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Minerals
CHARACTERISTIC formations or manner of occurrence in nature of
certain minerals, such as coal, oil, salt, gold, fit naturally and
perfectly into the pattern of the theory of the recurrent careenings
of the globe. Nothing but such careenings explain the locations and
forms of these minerals.
COAL
Coal is found in all parts of the world, including the antarctic continent, the arctic islands, Greenland, Alaska, and in
all of the temperate and tropical zones. It is being mined under the
bed of the Pacific Ocean at Lota, Chile, and under the Atlantic
Ocean off England, Nova Scotia, and elsewhere. It is mined in the
Rocky Mountains, in the Appalachian Mountains, in the Urals and many
other mountains. The coal beds found in polar regions are the
results of vegetable growths which accumulated when those areas
enjoyed temperate or tropical climates. Layers of coal were formed
from masses of vegetation, consisting of leaves, sticks, and trees,
which had become water logged and then sank to the bottom of
depressions in the land such as swamps, lakes, and rivers just as
vegetable mucks accumulate at similar locations in our own time.
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This process resulted in the accumulation during the entire epoch of
a bottom layer of vegetable matter, with some mineral contents. All
other detached vegetation was exposed to the air and was slowly
burned up by oxidation, just as is happening all around us today.
Vegetable muck deposits, which are now found as coal, have been
protected from oxidation, i.e. slow combustion, by being covered
with superimposed layers of earth materials. The churning up and
dispersal of huge volumes of earth materials by the great deluges
which accompany each careening of the globe, create the layered
condition now existing in the structure of the earth.
The coal fields of Pennsylvania show five at some places seven
horizontal layers of coal with layers of shale or slate interleaved
between the coal beds. This evidence indicates that these areas were
alternately warm or tropical, at which time the vegetable muck which
later became coal was gathered, and then polar, when the silt
collected, being carried by water and also forming beds at the
bottom of depressions.
The vegetable muck was shifted to a polar climate by a careen of the
globe and, being covered with water which immediately froze solid,
was protected from slow combustion while in the polar region. Into
certain of these muck bottomed depressions there flowed, during the
summer, waters containing silt which settled down to form an
additional protective covering for the muck. The layer of silt also
prevented oxidation when the muck was again careened back to a
temperate or tropical zone. The silt eventually became shale or
slate.
Having explained the process through which vegetable mucks turn to
coal and glacial silts become clay, shale and slate, we notice that
there are features common to both formations, and also features
peculiar to each. A common feature is that both coal and silts
require a depression in the land, because they both form on lake
bottoms, etc., from materials which once floated and then sank in
these waters.
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The features peculiar to each are:
(1) coal represents warm climate
ingredients which fell into the waters and sank;
(2) clay silts
represent polar ingredients which were carried by the waters in
summer and sank to the bottom, forming a layer above the muck.
Such a series of superimposed alternate layers of coal and slate
indicate that the particular area once was a basin of depressed land
created by one of the ancient ice caps once existing in that
location.
Thirty coal beds have been found in Pennsylvania and 63 in Nova
Scotia in vertical earth strata indicating possibly as many separate
and distant epochs during which these lands were in latitudes and
climates suitable to the development and accumulation of the
vegetable mucks from which coal is usually formed.
There is always the possibility that a basic coal stratum, laid down
in any one epoch, may be found to be divided into seams, separated
by interleaved strata and caused by nothing but local disturbances;
but there is general agreement that each layer of coal buried in the
bowels of the earth was once vegetable materials growing upon the
earth’s surface.
Coal is a product of the land; but oil, salt, and gold appear to be
products of the sea. All have been created during successive epochs.
The geographical areas in which the greatest supplies are located
have been determined by the careenings of the globe. They are all
telltale evidence of such careenings.
Starting with the theory of global careenings to explain the
perfectly preserved conditions of mammoths, I looked elsewhere in an
endeavor to find supporting evidence. Studying the formations
containing various minerals I found that coal, oil, salt, and
supplies are located have been determined by the careenings of but I
discovered no adequate explanation for these materials being located
in earth strata at varying depths.
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OIL
I have come across seven different theories to explain the
formation of petroleum or oil in the strata of the earth; and only
one of them seems to be able to stand the acid test of factual
evidence. That theory holds that oil comes from fish. The theory of
fish being the origin of oil is ably and adequately expounded in the
literature on the subject; but, in all these treatises there has
been a "missing link." A cataclysm was required to kill fish in such
enormous quantities, and means for preserving them from decay and
oxidation immediately after death were also necessary. That link is
now adequately supplied by the theory of recurrent global careenings.
The most widely held theory today is that oil principally has been
produced by animalculae; but if that theory is correct, we could
expect to find oil widely distributed and not concentrated in
certain locations. The theory that oil comes mainly from the fish in
the seas of ancient times accounts for its being present in certain
localities.
Animal life in the sea is estimated to be immensely greater in total
numbers than life on the land, for the sea covers approximately 71
per cent of the surface of the globe and supports life for miles
below the surface whereas animal life on land is confined to a
single restricted surface. A small part of the great abundance of
marine life has been trapped and converted to oil at the time of
each recurrent careening of the globe.
Fishes’ graveyards, containing their skeletons abound in successive
rock strata the world over, in rocks belonging to all of the various
systems of formation. The fish skeletons are found in closely packed
layers, in an astonishing variety of different sizes and numbers.
Estimates have been made to the effect that the beds must have been
many thousands of square miles in extent. The Old Red Sandstone
found in all parts of the world has been referred to as belonging to
the "Age of Fishes," because the remains of whole shoals of fish are
found in it almost everywhere.
A hundred years ago Hugh Miller studied the massed fish graveyards
in the Old Red Sandstones of Scotland and concluded that the fish
must have remained undisturbed in quiet waters following their
death. He reached that conclusion without knowing anything about the careenings of the globe, which produce just those conditions. (The
Old Red Sandstones, published in 1858.)
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Massed skeletons of river bullheads have been found in profusion,
with their two spines at nearly right angles to the plates of the
head, this being a sign that they died of asphyxiation like the
mammoth mentioned on page 20. Masses of fish skeletons with fins
spread to the full, not relaxed as in a quiet death, are common; and
certain individual specimens have been preserved with traces of
color on their skin showing that they were entombed before
decomposition of the softer parts had taken place.
Like coal, oils are found in all geological formations, from the
earliest to the latest. Oils are derived from a number of sources
from fish, whales, and other animals, from trees, shrubs, and
plants. Commercial oils are manufactured from menhaden or silver
herring. Fish are the main source of the mineral oils of the earth;
this is shown to be so by an outline of the theory of why and how
fish changed into oil.
Consider what happens when a body of water the
size of Lake Superior is careened to a polar area and its waters freeze solid; or, if a
section of the ocean becomes landlocked in a polar area after a
careen of the globe.
