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CHAPTER 4 109
flourishing in places where twenty years ago there were ice fields!
Dr. George H. T. Kimble, director of the American Geographical Society, says it is altogether possible that
Canadians in Northern Ontario will grow corn and New Yorkers will become cotton planters. He points out
that temperatures have been rising in winter in the last thirty to forty years. In Upper Canada, he relates, the
forest is migrating into hitherto barren tundra.
Arnold Court of the University of California says we can expect temperatures over one-hundred seven degrees
in the summers of the future. Scientists probing glaciers throughout the world, including the great Baffin
Island glacier, have discovered these glaciers are steadily shrinking.
Dr. John W. Aldrich, of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says that fish are moving northward. Cod, once
unknown in Greenland, is now a steady Eskimo dish. Whiting, halibut, king mackerel and haddock are found
farther and farther north in the Atlantic. New Jersey has sighted tropical flying fish! The tropical-fish hunting
grounds of the future will be along the New Jersey and Maryland coasts instead of Florida and the Bahamas,
as at present. For some years now, deep sea pleasure fisherman have been taking tuna off the Long Island
Coast and even further to the North. It was not so long ago that tuna were seldom observed further North than
Georgia waters.
The tremendous warming-up is also observable north of the United States--Canada, Alaska, and Greenland.
The size and extent of glaciers in all these areas have been decreasing at an unprecedented rate, exposing vast
areas for potential cultivation. In Alaska, Muir Glacier has been shrinking in length at a rate of about half a
mile a year, while Guyot Glacier has been losing thickness at about thirty feet a year. Alaskan farmers are
now growing crops in areas that only a few years ago were snow-covered. Along the Alaskan Arctic Coast,
much of the ground is bare of snow through many months each summer, while temperate-zone trees and
shrubs are appearing further to the North and higher on the mountainsides. Alaskan forests are "advancing",
according to authority Dr. Robert E. Griggs. Along the entire roof of the North American continent, the Arctic
Ice is receding rapidly. It used to contact the coast solidly and be many feet thick in winter. Now there are
often open patches of water extending fifty or more miles offshore, while the thickness of the ice has greatly
decreased.
Ships are now frequently able to put in at Greenland ports in mid-winter. Fresh land is steadily being bared by
the receding icecaps, and vegetation and birds that formerly shunned Greenland are appearing. The great strait
between Greenland and Canada that used to be ice-locked the year around is now frequently open to ships. In
the United States the climate will be like that of present day Mexico. Canada's climate will resemble that of
the United States today. Greenland's climate will resemble that of Canada now. However, if the trend does not
slow down, the entire equatorial belt will become unfit for human habitation--the temperate zones will
become largely scorching deserts, while only the polar regions will be comfortably habitable.
In the United States, "dust bowl" areas are increasing. In Africa, the Sahara Desert is advancing Southward at
a rate of three miles a year. The Middle East is steadily declining in water supply, while much of India and
China, once fertile agricultural land, is now semi-desert or actual desert without vegetation of any sort. In
Central Africa, the lakes are becoming smaller and the jungles less lush. This is also true of South America,
where the Amazon River Basin and jungle areas are shrinking rapidly, with grasslands developing around the
periphery. Lake Victoria in Africa is dropping at the rate of almost a foot a year while the amount of water
flowing over Victoria Falls has declined greatly.
Great Salt Lake in America has shrunk by half in less than fifty years, and the waterpower production of
Niagara is declining. In one-hundred years the temperature of England has risen by three degrees. Similar
rises have been noted in other countries where accurate weather records have been kept. It has been estimated
that a rise in average temperature of only six degrees would melt all the glaciers and polar icecaps in the world
in a few decades. The sea-level of all the oceans is rising at a rapid rate.