Page 52 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

In spite of these warnings, commercial interests and the president of the
United States push for the completion of the Panama Canal (actually completed
in 1914 at a cost of $400 million). In the book, the excavation commences in
1909 and triggers a natural disaster. A massive series of earthquakes and tidal
waves strikes Colón. The isthmus sinks, opening up a passage between the
Atlantic and the Pacific that had been closed for 3 million years. Subsidence in
Panama results in volcanic eruptions and the catastrophic convergence and eleva-
tion of the Caribbean islands. The Earth shudders, the poles “wobble,” and the
Gulf Stream, “no longer turned aside by impassible walls of land, triumphantly
[sweeps] into the Pacific,” opening a “new chapter in the history of the world and
the history of nations” (92–99). In an understated response, President Theodore
Roosevelt is quoted as saying, “It seems likely that this physical alteration may
mean a change in the climate of the older portion of the earth” and an end of “the
glory of England” (121–123).
With the Gulf Stream now warming the Pacific coast of the United States,
Europe descends into a new ice age as the North Atlantic cools dramatically and
devastating snowstorms pummel the region. Like a scene out of the film The Day
After Tomorrow (2004), Reykjavik lies deserted. In Edinburgh, snow “fill[s] up
the deep moat of the Princes’ Street gardens [and] round[s] the rugged edges
and wandering parapets of the Citadel” (131–136). Europe trembles “with a new
apprehension” as markets panic and moral depravity sets in. London is evacuated.
As the savage Scots move south, the English seek refuge in their colonies in Asia
and Australia. “Heat is life, cold is death. . . . our civilization, the civilization of
Europe, has overstepped the limits of climatic permission” (187, 295). All these
consequences were triggered by a macro-engineering project that went against
the advice of the geologists.

rock the earth

World peace as a consequence of the demands of a mad scientist is the theme of
The Man Who Rocked the Earth (1915), by Arthur Train and Robert Williams
Wood. With most of the world wracked by war, a mysterious message arrives by
wireless from the inventor PAX: “To all mankind—I am the dictator—of human
destiny—Through the earth’s rotation—I control day and night—summer and
winter—I command the—cessation of hostilities and—the abolition of war
upon the globe.” 13
To demonstrate his resolve and his power over the elements, PAX slows the
Earth’s rotation by five minutes; makes it snow in Washington, D.C., in August;

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