Dear Olivier,
First I want to apologize to Jim Fleming. He pointed out to me that he
discusses the same passages of /American Claimant/ is his wonderful 2010
book /Fixing the Sk//y /(which all of you must have read already, and if
not, you need to read) on pp. 27-30. So although I had forgotten that I
read it (I'm old), it must have still been stuck in my brain somewhere.
Nevertheless, I did really rediscover it by reading the book, and it is
still worth reminding us all of it.
Second, the part about geoengineering is in the main text of /American
Claimant/, at the end. And for the first part, I tried Google
Translate? How did they do?
Aucune météo ne sera trouvée dans ce livre. Il s'agit d'une tentative de
tirer un livre sans temps. Il s'agit de la première tentative du genre
dans la littérature fictive, cela peut s'avérer un échec, mais cela a
semblé valoir la peine pour un casse-cou de l'essayer, et l'auteur était
juste d'humeur. Beaucoup de lecteurs qui voulaient lire un conte
jusqu'au bout n'ont pas pu le faire en raison de retards dus au temps.
Rien ne brise les progrès d'un auteur comme devoir s'arrêter toutes les
quelques pages pour perturber la météo. Ainsi, il est clair que les
intrusions persistantes du temps sont mauvaises à la fois pour le
lecteur et pour l'auteur. Bien sûr, le temps est nécessaire à un récit
de l'expérience humaine. Cela est concédé. Mais il doit être placé là où
il ne gênera pas; où il n'interrompra pas le flux du récit. Et ce
devrait être la meilleure météo qui soit, et non une météo amateur
ignorante et de mauvaise qualité. La météo est une spécialité
littéraire, et aucune main inexpérimentée ne peut en faire un bon
article. Le présent auteur ne peut faire que quelques insignifiants
genres ordinaires de temps, et il ne peut pas faire ceux qui sont très
bons. Il a donc semblé plus sage d'emprunter la météo nécessaire à
l'ouvrage à des experts qualifiés et reconnus, bien entendu. Cette météo
se trouvera dans la partie arrière du livre, à l'écart. Voir l'annexe.
Le lecteur est prié de se retourner et de se servir de temps en temps au
fur et à mesure de son cheminement.
Alan
On 5/6/2022 6:13 AM, olivier boucher wrote:
Hi Alan,
It would be a nice fit to our "le temps des écrivains" section of our
three-monthly meteorological journal.
See an example here:
https://lameteorologie.fr/issues/2017/98/meteo_2017_98_52 The section
reproduces selected writings on the weather.
I checked and there is a French translation of the American Claimant,
unfortunately the foreword and annex were not translated at the time.
All the best,
Olivier
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*De: *"Alan Robock" <[email protected]>
*À: *"geoengineering" <[email protected]>
*Envoyé: *Jeudi 5 Mai 2022 22:07:28
*Objet: *[geo] Mark Twain was the first geoengineer
Dear All,
In these days with so much troubling news in the air, I thought some
humor would help.
It turns out that Mark Twain was the first geoengineer, as explained
in his book /American Claimant/, written in 1891. After beginning the
book with this hilarious explanation about weather,
“No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a
book through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind
in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth
the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in
just the mood. Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not
able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing
breaks up an author’s progress like having to stop every few pages to
fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of
weather are bad for both reader and author. Of course weather is
necessary to a narrative of human experience. That is conceded. But it
ought to be put where it will not be in the way; where it will not
interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it ought to be the ablest
weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality, amateur weather.
Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a
good article of it. The present author can do only a few trifling
ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good. So it has
seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the book from
qualified and recognized experts—giving credit, of course. This
weather will be found over in the back part of the book, out of the
way. See Appendix. The reader is requested to turn over and help
himself from time to time as he goes along.”
he ends the book with geoengineering. Speaking is Colonel Sellers to
his partner, describing his money-making scheme:
“This grand new idea of mine—the sublimest I have ever conceived, will
save me whole, I am sure. I am leaving for San Francisco this moment,
to test it, by the help of the great Lick telescope. Like all of my
more notable discoveries and inventions, it is based upon hard,
practical scientific laws; all other bases are unsound and hence
untrustworthy. In brief, then, I have conceived the stupendous idea of
reorganizing the climates of the earth according to the desire of the
populations interested. That is to say, I will furnish climates to
order, for cash or negotiable paper, taking the old climates in part
payment, of course, at a fair discount, where they are in condition to
be repaired at small cost and let out for hire to poor and remote
communities not able to afford a good climate and not caring for an
expensive one for mere display. My studies have convinced me that the
regulation of climates and the breeding of new varieties at will from
the old stock is a feasible thing. Indeed I am convinced that it has
been done before; done in prehistoric times by now forgotten and
unrecorded civilizations. Everywhere I find hoary evidences of
artificial manipulation of climates in bygone times. Take the glacial
period. Was that produced by accident? Not at all; it was done for
money. I have a thousand proofs of it, and will someday reveal them.
“I will confide to you an outline of my idea. It is to utilize the
spots on the sun—get control of them, you understand, and apply the
stupendous energies which they wield to beneficent purposes in the
reorganizing of our climates. At present they merely make trouble and
do harm in the evoking of cyclones and other kinds of electric storms;
but once under humane and intelligent control this will cease and they
will become a boon to man. I have my plan all mapped out, whereby I
hope and expect to acquire complete and perfect control of the
sun-spots, also details of the method whereby I shall employ the same
commercially; but I will not venture to go into particulars before the
patents shall have been issued. I shall hope and expect to sell
shop-rights to the minor countries at a reasonable figure and supply a
good business article of climate to the great empires at special
rates, together with fancy brands for coronations, battles and other
great and particular occasions. There are billions of money in this
enterprise, no expensive plant is required, and I shall begin to
realize in a few days—in a few weeks at furthest.
“I would like you to provide a proper outfit and start north as soon
as I telegraph you, be it night or be it day. I wish you to take up
all the country stretching away from the north pole on all sides for
many degrees south, and buy Greenland and Iceland at the best figure
you can get now while they are cheap. It is my intention to move one
of the tropics up there and transfer the frigid zone to the equator. I
will have the entire Arctic Circle in the market as a summer resort
next year, and will use the surplusage of the old climate, over and
above what can be utilized on the equator, to reduce the temperature
of opposition resorts. But I have said enough to give you an idea of
the prodigious nature of my scheme and the feasible and enormously
profitable character of it.”
This is followed by the weather appendix, with quotes from various
other authors of the time.
--
Alan
Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University E-mail:
[email protected]
14 College Farm Road http://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 ☮ https://twitter.com/AlanRobock
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