this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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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.
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