-
The waters immediately become covered with ice. All kinds of fish,
by the thousands, are alive and swim about in the water. This is the
sequence of events which follows:
-
The body of water becomes hermetically sealed by the ice cover and
the oxygen in the air is prevented from being absorbed by the water;
-
The usual percentage of oxygen present in the water is exhausted by
the demands of the organic life;
-
The fish all die of suffocation, and they sink to the bottom;
-
The dead fish do not float to the surface, since the lack of oxygen
and the coldness of the water prevent the creation of gases of
decomposition;
-
The water itself turns to ice leaving a residue of its mineral salts
and silt as a layer covering the dead fish.
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When the masses of dead fish, from former epochs of time, were again
returned to a warm climate by the next careen of the earth, the
depressions in which they rested continued to be bottoms of lakes;
they remained filled with water which gathered more silt while the
frozen fish were thawing out. The cell structure of the fish had
been expanded and disrupted by freezing, just like the cell
structure of an apple is disrupted by frigid temperatures. When
thawed out, and subjected to pressures by the overlying strata, the
hydrocarbons oil readily separated out.
At the bottom of this new lake a layer of muck, dirt, and silt
gradually formed, and removed the fish remains one layer farther
from the surface of the earth. The oils could not float to the
surface because they were underneath a covering layer of residual
mineral salts and a layer of silt. The oils, therefore, oozed still
farther downward through the earth strata above which they had been
formed until stopped by a rock obstruction. Today oils are being
found in saturated reservoir rocks and sands just above or below
geological obstructions by which they have been trapped.
When oils are found below such obstructions and gush on being
tapped, or when they ooze from the ground, such oil motion is
reasonably explained as due to changes in local, internal earth
pressures and centrifugal forces, these being natural consequences
of changes in the location of the earth’s Axis of Figure.
For a long time many geologists thought that oil could only be found
in "domes." These were searched for underground. Then, oil was
discovered in buried and forgotten shore lines of underground seas.
Geological horizons of ancient sea bottoms are, at sporadic
locations, fish graveyards, and oil has been found in abundance in
ancient underground coral reefs.
J. J. Newberry has described fossil fish of all sizes found in
Pennsylvania and in surrounding states. See The Paleozoic Fishes of
North America, in U.S. Geological Survey Monograph No. 16, 1889.)
Naturally, oil has been found in some of the same locations.
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The worldwide distribution of underground oil like coal, salt, and
gold confirms the theory of the recurrent careenings of the globe
and the build up of its various strata, epoch by epoch.
SALT
The great underground deposits of soluble mineral salts, found
in many strata under the surface of the earth, can be rationally
accounted for by the theory that they are located in what was once
the bottom of a depression in the land which was filled with sea
water when a flood inundated the land; or their location marks the
bottom of a salt sea of long ago which became landlocked because of
the earth’s careening, its waters having evaporated or frozen to ice
leaving salts as a residue.
The bottoms of salt beds are lens shaped. Their cross sections are
like those of lakes, and this shows that they were lake or sea
bottoms at the time the salt residues were accumulated.
In central New York State seven successive salt beds have been
discovered, and in the southwest there are thirty or more separate
beds of salt, all derived from the evaporation of sea water, as
pointed out by Charles M. Riley in Our Mineral Resources, page 259.
He states that layers of gypsum underlie the rocksalt in mines; he
also stresses the fact that gypsum precipitates from sea water after
37 per cent of the water has evaporated, but common salt does not
precipitate (crystallize) until over 93 per cent of the sea water
has evaporated. The result of this fractional precipitation is that
layers of gypsum arc laid clown before the salt layers.
GOLD
Having seen how fish change into oil when a landlocked section
of the ocean or a lake turns into ice, and how salt becomes a
residue from evaporation or freezing, we will take a close look at
the gold that was present in those same sea waters.
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Gold together with most of the common elements of the earth is found
in the oceans. The Encyclopaedia Britannica states that gold is
present in minute quantities in most rocks and is widely
disseminated in igneous rocks, of which, however, it makes up an
extremely small percentage. Gold exists every where in rocks, in
sands, and gravels. There are important gold fields in every
continent. A rich deposit was found in a bed of lignite in Japan and
another in the Cambrian coal fields of Wyoming. Most of the gold
crystals in ores and rocks are too small to be seen; but in
California there are larger crystals, of the cubic system, an inch
or more across.
The gold in the ocean was left behind, like the fish and the salt,
when the landlocked seas froze or evaporated and thus abandoned the
areas in which they had been trapped. Apparently the gold
crystallized out just as the salt did, and many of the larger
crystals occur in lodes; these have been attributed to the
concentration of the residual liquid before its final disappearance.
The distorted, rounded forms of many of the larger crystals are due
to the pressure and movement of temporary, overlying glacial ice;
while the wide diffusion of gold in rocks throughout the world
attests to the frequency of the rollarounds of the globe and
indicate the great number of locations in which the gold of ocean
waters has been left behind as a residue. For example, gold in South
Africa is found in "reefs", which have been developed on a rock
stratum which was originally horizontal, but is now tilted. Mine
shafts that start at the surface outcroppings follow the downward
sloping strata, or synclines, to depths of two miles.
The Ocean
OCEAN FLOOR
The floor of the ocean may be likened to mountains,
hills, ravines, gorges, plains, and river beds. These areas happen
to be submerged in our present epoch, but their topography is not
essentially different from the land areas now rising above sea
level. The fact that these conditions exist is ample proof that
there was a time when they were dry land.
There were also times when the world’s present land areas were below
sea level; in that era originated the marine fossils now in evidence
as well as the strata of limestone rocks which were first created in
the ocean by the shells of countless shell fish and corals. These
rocks provide positive proof that these areas were formerly under
water.
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The ocean floor and the beaches of former epochs consisted of
sedimentary layers of sand, shells, corals, etc.; they were later
metamorphosed into sandstones and limestones many of which are found
today as rock in the mountains, while countless others form sections
of the earth’s upper strata.
What was at one time the floor of the ocean may today be a mountain
top. Ovid (born in 43 B.C.), in Metamorphoses, Book XV, tells of an
ancient anchor found on the very summit of a mountain, and of marine
shells lying dead far from the ocean.
Explorers have been puzzled by finding sea shells and other
specimens of marine life high up in the Rocky Mountains, in the
Appalachian, the Andes, the Himalayas, and other mountain ranges.
The location of these marine specimens is readily accounted for by
the successive Great Deluges of the earth; during each Great Deluge
huge quantities of sea shells and marine specimens were churned up
as debris, held in suspension by the rushing flood waters, and then
widely scattered over the mountains, plains, and valleys comprising
the land areas.
Two enigmas, which have long baffled scientists, resolve themselves
automatically in the minds of those who accept the theory of the
recurrent careenings of the globe. These two riddles have to do with
the Land and Water Hemispheres and with the Rifts.
LAND AND WATER HEMISPHERES
Our globe may be divided into a Land
Hemisphere, containing approximately 46.6 per cent land and the rest
water; and a Water Hemisphere, having only approximately 11.6 per
cent land. This geographical fact confirms that the Sudan Basin area
of Africa was at the North Pole during Epoch No. 1 B.P. It was there
that the polar ice cap of that epoch grew to maturity and created
the Sudan Basin.
