Can't we use liquid N as a catalyst to consolidate and build the ice caps? Neg fdbk loop vers global warming?

Question

Liquid nitrogen is a cryogen. Remember Demolition Man?

Our icecaps hold CO2 which will continue to be released in the atmosphere increasing the rate of warming and subsequent climate change. By preventing further melt, we stop the trend and instead build the ice to reflect more solar radiation back into space, thus creating a negative feedback loop which helps us fight global warming and the dangerous associated climte change.

By consolidating the ice we also keep our coastal cities from becoming flooded indefinitely. The majority of the US population lives on the coast, the displacement of citizens alone would be a serious blow to our economy. A significant amount of the biodiversity on Earth is in Hawaii.

Answer 1

you used a lot of big words there, but im gona say that the process of extracting and packaging liquid nitrogen creates more problems than your plan would prevent

Answer 2

Are we so conceited that we think we know ANYTHING about the grand cycles of the Earth? Have we amassed so much knowledge in our two centuries of record keeping that we dare suggest how much polar ice is the proper amount of polar ice? Our knowledge is so insignificant as to be laughable. If there are hard times ahead from climate change (either warmer or colder…there is no consensus even on that point), our economic resources would be put to much better use planning and adapting, not trying feebly to outwit nature. Only an arrogant fool would think otherwise.

Answer 3

BZR points out some of the impracticalities of the method using LN2, but I think what you're really getting at is increasing the albedo of Earth and it might be possible to do that in other ways that are less energy intensive.  Perhaps using a highly reflective dust that could be scattered on land surfaces or in the air as an aerosol might work.  Attempts such as these fall into the category of "Geoengineering" and one such scheme has even been published by the Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen.

Answer 4

The simple answer is no.

The more complex answer is Liquid nitrogen boils at -196c putting it on something warmer that, like ice that is only ~-20-30 would cause the liquid N to boil away with little effect on the ice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost...

Answer 5

The ice caps have a negligible amount of CO2.

The northern cap does trap a lot of methane that is far more important than the trapped CO2.

Don't spend a lot of fossil fuel or even nuclear power compressing nitrogen to cool the arctic, however. There is lots of very cold air way up high above the antarctic, if we can just pump some of that down to the glaciers, we should be able to stabilize them.

However, right now the snow falling on Antarctica is maintaining that continent's mass of ice. The large volume of water vapor over the oceans keeps blowing over Antarctica as snow, but at the same time it appears to be taking that water out of the oceans.

Oceans may not do much rising as long as most of the antarctic coastal precipitation is still snow.

Answer 6

It takes energy to refrigerate nitrogen to the point of being a liquid. Unfortunately, the 'coldness' in liquid nitrogen is outweighed by the heat produced in using energy to refrigerate the nitrogen.

For the same reason, your refrigerator can't cool your house... it cools a smaller area by moving the heat to a larger area.

If we used liquid N to consolidate the icecaps, the heat released from trying to refrigerate all that N would actually cause the earth to warm even more. So... no... cool idea but it wouldn't work.

The key is to adjust to possible consequences while we have time and slow the release of carbon emissions into the atmosphere through legislation and scientific research so hopefully we can buy enough time to survive until science has reached a point where we can reverse the effects of global warming.

Answer 7

no.  for several reasons.

- it just takes too much energy to create liquid nitrogen.

- it can only be created in small amounts, and thus cannot be dispersed all over the ice caps.

and, even if those were possible, CO2 is fairly dispersed within the ice, so that only small amounts would be stabilized.

almost none, in comparison with the CO2 released by fossil fuel use.