{"id":5176,"date":"2023-07-31T02:40:29","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T16:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/?p=5176"},"modified":"2023-07-31T02:40:29","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T16:40:29","slug":"earth-declared-safe-from-glaciers-part-1-17-jan-1925-regions-of-the-earth-now-thickly-populated-and-noted-for-geniality-of-climate-were-once-as-cold-and-inhospitable-as-the-poles-south-australia-i-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/?p=5176","title":{"rendered":"Earth Declared Safe From Glaciers. Part 1. 17 Jan 1925. Regions of the earth now thickly populated and noted for geniality of climate were once as cold and inhospitable as the poles. South Australia is one of these regions."},"content":{"rendered":"

Earth Declared Sate From Glaciers (1925, January 17).\u00a0The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 – 1954)<\/i>, p. 17. Retrieved July 31, 2023, from\u00a0https:\/\/trove.nla.gov.au\/newspaper\/article\/59714304?searchTerm=european%20glaciers#<\/a><\/p>\n

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Regions of the earth now thickly populated and noted for geniality of climate were once as cold<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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and inhospitable as the poles. South Australia is one of these regions.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Scientists assert that ice and snow will once again cover parts of the earth that are now semi-tropical.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This we need not fear. The next glacial period is probably a million years away.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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THE shore of north Greenland is reported by Capt. Donald B. Macmillan, Arctic explorer, to be sinking, and as a result of this the glaciers are moving southward at a greater speed than for-<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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merly. These statements are based upon observations made by MacMillan and his assistants during the last several years and by discoveries made last summer. The Eskimo are aware of these movements and they are often compelled to build their igloos further back from the shore. They pointed out recent clam-shell deposits at a height of 1,100 feet.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It has been assumed from Macmillan\u2019s remarks about the glaciers of north Greenland that their movements indicate the beginning of serious climatic changes that in the near future may develop a new glacial epoch like that which coated with ice the present inhabited portions<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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of the earth about 400,000 years ago.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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There have been four notable coverings on the earth. Three of these occurred since the first animals and insects appeared. There can be little doubt that there will be other ice ages. But those who are familiar with the science of glaciology are unlikely to participate in any fear of another glacial epoch during the period of the dominance of the earth by the white races of mankind.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Speed of Glaciers Varies<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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MOVEMENT is one of the essential characteristics of glacial development. Every glacier must move; otherwise the ice would be accumulated so rapidly that in the course of a comparatively short time it would reach far up into the skies. Every glacier pushes out into the sea and sends out innumerable icebergs, pans, growlers and other forms of sea ice, or in the case of land mountain icebergs, presses its ice tongues into the valleys and plans until they melt every glacier moves every day in the taries.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Many observations and measurements have been made of the movements of glaciers, and it is definitely known that every glacier moves every day in the year irrespective of the seasons, its geographical and geological conditions and other cicrumstances. There is no regular speed followed by any glacier. It varies with many factors governing glacial life. Some glaciers move much faster than others. Alpine and other mountain glaciers have an average velocity of three feet a day throughout the year.<\/div>\n
The Jakobshavn Glacier, Greenland, has a velocity of sixty feet a day. Early last September, while there were volcanic forces operating within the cone of Mount Shasta, California, a glacier that saddled that peak of the Sierra Nevada was turned out of its old position and began de-<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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scending the mountain slopes at the rate of five miles an hour, tearing up the soil, rooting out great trees and crashing into every obstacle in its path. A speed like this, however, is unusual and temporary.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Greenland\u2019s Immense Glacier<\/div>\n
GLACIERS are found today throughout the world. They are huge masses of solid ice that grip high mountain ranges and sent out tentacular tongues. The interior of Greenland may be con-<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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sidered one immense glacier\u2014 the largest in existence. This vast ice sheet is 1,500 miles in length, 700 miles in breadth and has an area of about 575,000 square miles at an altitude between 5,000 and 10,000 feet above the sea level.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This vast ice cap sends out tongues of ice like the tentacles of an octopus, through all the fjords and bays of the seacoast. These are looked upon as separate glaciers, and are named after<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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the fjords in which they occur.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It is the fracturing of the ends of these glacial tongues that gives birth to the great flotillas of icebergs that parade down the Labrador coast in summer, sail past Newfoundland and drift<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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across the sea lanes of the North Atlantic until they become waterlogged and sink or are dissolved on meeting currents of warm water.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Most snow is added to glaciers in the warmer, rather than the colder, months of the year, and they also receive more ice from the condensation of fogs and clouds in the summer months. The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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winds play an important part either in building up or in destroying or packing glacier ice. Wind is a potent factor in loose snow along the ice fields and depositing it near or behind obstacles such as those formed by hills and valleys.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The ice when once formed by snow, undergoes many changes due to temperature variations and a multitude of crystal actions. As consolidated ice ages it is subjected to many stresses and<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Crystallisation strains alone are reponsible for much of the fissuring, fracturing and crevassing of glacial ice. When the interval structure of ice in increased glacial velocity, increased areas of spreading and increased height.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The internal heat of the ground beneath the elacier tends to vary crystallisation changes and consequently modify the and gravity comprise the principal motive powers of glaciers. Many elaborate theories have been advanced to explain these vast ice movements, but the studied facts show that only the above agencies are really operative. The so-called viscocity forces<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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are simply modification of the vapor and crystal pressure forces.