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Hot, hot, hot...🧊😌 (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/aww@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

In a strictly technical sense if you source ice in space from something like a comet and bring it down slowly with something like a space elevator it would help a tiny bit. However the amount of effort would be much better spent on either fixing things we are doing or going for one of the crazier but valid options like building satellites that shade something like 1-2% of sunlight etc.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Hmm, not actually true, but I only know this because there is a what-if covering this exact scenario:

    https://what-if.xkcd.com/162/

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Kinda. The exact quote for it being lowered down without heating up from reentry is "the added ice would cool the water down by only about a millionth of a degree" But yea essentially useless in the big scheme of things.

    The ice would be massively better used in space habitats or terraforming other places.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You stopped reading too soon:

    Unfortunately, comets would affect the Earth's temperature in another way. In addition to dust and water, they contain a small amount of CO2, which would be released into the atmosphere as the comet melted. This CO2 would change Earth's radiation balance

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I recently saw a video where someone had done the math if the sun output literally 1% less energy (or I guess shading 1% that reaches earth would be the same) and it would literally throw us into another ice age lol, and apparently models say that even that wouldn't fix the damage done to our oceans and it would actually speed up acidification.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Sounds like we would have to build satellites with shades that would be selectively turned off and on as needed and only for specific parts of the globe like the overheating cities. Might be able to have some interesting effects forcing weather patterns that way.

    However as you say none of that helps the ocean acidification and that is terrifying.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Might be easier to put a space elevator up and set up an “ice cycler” that has a shitload of radiators and goes out in a highly elliptical orbit, that’s maybe carefully shadowed by earth. The ice is then transferred to the top of the elevator and exchanged for more water.

    By ice cycler, I mean a vehicle sort of like a mars cycler, that, uh, doesn’t go to mars….

    Or even better, use something like a space fountain. Using actual water as the kinetic mass. (lol.)

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