Global Warming? Up to 1970 everyone was convinced of cooling and the clever ones still do  https://electroverse.co/  (and .net)


https://ia803200.us.archive.org/18/items/understandingcli00unit/understandingcli00unit.pdf


understanding climate change  1975


But cooling can't be prevented, and global warming is a bIG BIG CASH reward for the green maffia

During the recent decades of marked stature improvement
there had also been a change toward earlier onset of puberty.
Sexual cycles of freshman girls now begin a full year earlier than
they did 30 years ago. This trend toward ever earlier onset of
puberty has recently changed again, however, for North
Carolina freshman girls born since 1918 have shown a pro-
gressively later age for -beginning of their sexual cycles. At
Cincinnati and in Kansas the reversal came a year later, while

177
  in Wisconsin only the faintest hints of a turn have been found.

Even down in the high schools, body size is tending to become
stabilized for given age groups. The 15-year-old children of this
year’s class do not show so much gain over those of last year’s
as was the case a decade ago. In fact, following the severe heat
of the 1934 and 1936 summers in Cincinnati, the stature of
high-school children received an actual set-back. Instead of
showing the usual yearly improvement with successive classes
of 12-year-olds, for instance, children of this age were actually
smaller after those hot summers than had been the case in
former years.

Down at the grade-school ages stature is still improving. Èkch
year’s erop of 9-year-olds is better developed than was that of
the preceding year. But stabilization seems to be advancing
through the years of youth toward ever earlier ages, so that we
may expect before many years to see even the 5-year-olds of
one year no better than those of the year before.

Improved methods of feeding and a befter supply of fruits and
green vegetabfes at all seasons have no doubt been responsible
for much of the improvement in growth through childhood and
youth. This was probably an important factor also in the
advancing adult stature. But to-day we face an oncoming
stabilization and probable recession at a time when dietary
standards and the availability of proper foods are better than
ever before. Furthermore, the growth tide reversal is taking
place even in that part of the population usually best nourished.
Some force other than mere food deficiency must therefore be
at work over the earth, reversing our trend from racial
expansion in size and vitality into the start of a profound
rctreat.

This finding of a beginning biologie recession gives sharp
emphasis to the social and economie turmoil around us. Pon-
derous forces seem perhaps to be again tuming man’s course
downward after centuries of most remarkable advance and
achievement. If changes in world temperatures really affect us
in the ways pictured in these pages, then we do indeed seem
to be heading into a period of prolonged and disheartening
decline.

Perhaps you feel that this gloomy view of the situation is not
justified, that man’s control over his physical environment is
much better to-day than it was 2,óoo years ago, and that Science
will find ways to prevent the calamity which seems to impend.
Any such optimistic attitude seems hardly warranted, however,
for already there has been a sharp shrinkage of funds available

178
  for scientific research and higher education. European countries
suffered for years from this dwindling support while our funds
were still plentiful, but the financial trend of the last ten years
in America has cast dismay over those in charge of our in-
stitutions of leaming and research. Increasing aijiounts of
federal funds are being doled out from Washington in an effort
to keep scientists at their investigations, but with such support
often goes a degree of open or hidden dictation regarding the
kind of work to be done; any such reginientation of Science will
almost certainly result in impaired productivity.

Great discoveries usually arise from among a large number of
futile-appearing individual projects scattered here and there.
At first glance the multiplicity and duplication of these scattered
efforts make Science seem very wasteful, but no better way has
yet been found to give hidden genius its chance to emerge.
A very considerable element of chance lies behind the making
of important new discoveries, hence the broadest and least
restricted working base will always give greatest results.

Science of to-day should make every possible effort to put its
new findings into easily understood language, especially when-
ever they bear directly upon the public welfare. Many in-
vestigators have in the past scorned to recognize this duty; but
with the present increasing dependence upon public funds,
workers will be compelled to thus justify their projects in the
public eye. In passing from the field of abstract Science into
concrete utilitarianism, fundamental developments may suffer;
but it seems that the change is upon us. and that its implications
should be recognized by all. Here, as elsewhere, publicity can
easily be overdone and workers greatly handicapped by too
active salesmanship; but in general the reporting of scientific
findings is to-day very well done and merits the closest co-
operation from investigators.

In quite another direction there is also room for doubt as to
our ability to benefit long from present scientific knowledge.
To-day we see public and personal health measures producing
widespread reduction in many diseases and bringing about
a progressive lengthening of the life span. This has been off-
setting quite Iargely the reduction in birth rate of recent
decades. City water supplies have been purified with untold
saving of life. Malaria has been eradicated from large areas.
Cholera, typhus, and yellow fever are being restricted in thoir
spread from regions endemically affected. But eternal vigilance
is the price we must pay for these highly desirable results. And
vigilance is costly in energy terms.

