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

NORTH AMERICA AT THE POLE
ago (242:23). Other late glacial or early postglacial volcanic
activity in Oregon was reported by* Hansen (199). Farther
south the story is the same:
In Arizona, New Mexico and southern California there are very
fresh looking volcanic formations. The lava flow in the valley of the
San Jose River in New Mexico is so fresh that it lends support to
Indian traditions of a "river of fire" in this locality (235:113).
Volcanic disturbances in South America about 9,000 years
ago have been dated by radiocarbon (242:45). Huntington
reported "lava flows of the glacial period interstratified with
piedmont gravel" in Central Asia (232:168). Ebba Hult de
Geer quoted Franz Firbaz as follows: "The volcanic eruptions
that produced the Laacher marine volcanic ash are
about 11,000 years old, or a little older. . . ." (108:515).
Hibben suggested that the extinctions of animals in Alaska
at the end of the ice age may have been due to terrific vol-
canic eruptions there, of which the evidence is plentiful
(218). We will return to his account later.
Volcanic dust is not the only important product of volcanic
eruptions. They also produce vast quantities of carbon dioxide
gas. Tazieff, for example, estimated that in one eruption
he observed in Africa, along with about seventy-eight mil-
lion tons of lava, the volcano emitted twenty billion cubic
yards of gas (416:217), not all of which, of course, was carbon
dioxide.
The carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes has an important
effect on global temperature, but one quite different from
the effect of the volcanic dust. Being a translucent gas, it does
not interfere with the entrance of sunlight, of radiant heat,
into the atmosphere. But it is opaque to the radiation of
the earth's heat into outer space. A small quantity of the
gas will act effectively to prevent loss of heat from the earth's
surface. A considerable increase in this small percentage will
tend to raise the average temperatures of the earth's surface.
Carbon dioxide differs from volcanic dust also in the fact
that because it is a gas it will not settle out of the atmosphere.