When the eccentric throw of the rotating weight of the Sudan Basin
Ice Cap rolled the earth around until the basin reached its present
latitude, the earth careened about 80 and ended Epoch No. 1 B.P.
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The city of London is located at the approximate center of the Land
Hemisphere; it lies approximately halfway between the North Pole and
Lake Chad, and nearly on the line of the ice Cap’s travel.
The existence of a Land Hemisphere is explained by the enormous
weight and rotating speed and corresponding eccentric centrifugal
force of the migrating Sudan Basin Ice Cap. The Ice Cap traveled
with a varying rate of speed as it left the Pole of Spin and
journeyed toward the tropics; its speed was that of the earth’s
surface strata for each latitude plus the additional speed generated
by the careening motion of the globe’s surface.
Neither the speed of careening nor the speed of the earth’s rotation
affected the Sudan Basin Ice Cap when it was at the North Pole. Then
it moved only at the slow speed of the wobbling motion of the earth
and at the speed created by the distance the Axis of Figure was off
center from the Axis of Spin. The speed of careening soon became
excessively great, but decreased to practically zero when the Ice
Cap reached about 10 Northern latitude, while its speed of motion
due to the rotation of the globe became about 40 per cent faster
than the speed of sound, since it would then move at approximately
the speed of the earth’s surface at the Equator.
The eccentric centrifugal force created by the motion of the Ice Cap
at these great speeds caused the elevation of all the lands of which
it was a part. It pulled them upward and outward from the center of
the earth, against the force of gravity. At the same time most of
the land areas of the opposite hemisphere became submerged in the
oceans, and became a Water Hemisphere.
More than three quarters of the land surface of the globe is north
of the Equator. This is so because the three most recent ice caps
that have caused the globe to careen have been located at the North
Pole. It is therefore to be no more than expected that the northern
land areas are found to be elevated. The present arrangement of the
land masses is evidence of the upward and outward throws of the
eccentric centrifugal force of the migrating ice caps of the past.
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Rifts
THE UPWARD and outward pulls as well as stresses of the eccentric
centrifugal force of the Sudan Basin Ice Cap created during the ice
cap’s migration put certain tensions in the adjacent earth masses.
The great African Rift remains as mute telltale evidence of this.
The rock formations thus torn apart tell of the transient forces
created by the Ice Cap’s migration. It has long been known that
tremendous force and tension were required to form the crevasses in
the rocks, and that force is now clearly identified. We also
identify this rifted area as a section of the globe that was moved
from the North Pole to the tropics; it was at the same time moved
about thirteen miles further from the center of the earth. The
radius of the earth being about 4,000 miles, the area had to be
stretched out about 13/4000 squared, more than it had been, for
surfaces of spheres are to each other as the squares of their
diameters.
The Great African Rift lies to the east of and parallel to the
direction of the Sudan Ice Cap’s line of travel. It extends both
north of and south of the Sudan Basin, ranging from Syria to south
central Africa, a distance of over 4,000 miles. Bailey Willis, in
Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication No. 470 (1936), has
collected many photographs of rift valleys. In many places the sides
are vertical, or nearly so, and are so bare and sharply cut as to
indicate the rift’s recent geological creation. Some of the rift
valleys have normal escarpments.
J. W. Gregory delineates and describes sections of the Great African
Rift Valley in his book The Rift Valley and Geology of East Africa.
Both of these authorities refer to other rifts known in many parts
of the world. They describe the Rift Valley as being in some places,
a single chasm and sometimes being as wide as the Red Sea; in other
places it has been broken into a long, wide chain with numerous
chasms. The Rift Valley branches eastward to the mouth of the Gulf
of Aden and westward beyond Lake Tanganyika in the rift valley of
the central Congo region. The Red Sea is not in a valley; no
important rivers flow into it. It appears to be a crack,
approximately 1,250 miles long, in the upper rock surface of the
earth, where the earth opened up, clue to transient tensions, and
stayed open.
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The Dead Sea, near the northern end of the Great Rift, is 1,300 feet
deep and its surface is 1,293 feet below sea level the lowest land
surface on the earth. The Dead Sea and the River Jordan lie in a
narrow valley, so straight and deep that it has been described as a
crevasse in the earth’s so called crust. Similarly, Lake Tanganyika,
lying in what is one of the southern extensions of the Rift, is
4,190 feet deep and its bottom is 1,664 feet below sea level. The
Great Rift is indeed no local fracture, its length being one sixth
of the circumference of the earth.
There is much evidence to show that the rocks in the area have been
pulled apart. In many places parallel faults, extending north south,
are arranged like a grid, or like parallel fingers of long, thin
rock slices on end, separated by bays of alluvium.
If we look for evidences of earth tensions on the side opposite the
Rift, caused by the Sudan Basin Ice Cap reeling southward and
causing the land surfaces to stretch, we notice both the main fjords
at Oslo running north south and the English Channel. In the Channel
area we find that a great deposit of chalk has apparently been split
approximately down the middle, with one half in the cliffs of
Normandy facing the other half in the cliffs of Dover.
In view of the above facts, indicating that rifts were created by
the tensions resulting from the eccentric centrifugal forces of
rotation of polar ice caps in transition, we can confidently look
for other rifts caused by former polar ice caps, and we will find
them as fjords, chasms, and steep, walled valleys all over the
surface of the earth.
Polar Regions
EARLY explorers arrived in Antarctica with comparatively open minds
but did expect to find evidence to support the then current belief
that the ice mass was the waning remnant of a prehistoric ice age.
They discovered physical phenomena which they erroneously concluded
were proofs of the ice mass having been larger in former times.
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Near the coasts they observed glacially transported boulders perched
1,000 to 1,500 feet above the flowing glaciers, and high up on the
sides of mountains they saw the scouring marks, striations made by
moving glaciers. They assumed that the Ice Cap must have been at
least 1,000 feet higher in former times, and their erroneous
conclusion that the Ice Cap was waning became current popular
belief. It is possible that they observed the telltale markings of
an earlier ice age for Antarctica; as The Encyclopaedia Britannica
states,
"Raised beaches show an emergence of land in Quarternary
times and there is evidence of a recent glacial period when the ice
sheet on the Palmer Peninsula was 1,000 feet higher than it is now."
(Vol. 2, 1959, page 14) .
A more recent view holds that these phenomena more probably have
been caused by the natural workings of isostacy, the inland ice
pressures having caused the extrusion of coastal mountains. The Ice
Cap, fed by copious snowfall and almost continuous fall of
hoarfrost, appears to be constantly growing in robust health, and
not waning. Glaciers, past or present, never could pile up any
higher on the sea coasts than they do at present, because any
increase in weight makes them flow away faster into the oceans, and
the ice is constantly flowing off the land and into the sea.
Therefore, glaciers could not have deposited the 1,500 foot high
boulders on the coast nor have caused the scouring marks on the high
coastal mountains.
Some of the coastal rocks of yesterday have apparently become the
coastal mountains of today. They were spewed up to relieve the
tremendous pressures created on the rock floor of the inland ice
bowl. Greenland’s ring of coastal mountains and its depressed center
appears to be a similar example of the workings of isostacy.
