Good News Item 1: There is an underutilized method to fight climate change globally: Albedo Enhancement (AE).
Good News Item 2: The average homeowner can contribute to fighting climate change by painting their roofs white and farmers by also painting their barn roofs. This method of Albedo Enhancement (AE) reflects heat away. One sq km of white roofs (247 acres) reflects away 2.2 million kWh per average day on average and more than twice as much if close to the equator and in midsummer. This reduces the heat island effects, the cost of, and need for, A/C and reduces fuel consumption. White school roofs cool the children.
Good News Item 3: This could become a bipartisan approach to cooling the planet as AE activation does not demand downscaling fossil fuel consumption for it to make a huge contribution by itself.
Good News Item 4 : When this is understood by politicians and the public, support for large-scale Albedo Enhancement (AE) projects to cool the planet will become possible. Some of the possible large-scale AE projects will sequester mega tons of carbon in the oceans.
Other News Item 1: In fact, we must fight albedo loss whether we replace fossil fuels or not. Earth’s Albedo Loss is causing heat accumulation in addition to the Greenhouse gas heat due to snow field loss, sea-ice loss, cloud loss and similar reductions in reflectivity (albedo) of surfaces.
A paper by James Hansen and Pushker Kharecha (Ref 1) in the Columbia University newsletters of August 2025 captures this global decline using NASA data and describing their conclusions resulting from two of their earlier peer reviewed Journal papers.
The planet is losing albedo. This adds to the heat not being reflected away into space by all of earth’s land, sea, and atmospheric surfaces (cloud tops)
Other News item 2: A more meaningful measure of our climate situation has been highlighted by Tremberth and separately by von Schuckmann and 64 other scientists as Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) and this takes into account the accumulated heat in the ocean especially but also on land and in the cryosphere and atmosphere. This means that we have to shield our oceans from absorbing so much heat with either cloud creation or reflective algae. Both of these are possible with coccolithophores inoculated and perhaps fertilized with artificial upwelling over millions of sq km .
More about Good News Item 2 : Mediterranean countries have used this white roof method for cooling for thousands of years. California requires white roofs on new homes in some districts. New York City already has 1.3 sq km of white roofs on commercial buildings.
White roofs also reduce the power requirements for A/C and thus reduce the release of carbon dioxide. In addition, about 54% of the reflected heat reaches the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA) and thus has the same effect as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
For 2.2 million kWh reflected away and 54% reaching the TOA, that is equivalent to removing 123,000 tons of Carbon dioxide for the duration of the reflective surface (See peer reviewed article in the MDPI Climate Journal of Mar 7, 2023 for preliminary calculations)
A single home white roof can offset the carbon dioxide release of about 10 non-stop single person commercial seating flights from Boston to Los Angeles on a one-time basis. The A/C power saving was estimated in one study at 14% and as such would offset approximately another 5 flights per annum for its duration of say 20 years. White school roofs, Truck roofs and car roofs have similar effects.