Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-01-28
"On Board the
Good Ship Earth
The Coming Exodus to Siberia and Canada
BY Herbert Quick

duped There does not fall on the
average drop more Of moisture on
any acre of our great arid and semi
arid plans than fell there on the aver
age before q plow was put into them.
Climate has always been the master
of man.
But will this always be so? No,
without intending to do so, man is
already affecting the climate of the
whole EARTH He is doing this by
thing never done before in the history
of the globe-the burning of coal.
Whenever a ton of coal is burned
there passes off into the air a great
many vapors. Among them is car
bonic acid, or carbon dioxlde. This
lie the gas that gathers in the we'll and
kills the man who unwarily goes
down to clean 1t. 1t passes into the
air as a product of combustion every
where that combustion takes place.
and always has. 1t is breathed in
By the leaves of plants. It Is fatal
to animal life if breathed in too
strong a mixture, but in the amount
usually found in the air, unless in an
unventilated room, or well, or mine..
1t is not hurtful The forest fires, the
prairie fires, the rotting Of vegeta-
ton, the Transportation of plants--all
these have always kept in the air q
certain amount of corbonic acid gas.
And now man is adding to the
amount of burning coal as nothing
was ever burned on earth before since
the fires of it's glowing core were
quenched by its crust. Up to 1916
man had burned 27.700.000 tons in all
history In the one year of 1911 we
burned not less than 100000, 900 tons.
This is terrific thing to contem-
plate-the passengers engaged in such
tremendous robbery of the coal
bunkers--but we are now concerned
only with carbonic acid gas and Its
effects on the climate.
II we keep up the increase to even
half the extent which seems certain,
we shall pour into the air enough
carbonic dioxide to double the amount
of it in the atmosphere in eight hun
dred years. The possibilities are that
the amount will be tripled in less
than thousand years-and your
children and mine will be here theni
One of the greatest scientists in
the world is Arrhenius of Sweden. He
Is chemist and physicist, and has
studied this matter. He shows that
this proportion of carbon dioxide In
the air will make the climate warmer.
| by acting like the glass roof OF
greenhouse. With the carbon dioxide
increased from two and pne-half to
three times. the temperature of the
whole world will be raised 8 TO de-
| grees centigrade-and Greenland will
have a good climate for farming. All
| the good, soil of Canada will be in as
temperate a climate as that now en-
| joyed by Missouri.
| Corn will be grown in the Peace
River Valley. Oranges will be an
orchard fruit in Arkansas and Vir-
gina. The suburban residents of Chi
cago may literally sit under their
| own fig trees and scuppernong grape
arbors. Cotton will be a staple crop
! in Iowa. Bananas will fringe the
shores of the gulf. Siberia will be-
come the greatest farming country in
the world. The great Antarctic con-
tinent-one of the greatest on earth
J in eXtent--will be the western Can
ada, the Scandinavia, the Siberia OF
that day, and will have millions OF
people. Alaska will be as warm as
] Maine now is. And the heat of all the
tropics will be made hotter for thou
sands of years.
| The increased heat will cause more
! evaporation of water vapor from the
J oceans-and as what goes up must
come down, this will cause moister
climates almost everywhere, and our
dry-farming regions will become as
wet as Ohio.
And then the passengers on this
Good Ship Earth will have vast fields
/ of good land, which are not good now,
upon which to multiply-as 1t seems
/ to be their fate to do. All this will
/ take place in time shorter than the
history of England since the Norman
conquest--in twice the time which has
elapsed since the governors palace
was built in Santa Fe, NJ M-our
/ youngest State.
See tomorrow's Star for announce
ment of the next article in this great
series.
=