The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

196
EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST
... On the other hand, the only apparent alternate hypothesis
that of a uniform depression of the mean temperature of say 10 F.
would suggest a July mean of 60 F. for the ice sheet's lower boundary,
which is similar to that of present-day England, or northern Ger-
many, or the State of Maine, but with somewhat colder winters.
Since no glaciers or permanent snow fields are known to exist today
under such mild climates, it seems scarcely likely that they could have
done so in former times (114:168).
Dillon does not explicitly suggest a movement of the crust,
but he leaves no alternative.
A fifth line of argument may be based on some evidence
used by Wegener to support his theory of drifting conti-
nents. He quoted the glaciologist Penck as saying that the
Pleistocene snowline lay about 1,500 to 1,800 feet lower in
Tasmania than in New Zealand, and added, "This is very diffi-
cult to understand because of the present nearly equal
latitudes of the two localities" (450: 1 1 1). Wegener, of course,
explained the matter by his theory of continental drift. If,
however, his theory is rejected, crust displacement may provide
a solution, for if the Hudson Bay region was then located
at the North Pole, as we suppose, Tasmania would
have been a good many degrees nearer the South Pole than
New Zealand, as a glance at the globe will make plain. An-
other bit of evidence that fits in here is the apparent retreat
of glaciers in South Australia about 10,000 years ago (16).
A sixth line of argument may be based on the evidence for
world-wide volcanism at the end of the Wisconsin glacia-
tion. Extensive volcanic activity is an inevitable corollary
of a general movement of the earth's crust. I shall present
the argument that the volcanism incident to the movement
accounts for the numerous oscillations of the Wisconsin ice
sheet, and for the following "Climatic Optimum."
A seventh line of evidence is provided by the mass of data
relating to changes in sea level at the end of the ice age. I
shall attempt to show that these changes cannot be explained
by the melting of the northern icecaps, though they may be
explained by a displacement of the crust, on the basis of
principles already discussed.