Such rock upthrusts receive confirmation from the carcass of a
Weddell seal, found by Captain Scott high up in the twin Ferrar
Glacier, near the Ross Sea Coast. For a seal to have climbed so high
is, of course, absolutely impossible. For a seal to have been
reposing on rocks which were flung up to a higher
altitude can be explained in the same way as the finding of glacial
boulders perched high in the mountains.
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Solid rock flows under pressure, but it cannot move downward.
Antarctica’s interior ice pressures are relieved at the coasts, the
rock being burst up into the coastal mountains. Thus added to, these
mountains serve to enlarge the area of the continent, and at the
same time, they block off or dam the flow of ice. This increases the
volume and weight of cold storage ice, which, in turn, acts to
produce new coastal mountains. This is the vicious circle of
Antarctica’s growth!
"Ice mountains" and "ice volcanoes" illustrate the vicious circle of
the continent’s growth. An ice mountain discovered along the Queen
Maud Land coast by the U.S. Navy’s 1946 47 expedition is described
by Admiral Byrd as "luminous blue, towering more than two miles high
and extending 100 miles along this coast." Others have described it
as rising sharply from the ocean depth. It now blocks off the flow
of the ice to the sea, increasing the weight of the Ice Cap.
"Luminous blue" signifies deep glacial ice. Placed in a glass of
water, it gives off air bubbles as the ice melts, the effervescence
being due to the air having been under pressure. Deep glacial ice,
now high up in a mountain, can only be accounted for by the theory
of underground rock movements and coastal upthrusts.
Ice volcanoes, or "ice bowls" which pockmark a large area of the Bellingshausen Sea coast are caused by sudden violent rock flows
resulting in pillars, or guyots, that have been thrust up. They
block off the flow of ice to the sea, and thus increase the Ice
Cap’s weight.
The ice appears to have been thrust upward with such speed that the
momentum caused the upper sections of the glacial ice to become
detached from the parent ice on the floors of the bowls. Some of
these upper layers of ice were extruded so violently that they broke
into great blocks, the size of houses and ships, some of which
landed on the lower ice shelf and some back in the craters.
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The rocks under these bowls have been thrust up as the result of the
same processes, described on page 101, that have formed the
underground pillars of salt, the clay pipes of the diamond mines,
and the ocean guyots as well as the ice mountains. The contours of
the tops of these rock extrusions are either flat or irregular,
depending on whether the ground levels from which they were extruded
were even or very rough. It is predicted that when some of the sheer
wall like coastal mountains are examined more closely the rock
surfaces will be found to look less aged less eroded and spalled by
frost action than mountains rising above the ice sheet in the inland
areas. This will confirm their more recent creation.
Where a long range of mountains now located inland from the sea
coast lies parallel to it, the presumption is that the inland range
at one time was actually at the coast. The mountain range of Queen
Maud Land, 100 miles or more inland, is an example.
Greenland’s topography indicates that the mountains along its sea
coasts have been thrust up by the same process. Its central plateau
of ice is about 10,000 feet above sea level and is contained by
these mountains, now forming most of its sea coasts and shore lines.
In the central areas the rock floor has been depressed below sea
level by the weight of the ice.
Antarctica’s highest elevation is reported to be approximately
14,000 feet above sea level. Recent depth recording echo soundings
have disclosed that the rock floor, in some central locations, is a
mile below sea level. Thus, the maximum ice column may be estimated
to be approximately 19,000 feet in height. The resulting pressure on
the rock floor is over 7,500 pounds per square inch over 1,000,000
pounds (500 tons) per square foot at those particular locations,
assuming that the ice weighs uniformly 57.5 pounds per cubic foot.
To repeat, this bottom pressure appears to find relief at the sea
coasts by pushing up the coastal mountains.
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It has been noticed that striated glacial markings are found on the
rocks forming one side of a glacier filled valley, and that no
markings appear on the softer rocks forming the opposite wall of the
same valley. The markings on one side could never have been made by
the valley glaciers; if the glaciers had reached higher previously,
both sides of that valley would have striated walls. It is more
reasonable, then, to assume that the rocks have been forced upward
than that the glaciers have sunk down. Apparently the rocks on both
sides of the valley have been thrust upward by underground pressure,
caused by the central ice weight, the striated one by tilting and
the softer, unstriated rocks by direct levitation. It is also
postulated that enormous striated rock masses have been carried
seaward because of the inland ice pressure.
Starving glaciers have been reported by explorers who have observed
cirques and bare mountain walls. But available photographs show that
bare walls always occur on the north side, except where flowing
glaciers are carrying the ice seaward by the force of gravity. The
glacial ice does not appear to be starving on the south side of
valleys, where inland ice pressures apparently fill all available
space with ice.
Oases, which are limited areas of bare rock and sand, free from snow
and ice, are found in the midst of ice covered areas. Some explorers
and writers maintain that these oases indicate that the entire Ice
Cap is waning. The phenomena are explained more rationally, however,
by the theory of earth electric currents, which heat the land and
cause snow and ice to melt. They are the cause of the fumarole of
Mount Erebus. (See "Volcanoes and Hot Springs," Part III, page 236.
)
Iceland, as an analogy, has both glaciers and hot springs. Many
buildings in the city of Reykjavik are heated in winter by the hot
water piped from the hot springs. Ice free areas and frozen lakes
are attributed to the same cause that creates the hot springs. It is
obvious that the cold storage facilities of the great antarctic
continent are reduced by only a tiny fraction by the relatively
small areas of localized heat.
Page 102
The Creation of Mountains
THE forces of nature react on each other in various ways during the
active periods of global careenings. Because of the curvature of the
globe the centrifugal forces of the rotating ice caps which initiate
the careens soon reach a maximum and then diminish.
When the ice caps have migrated 45 degrees of latitude their
centrifugal force responds to the combined motions of careening and
rotation. Between the sun latitudes of 45 and 0 degrees they change
from being upsetting to being stabilizing forces.
Equatorial bulges then start to form, and the centrifugal forces of
the ice caps and of the new bulges of the earth are soon working in
unison to bring the reeling motions of the globe to a rapid slow
down and stop.
In the meantime, kinetic energy which has developed in the
continental land masses because of their weights and velocities,
collides with the combined energy of the newly generated bulges of
the earth and of the ice caps.
The result of these collisions of forces is that the energy of the
moving continents is absorbed by the crushing, elevating, and
wrinkling of large land areas whose rock strata are crumpled and
bent in ridges at right angles to the forces being dissipated.
A striking illustration of the formation of mountain ranges, by the
dissipation of the mechanical energy of the rolling earth masses
when brought to a halt by a superior force of global stabilization,
is the great chain of mountains lying approximately at right angles
to the directions of motion of the last three rollarounds of the
globe. They extend along a nearly perfect meridian circle skirting
the basin of the Pacific Ocean, traversing the west coasts of South
America and North America and parts of Asia. The directions in which
the three last North Pole ice caps moved, while rolling the globe
sideways to its normal direction of rotation, were,
(1) On a line
from the Hudson Bay Basin of Canada to the Caspian Sea Depression of
Russia (which previously had been at the North Pole),
(2) From
Hudson Bay Basin (which had been at the North Pole) to the Sudan
Basin of Africa,
(3) From Sudan Basin to present North Pole.
