Real Climate Records

In the last great geological period, the time of the great ice age in northern lands, the earth underwent many geographical changes. There are many people who hold that those changes are still in progress and that, really, we are not yet out of the Ice age.

It has been held that glaciers in the Alps and the Karakorums are still generally retreating. In spite of some occasional and localised advances. These things may point to a general warming up of the globe.

The foregoing remarks were made by Dr. F. W. Whitehouse. lecturer in geology at the University of Queensland, when delivering last night a lantern lecture on “Changing Scenery” at the annual meeting of the National Parks Association.

In the last great geological period the earth underwent many geographical changes. The ice itself modified largely the lands over which it flowed. But away from these frozen regions the results were still felt. As the ice alternately formed and thawed, the swinging level of the sea changed and the coasts were altered largely. As temperatures rose and fell the limits of the arid lands moved.

People who hold that we are not yet out of the ice age say that climates still are changing and they point to many varied phenomena on the earth to-day in support of this idea, the Doctor continued.

Cities of Central Asia and the Sahara that once were populous and wealthy, now lie in regions so arid as to suggest that the desert has crept in.

Around the margin of some desert lands, in the South Sahara for instance, the sands are creeping out over once fertile land. The ice seems to be melting from the Antarctic Ice-cap. It has been held that glaciers in the Alps and the Karakorums are still generally retreating, in spite of some occasional and localised advances. These things may point to a general warming-up of the globe. There are other authorities, though who hold that climates have not changed in historical times.

EVIDENCE IN QUEENSLAND.

Here in Queensland, the lecturer added. there is abundant evidence of change during the last geological period—in the drowned islands and rivers of the coast-lands, the great coral reefs and the raised beaches; in the changed aspects of the sand dunes in the arid parts of the centre; in some of the vagaries of our great inland streams it may be, too, that the processes are still in operation. People who live in our arid interior hold that the desert is growing. Others who live near the Gulf say that the sea-level is changing there.

These things have not been studied in that detail that will allow us to be certain just what is going on; but in these and other aspects there is a fascinating field of work for the geographer of the future.