179
  Tropical cities to-day maintain safe water and sewage Systems
only by an importation of energetic overseers from the more
dynamic temperate regions. If left entirely in local hands, they
would within a very few decades succumb to political graft and
revert to their former indolent filth. Even with smallpox vacci-
nation in the most enlightened regions, it is only constant
compulsion which maintains a high denree of mass immunity.
Were this compulsion removed, vaccination would soon drop
to quite ineffective levels, and real epidemics of the disease would
again appear. We have to-day a very good example of this in
the sector of the United States lying west and north of Missouri.
These 16 States provided almost nine-tenths of the country’s
15,111 smallpox cases in 1938, although they contain only
about a quarter of the total population. In 3 of them com-
pulsory vaccination is actually prohibited by law!

Even our food supply is made safe only by a thin veneer of
governmental control which is kept effective by constant vigil-
arice. Sickness and death lurk behind the least carelessness in
the preparation and handling of our milk supply, our canned
foods and meats, the drugs we use, and the beverages we drink.
And in the city air we breathe, only the faintest beginnings
have yet been made in the eradication of harmful contami-
nations.

A few decades of falling energy level and initiative could, and
probably would, bring aboiit a rapid crumbling of this fragile
defence shelter we have built up around our health and welfare.
Not only would scientific advance cease; We might well rapidly
slough off much of our present application of scientific dis-
coveries. Even in the mechanical field, or perhaps most markedly
there, regression would be disastrous. Mechanical developments
of to-day have become so complicated and involved, depending
on such high degree of accuracy and skill, that they would be
quickly affected by a loss of initiative and intense mental appli-
cation to the problems at hand. How long could air trans-
portation survive an increasing carelessness, when one mechanical
fault in construction or operation means certain death for many
passengers?

Our vaunted advances thus render us all the more vulnerable
to a recession in energy and initiative if it is to come. We need
not delude ourselves into a false sense of security behind our
present level of scientific development, for there is no such
security. What use was made of the valuable knowledge amassed
in early Greece and Rome when man descended into the murky
centuries of the Middle Ages? Yet medical knowledge of the

180
  early Greeks compared well with that of to-day except in the
phases dependent on mechanical skill and precision. In medicine
of to-day, as in transportation, industry, and the arts, we place
great reliance upon mechanical devices of highly technical
character. Should the control of society’s welfare be taken from
the intelligent and ingenious few and be grasped by the hands
of the ignorant many, our machine-age civilization would
speedily crumble and plunge us into another Dark Age.

As man has gone down in past tidal recessions, he not only
ceased actually adding to his knowledge but even lost his ability
to use that which he already possessed. For instance, it has been
recently pointed ’6ut that in early Egyptian and Babylonian
times mathematical knowledge was far advanced, but that from
about 2,000 to 500 b.c. no use whatever was made of such
functions as quadratic equations. With the early Greeks such
knowledge was revived and given much further progress. But
it once more suffered a complete eclipse during the Middle
Ages, as mankind receded in all other ways. Revival and
marked mathematical advances have again held sway since
the time of the Renaissance.

If such abstract and fundamental knowledge and mental
skill as that required for higher mathematical works can suffer
such complete eclipse with long periods of warmth and physical
decline, then we should no longer doubt the precariousness of
our present situation. Our complete dependence upon the
machine, and upon the intricate technical knowledge required
to keep it in operation, renders us very susceptible to the long
mental decline which now seems perhaps due to recur. Ours
will probably be looked back upon as the Mechanical Age of
Science and Industry, abandoned by man as he lost the mental
acuity to operate successfully the intricate devices previous
intelligence had invented.

Still another featurq of the tidal change which has been causing
concern in high places of several nations is the increasing reduc-
tion in reproductivity. For almost 80 years the fertility of
English women has been declining, and estimates have been
made that another 150 years of similar decline may bring the
population down to perhaps one-tenth of its present mass, with
reversion to a pastoral type of life. The wave of ninetcenth-
century reproductivity doubled human numbers on earth but
showed signs of slowing down by the end of the century; during
the early decades of the twentieth century this loss of momentum
became alarming in several of the previously most vigorous
peoples. Interesting speculation may well arise as to just how

181
  far this reduced fertility may go toward bringing about an
actual reduction in human numbers on earth during the
centuries ahead.

