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Can't we make solar powered ice makers on a huge scale and just re freeze it?
by danschumann 7y ago
Can't we make solar powered ice makers on a huge scale and just re freeze it?
- maxxxxx 7y agoYou understand that a refrigerator puts out heat so in the end it’s a zero sum game?
- cookingrobot 7y agoNot exactly a zero-sum game because the earth isn’t a closed system. We’re constantly getting heat energy from the sun and radiating it back out into space at an equal rate. The composition of the atmosphere (greenhouse gasses) decides what equilibrium temperature will be. So if we had big refrigerators refreezing the arctic (without creating greenhouse gasses), they would put a ton of heat into the air but it would radiate away into space just like any other heat captured by the sun, and wouldn’t really affect the earth’s average temperature.
- maxxxxx 7y agoBy that thinking you could just cool down the air. No need to freeze the arctic.
- danschumann 7y agofreezing is white and reflects more
- keenmaster 7y agoThermal energy storage might be able to capture the waste heat. That’s assuming we can make such a massive amount of ice to begin with.
- maxxxxx 7y agoI think the scale of the effort would be way too big. Same probably for carbon sequestration. It’s just too much.
- danschumann 7y agoenergy will keep getting more efficient
- umvi 7y agoWhat you really need is a way to turn heat into some sort of long term energy storage. What you'd need is something like a thermal->chemical energy converter. You could even make it do something useful, like desalinate water. However, good luck pulling enough thermal energy from the air or ocean to have any significant effect on global climate.
- kabdib 7y agoI did a back-of-the-envelope calculation and was surprised how much ice a square meter of solar power can make in a day. But to scale ice making machinery to planetary capacity you'll probably need to use all the metal we've mined, ever. With this kind of massive industrial effort, it's probably cheaper to build big towers and get rid of excess heat by pumping it up and radiating it into space off the night side of the planet. You don't need to make ice, you just need to reduce global temperatures. You could accomplish the same thing with a shield in space to reduce insolation.
- baking 7y agoRegarding your radiating tower idea, wouldn't the radiation need to be in the visible light spectrum in order to avoid the greenhouse effect? Probably better to just do carbon capture to reset the greenhouse gas thermostat. But that still doesn't refreeze the ice which will require centuries of snowfall to build up the ice sheets again.