The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

CAMPBELL'S MECHANISM 355
near the equator to the vicinity of a pole might produce
major increases in elevation. Finally, it would be necessary for
both poles to be so far away from the nearest land as to prevent
the growth of icecaps on any side, for an icecap formed
all on one side of a pole and at a considerable distance from
it would have a very great centrifugal effect proportionately
to its size. Campbell carried out a series of careful measurements
of the globe to find out how many possibilities actually
exist at the present time for the location of both poles in
water. He found that there is only one such position, where
one pole would be in the South Atlantic and the other in the
North Pacific between the Marshalls and the Carolines. But
the latter area, in the course of its displacement from its present
latitude to the vicinity of a pole, could easily be raised
above sea level.
It cannot be denied, despite this, that there exists a real
possibility that at various times during the history
of the
globe both poles have been, in fact, situated in oceanic areas.
Unquestionably, this would have resulted in the temporary
cessation of the formation of great polar icecaps, and there-
fore of displacements of the crust. However, there is no rea-
son to conclude that this would have meant a permanent
cessation of crust displacements. We must not forget that
Gold has suggested a mechanism by which a shift of 90 de-
grees in the positions of the poles could occur in periods of a
million years. In this way a period without crust displacement
could be ended by the gradual movement of a new land
area to a pole. It is even quite possible that the accumulation
of inequalities of mass within the crust itself, as the result of
erosion or of igneous processes, might eventually produce a
displacement without the agency of an icecap.
d. The question as to why the postulated centrifugal effect
has not prevented the accumulation of the icecap. One com-
mentator has pointed to the well-known fact that ice flows
outward in all directions from a central point or points,
through the effects of its own weight, and has argued that the
centrifugal effect should operate to make the icecap flow off