The Coolidge examiner., 1932-06-17
Melting Polar Ice Caps to
Cause foundations.

Washington.-We still speak of
"the Ice age" as If it belonged to
the remote geological past. Geol-
ogists have reached the conclusion
that there were several ice ages.
What is more, the last Ice age,
known as the quaternary, is only
about half over, despite our blister
ing summers. Eternal ice" or
eternal snow" are fgments of the
poetic Imagination. Very slowly the
great ice sheets in the Arctic and
Antarctic regions are melting and
pouring their torrents into the
oceans. The earth must inevitably
change its aspect and its climate.
How the change is slowly taking
place and what the result will be
has been considered by such able
geologists, physicists and meteorolo-
gists as Prof. Sir Edgeworth David
of the University Of Sydney, Aus
tralia, Prof. Wilhelm Meinardus of
Gottingen and a score of others.
The latest is DR.: William j. Hum
phreys Of the United States wealth
er bureau, who recently addressed
the American Meteorological society
on the subject, summarizing old
views and modifying them in the
light of the information gathered in
the Antarctic regions by the Byrd
expedition and In Greenland by the
iIl-fated Prof. Alfred Wegener and
his companions.
The glacial sheets that now cover
the North and South poles were
once 100000 square miles in ex-
tent-more than one-fifth the pres
ent total land area of the globe. In
the course of about 100000 years
they have melted down to their
present area of about 100000 square
miles. The Ice on Greenland alone
is ten times vaster than the area
of the State of New York. Veg
ener's echo soundings showed that
it is over 1900 feet thick near the
center of the island and about 1000
feet thick near the edges of the
bowl over which 1t spills. Here,
then, we have enough ice to pro-
vide a layer of water one mile
thick over 100000 of Greenland's
S27 ,275 square miles of surface. To
this we must add another layer of
mile-deep water which would be
spread over 100000 square miles
of Antarctica's 100000 square
miles.
The earth is steadily growing
warmer. AS all the ice at the two
poles melts a stupendous volume OF
water will be released. Professor
David conservatively estimates that
the sea level will rise so feet. Pro-
fessor Meinardus doubles that esti-
mate. Doctor Humphreys, with the
studies of Byrd and Wegener before
him, believes that the rise will be
151 feet. Such floods are nothing
new, as we see by the marine fos-
sils found on the tops of the
Rockies, Andes and other mountain
ranges
So, within 10000 or 10000 years
there will be another deluge. Salt
water will sweep over the conti-
nents, leaving only the higher land
dry. Holland will be inundated.
Fish will swim in Buckingham pal
ace and Westminster abbey, for
most of England will lie beneath
the waves. The Desert of Sahara
will be a great inland sea. What is
now New York will be marked by
the upper stories and towers of the
taller skyscrapers as they jut out
of the water.
In an inundation which would
thus change geography and which
would be accompanied by rise in
temperature, the climate would re-
turn to what it;was when dinosaurs
roamed the earth and dense jungles
of dank, gigantic ferns grew in
what are now Pennsylvania and
Canada. Palms and alligatOrs
would flourish at the poles as they
did millions of years ago.
What will become of man II cli-
matte conditions are thus changed?
Ice sheets in high latitudes produce
strong contrasts in temperatures
between the polar and equatorial
regions. Winds, storms, weather