Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1890-02-20
A WARM DEBATE.

New York Press.
General Greeley's theory will not do
He accounts for the phenomenal mild.
ness of our winter by saying that Sc
ries of storms sweeping across the con-
tinent in high latitudes have created
partial vacuums, to fill which warm
winds have come up from the South
That would account only for a success
ion of warm spells, but not for the al
most total absence of such severe cold
as used to be experienced every winter.
Besides, the whole civilized world, or
so much of it as lies in the Northern
Hemisphere, is basking for the most part
under exceptionally propitious skies.
No more will the Gulf Stream theory
do. The most careful and scientific
observations have failed to reveal any
change of location on the part of that
mighty and mysterious river that flows
in the ocean. For lack of some better
explanation we are almost compelled to
fall back upon the time-honored sug-
gestiOn that changes is taking place in
the actual relation of the earth to
the sun. 1t is not supposed, as
far as we are aware, that this planet
is drawing nearer to that center of light
and source of life, but that this end of
the globe on which we have the good
fortune to dwell, is tipping up, so as to
shift the plane of the ecliptic and bring
us a little more nearly under the suns
direct rays.
Two more or less plausible arguments
are made in support of this hypothesis,
and they curiously correspond, the one
to the other. 1t is alleged that the at
mosphere around the South Pole is GER
tainly growing colder. Tales of voy-
ayers reach our ears to the effect that a
vast and rapidly increasing continent
of thick-ribbed ice is forming in the
Antarctic Ocean. We are assured that
explorers now find it impossible to ap-
proach anywhere nearly as close to the
SouthPole as waspossible in former times.
And there are people who claim this
stupendous accumulation of ice in that
part of the world is disturbing the equa-
torial balance. Their idea is that the
process there going on is both cause and
effect. The heavier that end of the
globe becomes the more the other end
turns up to the sun, with the cOnse-
quence of leaving the depressed end lit
orally 'out in the cold," and the colder
it is the more the ice accumulates and
the heavier the end becomes.
In the second place, it is alleged that
the atmosphere around the North Pole
is growing warmer. Hence we are able
to look at the question with little more
confidence as to the facts, and are
bound to admit that there are some
signs which tend to bear out the ideas
now under consideration. Chief among
these are the icebergs. Never before
did ships crossing the Atlantic encounter
so many at this season. The stories |
told by captains and crews, and passen-
gers as well, are enough to freeze ones |
blood. Nor are these stories told to the |
marines only, but to landsmen as well, |
some of the most wonderful |
are told by marines. Now, it is a per-
fectly well settled fact that mild win
ters in the Arctic produce icebergs in
the Atlantic and Pacific The warmer
it is up there the more bergs we have
down here. 1t is the partial thawing
and consequent disintegration of the
crystal mountains of the north that sets
the fragments free to float southwark.
"History repeats itself" If political
history, why not physical? Every geol
ogist and paleontologist knows that
what is now the frigid zone was once
or semi-torrid. The man.
moth and the mastodon once lived, and
could only find the food on which they
lived in climate like that which sup
ports their degenerate successor, the ell
,phant. Yet fossil remains of those ex-
,inct giant brutes are found in Siberia
Ind Alaska.