CAUSE OF WARM AND GOLD PERIODS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 27, 2 April 1907, Page 2

CAUSE OF WARM AND GOLD PERIODS.

Recent; experiments of the Swedish physicist, Arrhenius, supplementing the investigations of Professor Langley, indicate that in order to explain the origin of the warm climate which prevailed over the earth in the Tertiary age, when even the Polar regions seem to have abounded with life, and of the intense cold that caused the glacial periods, when half the northern hemisphere was buried under ice, it is only necessary to look to slight changes in the composition of the atmosphere. The active agent in these changes is thought to have been carbon dioxide. It has been shown that this gas possesses so great a power to retain solar heat' that its addition to the extent of only one-tenth of 1 per cent, of the present atmosphere would suffice to produce a Tertiary climate, and that taking away only one-fiftieth of 1 per cent. from tho present atmosphere would bring on glaciation. It has been conjectured that the fall of meteors was the source ol the supply of carbon dioxide in former geological periods.