It is customary to refer to Africa as "a plateau of continental
size, because its margins are abrupt . . ." (Elements of Geography,
by Vernon C. Finch and others). The elevation of the continent of
Africa is due to the centrifugal force of the most
recent roll around of the globe, which was spearheaded by Africa and
its ice cap; as mentioned before, the depression of the great Sudan
Basin remains as a telltale evidence of this ice cap.
Page 103
The wrinkles and folds in the rocks of the earth’s upper layers are
not uniformly distributed. They are not, for instance, like the
surfaces of desiccated plums (prunes) and dried apples, whose
wrinkled surfaces do not have fault foldings, as do some of our
mountains. Such evidence provided by the earth itself, helps to
refute the older theory that the wrinkling of rocks into mountains
indicates that the earth is shrinking in volume. We now know that it
is growing in volume.
Cross sections of the Appalachian mountains and the Alps show
shallow folds of rock strata, the result of great compression forces
acting tangentially at that point of the earth. Below these folded
strata are other earth layers making up entirely different
formations; that they are unaffected by the local surface forces is
shown by countless illustrations in geological literature. This, in
turn, indicates that the folds have been caused by surface forces
which did not affect the lower earth strata.
The warping and the folds of localized earth layers become corollary
evidence supporting the theory of recurrent careenings of the earth
and of the tangentially imposed compression forces. The energy
involved in careening earth masses, when brought to a halt, is
sufficient to create the observed folds and warpings and is also
great enough to change the horizontal position of many earth strata
to a vertical one, and also to cause the synclines and the
anticlines in the earth’s rock structures.
All changes in tile surface of the earth are due to forces which
even in our day are either active or latent, and these forces will
continue to produce similar changes for the duration of the earth’s
existence.
Mountains of the Rock of Gibraltar type indicate clearly that a
vertical geological break or fault bas occurred in such rock strata,
and that it was caused by an irresistible force; it brought about an
upheaval or elevation of the tiered underground earth strata on one
side of the fault, exposing the laminated strata in one sheer face
or precipice. The other sides of such mountains will usually slope
clown gradually, the earth’s surface being practically as it was
before the upheaval, but it is now slanted to the horizontal.
Page 104
The precipitous face of this type of mountain weathers and erodes
increasingly toward its summit, and the area around its base is
filled with talus, breccia, and debris deposited on what was
formerly the surface of the earth on the opposite side of the
geological fault.
Mountains of this kind are produced not only when the earth careens
and then rapidly ceases its reeling motion, but also during ice ages
such as the ones now prevailing in Antarctica and Greenland. The
normal workings of isostacy equalize the ice and rock pressures by
underground earth movements, including rock fracture and rock flow.
The Ice Cap in Antarctica, for example, exerts a pressure, at sea
level, of about 500 tons per square foot on the underground rock
materials. This pressure can be relieved only by lateral rock motion
in the center and by lateral and upward motions of the rocks at the
edges of the continent.
Some parts of the mountains forced upward by the lateral underground
flow of rock materials as occurs in the coastal mountainous areas of
Greenland and Antarctica will be found to lack well marked
stratification, for the stratifications become distorted in those
parts of the rock materials which have been forced to flow.
Subterranean pressures have raised up mountains of various shapes.
Some, like Gibraltar, appear with slanting elevations placed almost
on end; some look like humped mounds; others resemble a long finger
of uplifted stratified rock layers, their centers welling up like
heads of well developed cabbage which have been tremendously
elongated, and which have divided numerous layers of the upper rock
strata.
Sheep Mountain on Wyoming’s Big Horn River is an example of the last
mentioned type. In the course of time the center section, where
broken, has eroded away to form a hogback mountain. The harder or
more durable rocks of the cracked outer strata have eroded and
become ridges paralleling the contour of the main formation.
Page 105
The unusual appearance of Steamboat Rock at Dinosaur National
Monument, Utah, its shape and flat stratifications, resembles a
multistoried New York City skyscraper with setbacks on one face and
a sheer flat precipice face on the other. It appears to have been
extruded by subterranean pressures seeking relief.
The birth of a different class of small mountains, created by
volcanic heat, is described in Part III, in the chapter entitled
"Theory of Volcanoes."
The polar ice caps, which have existed in all geological epochs, are
a primary instigating cause of the creation of mountains. They
produce mountains by the pressures they exert while growing, and by
causing the globe to careen when they reach their maturity.
The successive layers of earth strata are clearly seen in many
mountains. This indicates that the strata now forced up to the
surface were once below the surface. The flat tops of some mountains
may have been the original level land surface, or the flat top may
be all that was left when the topmost layer or layers of the
mountain were carried away by a flood during one of the careenings
of the globe, or were floated away on the ice during an ice age.
The Ice Cap in Antarctica is suspected of separating mountain tops
from their bases by creating cleavages along the strata planes of
the mountain layers. A limestone layer will slowly dissolve in fresh
water, which is slightly acid. Such a layer might become so slippery
that the side pressures of the ice could cause the whole top section
of the mountain to slide sideways and be carried by the ice to the
sea coast like any other oversize boulder.
Submerged flat topped, conical mountains have been found in the
ocean. They are called "drowned ocean islands," or "guyots." More
than 500 have been charted in tire Pacific Ocean during the past
decade, and a few in the Atlantic.
Page 106
The theory that these mountains were extruded and forced upward
either during ice ages or were decapitated by ice during an ice age
fits the facts more snugly than any theory yet advanced to account
for them. Their flat tops were probably the flat ground level where
the extrusion occurred. The "ice bowls," described in the section on
Antarctica (page 99) are postulated to have resulted from just such
extrusions.
Other well known types of earth formations fit into the theory like
the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle when they are explained as having been
caused by the tremendous pressures of overlying ice caps; and no
other adequate explanation has previously been advanced to explain
the phenomena.
The clay columns or "pipes" in which diamonds are found in
Africa
and Brazil, identified by me as beds which underlay ice caps are
composed of silt in nonsolidified but articulate form. The great
pressures created when ice caps develop above clay beds cause the
particles to rearrange their formation and to be squeezed into and
penetrate the upper adjacent materials of the earth, and therefore
the clays are forced into the shapes of long pipes.
The particles composing some African pipes have been termed breccia
because they consist of many small rock particles of widely varying
chemical composition. The fact that the pipes are like cornucopias,
with the large end up, is an indication of a sudden upthrust of
material under a great pressure which caused the upper part to
expand more than the lower part, the reason for this being that the
resistance of the lateral rock pressures were less great toward the
surface than deep down. The upper surfaces of rock strata in the
South African diamond area are marked by sharply defined straight
furrows characteristic of the ice ages.
Just why diamonds are found in these clay pipes is quite another
subject; but in view of the pressures created by a tremendously
heavy overlying ice mass, it seems reasonable to assume that the
carbon contents of animal or vegetable item strapped snugly in the
clays changed gradually into the diamond form of carbon
crystallization.
