For some time now a crack team of international plumbers have been looking into the issue of global moistening and have recently presented IPREC with their estimate. Working long and hard, sometimes staying behind till at least four-thirty on some days, and foregoing several tea breaks, they have come up with four possible plans to counter the problem.
Their first idea was to surround the Earth with a string of very powerful fan heaters, which would hopefully be sufficient to dry out the planet completely. Sadly, it has been pointed out that steam created by such a tactic would drastically alter the climate, giving rise to humid conditions in which disease would flourish. Also, fan heaters are notoriously expensive to run and no agreement has been reached about who is going to foot the bill. The final nail in the coffin came when it was realised that the kind of temperatures required for this to work effectively would have the additional side effect of cooking all mammalian life on the surface. This would be a bad thing.
Their second ingenious notion was to drill a massive hole at the North Pole - it doesn't have to be at the North Pole, it's just better for aesthetic reasons. They would then suck all the water out of the planet using a giant plunger, to be operated by a specially trained pneumatic badger called Cyril (this may be a typo). Although at first glance this would appear to be an elegant and popular idea, further calculations reveal that the pressure generated would be sufficient to turn the planet inside out. This would also be a bad thing.
Giant space mangle - put planet in - squeeze water out... You get the picture. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the Earth would spring back into shape. We could end up with a completely flat planet and things would inevitably roll off and be lost in space. Whilst there's no doubt that there are certain things that wouldn't be missed, it is generally felt that for the most part this would be a bad thing.
Plan four currently has the most support. It proposes the construction of two giant clamps, one in Peru, the other in China. These will be used to twist the planet in opposite directions, forcing out the excess water. It's a relatively simple process and the damage should be limited to just a few stretch marks in the Pacific Ocean and minor creasing in Western Africa. The plan has the added bonus of enjoying funding from Disney, who plan to collect the excess water in a giant bucket and use it to irrigate Mars so they can turn it into a theme park. Hollywood film star Bruce Willis has already been tipped to head the project, having already saved the planet on more than one occasion - once in that film with the big asteroid, and again in the one with the flying taxi and the woman who just wore little bit of string... which is probably no bad thing.
