a special vote of the legislature. And I want to say it's either two-thirds or three-quarters. It's a hypervote of the legislature. And then you could theoretically do it. And I don't know what the circumstances would be to change people's minds. But most people who speak on the issue here treat nuclear as a violation of all the environmental considerations they like to protect. So I told you there'd be opposition and you just delivered it. But that is definitely one method of global cooling, a radical method. So let's look at another method where you take a volcano that's about to explode and you infuse it with hyperexplosives such that it explodes like Prakatoa exploded in 1816. We had a summer of winter in 1816 because the effusion of the volcanic matter was so it was worldwide and it was so thick that it blocked many of the sun's rays and we didn't really have summers. That cooled off the planet. That cooled the planet. So some people are saying, let's just find a volcano that's about to explode if they have found one and just explode the holy heck out of it. How do you explode them? Don't they explode naturally? They explode naturally. You can't go in there and explode the thing yourself, can you? Well, not yourself, but scientists with their armaments can. Or at least they think they can. They're proposing this. OK. It might be a little on the controversy. Put that on the far side of nuclear. OK, what else you got? So otherwise, you infuse the atmosphere. Actually, the troposphere goes up about 36,000 feet where airplanes fly. That's the last of the thick air. And right above the troposphere, you spray aerosols. Aerosols that block from the sun's suit. Didn't you want to get rid of aerosols a few years ago? We did. And now we want to bring them back, but not in our atmosphere, but in the upper atmosphere, because they, too, block some of the sunlight. It would cool the planet. I can see the t-shirts now. Bring back the aerosols. So I mean, really, I think the message of all these three possibilities you've raised is actually very helpful. Because none of them are practical. None of them will ever happen. I'm sorry to say. And what it does show us, though, is that if we were thinking about some grand geoengineering plan to save the planet, forget about it. That's what I get out of it. And instead, what we really have to think about is house by house, office building by office building, power plant by power plant all over the world. And we have to develop the political will all over the world to change the way we do power. And to change the way we use the resources. We have to start working on that right now. And I mean, we've been saying this for 20 years anyway. I've been saying it for 40 years. Okay, don't give away your age. I certainly agree. I totally agree. And it's like repeating it doesn't help. There needs to be political action. And we haven't had that yet. We're gonna take a short break so we can sort of integrate all this information. Can't I do one more? This is another possibility? Yeah, yeah. And we'll see if this is any more realistic. Okay. We throw hundreds, thousands of tons of fine iron particles into the ocean. Does that sound? So that would kill all the sea life in the ocean. No, it's above. It's in the areas that are full of what's called phytoplankton. It is a many, many, many little sea creatures that actually behave like plants in that they absorb carbon dioxide. And the iron particles somehow stimulate their absorption so that they grow like mad and absorb all of this carbon dioxide. But that's just the beginning. With all this phytoplankton, then whales and many other sea creatures can start gobbling them up like mad. And we know that we have a deficiency of fish already. Fisher just depleting, depleting, depleting because of overfishing. Now we get this explosion of fish beginning with the explosion of phytoplankton. And the food chain, the sea food chain just goes up, up, up while the carbon dioxide gets absorbed, absorbed, absorbed. Now what could possibly go wrong with that? Everything. It actually sounds pretty cockamamie to me, but okay. It would take like 50 years of research to make anyone feel this would not destroy the oceans. This is a little bunch of iron in there. See what happened. There you go. All right, and this makes me wanna take my break. That's Howard where he's the customary host of Code Green which is about energy, which is about saving the planet and dealing with climate change. And we've been talking about geoengineering the planet without any real chance of success. I'm sorry. But the point is that it's not likely we'll be able to geoengineer the planet. So we have to work on it house by house, building by building, power plant by power plant. And right after this break, we'll come back and Howard's gonna tell us how to do that. There are ways. We have our ways. Thanks to our ThinkTech underwriters and grand tours, the Atherton Family Foundation, Carol Mun Lee and the Friends of