[SketchySeaBeast]

As others have pointed out, it's not even what energy you use where, it's the laws of thermodynamics, you can't make the system colder, you shuffle heat around, so that's gotta go somewhere. I don't care if you're using the natural power of lightning strikes, you gotta put that heat somewhere and if you're venting it out into the atmosphere I can tell you where it's going to end back up.

[ftxbro]

Isn't it possible to radiate heat into space, like with a directional radiator? Or are you saying that it is possible to do that, but it's not possible to convert heat in the atmosphere into radiant heat that goes out of a radiator without somehow generating more heat that goes into the earth?

[SketchySeaBeast]

I didn't consider a directional radiators. Maybe that's more possible, but still you'd need to move a huge portion of what the sun is hitting the earth with and reflect it back into space.

Looks like the oceans have been heating at a rate of ~0.5 - 1 W / m2[1], and there's 3.61e+14 m2 of ocean on the planet, so potentially we'd need to radiate 361,000,000,000,000 W into space just to break even (assuming we're not generating heat to move the heat)?

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/how_long_can_oceans_continue_...