TO SHIFT THE NORTH POLE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3696, 4 December 1912, Page 7

TO SHIFT THE NORTH POLE.

BROOKLYN ENGINEER'S PLAN

A scheme to make Siberia a summer resort, start ice famines in Labrador, give Scotland an all-day summer with a temperature like Japan’s, change the climate of the Atlantic coast to one like that of Southern California, and melt all the ice on and around the North Pole and open it to gardening is outlined in the “New York Herald” (Paris edition). It is the work of Dir C. L. Piker, a Brooklyn engineer, who estimates the cost at £38,000,000. AH that is needed, lie states, is to build a jetty about 200 miles long across the shoals extending eastward from Newfoundland, near Cape Race. This would stop the Labrador Curj rent, whose cold is capable of making 2,000,000 tons of ice every second, from running right into the Gulf Stream, whose heat is equal to the burning of 2,000,000' tons of coal every minute. They meet- now on the Grand Banks, where the water is only about 250 feet deep. If such a jetty were-built, the Labrador current, coming down from the Arctic, would be turned eastward and would he sunk so far when the Gulf Stream met it that the latter warm, blue river of the* ocean would pass over the great cold river from the North Pole The warm Gulf Stream would continue in almost undiminished volume to the northward, and the Labrador Current would run a mile deep through the great depths of the Atlantic, making the torrid zone about the equator cooler, while the Gulf Stream would require onlv three months to> melt every inch of ice around the Pole.

Air Piker is a distinguished engineer and his scheme, fantastic thought it may appear, has commanded much attention.

No more icebergs in the steamship lanes, no more of such fogs as now prevail about the meeting of the cold and warm currents, storms reduced to a minimum, and the whole of the Eastern North America a garden of paradise with no great eold or heat are some of the results he foresees from building the jettv. Cape Hatteras. he believes, would disappear owing to the increased speed of the Gulf Stream xvhich he estimates won hi flow clos-w to the Jersev coast and inHdentellv redeuosit along the coast about 6.000.000 rmres of land.

The molting of the Arctic ice can, he estimates, would shift the equalising balance of the "lobe, and the then preponderating weight of the Antarctic ice can would make what is now + bs North Pole shift towards Northern Eurone. with the result of producing a. nightless summer in the area of &rotland without a dayless winter.