Let the movement's motto be: think globally, act tangentially

NEWTON'S OPTIC:HACKERS HAVE uncovered the following e-mail exchange between two climatologists at the University of East Antrim. Please note that this may only be a computer model of an e-mail exchange between two climatologists at the University of East Antrim, in which case it proves nothing.

From: Rupert

Just back from the Vancouver conference, terrible jet-lag. Not looking forward to next month’s trip to Tokyo. Which reminds me – how’s the stratospheric CO2 study going?

From: Jeremy

Badly. According to the latest results, Earth will be hotter than Venus before our funding runs out, which is going to be tricky to fit to the data. We need to re-examine our assumptions and project some new trends over the next decade of our careers. Any suggestions?

From: Rupert

I think “global slowing” has potential. The Earth’s rotation is slowing down due to tidal friction with the Moon. If it continues unchecked days will become noticeably longer, destroying civilisation as we know it. Levels of tiredness will rise, calendar firms will go under and confused badgers will wander into town and bite people on the ankles.

From: Jeremy

True, but without a man-made cause there’s no moral dimension. The Earth spins west to east – we need to find some sort of human activity that exerts a net force in the opposite direction.

From: Rupert

I hear love makes the world go round.

From: Jeremy

Please, this is a serious matter. How about shipping? A lot of supertankers and container ships come west fully loaded and go back to Asia empty. The extra force required to propel them westwards is counter-rotational, and cumulative, so it doesn’t matter if it’s too small to measure. We could call it “the wheel-house effect”.

From: Rupert

Perfect – you’ve got oil, globalisation, consumer guilt and fear of China all in there. Don’t forget that developing countries will suffer most from imperceptibly lengthening days, because they have cheaper watches. But we need scope for personal redemption if we want popular appeal. What can ordinary people do to stop man-made global slowing?

From: Jeremy

Anything that exerts an eastwards acceleration at a tangent to the equator – running on the spot, blowing really hard. Let the movement’s motto be: “Think globally, act tangentially”.

From: Rupert

We should have some technical solutions as well to get business involved. Maybe rotation-neutral sailing ships or rotation-offsetting ships that always sail east. Or we could just go for the traditional giant mirrors in orbit. I’ll get the students to knock up a graphic.

From: Jeremy

What other well-funded areas of research do you foresee opening up in this exciting new academic field?

From: Rupert

I do believe there’ll be opportunities in vertigo biology, enormous horizontally mounted rocketry and the extremely accurate measurement of the Earth’s rotation, or “precision geochronometrology”, as we’ll be calling it on the grant application. We should organise a conference on the subject, somewhere nice and warm.

From: Jeremy

Might I recommend Spinalonga?

From: Rupert

Which just leaves one little problem. Because tidal friction is also pushing the moon away, the rate of global slowing is itself slowing. What do we say about that?

From: Jeremy

Denier!