Real Climate Records

In the opinion of an American scientist, Mr- Leon Lewis, the whole human race is in danger of being swept away by a great flood of ice, which will proceed from the South Pole. Mr. Lewis has written a book on the subject, entitled “The Great Glacial Deluge and its Impending Recurrence.

From this book we make a few extracts, and though we do not pretend to take Mr. Lewis seriously it will be seen that he commands an army of facts with which to back up his arguments.

The trouble begins says Mr. .Lewis, “at the extreme southern end of our globe. The cold there is very excessive, as has been made plain by Mr. Borchgrevink and our other explorers. The snowfall there is almost continuous, Captain Ross tells us, it having snowed 28 days out of the 30 he was cruising along the great ice wall presented by the edge of this so-called continent. All the snow at the South Pole is converted into ice under pressure.

There are no rains or thaws there. The great mass of, ice thickens and widens constantly, despite the losses to which it is subjected by the breaking off of the immense tabular icebergs which have presented themselves to the notice of navigators in those regions. The waters of the surrounding seas are below the freezing point, and hence there is a constant accretion from this source to the vast bulk resulting from the unwanted snowfall.

For many thousands of years the so-called “Antarctic Continent or “ice-cap” which is a huge mountain of ice has been getting bigger and bigger, until now it is estimated to have a surface of eight million square miles. It is more or less circular, and with its loose ice it fills the whole space between Australia, Montevideo, and the Cape of Good Hope. It is about two miles thick at the edge, and slopes upwards to the centre at the Pole, where the ice is estimated to be at least twelve miles in thickness.

During the whole period of its growth this vast ice continent has been drawing the ocean from the Northern Hemisphere across the Equator into the Southern. This movement, says Mr. Lewis, accounts, for the present situation of affairs the land, in the Northern Hemisphere and the water in the Southern ; the flooding of the Southern Hemisphere and the draining of the Northern.

This movement of the waters southward — their migration, as he calls it—has kept pace perfectly with the growth of the ice-cap, and the consequence is that three-fifths of the waters of the globe have been drawn almost a mile to the southward of the earth’s former centre of gravity, and are held in this precarious position by the gravitational “pull” of the ice continent— literally suspended almost a mile above our heads in readiness to be let back upon our low-lying lands at any moment.

The author is of opinion that the great ice mountain must break up sooner or later, and that when it does the whole mass of water and ice will start northwards in a rush to the Arctic Basin. Many countries will be completely overwhelmed by the great glacial deluge, and Great Britain will be among them. So will the United States, and Mr. Lewis’ book has been taken so seriously over there that the New York Herald has just published an illustration showing what the deluge would mean to New York.

The Arctic Basin will become filled to overflowing, and the deluge will then return southward. The whole Northern Hemisphere, according to the same reckoning, will be buried beneath hundreds of fathoms of water and ice.