Serious social consequences arise from the change in racial
reproduction. Fewer children will soon mean less crowded
school conditions in the cities of America. For many decades we
have been frantically enlarging our school facilities, only to find
the ncw quarters soon just as crowded as the old. That will
soon cease and be replaced by a yearly decline in enrolment.
Such a decline has already begun, for in many American cities
primary-grade enrolment is 25-30 per cent. less than it was
ten years ago. A pre-war study in London showed that the
school population will be less than half what it is to-day if the
birth rate continues for another 20 years its course of the past
several decades. However, as the burden of educating fewer
children lessens through the decades, society will be faced with
the problem of caring for a growing proportion of aged de-
pendants. So perhaps we shall soon be converting our fine
school buildings into homes for the aged.

Man to-day faces a real challenge. He has the intelligence and
skill to control artificially those very factors of his environment
which produce wide fluctuations in racial capacity and develop-
ment. This intelligence, however, resides only in a few members
of the total human mass, and can function effectively only as
the masses understand, encourage, and apply its dictates.
Whether the genius and high intelligence of the few will be
permitted to function therefore depends entirely upon mass
psychology and the social and political motivating forces direct-
ing the course of events. If those forces favour individual
opportunity and the exercise of initiative, then mental genius
will be stimulated to the utmost. But with the mass demanding
“subsistence” and “social security,” less attention will be given
to encouraging the inventive genius of the race.

Many peoplc claim to see another dire threat to the usefulness
of Science in the labour revolution now taking place over the
wdrld. Rugged individualism of recent centuries had its faults
and selfish aspects, but its keen appreciation of the value of
scientific discoveries was largely responsible for the amazing
developments of the machine age in which we now live. But
may not labour develop a similar appreciatioh after it has had
more experience with the responsibilities of national guidance?
Here, as on the field of battle, Russia provides ground for
optimism, for her scientific men are given every encouragement
and occupy most favoured living conditions. A short 25 years

182
  of labour rule there seems to have accomplished great things,
to have changed a lumbering, clumsy, discontented giant into
the fervently patriotic people who to-day are matching most
intricate skill in a war to the death against the world’s best
organizers and accomplished scientists. No matter how many
doubts we may have had regarding the Russian political
philosophy of recent decades, the whole world should now be
willing and anxious to understand more about the workings of
the forces which have wrought such changes.

There can be no gainsaying the fact that labour is definitely
on the move toward a higher place in world affairs. The labour-
union ferment had long been at work before the massive Russian
experiment began. The matter came to a head in Britain with
the general strike of 1926 and the formation of MacDonald’s
Labour Government. Even in far-off China, the Nationalist
uprising which reached Peking as we were leaving in 1928 was
largely on this basis; and the Chinese Red Army has given
a most able account of itself in the years of defcnce against
Japanese aggression. lts 6,000-mile trek around the Kuomintang
forces to get at the Japs in the north will live for ever among
the world legends of patriotic performances.

It is indeed unfortunate that the bitter struggle for power
here in America should have come at a time whcn long-
established trends of various kinds seemed to be charting a new
course. It looks very much as though our President was right
a few years ago when he said in effect that old landmarks no
longer sufficed, that we were putting out upon unchartcd seas
with only experimental soundings taken from time to time to
guide our course in the troubled years ahead. Events of

2,000   years ago, as ancient civilizations began slipping into the
abyss of the Dark Ages, can help us little to-day, for scenes and
people change with the passing millenniums. The rcal tragedy
of America—and other countries—of to-day is that ponderous
trends so often go on unrecognized, with a nat ion’s wealth and
accumulated advantages being dissipated in bitter class oppo-
sition. If only the certainty of the change and direction of trend
were more obvious and convincing, much human miscry and
wasting of valpes might be avoided.

If another recurring millennium of warmth is now really
plunging humanity back into a new Dark Age, we may well
consider the possible rearrangements in world power which
may take place. The present global conflict is erasing national
boundaries and bringing about new international alignments
which may have a profound inffuence upon the future course

183
  of history. All now is fluidity, with every thinking person
realizing that there can be no return to pre-war conditions.
A new scheme of things must be constructed after the war has
ended. Who will sit at the head of the peace table and whose
will be the dominant voice?

Many people have professed to see a “rising tide of colour” as
the conquering grip of Western nations has shown signs of
relaxing its hold over the population masses of tropics and
Oriënt. The present onrush of Japanese conquest provides sharp
emphasis to the changed relations now clearly seen for the first
time. Japan has availed herself fully of the Western world’s
mechanical ingenuity to weid a powerful military machine.
Her men are no fighting prodigies, however, as has been
demonstrated whenever they have come to grips with American
forces under conditions of equal equipment. In fact, the ragged
troops of China, with almost no military background and
entirely negligible equipment, are often out-fighting the
Japanese invaders.

