Roads and highways are the main cause of United States warming

Heat from buckled roads

The ominous headlines roll 0n…

EXTREME HEAT BREAKS 4,500+ RECORDS…
CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE TO POWER GRIDS…
HELL COMMUTE: Thousands of Stop Lights Dark…
Millions without power as stifling heat wave hammers eastern US
Drought hits 56 percent of continental US
Crops shrivel as temps soar
Heat wave expands – and roads buckle
Fires create barren wasteland in Colorado

Will the United States become on of the largest deserts in the world?

The common belief is that CO2, a heat-trapping “greenhouse” gas, is the cause of global and United States warming.

This, however, may not be the case. There may be another, better, explanation as to why the United States is warming up and will become a desert.

The main cause United States warming is its roadways and highways

The roads and highways generate 28 times more energy than the total energy consumption of the United States

Asphalt streets are black and soak up the sun’s rays. Try to walk barefoot on an asphalt street on a hot summer’s day and you will begin to the picture.

Let’s do the math:

According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, there are currently 4.04 million miles of road in the United States.

A reasonable estimate is that the average width of all roads in the United States is 50 feet.

First off, 4.04 million miles equals 21,331,200,000 feet.

The square footage of all roads in the United States is equal to 50 feet times 21,331,200,000 feet or 1,066,560,000,000 square feet.

This 1,066,560 000,000 square feet when divided by 27,878,400 square feet in one mile equals 38,257.58 square miles of road surface in the United States.

In full sun, about 100 watts of solar energy per square foot reach earth. If you assume 12 hours of sun per day, this equates to 438,000 watts per square foot per year.

Based on 27,878,400 square feet per square mile, sunlight bestows a whopping 12.2 trillion watts per square mile on United States roads alone per year.

Let’s be extremely conservative because not all roads are entirely black and clouds sometimes block the sun. Our estimate is that only 22.4% of the 12.2 trillion watts per square mile per year is converted into heat, which is 22.4% times the 12.2 trillion or an effective 2,735,205,580,800 watts per square mile per year.

Multiply that by the area of all the roads, which, again, is 38,257.58 square miles times 2,735,205,580,800 watts per square mile per year and that we get 104,642,334,720,000,000 watts of heat energy generated by roads in the United States in a year.

Dividing by one million the figure comes to 104,642,334,720 megawatts per year.

In contrast, the total annual US energy consumption per year is “only” 3,741,000,000 megawatts per year.

Dividing that 3,741,000,000 megawatts U.S consumption, into the 104,642,334,720 megawatts generated by United States roads, we come up with a factor of 28.

In other words, the United States roads generate 28 times the heat as does the energy consumption of the entire United States

Is there a solution to this problem? Paint the roads white and pass out sunglasses?

In addition to the roads, the rooftops are most likely making an even larger contribution to the rapid warming the United States.

Paint the rooftops…

There is no solution. Forget cap-in-trade, forget the carbon tax^{note 1}—they both fail to address the real issue at stake is heat from roads and rooftops.

July 20, 2012 update:

Warming is the cause of the worst U.S. drought in more than 50 years is pushing food prices to record highs. Crops are failing due to the parched weather condition. The drought in the U.S., the source of nearly 50% of world’s exports of corn will raise prices world-wide. This includes prices not only of corn, but of beef and ethanol.

August 5, 2012 update:

Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees.

So many fish died in one Illinois lake that the carcasses clogged an intake screen near a power plant, lowering water levels to the point that the station had to shut down one of its generators.

“It’s something I’ve never seen in my career, and I’ve been here for more than 17 years,” said Mark Flammang, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. “I think what we’re mainly dealing with here are the extremely low flows and this unparalleled heat.”

July marked the hottest month on record for the contiguous United States, according to government scientists. Furthermore, drought now covers nearly 63 percent of the Lower 48 states turning a large part of the U.S. into a potential dust bowl.

The math summarized:

 Note 1:

What is cap-and-trade? It is Emissions trading, a government regulated market-based approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants. Even worse than cap-and-trade is the carbon tax.

What is a carbon tax? A carbon tax is a form of carbon pricing. Unfortunately, carbon is present in every hydrocarbon fuel (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) and, when burned, is released as carbon dioxide (CO²). In contrast, non-combustion energy sources—wind, sunlight, hydropower, and nuclear–do not convert hydrocarbons to CO².