Cheap cold air from the atmosphere

This is factually untrue.

I had a similar idea about refrigerators. Put a pipe from the refrigerator to outdoors, and if the outdoors air is colder than the air inside the fridge, bring that air in to keep the fridge cold. Of course the pipe would need to have a screen on the end to keep insects/animals out and a valve to cut off the air flow if the cold air isn’t needed.

Or you can just use the outdoors as a refrigerator more directly. I always wait for a nice cold day before defrosting my freezer (so I can leave everything outside while I do it), and my grandmother used to store holiday leftovers in the enclosed-porch front room that was always cold that time of year.

Yup.

My attached garage makes a damn fine walk-out refrigerator if the outside temp is below 20 degrees. It becomes a walk-out deep freeze if the outside temp is below -10 degrees.

Yes, a number of crackpot notions were later hailed as genius ideas.

An immense number, though, just stayed as crackpot notions.

This. Most of the reason air is colder at altitude is due to adiabatic cooling as the pressure drops.
In the summer, the warm ground heats the air, and there is a layer a few hundred feet thick that is significantly warmer than the adiabatic lapse rate. This is unstable, and gives rise to thermals, cumulus clouds, thunderstorms. After a clear night, the ground can cool the air near the ground to well below the adiabatic lapse rate, creating an inversion that makes things uber stable, and traps pollutants near the ground.

lol that’s funny.. is that general or only where I’m concerned? :confused:
virtually yours

That’s only up to a certain altitude .. beyond that it will cool at the usual 4.7 (ratio) per 1000 ft. the air up higher would be too thin to get warm. no?
virtually yours

It’d probably be easier to stick turbines on blimps to take advantage of high altitude winds and use the electricity to run the AC. I remember seeing designs for those a long time ago, dunno if they ever made one.