thus reproduced? Norway might indeed become a second south Greenland,
and perennial snow and ice might appear in the mountainous tracts of
the British Islands. The climate of Hudson's Bay and the surrounding
lands might be experienced in the Baltic and its neighbourhood, and
what are now the temperate latitudes of Europe, north of the 50th
parallel, would possibly approach Siberia in character. But surely
these changes are not comparable to the conditions of the Glacial
period. The absence of a Gulf Stream would not sensibly affect the
climate of south-eastern Europe and Asia, and could not have the
smallest influence on that of the Pacific coast-lands of North America.
Yes, but if we conceive the submergence of the Isthmus of Panama
to coincide with great elevation of northern lands, would not such
geographical conditions bring about a glacial epoch comparable to
that of Pleistocene times? It is hard to see how they could. No
doubt the climate of all those regions that would be affected by
the withdrawal of the Gulf Stream alone would become still more
deteriorated if they stood some 3000 feet higher than now. A vast area
in the north-west of Europe would certainly be uninhabitable, but it
is for the advocates of the "earth-movement hypothesis" to explain
why those inhospitable regions should necessarily be covered with an
ice-sheet. For the production of great snow-fields and continental
ice-sheets, considerable precipitation, no less than a low temperature,
is requisite. Under the conditions we have been imagining, however,
precipitation would probably be much less than it is at present. But
to whatever extent north-west Europe might be glaciated, it is obvious
that the geographical revolutions referred to could have little
influence on the climate of south-eastern Europe, not to mention
central and eastern Asia. Nor could they possibly influence the climate
of the Pacific coast-lands of North America. And yet, as is well
known, the climate of all those regions was more or less profoundly
affected during the Glacial period. To account for the widespread
evidences of glaciation by means of elevation it would therefore seem
necessary to infer that all the affected areas were in Pleistocene
times uplifted _en masse_ into the Arctic zone that stretches above our
heads. Now it seems easier to believe that the snow-line was lowered
by several thousand feet than that the continents were elevated to the
same extent. Glaciation, as we have seen, was developed in the same
directions and over the same areas as we should expect it to be were
the snow-line to be generally depressed. To put it in another way,
were the snow-line by some means or other to be lowered over Europe,
Asia, and North America, then, with sufficient precipitation, great
ice-fields and glaciers would reappear in the very regions which they
visited during Pleistocene times. Neither elevation nor depression
of the land would be required to bring about such a result. Certain
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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