ThinkTech, the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education, Collateral Analytics, the Cook Foundation, Dwayne Kurisu, the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Hawaii Council of Associations of Abarbon Owners, Hawaii Energy, the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, Hawaiian Electric Company, Integrated Security Technologies, Galen Ho of BAE Systems, Kamehameha Schools, M.W. Group, the Shidler Family Foundation, the Sydney Stern Memorial Trust, Volo Foundation, Eureko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. Right. So the mission is to save the planet, nothing less. And the problem is political will. We do have at least potentially the technology to do that on a small, house by house, building by building, power plant by power plant basis. And so for the rest of the show, we're gonna see how it really feels about this. We are going to make him a tyrannical leader because the only leader who can get this kind of thing done, who can force people to adopt the notions that are necessary to save the planet and cool the planet, okay, would have to be a tyrannical leader, I'm sorry to say. So let's make you, Howard, you don't seem like a tyrannical guy, but let's make you a tyrannical leader. What would you do? I would first go to, I would understand the urban heat island defect. And we just happened to have a slide that illustrates the urban heat island defect. Okay, so on the left axis is temperature, the ambient temperature. And as we see on the left, rural temperature, lots of trees, 85, then suburban, get higher, higher, higher, commercial, then we get downtown, now we're up to 92, then we get back to residential park and rural farmland and so forth. Now, we're gonna take this, that's the big notion. Now, I happen to be an energy codes guy, so what do we do first and foremost to address that big downtown area? You flatten the code, you flatten the buildings, you flatten that chart, right? You make everything like rural, then you bring down the temperature everywhere. Yeah, and who needs a building? I mean, are we sitting under a tree right now? I don't know, maybe not. No, okay, maybe that wouldn't work, but what is your point here with this chart? So first and foremost, who cool, especially that high point, we change energy codes such that the roofs of the buildings and incidentally, it mentioned the suburbs, also the suburbs, also the low rise commercial buildings, especially in the warmer sections of this nation, we make them cool roof. And that, they don't have to be white, white is best, but there's all kinds of other colors, lighter tone colors that have extreme reflectivity. Reflect the heat back up, reflect the sun's rays back up. And then very high, what's called emittance, what heat does penetrate into the roof, emits back into the atmosphere. It doesn't go all the way through. Do this by code. Yeah, you do this by code, and guess what? It's already code. The Hawaii is just now adopting the International Energy Conservation Code 2015, and it's right there in the code. So what's holding us up? Oh, it's there. All new buildings in climate zones, one, two, three. I participated at the national level. This is something I've fought very hard. You got an award for that. Yeah, oh, I did, yeah, didn't I? Yes, yes. So it's already in for the warmer climate zones. In my opinion, we need to move it into the middle climate zones. There will be a hearing in October. I'll be arguing for that. But guess which state in the nation led the way in requiring reflective roofs? Hawaii. Hawaii. I knew that. Mm-hmm. Now we're going to move into something called cool walls. It turns out that especially for taller buildings, and this makes sense, you only have a little bit of roof space, you've got a heck of a lot of wall space, and the sun is not striking the walls all the time, but a lot of the time, so why don't we make walls also reflect the sun's heat back up? Show me a picture. Oh yeah, oh, how about the next line? That picture. Now that is really cool. This is an extreme, cool wall. I don't think every, oh, and it also has zero fenestration, zero windows on this, if this was the west side, and that's the hottest side of the building. Here's an extreme example of a cool wall. Now not everybody's going to go along with that. I learned that the hard way some years ago, but we make cool walls an option, and there is one state in the nation that has in its energy code cool walls as an option. Do you suppose that? That's Hawaii. That's Hawaii. You know what, just a thought is you go into hot climates, I'm thinking of Greece on the Mediterranean, or Italy, if you look at these cities and towns in hot areas, they have walls that look like that. Yeah, and that, really bright color white walls. Just happens to be our last slide, showing that there is nothing new under the sun, but we will get to that. Okay, let's go to the next one then. Well, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry, okay. Oh, I'm running out of time. Okay, let's go to the next slide. Yes, you