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[–] 50 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

Deliciously ironic that we are warming the environment by making those blocks of ice.

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  • [–] 61 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    We can just drop an ice block into the ocean to cool things down again /s

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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 β€œice 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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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    hypothetically if I attach a solar panel or windmill thing to an ice maker then toss the ice in the ocean, would it make the world cooler or warmer?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I think very, very slightly warmer, for solar panels. The solar panel captures energy that's hitting the earth and would otherwise partially heat it up, and to some degree reflect back into space.

    Since the energy would normally heat up, if you spend it doing refrigeration instead, it'll ultimately produce the same amount of heat from energy losses - you can't produce more energy than you have coming in. If I'm correct about that then, the only increase in warming you'd be getting would be from the small amount of light that would otherwise reflect into space, but was instead captured by the solar panel.

    No idea how this works out with wind turbines, since the wind has to be getting energy from somewhere and putting it somewhere, but no idea if it ends up dissipating as heat (from friction?).

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I don't know. I'm not sure if the refrigeration cycle is neutral. Even if we ignore the energy source, creating cold also creates heat, so that ice might just about counteract the heat generated to create it.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think heat pumps solve this somewhat.

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    heat pump technology is not the same as refrigeration. it's the same difference as heat pump versus air conditioning

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  • I mean, a refrigerator uses a heat pump to cool itself. An air conditioner is a heat pump, it's just moving heat from inside to out instead of outside to in. It's specialized for it's purpose ofc, I doubt you could just install a window mounted air conditioner backwards and have an efficient heating solution, but they're atill using the same core process, just turned around

    Sorry to umm akshually you

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    my dads cat loves doing that to the kitchen chairs, I don't have a great photo but this is the closest I have

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    It's really cold here if, you know πŸ‘‰πŸ‘ˆ, anyone wants to give me a red panda...?

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