EARTH'S ICE AGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 147, 23 June 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

EARTH'S ICE AGES.

ARE WE IN ONE?

WHEN THE POLE CAPS' MELT.

WHAT THE FUTURE PROMISES

Two pieces of evidence were recently presented to substantiate the views held by most geologists that some day thcie will be no frozen north and that vessels will sail in Arctic seas now imperilled by ice floes. One piece of evidence comes from Greenland, the other from Alaska.

A party of scientists from tlic University of Michigan, headed by Professor Ralph I. Belknap, fcound a pile of stones with a very artificial look. At the bottom of the pile was a piece of paper which had been torn from a notebook and which bore a few words signed by the late Professor R. S. Tarr, of Cornell, and dated 1896. Tarr had gone to Greenland to explore the great Cornell glacier. His note had been deposited at what was then the edge of the glacier, 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle. But the pile found by the Michigan expedition was about three-fifths of a mile further front. There was but one conclusion to be (drawn. The ice had receded.

Turn now to Alaska and look at it through the eyes of Professor Robert F. Griggs, of the University of Washington? 0 The forest line is advancing iu the tundra or treeless flat country at the rate of one mile in a century. Evidently Alaska's climate is growing -warmer. Her trees are the first that have grown in 20,000 years. Greenland Growing Warmer. On one point Professor Griggs seemingly disagrees with the scientists from M?ciiigan. He finds that Greenland's climate has been growing .increasingly colder for several centuries. Bodies of Norse colonists who settled in Greenland four centurics before Columbus discovered America wcro buried in ground now icy. The roots of trees long ago frozen to death have pierced many a grave. Who can doubt that Greenland must have had a much milder climate 1000 years ago than it has now 1

Tho findings of Professors Griggs and Belknap are not actually in _ conflict. Both scientists are dealing witli comparatively short periods. The ice may again creep down upon the spot where Professor Tarr left his note, or it may continue its apparent recession and convert Greenland into a country as hospitable' as the Norsemen once found it.

Still in the Ice Age. Geologists are convinced that we are living in the Quaternary Ice Age, which began about 600,000 or 700,000 years ago and which will continue for thousands, more. Although there can be no doubt that tho ice will eventually melt at both Poles, it is possible that it will increase in thickness and area before it finally disappears. And what a mass there is to melt! Five million square miles in the Antarctic and 1,000,000 in the North. The truth is that the earth has passed through several ice ages. Those of the past were probably much like that in which the earth, is still wrapped. In Other words, there were relatively cold and mikl periods. Although 1 an ice age may last for 700,000 or 1,000,000 years, it is but a passing phase in the history of the earth. The mild intervals between ice ages are measured by tens of millions and even hundreds of millions. What will happen if all the ice should melt? According to Dr.- W. J. Humphreys, of the United States weather Bureau, tho ocean levels would be raised 150 ft, which Cleans that some of the world's most fertile regions would be destroyed.—W. Kaempffert in the New York "Times."