> The United Nations (UN) believes there are 4B buildings on Earth. This week, a dataset called "GlobalBuildingAtlas" (GBA) was published by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) that attempts to estimate this number at being closer to 2.75B.
If we painted the roofs on all of them white, by how much would the temperature of the planet drop?
I would guess not that much - certainly fractions of a degree - because the proportion of the planet's surface is still relatively low, and as much as 60% of that reflected light would be scattered and absorbed by the atmosphere.
It'd have a much bigger impact if all those roofs had solar panels, and the resulting electricity was used to replace carbon-emitting energy sources.
AI is responsible for 60% of all internet traffic this morning, OP is the other 40%.
But on a serious note this is an interesting project highlighting the sheer volume of power usage across the world. .. I'm also curious given the data and power usage, if AI assisted heatmap is actually more accurate than one developed by downloading a single dataset of high resolution satellite imagery at night, performing algorithmic analysis to draw heatmap based on light output or !maybe even simple image processing downsampling the image and shifting white-blue to red?
70% of daytime RGB sat imagery is covered by clouds. I'm not sure how easy it would be to spot if clouds were covering a city's lights at night.
I've only seen Maxar publish one night time image and that was of Dubai. I suspect smaller buildings in not so well lit areas could end up getting missed out.
SAR imagery would work well for seeing at night and through clouds but I'm not sure what the state of AI building footprint detection is with SAR atm.
Kind of crazy to think that there are almost half as many buildings as people and yet me and my wife can't even afford the deposit to buy a single one on a mortgage after 10 years of saving, hustling hard, taught myself to code, got a university degree, worked in the tech sector, near the forefront of all the hot tech tends... Meanwhile, all this time, I'm told I'm privileged. I must be the victim of some kind of massive PsyOp conspiracy.
Ok a bit off topic but isn't a 1200W PSU overkill for this system? For a 9950X and 1080, 500W seems plenty.
> The United Nations (UN) believes there are 4B buildings on Earth. This week, a dataset called "GlobalBuildingAtlas" (GBA) was published by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) that attempts to estimate this number at being closer to 2.75B.
If we painted the roofs on all of them white, by how much would the temperature of the planet drop?
Probably not as much as if we “painted” them black with solar panels and used the resulting electricity to displace fossil fuel burning.
A good percentage of Pakistan did this recently and removed 35% of demand off of their grid https://www.ted.com/talks/jenny_chase_solar_energy_is_even_c...
I would guess not that much - certainly fractions of a degree - because the proportion of the planet's surface is still relatively low, and as much as 60% of that reflected light would be scattered and absorbed by the atmosphere.
It'd have a much bigger impact if all those roofs had solar panels, and the resulting electricity was used to replace carbon-emitting energy sources.
AI is responsible for 60% of all internet traffic this morning, OP is the other 40%.
But on a serious note this is an interesting project highlighting the sheer volume of power usage across the world. .. I'm also curious given the data and power usage, if AI assisted heatmap is actually more accurate than one developed by downloading a single dataset of high resolution satellite imagery at night, performing algorithmic analysis to draw heatmap based on light output or !maybe even simple image processing downsampling the image and shifting white-blue to red?
70% of daytime RGB sat imagery is covered by clouds. I'm not sure how easy it would be to spot if clouds were covering a city's lights at night.
I've only seen Maxar publish one night time image and that was of Dubai. I suspect smaller buildings in not so well lit areas could end up getting missed out.
SAR imagery would work well for seeing at night and through clouds but I'm not sure what the state of AI building footprint detection is with SAR atm.
Fascinating. So no such satellite data exists. Thanks for the insight, makes the linked write up much more satisfying.
Kind of crazy to think that there are almost half as many buildings as people and yet me and my wife can't even afford the deposit to buy a single one on a mortgage after 10 years of saving, hustling hard, taught myself to code, got a university degree, worked in the tech sector, near the forefront of all the hot tech tends... Meanwhile, all this time, I'm told I'm privileged. I must be the victim of some kind of massive PsyOp conspiracy.