Page 107
Ocean waters, trapped in landlocked basins following any one of the
many former roll arounds of the earth, evaporated and left behind
vast beds of salt with flat surfaces and bottoms having lake like
contours. The surfaces became overlaid by some of the many minerals
left behind when the sea waters evaporated. These, in turn, were
covered by various earth materials during the following epochs
between and during the recurrent careens of the globe.
In drilling for oil, sulphur, and other materials, it has been found
that pressures heretofore unidentified have forced some of the salt
upward into straight, smooth, sheer underground pillars. There are
usually several layers of the normal rock strata which cap these
salt plugs and appear to have spearheaded the advance of the softer
pillars as they emerged from the main salt beds, under pressure of
the overlying ice.
This release of pressure is somewhat analogous to the popping of the
cork from a bottle of champagne. "Ice bowls" and "ice mountains" are
similar extrusions forced by the ice cap pressures.
Salt pillars have been found only whenever salt beds have been
compressed into dome shapes, and both domes and pillars are natural
phenomena explained by ice cap pressures. Domes as well as pillars
record the fact that an ice cap once existed in that locality.
Ocean Depths and Mountain Heights
CHANGES in the elevations and depressions on the earth’s surface,
caused by the locations of the earth’s bulge and axis being shifted
following each careen of the globe, are limited to 13 miles
vertically. The diameter of the earth at the bulge of the Equator is
about 26 miles greater than the length of the polar axis, and
therefore the maximum change of land elevations and ocean
depressions is limited to half of the change in diameter at any
given point on the surface of the earth. The total changes on both
sides of the globe may add up to about 26 miles, but the changes on
any one side will not exceed 13 miles at the points of maximum
change.
Page 108
These changes in elevations and depressions have occurred repeatedly
each time that the Axis of Figure has been shifted to a new random
location, and today the surface of the earth consists of innumerable
elevations and depressions.
The highest mountain peaks are nearly 6 miles above sea level, and
the greatest ocean depth almost 7 miles below sea level. They add up
to just under 13 miles just within the permissible theoretical
limit.
The Sudan Basin land area, which was at the North Pole during Epoch
No. 1 B.P., was moved approximately 13 miles further away from the
center of the earth when the globe last careened, while the land
areas now at the North and South Poles which were at that time near
the edge of the tropical zone were moved closer to the center of the
earth by about 13 miles.
These were cataclysmic disturbances in the surface layers of the
earth; yet, when the various forces involved readjusted the earth’s
surface in order to eliminate the conflicting pressures of the
centrifugal force of rotation, the kinetic energy of motion, and the
force of gravity, the total vertical distance between the greatest
depressions in the sea bottoms and the highest elevations of
mountains remained within the total possible range of 13 miles.
This balancing of existing pressures, effected by rapid movements of
rocks and other earth materials, resulted in the first post flood
isostasy or equilibrium of the earth’s stratifications. Since then,
isostasy has been maintained by the earthquakes which occur every
day.
The theory of the recurrent careenings of the globe caused by the
eccentric centrifugal forces of great rotating ice caps accounts for
the limitations found to exist for ocean depths and land elevations.
The tremendous forces which have torn earth layers apart and caused
mountains to be formed in chains, or ranges, can now be identified.
The reason that the floor of the ocean resembles the contours of the
land is no longer a mystery. The great ice caps of the recurrent ice
ages aid in accounting for many of the geological faults, and for
the Ice
Page 109
Front, which fringes much of Antarctica far out into the oceans. The
actual coastline is reported to be mostly unrecognizable, due to the
continuity of the ice which extends out into the sea from one
hundred to several hundred miles.
The earth has been rotating on its present Axis of Figure for about
7,000 years, as shown by the time scale of Niagara Falls (see the
chapter on "Rivers," page 35) . The Ice Cap has grown during that
period of time to a height of 14,000 feet above sea level. The
weight of the South Pole Ice Cap now approximates the astronomical
figure of nineteen quadrillion tons 19 followed by 15 ciphers. This
figure is derived from the statement of U.S. Coast and Geodetic
Survey to the effect that if the ice of Antarctica were uniformly
distributed around the earth, it would make a layer 120 feet deep.
One arrives at the same figure by assuming a cone two miles high
with a base diameter of 2,800 miles.
The heat of the sun strange as it may sound causes the great South
Pole Ice Cap to grow continuously. If one keeps the globe in one’s
mind’s eye and pictures air currents rising everywhere throughout
the temperate and tropical zones caused by air becoming heated by
the sun’s rays one will notice that heated air rises, since it
expands and thus becomes lighter. Heavier, colder air flows in
beneath it.
In the southern hemisphere, below the Equator, the rising air
currents flow south. They cannot flow north, because similar air
currents are rising on the north side of the Equator.
Since the earth is a sphere, all of the south flowing air currents
must converge at the South Pole. These air currents meet "head on"
from every direction, and, because of the speeds of their motions,
they build up air pressures over the polar areas. These pressures
are relieved when the air currents curve downward because of the
fact that colder air is heavier; they thus reverse their directions
of flow and pour northward at low levels and at very high
velocities.
Page 110
Clearly then, it is the beat of the sun’s rays, in other parts of
the world, that has caused the great South Pole Ice Cap to grow to
be approximately two miles high in approximately 7,000 years. It is
also evident that the growth of the Ice Cap started and continues
because of the physical property of air to act like a moving
conveyor, to absorb water like a sponge when warm, and to wring out
the water when cold. The south flowing air currents become so cold,
as they approach the South Pole, that the moisture is wrung out of
them.
At Little America the general flow of the air currents is from the
north at high altitudes, and from the south at low altitudes. The
south flowing air currents are found at altitudes of 3% to 7 miles
(U.S. Navy, Hydrographic Office, Bulletin No. 138, "Sailing
Directions for Antarctica, 1943," page 38). Theoretically, there
should be more precipitation of moisture on the inland area than at
Little America because the air flowing south is warm, moist, and
high up, while the air returning northward is cold, dry, and at a
low altitude.
On the journey southward the air becomes increasingly chilled, and
naturally forces precipitation. On the return journey northward, the
air currents begin to warm and this naturally increases their
capacity to retain moisture. Such winds would be expected normally
to produce cloudless skies over Little America. The air at Little
America is reported very dry although the relative humidity is high,
the air holding ’s of 1 per cent of moisture. The same air in
tropical regions often contains up to .3 per cent of moisture at sea
level, or about 15 times as much.
Less precipitation will fall on areas facing the open ocean, as does
Little America, than on those facing the continents, of Australia,
South America and Africa, remembering that the winds which bring in
the moisture and snow are strongest opposite the continents. The
continuous fall of snow and hoarfrost produce cold storage ice. A
small amount melts in summer, but practically none melts during the
winter months when the sun is generally below the horizon.
