Fifty years ago Freeman Dyson took a bite out of the Energy Crisis by insulating an unused Olympic swimming pool with foam and plowing it full of winter snow. Come summer, circulating chilled water from the thousand ton slush pond through the radiators of the Institute for Advanced Study quietly did the job of a hundred noisy air conditioners.
Fast forward a half century and a degree of warming to Ladakh, the Little Tibet east of Baltistan best known for Red Hat lamas, snow leopards and Yeti footprints, where local ingenuity has created cheap drought insurance by making ice all winter to augment the diminishing glacial meltwater supply. Uphill springs feed downhill penstocks, pressurizing water to the level needed to fountain water a hundred feet into the frigid nighttime air. The conical ice cascade, designed to minimize melting when the sun is high, has incidentally created a new Buddhist art form— the Ice Stupa:
