New Britain herald., 1929-08-16

\ Happy-Faced Roumanian Girl, With Bountiful Supply of Wheat, Syaibol- izes Her Country's Plentiful Harvest.
 This Is the Indirect Result, Says Science. of the Moons Influence. For instance" he explains. dur 5 ing the last few months there has Z been a water area of unusual warmth in the Eastern Arctic. From thence 2 the warm air Is pouring southeast ward over Europe, and, as it becomes superheated by the Summer sun, it will produce in northwestern Europe a season of drought.
 "One might imagine such a con- dition to be unpreventable, the result
 of an memorable process of Nature.
 But 1t is not. If the Arctic ice fields
 were broken up and released, allow
 ing the ice to move southward in
 south-bound currents, they would re-
 frigerate the warm oceanic waters of
 lower attitudes, thereby cooling the
 air and so save northern Europe from the heat and drought in immediate
 prospect.
 "Too late, of course, for this year. But why not try out the plan in an- other year and, if it works, operate it in suitable seasons? Difficult? Not at all. An ice-breaking ship, such as the Russian krasSin, can blow through ice ten feet thick, and not much Arctic ice is more than that. A fleet of half a dozen such vessels could blow across the whole Arctic Basin in season.
 By this means some thousands of square miles of field ice could be broken loose and moved out of that basin. The temperature of sea ice is considerably below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, and the melting of thou sand square miles of it would lower the temperature of seven thousand square miles of surface water by an estimated eighteen degrees.
 Here is an interesting point. The Arctic ice-cap is remnant of the last Ice Age. It would soon melt away and disappear were 1t not that the ice re- fleets back into space the rays of hot Summer sun. Were the ice not there, the Arctic Ocean would become rela- lively warm sea. Greenland would en- joy Summers like those of the Scandi-
 
 of the world would move northward perhaps three hundred miles.
 Now, let us consider the South Polar region. Outward from the Ant. arctic continent is a prodigious but ir- regular flow of ice, which is a major cause of droughts in Argentina, South Africa and Australia.
 "To break up the Antarctic ice at suitable intervals, and release it north ward, so that there might be no undue accumulation, would be entirely prac- ticable, at an annual cost of few mil lion dollars.
 'The cost would be not worth con, sidering, taking into view what might be expected of beneficial influences upon the climates of the southerly ex- tensions of South America and Africa, of Australasia, of India and not i'm probably of Persia and Arabia.
 "We are scarcely accustomed to re- alize the greatness of the celestial body We call the moon. It is a rocky ball, ?, ,l65 miles in diameter and it's attrac- ton is of mighty power. No wonder, then, that by the means l have de- scribed, 1t should be able to influence weather on the earth.
 By forecasting moon positions and variations of solar radiation affecting surface temperatures of the oceans, we shall this year be able to inform west ern Canada of correct seeding dates for eight years ahead with a possible error of not more than a week"
 Thus it is that science, in spite of its own previous doubts, has discovered in the moon a friend and foe of man. kind To the meteorologist it assumes a place in calculations vastly more inn portant than 1t enjoyed in the past and to the so-caled ''man on the street" the appearance of the moon in the sky takes on new meaning, new sig nificance-and not sentimental one!