European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - March 13, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Honoto of Chrls Johns a Moil Hajj Rypl runaway ice Walls such As this one formed by Alaska s advancing Hubbiard Glacier possess Lite Power to create and destroy the face of the Earth. The ice phenomenon National geographic f it seems As if we re in the midst of an ice age. It May not be simply because it is near Trie end of Winter the be age has really not left Earth Lor 2 million years geologists say. For the last 12.000 years. We have been living in Only a slightly warmer spell of it. At the Peak of the last great icy time some 18,000 years ago when Cro Magnon Man lived. Inick ice and Snow buried More than three tenth of the world s land area. Ice scoured and heaped the Hills around new York cily. Led the River courses thai meet at is Louis gouged the great Lake basis and norwegian Fords someday soon say some climatologists who think in millennia ice could creep South again Over North America to bulldoze away Chicago and shove its wreckage to St. Louis according loan article by Samuel w Matthews in National geographic. Ice still covens one tenth of All Earth s land and an entire Ocean the Arctic. Almost 30 percent of today s ice lies atop the Antarctic comment seven Mii fion cubic Miles of ice As much As 12.140 feet thick. And Antarctica is literally a desert most of it gels less than two inches of Snow a year but that Snow scarcely Ever melts ice Thich brings streams and waterfalls to Frozen stillness  also by continued melting slowly raise the level of All he oceans ice can be a killer on streets ii can ground planes sink ships break water pipes Cut Oil electricity. Hood arms. Find Ifcic crops hailstorms have caused More economic damage in the untied states primarily through crop destruction than tornadoes Bui ice also can give a warm protective Coaling to Florida Strawberry plants in Winter when below Iro Eizig temperatures Are forecast the a tanks Are Page 16 the stars and stripes sprayed with water which encases the strawberries at 32 degrees fahrenheit a temperature at which thay can survive a remarkable stuff  mall hew writes not Only does ice produce heat while freezing and absorb it in melting it floats because unlike almost every other substance it is lighter As a solid than As a liquid. Ii in were not for this phenomenon ice cubes dropped in a Glass of water would sink to the Bottom. Icebergs would not float. Lakes Rivers and sees would freeze from the Bottom up. The world would be in deep cold trouble. Ice is one of nature s most Beautiful and elegant  writes Matthews. It can form in he atmosphere As Lacy delicate crystals Snow. Thoreau called snowflakes Chariot wheels fallen from a Battle in Shesky. When one year s snowfall does t Mell before the next year s Snow a Glacier is born a phenomenon called surge glaciers can race at 10 to 100 times Shnir Normal rate according to John l. Eliot who wrote a companion article in National geographic. Alaska s giant Hubbard Glacier which has been moving Forward for More than a Century suddenly surged last Spring. It blocked a Saltwater fiord creating a Freshwater Lake thai swelled to we months then emptied in a thunderous torrent As the glacial dam burst. The Hubbard s Advance will almost surely continue. Eliot reported. When Snow becomes thicker year alter year it compresses by sheer weight and gradually turns to ice ii this process goes an Long enough and widely enough an ice Sheet develops. Such an ice Sheet covered much of he Northern half of North America during the pleistocene epoch the glacial age began about 2.5 million years ago in the past million years there have been Ai least nine Tull glacial periods which lasted about  years Sacri Friday. March 13,1987 the warm spells in Between interglacial have been As Short As 10.000 years. At the most recent ice Peak 13,000 years ago ice on new England had to be Al teas 4,000 feet deep to have covered the while and Green mountains. Over Hudson Bay it must have been More than two Miles thick. As the tee melted from North America from Northern Europe from the icebergs that spilled from Antarctica and Greenland the seas steadily Rose the Rise has been put at close to 360 feel ii left the face of the Globe much As it looks now is the ice on Antarctica today shrinking growing or in balance scientists Are deeply divided. Mall hew reports. Most admit they Don t know and say in will take years if not decades of further research to find out some have calculated that a total collapse of Wesl Antarctic ice Wilh the ice shelves gone would cause a Rise in sea end worldwide of 1410 20 feet in As male As two to five centuries but if the ice shelves hold says glaciology so George h Denton of the University of Maine the speller of collapse a Antarctic ice and a catastrophic Rise in sea level seems unlikely. Though worried by me continuing increase of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to even warmer climate most scientists put the possible Rise n sea level largely from expansion of warm seawater and the melting of the Northern hemisphere glaciers at Only one to to feet by the year 2100, until now it had been thought that ice Lay deep on Antarctica As Long As 15, even 30. Million years ago but three Ohio state geologists. Peter Noel Webb. David m Hatwood and John h Tuleter. Have identified tree stems Root pollen and Liny fossils of open water Marine life As being two million to four million years old. These findings require a major and Radical rethinking of Antarctica s Long glacial history Matthews concludes