The really crucial factor responsible for Japanese conquests in
the Far East would seem to be a softening and crumbling of
the hold Western nations have long exercised there. The French
Empire is gone; that of Britain is rapidly following. The day of
a dominant white, race is past so far as the Oriënt and all Asia
are concerned, and the same may perhaps well hold for the
human masses throughout the tropics.

If and when Germany and Japan can be defeated and de-
militarized, it would seem logical that dominant places at the
peace table should be occupied by Russia and China. These are
the two peoples who have done the major part of the heavy
fighting, who have provided the most steadfast and grim resist-
ance to the aggressor nations, who ask nothing in return except
the privilege of pursuing their home affaire without outside
dictation. Endowed with a high degree of realism in world
affaire, they should have a large part in the post-war reconstruc-
tion of the Eurasian situation. They are the ones who must
continue to live alongside the present trouble-makers. People of
America are farther removed from the seat of trouble and have
a somewhat more academie interest in the whole matter. So
let Stalin take the head seat, with Chiang Kai-shek on his right
and the Anglo-Saxon group on his left.

As for a “rising tide of colour” engulfing the white race, the
chances for such are probably negligible so far as the Negro
race is concerned. Even though a diminution of climatic stimu-
lation should leave present temperate-zone nations at a lower

Finally invalided home, he was greatly chagrined to be still
on sick leave when war broke out. He is now rather rapidly
recovering and, with knowledge of the proper hygiene of living
in tropical heat, should soon be ready for active service again.

162
  There will be many similar cases of heat effects among the
thousands going directly into tropical heat from the winter
climate of the northem United States. Expert as are the Army
and Navy medical men in handling the tropical disease
problems of bacterial and parasitic origin, few of them have
given much thought to these disabling disturbances in body
physiology which arise from the direct effects of the heat
itself.

Tropical fevers and infections of various kinds have taken
a considerable toll among the forces fighting in the lowlands
of the East Indies, Malaya, and Southern China. One of the
most important reasons for Bataan’s fall was the presence of
malaria and other ailments among the courageous American
defenders. So long as drug supplies hold out, however, this toll
is now insignificant compared to what it was a half-century
ago, before modern medical methods of prevention and treat-
ment came into force. Perhaps proper measures to maintain
the highest possible vitality will still further reduce the ravages
brought by these hosts of minute tropical enemies. They are
always to be feared more than those in human form. Japancse
conquest of the East Indian sources for the world’s quinine
supply may prove to be one of her major victories over the
United Nations unless other effective anti-malarial drugs can
be discovered and produced quickly.

The British had always considered Singapore safe from land
attack because of the fever-ridden Malayan jungles; but the
Japanese attention to minute detail seems to have provided
effective protection for their men. Without adequate supplies
of quinine or other good anti-malarial drugs, such jungle
campaigns would indeed have been impossible.

Still more dangerous than sudden transfer of troops from
temperate coolness into tropical heat is a sudden shift in the
reverse direction. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, and a host of other
respiratory infections take a tremendous toll among troops
shifted from tropical homelands into winter fighting on northern
fronts. As we have already noted, in the First WoYld War tuber-
culosis among the African troops fighting in northern France
became almost as acute as pneumonia, running a very rapid
and often fatal course.

It would be disastrous for Italian soldiers to attempt winter
fighting in the polar cold of the northern Russian front. Even
in the much milder weather of the Crimea they are no match
for the more energetic Russians. Germans from the more
stimulating climate of north-central Europe are encountering

163
  considerable difficulties in the severe Russian cold. Their
difficulties, however, arise largely from lack of proper dress for
polar temperatures. Garments made of animal skins or furs are
the only ones capable of protecting against those wintry blasts;
only thus can the internal body heat be preserved hgainst too
rapid loss. The Russians have always relied on heavy furs for
winter use and hence have kept themselves well supplied; but
the men of Axis countries have never needed ormsed much of
this type of winter clothing. The Eskimo, in his suit and hood
of skins, is almost immune to outside Arctic cold.

Thus we have at least a part explanation of the vigorous
Russian offensive against the Germans, who froze arms and
feet by the thousands in the enforced winter fighting. The
German General Staff foresaw this danger and urged the
formation early in November of a winter defence line with
heated living quarters. Hitler gambled on paralysing the
Russian forces by a knockout blow before winter closed in.
His gamble backfired and his unprotected troops paid a terrific
price in their enforced activity at sub-zero temperatures. It was
this same catastrophe which overtook Napoleon, after he had
dallied too long on the Russian plains, with his troops in-
adequately clad for the cold of a Russian winter. Present-day
tanks and aeroplanes may be immobilized as the bitter cold
freezes their lubricating oils, but the shaggy-haired Russian
cavalry pony is then in his element.

