An Intentional Climate Change Story

(A literary interlude)

Apropos of our preceding post, this blog has unearthed (so to speak) an ingenious plan to improve our climate. In a little-publicized public auction held by the current administration (that not even the Sierra Club got wind of) The NPPA (North Polar Practical Association) has purchased territories north of the 84th parallel. That entrepreneurial organization plans to make good use of this apparently useless, icy, and uninhabitable region by, more easily than ever, extracting its still relatively untapped wealth of fossil fuels and precious minerals. The key is easy access to this treasure-for-the-taking. To that end, the NPPA plan to transform the polar region into a temperate zone — by reducing the earth's axial tilt, which is currently an inconvenient 23º 26'.

Those who might react with fear based on squeamishness about "unnatural" change need not worry. The tilt of the earth's rotational axis is currently decreasing anyway. This kind of change in axial tilt is a completely natural phenomenon. The NPPA just seek to hurry it along — to do their part in meeting our growing need for fuel and minerals.

In tropical Africa the NPPA have forged the greatest cannon ever devised. On the scheduled day (which this blog pledged not to reveal), the massive armament, hidden deep in a mountain shaft, will be fired. Its recoil will effect the tilt adjustment. This has been precisely calculated by the eminent scientist, J.T. Maston, whose computational wizardry is legendary. Who can doubt the result?

Jules Verne can. According to his 1889 "Sans dessus dessous" ("Topsy-turvy" or "The Purchase of the North Pole"), nothing happened. As it turned out, Maston miscalculated. Dropping three zeros in the measure of the earth's circumference (40,000 m. instead of 40,000 km.) at the outset of his computation made him overestimate the axial effect by 12 orders of magnitude (http://www.lesia.obspm.fr/~crovisier/JV/verne_SD.html).

A silly error base on a simple mixup in units in 19th century fiction based on now-surpassed computational technology? Or the same kind of very human error with which we now lose $125 million space ships (http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metrication/mystery_of_orbiter_crash_solved.htm)?