Can the ocean be cooled by human effort using existing cooling devices?

Answer 1

You freeze to death in the ocean, why would you want to cool it down?

Answer 2

No. This is impossible, even theoretically, because such a device (if wholly contained on the Earth) would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says any process, in any closed system, can only increase heat - never lower it.

The key to understanding this is the phrase "closed system". If you consider the Earth as a closed system (this would surely be the case for any machine that could be built with current technology), then any machine built to cool the ocean would cause a greater amount of heating elsewhere on the planet!

A cooling machine is essentially just a heat pump - it pumps heat from an area which requires cooling (inside a house for example), to an area to which we don't mind adding heat (outside our house).

The only way such a machine could, even theoretically, be constructed, would be to put the exhaust part of the machine into space, and of course this would be impossible with any technology in the foreseeable future.

Answer 3

Yes, at least a little bit, but where do you think the heat removed from the ocean to cool it would go?

Dave, you are right as far as it goes, but the question was "can we cool the ocean?" not "can we cool the entire system?" We can certainly cool the ocean, but it will raise the temperature somewhere else.

Answer 4

For all intents and purposes - no.

The oceans have a combined volume of approx 1.3 billion km³, that's roughly 200 million m³ for every person on the planet. To put that into everyday context, there's enough water in the oceans for every person on the planet to fill a bathtub for every second of their lives.

With such a vast amount of water to go at it's impossible to cool it by any appreciable amount.

Technically, every drop of hot or cold water added to the oceans is going to make a difference, it's just that the difference will be so small as to be immeasurable.

Answer 5

The oceans have been cooling for the last few years. And of course there will be armies of scientists attempting to explain away the cooling as a data acquisition error because it does agree with climate model projections.

Answer 6

Yes, if we toss all the ice from our refrigerators, we may be able to cool the oceans down 1 deg over the next 100 years. This is the same rate the planet is supposedly warming.

Answer 7

Yes. Use the existing space shuttle to carry existing reflective mylar blankets into a known geosynchronus orbit to block some of the Sun's energy from reaching Earth and her oceans.

You did say existing, not practical.

Answer 8

Could you use a spoon to scoop the water from the Ocean?
It is humanly impossible technologically and where would get the money to pay for it? It would be prohibitably expensive.

Answer 9

no, try again.