Deliciously ironic that we are warming the environment by making those blocks of ice.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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We can just drop an ice block into the ocean to cool things down again ~/s~
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.
Hmm, not actually true, but I only know this because there is a what-if covering this exact scenario:
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.
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
Right you are I missed that. So comets at least aren't workable.
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.
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.
Building satellites that shade, or adding reflective chemicals to high atmosphere clouds , would also limit plant growth, you know that natural co2 sucking machine
Might be easier to put a space elevator up and set up an βice cyclerβ that has a shitload of radiators and goes out in a highly elliptical orbit, thatβs 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, doesnβt go to marsβ¦.
Or even better, use something like a space fountain. Using actual water as the kinetic mass. (lol.)
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?
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?).
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.
It's indeed not neutral. It always takes work to move heat from a cold area to a hotter area, so there's always energy (and therefore heat) being added every cycle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump_and_refrigeration_cycle
I think heat pumps solve this somewhat.
ice makers/fridges are basicly inside out heat pumps
heat pump technology is not the same as refrigeration. it's the same difference as heat pump versus air conditioning
Heat pumps and air conditioners both work off of the refrigeration cycle. A heat pump is essentially an air conditioner that has a reversing valve to allow the refrigerant to flow the opposite way.
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
my dads cat loves doing that to the kitchen chairs, I don't have a great photo but this is the closest I have
It's really cold here if, you know ππ, anyone wants to give me a red panda...?