If we build more ice hockey rinks, can we stop global warming? - The answer.

So, a while back I did my yearly pilgrimage to my wife's grade one class, where I did my usual liquid nitrogen thing (freeze stuff, smash it, make ice cream, scare young kids with overly large safety goggles, etc), and as usual I was open to all manner of questions in my role as a scientist type (my wife actually refers to me as Dave Ng the Science King in the class, a moniker that hasn't caught on in my graduate level classes).

And I'm always amazed at how much these 6 year olds pick up from what they hear and see in their day to day.  Anyway, one of the kids asked this really cool question, silly really, but cool nevertheless. So it got me thinking about possible ideas to talk science by developing a science piece around a bizarre question. Anyway, here it is:

Q:
If we build more ice hockey rinks, can we stop global warming? ~6 year old boy

A:
To get to the bottom of this, one would need to focus on a country like Canada, where I'll wager that the hockey rinks per capita is tops in the world.  From this, we would note that generally speaking, Canada is, indeed, a pretty cold place - a point made all the more pertinent when one compares average temperatures between Canadian and European cities of equal latitude.  Here, it's clear that those European cities (London for instance), have comparatively much milder weather lending credence to the hockey rink theory.  Of course, there are other potential explanations out there, particularly those that center around the warming of Europe by wind and thermohaline mediated circulation, a phrase referring to the conveyor like global movement of ocean water as driven by wind, the water's temperature, and the water's density (due to things like salt content and melting glaciers), but to my knowledge those terms have never even once made it on a game show, so how real could they be?

Furthermore, this nation of many hockey rinks is one of the worst offenders in greenhouse gas emissions, consistently ranking, for the last 10 or so years, in the top 3 (of 36 queried countries). Since, man-made greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are evidently one of the prime factors in global warming (evident because carbon dioxide has been referred to during Jeopardy, Deal, No Deal, and I think also the Wheel of Fortune), we should expect a much warmer Canada. However, this is not the case and so, undoubtedly, this observation strongly suggests a beneficial cooling effect resulting from having this bevy of ice hockey rinks.  To which, all I can say is well done Derek!

No doubt, your question suggests that you also caught the wondrous irony of this year's Stanley Cup final being contested between the Edmonton Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes.  In things of such global consequence, who knew the NHL had such influence?

(The funny thing is, true to the inclinations of a 6 year old, the kid followed up his question by asking 'what is global warming?'