Can't we just build a giant air conditioner and solve global warming that way?

Answer 1

You could try, but you'd still have to generate electricity to power the air conditioner, which leaves you creating more
greenhouse gases as you use fuel to produce the electricity.




Since February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol has cost
US$ 363,035,723,977
while potentially saving an undetectable
0.003764815 °C by the year 2050.

http://www.junkscience.com

Answer 2

Beleive it or not this has been considered, or at least something along similar lines.

One problem with air conditioners is that they only move heat from one place to another, they don't actually destroy heat or contain it some way. Plus, the motor to run the AC unit produces it's own heat so the net effect is a warming one.

What would be required is to move the heat out of Earth's atmosphere and this is the proposal that was suggested. Not so much by blowing heated air into outer space but by heat transference through a solid medium.

The drawback of any such system is one of scale and cost. Getting anything up to the edge of space is expensive, getting millions of 'air conditioning' units is prohibitively so. There are however other more practical and less expensive methods of combatting global warming that are being studied, the frontrunners in this field of geoengineering being those schemes that are looking at ways of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Answer 3

No because with every conversion of energy, energy is "lost" as heat. No matter how great an ac more heat than cool air will be produced. It's not a remedy, it exacerbates the problem.

Answer 4

good idea,

I suggest using a large area of solar powered CO2 fixing devices (most of North America, Amazon, Congo, Northern Europe, Indonesia should do it); reflective ice sheets at the poles; lots of water for recycling nutrients & absorbing pollutants and a circulating system to move the heat around; and build in redundancy & failsafes, and we would want it in a range of pretty colours

or we could just stop wrecking the system we have that has done all this for free for millenia (it also provides irrigation, stops soil errosion...)
but then that wouldn't cost the US anything and all their global corps that depend on the belief of infinite industrial growth on a finite planet would complain that it hurts them, poor little cry babies

Answer 5

Sure why not.

However, have you ever been idling in a car for quite a while...just sitting there, say, in traffic or something and notice the engine/oil temp on the rise? Have you ever had that happen? And how do you remedy this? Not by cranking up the AC, but turning on the heat.

Answer 6

I don't think so. Where would we get the energy to power that. Maybe if we had no energy loss from it, and used all green energy, we could attempt it, but I don't think it would be very energy efficient. What would help would be if everyone stopped using incandescent lightbulbs, around 90% of their energy is put off as heat, not light.

Answer 7

What do we do with the heat produced by the A/C unit? The unit outside has a fan that pulls heat off coils inside it.

Answer 8

are you for real with this question? you want a giant a.c. for outside to cool the earth. think about it.

Answer 9

Richard = dick for short
cranium = head
you Richard cranium

Answer 10

And then we can direct the vent towards a temperature sensor and Algore can claim global warming continues and please buy a credit.