Studies made during the International Geophysical Year (1957 8)
reveal a peripheral zone of maximum collection of water, or
"rainfall", which increases inland from the coasts and then
decreases at the Pole. Reports of accumulation of water range from 2
inches to 2 ? inches at the pole, each year, to 33’2’ in the area
facing Australia, where the great cyclone winds bring in the most
moisture.
Page 111
Today, many scientists find that the ice cap is growing, and several
have issued statements regarding the yearly rate of growth. Ten
years ago textbooks generally maintained and students believed that
it was waning. Our own National Science Foundation prefers to defer
any final estimate or statement. They wish to thoroughly analyze the
detailed reports of yearly precipitation of moisture and to check it
against the ratio of ablation and flow off of icebergs in many
areas. They know that a statement to the effect that the ice cap is
growing will be the signal for an all out attack to halt its growth,
at a cost equal to that of a war. If and when they announce that it
is growing and is not waning, the rate of its growth will not be as
important as the number of years before it, in combination with the
wobble of the earth, will cause a roll around of the globe, with a
catastrophic flooding of ocean waters over the land areas.
Just as a growing tree sheds leaves, but a dead one does not, a
growing glacier sheds icebergs, but a waning glacier does not. We
have records dating back several hundred years which show that the
South Pole Ice Cap has been shedding great icebergs for as long as
men have navigated the adjacent waters. It continues to be a
prolific breeder of icebergs, which adds proof to the theory that it
is growing and is not waning.
The flow off of icebergs shows us that the South Pole Ice Cap is
bursting at the edges continuously. The extrusion of the ice shelves
and the ice cliffs, into the sea, results from the pressures of the
inland ice; and the ice pressures result from the weight of the snow
and ice continuously building up in the central areas.
A part of the Ross Ice Shelf containing a section of
Admiral Byrd’s
Little America has already been extruded so far out into the sea
that it has broken off and floated away. The rest of Little America
will follow. The shelf ice on which the German Weddell Sea
Expedition of 1911 12 was based, and the deck ice used by the
Norwegian British Swedish Expedition of 1949 - 52, have both
disappeared by breaking loose, calving, and floating out to sea as
icebergs.
Page 112
An iceberg 208 miles long, 60 miles wide, and extending below the
surface about 700 feet, was sighted by the American icebreaker
Glacier in November 1956. Its area was about that of the states of
Connecticut and New Jersey combined. It was a "calf" of the Ice
Front. Another iceberg 240 feet above the surface, which indicates
probably around 2,000 feet below was reported by Captain Scott.
A growth of about two feet a year is shown for the Ice Shelf on
which Little America is located. In 1929, Admiral Byrd erected two
70 feet long steel radio towers, projecting 60 feet upward. In 1934
they had been so covered by snow that they projected only 30 feet.
In 1947 they were 18 feet high. In 1955, one extended 8 feet, and
the other 10 feet, above the level of the Ice Shelf.
A growth rate of about a half foot per year is disclosed by
photographs of another part of the fractured front of the high ice
cliffs fringing much of Antarctica. Along the coast an average of 80
feet projects above the ocean, on which it floats, and about 160
varves or annual layers of the ice accumulation are visible
indicating about 6 inches per layer. This Ice Front is about 800
feet thick. It is an extrusion of the Ice Cap which extends more
than 100 miles out into the sea, but is still attached to the inland
ice.
Sir Douglas Mawson has reported his observations of the winds at
Adelie Land, which is adjacent to Wilkes Land. In 1911 14 he found
that the winds continually poured off the Ice Cap, exceeding a
velocity of 90 miles per hour for periods of more than 24 hours, and
reaching puffs of 180 miles per hour. The rate averaged 51 miles per
hour for the entire year.
These terrific winds at Adelie Land are caused by the nearness of
the continent of Australia. This enormous rush of icy, dehumidified
air, pouring northward from the Polar Plateau, is the natural return
circulating air current, at sea level, of the moisture laden, heated
air which rose over Australia and poured south at high elevations.
Page 113
Antarctica is surrounded on three sides by continents from which
heated air currents rise, flow south, converge at the South Pole,
turn downward and reverse their directions of flow after
surrendering most of their moisture content to promote the further
growth of the great lee Cap. This makes it appear that the moisture
being carried Pole ward will have become precipitated as snow prior
to reaching the Pole. The lower altitude of the South Pole, compared
to the surrounding areas at higher latitudes may be due to less
precipitation at the polar center.
The Ice Cap Plateau is found to have an apparently sunken surface at
the South Pole. A vortex is suggested because the Pole is the center
of rotation, and higher elevations, producing greater pressures,
occur nearer to the center of the continent. The highest altitude
reached by both Scott and Amundsen was at 88 31’; this spot is at
least 1,000 feet higher than the South Pole which is 9,200 feet
above sea level. The sunken polar center of the Ice Cap tends to
confirm both a minimum local snow fall and the underground flow of
continental rocks. The coastal mountains have been thrust up as a
result of the ice pressures on the rock floor of the lee Bowl. When
the central rocks went down the coastal rocks went up.
The base of the great ice pyramid grows ever larger in response to
the overlying ice pressures, this being the cause of the lateral
underground flow of rock materials. The widening of the base permits
the Ice Cap to become higher at the center, while the gradient or
slope of the glacial ice remains the same.
The extension of the base allows the weight to become greater; the
greater weight, in turn, increases the depth of the dent in the
earth’s surface, or the Ice Bowl, and this results in an additional
flow of underground materials to the coastal areas. What is going on
therefore is a progressive broadening of the base, by the widening
of the Ice Cap Bowl, with a concurrent increase in the total height
of the Ice Cap a vicious circle of continuous growth.
The tremendous weight of this great Ice Cap is now producing
pressures which will result in bulges or adjustments of adjacent
earth materials.
Page 114
The ice embalmed continent of Antarctica is undergoing slow
geological changes, the result of which is a general increase in its
area due mainly to isostasy, or the adjustments of earth materials
to natural physical forces. Antarctica thus holds a key position in
the impending tragedy the next great deluge of the earth.
Analogous are the Hudson Bay Basin in Canada and the Sudan Basin in
Africa. The heights of the perimeter of the Laurentian Shield which
encompass Hudson Bay and bound most of the Hudson Bay Basin,
resemble ramparts of some gigantic fortress. This ridge is called
the "Height of Land" on maps of Canada, such as Goode’s School Atlas
by Rand McNally Co., 1930.
This ridge of land is also a watershed. The rivers on the inside
flow toward Hudson Bay, while those on the outside of the ring flow
away from it. This "bowl" was created by the Hudson Bay Basin Ice
Cap.
The lips of any bowl of earth which once held an ice cap must
naturally appear as a height of land after the glaciers have melted
and disappeared, because glaciated rocks and earth flow under
pressure.
Mountain ranges occur along the eastern coast of the Hudson Bay Ice
Cap Basin, bordering on Davis Strait called Labrador Highlands and
Penny Highlands in Labrador and Baffin Island, respectively. These
all have appearances of being analogous to the mountain ranges along
the coasts of Antarctica.
A peculiarity of the Laurentian Shield is the fact that the rock
formations slope gradually on the inside of the bowl, toward Hudson
Bay; but, the slope is steep on the outside of the bowl, in which
direction the rock materials were pushed.
