At night, deserts can be mighty cold. This is surprising to many since they're often mighty hot in the day. This happens because while facing away from the sun, thermal radiation emits into the cold abyss of space. Deserts are rarely covered with cloud, so the radiative process is particularly efficient.

Deserts are usually low in water, which is right up there as a thermal buffer, particularly when it comes to changing states from solid to liquid to gas. Deserts also famously lack outdoor ice skating facilities, which makes Canadians sad, and has detrimental effects on the development of grass-roots curling teams in rural Nevada.

To solve the pressing global issues of sad Canadians and curling facility supply, I recommend the construction of enormous Ice rinks in the deserts of the world.

Following the construction of large shallow pools, enormous compressors work throughout the night* to freeze the pools solid. This process removes tremendous heat energy from the water and radiates it into space since the refrigeration equipment features space-aimed parabolic condensers.

Come sunrise, happy Canadians may skate between nascent curling teams on fresh level ice. By early afternoon, however, the ice will become unskatable, mostly melted from a hard day's heat absorption.

Overnight, we repeat the process, beaming ever more heat into space solving all the important problems. I should also insist that the parabolic emitters be steerable. Once a few hundred GigaWatts of emitters are installed, we could focus all the thermal energy at will, like a big environmental Death star. This would be useful should the Borg turn up. Granted it relies on them staying on the night side of the planet, but their waxy pale pallor is clear evidence that this will be the case.

*Economy 7 price plan recommended.
-- bs0u0155, Feb 15 2019

It's all about tilting at windmills Don_20Quixote_20Global_20Cooling
[theircompetitor, Feb 16 2019]

Poor Will.
-- pocmloc, Feb 15 2019


You'll get more ice for your dollar by rolling over the ocean* a giant white tarp in the daytime.

*choose a patch you don't care about much
-- Voice, Feb 16 2019


Maybe make it mandatory that all plastic produced will be white or silver, so when it lands in the ocean it will increase our albedo a bit.

Sorry, can't help your libido though...
-- RayfordSteele, Feb 16 2019


yup, the world needs more skating rinks in hot deserts.
-- FlyingToaster, Feb 16 2019


Another way to skate in the desert would be to use daytime light energy to fuse sands which can then be polished to a highly, ball bearing, slippery surface.
-- wjt, Feb 16 2019


What we ought to do is to find all the bald people in the world, and offer them a few dollars per hour to stand outdoors on tarmac when it's sunny.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 16 2019


Could we aim it at Mars?

Could we set this up on Venus and aim it at Mars?
-- notexactly, Feb 16 2019


The question being, can shape be hot or cold? Can different shapes be constructed, at the correct scale, to help cooling processes?
-- wjt, Feb 16 2019



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