CHANGING A CLIMATE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 19 June 1926, Page 9

CHANGING A CLIMATE

“ENGLAND A RIVIERA” : ENGINEER’S AMAZING ’ PLAN 48£SBLi'tu*r.'' . nn ling land a. Riviera ; palm trees in Loudon parks, and mild breezes blowing where now the chill March winds rage; duck- suits in summer and light clothes all the winter through ! Theso are some of the tempting visions conjured up for sufferers from the British -climate by the scheme of M. Dimitri Joanovici, a Rumanian engineer, who holds that Britain should not take its climate lying down. sA Man the Engineer has changed the face of the earth for his purposes, making ships to ride above house-tops, cataracts to hew and draw for him like whipped slaves, and the wilderness to' blossom as the rose, so may lie come to regulate the temperature jof the winds to his taste and turn the rain on and off as with a tap. This is the fascinating Jules Vcrnesque picture which M. Joanovici paints for us, says an English paper. Far away among boundless wastes of' Northern Canada is a neck of water, eight miles wide, between two desolate ’shores, which bears the sinister name of Fury ami Hoi la'Strait, It is through this narrow gap that the ice-laden waters of the Arctic pour into Hudson Bay, and it is from Hudson Bay in its turn that the famous Labrador Current flows, hurling icebergs in tho path of trans-Atlantic liners, closing tho St. Lawrence River in winter with bars and bolls of frost and making New York at certain months of the year the coldest capital in the world.

WHERE TWO CURRENTS MEET It,does more than that, however. The Gulf Stream—climatically Britain’s only friend in the world, is met by tho Labrador Current off the coast’ oi’ the United States, and as a result of the meeting its warmth is considerably reduced. If tho Labrador Current ceased to flow, or if it were not the icy current that it is now, the winds which are heated by the Gulf Stream and which eventually make •’ England i tolerable to live in would be warmer than they are now. "Good, then!” proposes M. Joanovici. “Let us turn this Labrador Current into a flow of water at tho temperature of the Atlantic and not the A retie Sea.' M short, let us build a dam across Fury and Hecla Strait and shut the door on the ice.” lo further this amazing project M. Joanovici has recently.visited ’ London to confer with' the High Commissioner for Canada, the Admiralty and the representatives of the States with seaboards on the Baltic. For lie slates that ho believed that not only would his nlan have the effect of opening the St. Lawrence to aII-year-round navigation and of effecting an improvement on the climate of the British Isles, ’but would also free the Baltic Sea. from ice during the winter. The gigantic and far-reaching results prophesied for such a comparatively small undertaking may well seem to nlace it in the region of fanatsy rather than of practical engineering. But, as a well-known Norwegian naval officer with unrivalled Arctic experience remarked, when it was outlined to him, Some' sohemes'that seemed mad to the world eventually turned out to be of great practical importance, and this dam may bo one of them. ‘ AN ENGINEERING PROBLEM '“There are grave difficulties in the 'way of constructing the dam,” added tho engineer. ‘ L/nave seen Arctic ice as it pours down through- those channels between the islands of Northern Canada, and I know tho enormous pressure it exerts. Would it be possible to make a dam strung enough to resist the attack of millions of tons'of ice? That is ono point for the engineers to settle, ‘More ‘important still is. the question as to whether or not the Labrador Current comes in its entirety from Hudson Bay. There is not enough data to settle that yet. We know so little about the movements of water in the Arctic seas that it is quite possible that the main source of the cold water owing into the North Atlantic and meeting the Gulf Stream is the Davis Strait, off the coast of Greenland.” M. Joanoviei’s scheme is not the first one in which the imagination of a man has been fired by the prospect of finding the key to the British climate in the islands and straits of Arctic Ctinada. j Such a scheme, elaborately worked out by a Munich scientist, lias been for some years among the archives at Canaria House, the offices of tho Canadian High Commissioner in London. Visionary as the scheme may be, it commends itself to all who have even endured the rigours'of a, British spring. The prospect of an England bathed at all seasons in the sun-kissed winds of a Gulf Stream which has not suffered from uonfact with Polar currents is too alluring to be. quickly cast aside.

A METEOROLOGIST’S VISION “An almost Mediterranean warmth,” raid a prominent meteorologist with enthusias, “with the chance of passing some of our present rainfall over to Continental countries because of the rise in our temperature, and increased fertility and a wider range of h'omcgrown fruits ! These would all come to Britain if we could induce the Gulf Stream to add a few degrees to its temperature. ‘Summer sports in winter, bathing all the year round foi .everyone instead of only for human Polar bears who indulge, at present ! These we should have along with the inconvenience of hav.® mg to rebuild our houses and otherwise adjust our conditions of living to suit the new climaic.”