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Lumifer comments on Crazy Ideas Thread - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: James_Miller 18 June 2016 12:30AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 20 June 2016 03:30:55PM *  1 point [-]

The problem is efficiency. Basically, it's (much) more efficient to control the temperature locally at small scale rather than transfer heat over large distances.

There are some exceptions, e.g. geothermal can be very useful, see Iceland. I've seen mentions of trying to cool seaside cities with cold water pumped from the deep, but it's wildly more expensive than doing it the usual way.