Word: climatologist
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...Climatologists admit that they really do not know. A substantial number believe the earth is undergoing a cooling trend and is returning to the conditions of the "Little Ice Age"-the generally cold, damp weather that prevailed from around 1600 to 1850. British Climatologist Hubert Lamb believes the change is cyclical, occurring every 200 years or so. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin and many others blame the earth's cooling on an increase of dust particles in the atmosphere; the particles act like tiny mirrors, reflecting back some of the sunlight sinking the atmosphere and depriving...
There is some evidence that the earth had cooled down-at least temporarily-in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1972, according to German Climatologist Horst Dronia, the atmosphere in the Northern Hemisphere was one full degree centigrade colder than in 1949. But there have been indications of a slight warming since then. If the cooling-theory school is correct, however, the prospects for man are chilling. A global average temperature drop of only 1° could shorten the growing seasons in the temperate zones by a critical week or more and reduce food supplies. Increased heating requirements would...
Between the 24th and the 26th of February, 1972, 3.72 inches of rain fell on Logan County, West Virginia--not unusual as the state climatologist would later testify. But it was enough, because there were no spillways built into the dam. On the morning of the 26th, Steve Dasovich, head of operations at the Buffalo mine, sent bulldozers to relieve pressure on the dam. It was too late for that, though. When they got to the dam a little before 7 a.m., it was gone. And 21 million cubic feet of water and God knows how many tons...
...that era may well be ending. From his studies of weather history, British Climatologist Hubert H. Lamb concludes that climate runs in roughly 200-year-long cycles, and that the earth is now entering one of its chilly phases. Perhaps the gloomiest of the weather prophets, Bryson speculates that the earth may be reverting to a frigid interlude comparable to what some scientists call the "little ice age" that cooled Europe from the 16th through 19th centuries. During those years Greenland's once lush fields vanished, England's productive vineyards withered, and agricultural disasters like Ireland...
...peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries-the U.S., Canada and Australia -global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable...