OUR WARMING EARTH. 04 July 1951. “Scientists have been assuring sceptical communities that the world is getting warmer.” How funny.
Barrier Miner (1951, July 4). Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW : 1888 – 1954), p. 3. Retrieved December 18, 2019, from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/48646375?searchTerm=earth%20warming&searchLimits=#
Barrier Miner
WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1951.
While Broken Hill, like many other parts of Australia, has been shivering during the past few days, scientists have been assuring sceptical communities that the world is getting warmer.
One would like to hear the Tasmanian people living round Macquarie Harbor, which was frozen over a couple of days ago, on the subject.
Still the scientists may be right. They can point to a rise of four per cent, in the average temperatures of certain northern countries during the past few years in support of their contention.
It is only hypothetical yet, for climate has some fascinating irregularities in its swing and the present may be merely one of them.
Yet there would be nothing strange if the world were entering a change of climates.
For years the ice caps at the poles have been contracting, that at the North Pole more rapidly than the southern one.
Mountain glaciers have also been steadily shrinking in Switzerland, much to the consternation of tourist resorts.
It has been calculated that if all the ice at the poles were melted the depth of the sea all over the world would be increased by several hundred feet; but unless some inconceivable calamity occurred the encroachment on the land would be noticed only at long intervals.
Tennyson wrote, reflectively, “Here, where the long street roars, Hath been the silence of the central sea.” The world would slowly return to that stage of its development, for unless natural convulsions raised the land mass immense areas of the earth would become sea floors again.
Britain for example would become a group of islets once more, large parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America would be submerged.
And Australia? Well probably a modern Noah with a diesel engined ark would receive more requests for a passage than his prototype.
It may be Nature’s way of keeping the production of food sufficient for the people. And, by the way, the Stalin of that future date would have to do the best he could with a dwindling Soviet on top of the Caucasus.