The outer edge of the Height of Land drops off 200 to 300 feet per
lateral mile, and is fairly uniform for more than four thousand
miles. The diameter of this great ring ridge averages about 1,500
miles, and the land area is shaped like semi plastic mud would
appear into which you had slowly pressed your booted foot.
Page 115
Such a ridge, ring, or "height" could be expected to develop in a
natural manner if an irresistible force were pushing rocks and dirt;
and it is therefore assumed, by analogy, that similar pressures and
the same process of nature are now causing similar expansions and
elevations in the lands surrounding the Antarctic Ice Bowl.
The rock floor of the Hudson Bay Basin Ice Cap like that of
Antarctica was moved in from a tropical climate by a careen of the
globe, and it was covered by tropical vegetation. Then, under ice
pressures which rose to approximately four tons per square inch,
caused by the ice masses which gathered above it, all forms of
vegetation were compressed to an amorphous layer. Tree trunks and
branches were deformed and obliterated by the ice masses which
slithered over them. Fossil specimens of past growths of vegetation
will rarely be found intact.
Telltale residue of buried organic matter, whose original forms have
been entirely eliminated (as mentioned as organic materials in clay)
are now being found in sections of the Laurentian Shield especially
in the black, slaty shales of some horizons of the Lake Superior
region. They owe their color to the dissemination of carbon derived
from organic matter.
An additional analogy is the Panama Canal, whose bottom was
incessantly forced upward in bumps and bulges, due to isostasy and
the weight of the surrounding hills. Lateral underground earth flows
equalized the earth pressures when the lesser weight of water in the
Canal replaced the heavier weight of the earth and rocks removed.
A communication from Hugh M. Arnold, Engineering and Construction
Director, Panama Canal Company, Balboa Heights, Canal Zone, of May
10, 1955, states:
"Any measurable heaving in the
Panama Canal
channel has been in the area of the famous Culebra slides,
intricately slickensided and highly bentonitic. Pressure of the
'rock’ from the adjacent banks sometimes results in a measurable
bulging or heaving of the bottom of the excavated canal."
Page 116
Risings or upswellings of the earth surrounding areas of meadow land
in the vicinity of New York City have often been noted following
attempts made to reclaim such lands by filling with dirt.
Minor reasons for the growth of the Antarctic continent are the
terminal moraines which are developed from the materials carried by
the flowing glaciers and by the waters which in summer flow out from
beneath the ice.
Some of the many small mountain tops -nunataks- observed near the
coasts of Antarctica will eventually be found to be detached blocks
riding shoreward on the glacial ice, as did the small mountains of
northern New Jersey and southern New York which rode the glaciers
during the Hudson Bay Basin ice age.
The geology of Antarctica shows that the land was successively
submerged under the oceans, and was also repeatedly above sea level
during previous epochs of time. The horizontal strata of many of the
mountains contain layers of sandstone, limestone, granitic rocks,
and coal. The older rocks are assumed to be at the bottom and the
younger rocks at the top.
The limestone layers were created by corals and shellfish in shallow
ocean waters. The sands of the sandstones were also created in
shallow ocean waters. The granite rocks were created in upland areas
(see "Origin of Granite" in Part III, page 228 ). The coal strata,
found in the mountains, show that the coal areas were once wooded
bottom lands, marshes or lakes, in tropical or temperate climates,
where water logged vegetation was prevented from oxidation and thus
became coal.
The icebergs all drift away from Antarctica just as floating apples,
in a rotating tub of water, drift away from the center of spin. The
rotation of the earth creates a throw of centrifugal force which
causes the icebergs to move away from the Axis of Spin. Local
southerly winds aid in starting the northward motion; but the
icebergs continue northward after the local winds are left behind.
Nature is setting an example for us to follow. She is showing us how
we, too, can delay the next careen of the globe by making the
Antarctic Ice Cap lessen its weight by making it shed some of its
ice. If we act within Nature’s time limits, and if we greatly
accelerate the throw off of the icebergs, we can postpone the fatal
day when the great Ice Cap will roll the globe sideways, and follow
the icebergs to the tropics.
Page 117
The great South Pole Ice Cap is a product of forces of Nature which
are created by the "Will of God" and are beyond the understanding of
men. The Ice Cap grows larger according to the Laws of Physics which
some of us must understand or most of us must perish. The Ice Cap
must be subdued by man or man will be subdued by the Ice Cap. Like
the Sword of Damocles poised by a hair at Dionysius’ banquet, it
threatens destruction, and in this case it will mean the destruction
of most of the human race.
Our corporal salvation depends on our ability to control the further
growth of the Ice Cap. Bleeding off the ice and making it gravitate
through newly made channels to the coasts, can lead to our only
salvation!
The North Pole area, in the epoch lasting until the next cataclysm
of the earth, will not have an ice cap, unless Bering Strait should
be closed.
Due to the Drag of Gravity (to be fully discussed in Part II), the
waters of the Pacific Ocean are forced against the west coasts of
North and South America. Because of this pressure, warmer sea waters
flow constantly through Bering Strait, from the Pacific Ocean to the
Arctic Ocean, at a normal speed of about four knots (about 4.6 miles
per hour). Information regarding this rate of flow has been
furnished by the U. S. Navy Hydrographic Office, which has since
indicated that it may be only a surface speed. A daily flow of
around 10 trillion cubic feet, or approximately 41 billion tons of
water, was indicated by empirical measurements made by the U.S.
Coast Guard in 1936.
The currents in the Arctic Ocean were discovered when the ship
Jeannette was crushed by the ice and abandoned off Wrangell Island
in 1881 and some of its wreckage was picked up three years later off
the coast of Labrador.
The drift of the ice and the flow of the waters were proved to exist
by Fridtjof Nansen during his voyage on the Fram, and also by a
similar Russian vessel G. Sedov. Both drifted from a
position near the Pacific side to the Atlantic side of the Arctic
Ocean by becoming frozen in the floating ice. They both demonstrated
that the surface ice flowed in the direction of the Atlantic side at
a speed about the same as that of the wreckage of the Jeannette.
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The floating ice on the surface of the Arctic Ocean is about 10 to
16 feet thick and it becomes rumpled into hummocks by the pressures
created by winds and currents.
Snow falls on the drifting ice, which acts like a conveyor belt
carrying it into the Atlantic Ocean, where both the snow and the ice
melt.
Were it not for the continuous flow of water, from west to east
through Bering Strait, the Arctic Ocean which averages about 4,000
feet in depth would have frozen solid centuries ago, and an Arctic
Ice Cap would have developed.
With two Ice Caps one in Antarctica and another in the Arctic our
epoch of time, between two careens of the globe, would have been
radically reduced in length, and our present civilization would
never have had a chance to develop.
Bering Strait as a connecting link between the oceans is seen to be
of vital importance to our civilization: it makes it possible for
the waters of the Pacific Ocean to flow into the Atlantic Ocean, via
the Arctic Ocean, and thus acts to limit the accumulation of cold
storage ice at the North Pole.
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