are running out of time. You're the dictators. I'd like to get through it, yeah. Now, one way that I got the idea for cool walls was this car, because it is, when it's sitting in the sun's heat, it is 12 degrees cooler than a car with ordinary paint. This has secret sauce in the car paint. Why does it make it white? Because not everybody wants white. Especially, you know, people are picky. But this has titanium dioxide mixed into the paint, and that's the same stuff that you have your sunscreen with. And they mix titanium dioxide in, our human eyes can't perceive the color difference, but it does, the titanium dioxide allows the radiant sun heat to get into the coating and then reflects it right back out. There's no law anywhere that requires this kind of paint or light color paint. People do have the choice of a dark color paint, if they like, isn't that true? If they like it? So if I make you this benevolent tyrant person, would you do this? Would you command this to be the case? Not everybody would have to have lime-green cars, but they would have to have a little off subject, but they would have to have reflective cars. Well, this is a common emergency, you know, you think climate change, would you order them to repaint their cars? No, just new cars, or when they're getting a new paint job. Okay, about buses? Buses, sure. Drunk? Drunk, sure. Railroad cars? Sure. Everything. Everything, yeah. Oh, I was gonna get to that. I'll divert a little bit. If you go to, especially Southern Florida, and you drive along the highways, you notice they're white. What in the world is going on here? Answer, they have so much coral floating around there and they've harvested so much coral. They just crush the coral and mix it with emulsifiers, and boom, there's your highway. It's a white highway, just to take. Reflects the sun to the heat, yeah, right. That's beyond my scope, it's another idea. Okay, let's go on to your track. Yeah, you keep getting me diverted here, but let's see what the next slide holds for us. Okay, believe it or not, every one of these walls is a reflective wall which is almost exactly what you were talking about. How can that dark wall in the foreground there be reflective answer? I wouldn't have guessed that it could be. No, because you haven't heard me yet. I'm about to hear this, I think. There's secret sauce, titanium dioxide. Even with a darkish wall like that, you infuse it with titanium dioxide. We talk in terms of reflectivity percentages and absorptivity percentages. If that were ordinary paint, it would be maybe 17, 18% reflective and say 77% absorptive, but because of the secret sauce in there, titanium dioxide, that wall is 41% reflective. So you don't have to have, yeah. So a question or two on that, though. First of all, would you require people to repaint their homes with titanium paint? No, I would say when you, oh, there you go, you get to the manufacturers level, you make this a federal law in a half the climate zones in the nation. You can only sell paints infused with titanium dioxide. Get it right at the root. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you go to the hardware store. I want purple, okay, exterior. Okay, you got purple, and it's even deep purple, that's 33% reflective. It's just sewn by the excess purple rain. So, but the problem is, I had a titanium bike one years ago where a frame was made with titanium, which is an airframe type metal, and it's very expensive. Are you denying that this will be much more expensive than regular paint? Yep, because it has gotten to the point of the wonders of capitalism. You mass produce stuff, and the cost goes down. I can cite instance after instance when we force new technology into the energy codes, at first it was pretty expensive, mass production took over, boom, it's a parody price now. Okay, same with the reflective, yeah. What's the next one, let's go moving forward. Yeah, you're slowing me down here. Here's a prime example, this is the EA Elementary School, and the important numbers are on the right there. Upper, that is where we left the original paint, this is, it's called the infrared, so the colors aren't accurate, but where we left original paint 121 degrees, this is on a very sunny day, we did reflective paint on the bottom down to 72. That looks to me like a delta T of 50 degrees. Yeah, well, that's a lot. This is a Hawaii instance. This is the titanium paint again. Yeah, titanium, but it looks like a normal color, it's just infused with titanium dioxide. Why doesn't Hawaii do this right now? Because you haven't passed a strong enough energy code. We have to get you into office. I mean, as a benevolent tyrant. Dictator, yeah. Okay, what's next? I think we've got one or two more slides here. Here is a high-end resort or high-end home, needless to say, that's very, very reflective. And if we go to the next slide, here's a low-end home, I believe this is in Mexico. And as you can tell, this is probably a very inexpensive home, but the roof is just a corrugated roof, but it has high reflective coating on the roof surface, meaning that it's gonna be cool. And if that roof had a dart paint on it on a hot day, it would be easily 170 degrees on the roof. My guess is that temperature is maybe 105, 70 degrees delta T, and then of course the walls, likewise, are reflective. And this is low-income stuff here. You see this in the South, you see this in Florida, right? Yeah. And certainly you see it below the South of the border. But you don't see it with titanium dioxide in it, or there could be other interior reflective substance. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. Titanium is one thing, what other materials would suffice? Strange, you should ask. Scientists recently were researching sharks that go way, way down deep. They're kind of bottom feeders. And the only type of light that gets to them is a very small spectrum blue light. It's the shark, and the sharks emanate a green color, a lime green color, just like that Toyota we saw. What's going on? Turns out there's a molecular shift from blue to green to fluoresce. Make it like a fluorescent color. It turns out that we can do the same process with coatings, roof coatings, or wall coating. And that increases the solar reflectance of at least so far research at 20 degrees. What is the material then? It's a compound that changes the electrons in the molecules, such that instead of having a longer range color spectrum in the electron flip and puts it into a shorter range. So which one of these solutions would you order the paint manufacturers to adopt? So far, you're a futurist, so I gave you a futuristic answer. I would stick with right now titanium dioxide or any other economically equally performing infusion. Okay, next. This has reached the way, this is an article out of a local magazine, and here are two vendors, roof painters and wall painters saying, let's go reflective. So it has reached the way. Yeah, that's a picture of a project in Hawaii. Yeah, yeah. So those are the two people who make it happen. They're business owners. Are they using titanium in this paint? I would assume so, yeah. That's the best way to achieve here. The building on the right-hand side is a white color, and the building on the left is a... Yeah, this is in action. They started repainting, this is a townhouse complex that needed redoing anyway. So the owner said, as long as we're doing this, let's get it cool and reflective. Well, you think a government incentive would be helpful to encourage people to repaint their projects instead of wait for another time, or wait for a new project, because the titanium's gonna cost money and people are gonna be reluctant to pay the extra money, so they're gonna defer the new paint job, right? So yeah, the government has to step in and, what kind of, what would you do with tax credit? Tax credit would be most excellent. There's an institution called Hawaii Energy. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Sure I am. That's a small joke. You're very familiar with that. Just encourage Hawaii Energy to heavily incentivize. Some kind of incentive, yeah. Reflective, roof coatings, reflective wall coating. Very exciting. So what else you got? Given our lack of time, let's go maybe to the last slide. Yes, here's the last slide. Theme, there is nothing new under the sun. This is a Grecian village. Look at the architecture. Those buildings are at least 200, if not 300, if not 400 years old, and along the southern Mediterranean and in the mid-east, where it gets hotter and blazes in the summer. In traditional architecture, you will always see the exterior of the buildings plastered, not just a little coating, but just plastered, literally with plastered white. White to reflect the sun's heat. Notice no air conditioning. With all of this, no air conditioning necessary. Yeah. Which means you save energy on the other end. Well, the building code says that if you don't have air conditioning, you shall do a whole bunch of nice things, and you'll have ceiling fans. Especially since our temperatures are getting warmer and warmer, we have lots of night, or days, and nights, where you need some kind of mechanical cooling, and ceiling fans require as little as one twentieth as much energy as their conditioners, maybe even less than one twentieth. Well, let's assume that you were not only the benevolent tyrant of Hawaii and the country, but you were the benevolent tyrant of the world. And I can see that. I can visualize that so easily. It's your personality and your style. Yeah. But even with that, changing the way buildings reflect the sunlight may not be a solution that's timely and sufficiently ubiquitous to actually save the planet. So you're not saying that this is the only solution, are you? Not the only solution. I'm saying let's go all nuclear and let's find that active volcano and just blast the holy heck out of it. There's a short-term solution. All right. Wow, bathing the planet, Howard. Thank you very much, Howard Wigg. The true host of Code Green. My huge pleasure.