Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1909-02-18
Records show the Similarity of Sea-
sons-PIanetary Changes slow.

sons-PIanetary Changes Slow.
1t is remarkable how memory eXag-
gerates the events of our youth. For
this reason elderly people have always
insisted and probably always will in
sist that the winters now are weak and
cOlorless compared to those of fifty
years ago, when the snow fell on
Thanksgiving day and lasted till the
first of March and the ponds were
solid ice to the bottom and the sound
was frozen from shore to shore. AS
there are no records to prove their as
sertiCns. they are positive OF their
facts. and respect for age and dispo-
sition to believe that the present is
rather commonplace period compared
with past centuries, prevent younger
people from contradicting them.
AS far back as accurate records have
been kept the climate of the northern
hemisphere has not changed, the Hart
ford Comm Times says. From 1872
to 1907 the mean average winter tenn
perature of the city of New York has
ranged from 40.7 degrees in 1890 to
26.4 in 1904. There have been cold win
tiers and comparatively warm winters,
but the average of the first three years
of the period is precisely the same as
that of the last three-31 degrees.
The cold winters are sprinkled in at
random, and do not become more nu-
merOuS or severe as time goes on.
They are evidently due to local and
temporary causes, probably to the di-
recton and force of the winds or the
shifting of the currents of the ocean,
which last, indeed, are affected by the
winds. For twentyfour years, from
1854 to 1878, the mean winter temporal
ture of eight Of our principal cities
was almost exactly the same us that
of the next twentyfour years. The later
period gives an average only .O15 of
degree higher, gain too small to be
! beyond the possibility Of error. 1t would
seem. then, that our winters are not
growing colder.
This is what might be expected from
| the fact that the northern hemisphere
receives the same amount of heat from
| the sun every year, because its average
| distance is the same. If the sun is
cooling down the rate is so slow that
many thousand years must pass before
| the loss of heat from the great life
giving sources is perceptible. AS rule
the great changes in the physical uni
verse are very deliberate, and, like the
tides. move first IN one direction and
| then back We know that the arctic
regions once enjoyed a temperate eli
mate, and that Connecticut was once
covered with an ice-sheet like Green
| land. Astronomers and biologists are
divided as to how many millions of
| years ago these climatic changes took
place. The orbit of the earth is clip
! tic. so that we are now some three
| million miles nearer the sun in winter
! than we are in summer. The procession
of the equinoxes will bring it about in
| time that the earth is farther from the
sun in winter than in summer. As our
| planet moves faster the nearer it is to
| the SUM- the result will be short, hot
summers and long, cold winters. The
amount Of heat received by the earth
| in a year will be the same, but the
effect will be very different. for there
will not be time enough to melt the
winter ice, which will slowly gain until
we have another glacial age in the
northern hemisphere. At the same time
the antarctic continent will be freed
from its ice cap by the long summer,
| I,n Of I'LL,
climate will change in a million or so
years. but at present is fairly stable on
the average.