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Bulk Always Changing<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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THE bulk of every glacier is always changing. It is conditioned by atmospheric and climatic activities. There are over four hundred glaciers in the European Alps, which have been studied closely for nearly a century. The collected data show that during the last hundred years there were five distinct periods of glacier enlargement and diminution, corresponding to the weather cycles.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Enlargement is furthered by cold and rainy seasons, and shrinkage occurs in warm, dry periods. The changes in the glaciers in north Greenland lately noticed by Dr. MacMillan are due to these<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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cyclic weather periods and are of a purely temporary nature. Should this year be particularly cold in the Arctic, the glaciers would increase in size and velocity.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In most glaciers there are numerous fissures, in which stalactitic formations are found that are often accompanied by surface or earth erosion debris.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Numerous subglacial streams are also found, which greatly modify glacial activities. Some of the subglacial streams in Greenland have been found to bring into the sea as much as 20,000<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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tons of mud and sand daily. This material is eroded from the land surface and is cast off into the sea bed.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Greenland glacier is of immense proportions today, but it seems to be only a fragment of what it once was. There are indications that many centuries ago it covered the whole of the<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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land surface, which was also much larger than it is today, and it was very much higher. As it has eroded and carried away the interior mountains and the coast line it has shrunk in size. It appears to be continually diminishing, but in a cyclic rather than a regular manner.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A glacial cycle begins by the piling up of the earth in some locality in the form, of a mountain chain caused by earth allocations due to pressure folds, like those often seen during volcanic<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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activities. When the peaks rise above the snow limit they collect and hold snow, which becomes consolidated into ice and forms an ice sheet. This increases in bulk with the growth of snow and in time begins to slide down the mountain valleys toward the sea.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Finally if sends tongues out into the sea for miles in some cases. These tongues are the sources of icebergs. The rocks of Greenland and other areas in the Arctic are frequently fossillferous, and show that temperate and warm climate animals and plants once lived in the north.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The eucalyptus, now confined to Australasia\u2019s warmer zones, once grew in Greenland, and the elephant and tiger roamed there. The glaciers came with a change in the continental areas and<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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an elevation of the polar lands. The interior of Greenland is now between 10,000 and 14,000 feet in height. It was this great elevation that started glaciation.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Traces Origin of Rivers<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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OTHER areas now covered by glaciers show that the animals and plants of the torrid zones once lived on them. This shows that there have been great modifications in the geographical features of the earth and the continental areas.<\/div>\n
The Hudson and other river channels, the Niagara and other falls, were caused by former river beds and drainage areas being changed by ice obstructions due to the blocking actions of debris from glaciers and by changes in the courses of glacier movements. It is estimated that the rivers of the United States and Canada, carry over 800,000,000 tons of mud and sand from the land and cast it into the seas every year.<\/div>\n
That means that about every eight centuries the land surface loses about an inch of its mass, and the sea floor is raised that much. In four million years this sediment would weigh several thousand billion tons. A mass of this size would result in enormous earth strains and would seriously disturb the geological equilibrium of the whole world. It would bring about numerous earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and would cause the elevation of some parts of the sea bed and continental areas and the depression and submergence of others.<\/div>\n
There are numerous immense depressions in the beds of the north and south Atlantic and in<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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the Indian and Pacific oceans. Around the southern parts of Australasia and in the south polar regions are vast submerged areas of sea that represent the former sites of continents and<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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mountain ranges, some of which were of great height.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It is a constant changing of the positions of continents and oceans that is responsible for the cyclic occurrence of glacial epochs like those which took place in Achaean, Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and recent times. The piling up of sea sediments disturbs the equilibrium of the earth\u2019s crust, and set up rock strains that cause the tilting up of mountains and the formation of glaciers. These begin eroding the mountains on which they rest and forming rivers which carry fresh silt into the sea.<\/div>\n
In time the glaciers completely erode the mountains away and cause their own disappearance by eliminating the forces necessary to sustain glacial life.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This is a general explanation of the metamorphosis of glaciers, icebergs, and mountain ranges and of the cycles of glacial epochs. They form a part of the ceaseless changes the whole cosmic universe is destined to endure forever.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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None of these glacial movements is regular. They all take place in a see-saw manner. The earliest stage of de-glacierisation, where a portion of the land surface is swamped and hidden by ice, is shown by the great continental ice sheets of the Antarctic and in Greenland. The next stage, where the mountain peaks emerge from the glacier, can be seen in Spitsbergen, Norway, the Alps, the Rockies, and in the mountains of Canada and Alaska. The final stage witnesses the warning of the weather cycles and the final disappearance of the ice and\u2019 snow. Greenland offers an example of a glacier in it\u2019s primaeval condition, and the Mount Shasta glacier offers one of a glacier in its final stage.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earth Declared Sate From Glaciers (1925, January 17).\u00a0The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 – 1954), p. 17. Retrieved July 31, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[450,1634,227,359,948,313,137],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5177,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5176\/revisions\/5177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realclimaterecords.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}