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Flashback 1923: ‘WINTERS ARE WARMER…extremes of cold in winter no longer occur as they did in years gone by’

The Narracoorte Herald

Friday 4 May 1923

WINTERS ARE WARMER.

Why the World’s Climate is Changing.

Our climate is becoming milder. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, extremes of cold in winter no longer occur as they did in years gone by. Nor does this apply only to our own country. It is the same all over the world. Iceland is no longer what its name implies—the land of ice. During the winter of 1920-21 there was neither snow nor frost there, and for many previous winters there has been very little.

The ice on the Neva River in Russia breaks up three weeks earlier than it did a generation ago. The Alpine glaciers are everywhere retreating, so that cultivation is now possible in valleys which, within the memory of people still alive, were icebound all the year round. In Candace, year by year the area under wheat is being extended northward, sure sign that the weather there is becoming milder. The Governor of the Falkland Islands reported recently that the climate there is not nearly so severe as it was seventy, or eighty years ago. Similar instances could be quoted almost indefinitely, and the combined evidence from so many different sources is irresistible. extremes of cold in winter no longer occur as they did in years gone by

In a book entitled “Warmer Wintersand the Earth’s Tilt,” Major R. A. Marriottsets forth his theory as to the reason for this world-wide phenomenon.

Briefly put, his contention is that the earth is gradually changing its position so as to bring the poles more directly under the sun’s rays, with the result that the ice-caps stored there during; past ages are gradually diminishing in size. ‘We are, in fact, at the tail end of the last great Ice Age, which was at its maximum about 15,000 years ago, when ;the greater part of Europe was shrouded under an ice-cap a mile or more!thick. This was the period when the earth was tilted in such a way; that the heat of the sun was concentrated on the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the globe, the poles getting hardly any.

The process is now being reversed.| So in a time which may not be very far off, large areas near the North Pole will be rendered productive for the requirements of mankind and-capable of supporting a large population. England will then return to the subtropical conditions which geologists as-‘sure us prevailed here before the beginning of the last great glacial period, some 30,000 years ago.

 

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