Home & People Ice-age on the way? Too soon to tell, says glaciologist

Press, 12 April 1978, Page 12

Home & People Ice-age on the way? Too soon to tell, says glaciologist

Extreme temperatures, freak weather and unusual movements of glaciers in many parts of the world indicate to some scientists that another ice-age is on its way. gut Mrs Hilda Richardson, an English glaciologist who was in Christchurch recently, says that it is impossible to make such a precast at the present time. Research done within the next 10 years should turn up definite facts one way or the other, she said. “It is a complex subject to assess, mainly because of having to take into consideration man’s influence on the environment,” she said. Heat rising from homes and factories, exhaust fumes from cars and smoke were having an effect on the upper atmosphere which encircled the world “like an envelope.” “Perhaps if the envelope becomes polluted with a lot of foreign matter that would have a greenhouse effect, making the temperature go up and masking the effects of the natural cycle of climate,” said Mrs Richardson. “That would hold back an ice-age.” Glaciologists do not know enough about the factors yet, including

man’s effect on the environment.

Hilda Richardson, who is secretary-general of the International Glaciological Society, Cambridge, did a considerable amount of field work in Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Northern Euripe after graduating with an M.A. drom Cambridge in geomorphology (the study of land forms).

She is now particularly interested in the possibilities of iceberg utilisation. The first trial run in iceberg-towing may be held within the next two years from the Antarctic to South-West Australia, the nearest area of serious water shortage. No one was quite sure how to get hold of an iceberg and tow it, she said. But if ways could be worked out the water produced would help solve the problem in arid areas for irrigating and for dirnking. “Iceberg water is very purea dnd would be less costly than desalinised water,” she added. Mrs Richardson, who is

international president of Soroptimist Internatinal, made her brief stopover in Christchurch after attending the inauguration in Adelaide of the SouthWest Pacific Federation of the organisation. “The formation of this, our fourth, fedeation was very exciting for me because I have been quietly pushing for it for many years,” she said.

“It is a more democratic arrangement for Australia, New Zealand and Fiji to have their own federation than to be part of the Federation of Great Britain and Ireland —as they have been utnil now.”

On her way from England to Australia Hilda Richardson called in at the Maidive Islands to see a U.N.I.C.E.F. health care project which is financially supported by Soroptimist International. At Male, the capital of the chain of coral atolls in the Indian Ocean, she launched a boat that will take health workers, medical supplies and educational material to remote atolls.