In a country like ours, with marked climatic differences
between northern and Southern sections, it would seem wise to
use northern troop units for garrisoning Newfoundland, Green-
land, and Iceland, or for active fighting in northern Europe or
Asia. Troops of Southern origin, on the other hand, would be
better adapted for service in tropical heat. Training of the
present army has been conducted largely in camps located in
the south or along the Pacific coast. This undoubtedly has
lessened the respiratory disease hazard, and the Southern
summer warmth has partially prepared the boys for facing real
tropical heat; it does not, however, fit them so well for trans-
portation to cold fighting fronts.

In returning ‘the sick and wounded home from tropical
fighting fronts, careful consideration must again be given to
climatic and weather ‘effects. They face severe respiratory
disease hazards if brought directly into the cold and storms of
a northern winter. The non-stormy South-west offers the ideal
climate for their recuperation; several base hospitals and large
convalescent units should be established there. Men from

164
  colder regions of warfare can safely be sent to treatment centres
in other parts of the country.

At the close of the war, men who wlll have spent many months
fighting in tropical heat should be demobilized with care. Great
distress and a widespread epidemie of respiratory disease might
result if they were returned en masse to their northern homes
during the colder seasons of the year. It has been suggested that
the ravages of the terrible influenza and pneumonia epidemie
of the 1917-1918 winter were perhaps made much worse by
the thoughtless transportation of tens of thousands of Southern
draftees to northern cantonments.

Whatever places become future battlegrounds—whether it be
Ceylon, Madagascar, Dakar, Alaska, or Arctic regions near the
northern supply route to Russia—it is apparent that special pro-
vision must be made for troops who are shifted from temperate
zone climates to far different surroundings. This, to be sure, is
only one of many problems facing the world’s military leaders.
But it is an especially important problem, for it involves the
efficiency and morale of the fighting forces—and the war will
be won by soldiers who are as efficiënt and as high in morale
as possible.

Recently there occurred one of the most impressive demon-
strations of the part climate is playing in the fighting melee of
to-day. The eastward onrush of Rommel’s armoured force
across northern Libya and Egypt—coming at a time of year
when it was maintained that severe desert heat would render
tank warfare impossible—is now rumoured to have been made
possible by the use of air-cooled tanks. The Allies had con-
sidered such air-conditioning, but had discarded it as not
feasible because of the tremendous weight of the cooling equip-
ment involved. Some time ago I suggested the use of the
radiational cooling scheme described in Chapter 15, since it
would provide insulation against outside heat as well as cooling
of the tank occupants with a minimal mechanical load. Military
authorities are considering the matter, but it now seems certain
that American Science will have to join more closely with
industry and take a direct part in the carrying out of the war
effort of the United Nations.

165
  CHAPTER SI

MIGRATION FOR HEALTH

The case of Mr. X in Chapter 8 was one example of
the advice which may be given in answer to the query, “Where
is the best place for me to live?” This question has been put to
me time and again by persons learning for the first time of the
climatic and weather dominance over their lives. For the
chronic sinus trouble of Mr. X I advised permanent migration
to the South-west, but other climatic regions also have their
good points. Obviously there can be no single answer, for much
depends upon the person’s physical condition and what he
wishes in life. If he seeks healthful contentment and real pleasure
in living, then the ideal climate will be such as the American
South-west offers at 4,000-5,000 feet elevation, or at still higher
levels farther south in Mexico or the Andean highlands. There
moderate stimulation keeps alive one’s interest in life, without
the impatience and boundless enthusiasm which make existence
in colder, more stormy regions so irritating and unsatisfying.

If it is a life of indolent, effortless ease he desires, he should
head for tropical heat where that kind of existence prevails
naturally. But for a life of accomplishment and activity, of keen
competition and initiative, of restless energy in both brain and
body, let him choose the stormy climates of middle temperate
lattitudes. If such be his choice, however, he should be prepared
for a life of strife at every turn—strife in home relations and
discipline, strife in business, strife in public and international
affairs, strife in old age, and strife even in trying to hold death
at bay.

The stresses of northern life, however, give evidence of being
serious health factors, particularly for people who have passed
middle age and lost the resiliency of youth. Cold weather
bothered them little through their younger years, but with
advancing age they chili more easily and meet sudden tem-
perature changes less well. The slower, easy life of warmer
climates exercises more and more of an appeal to these people
with each passing year, and midwinter sees those who are able
heading southward. The automobile trailer was originally

166
  developed to meet the needs and desires of these winter migrants
to the sunny Southland. lts success with them soon led to its
widespread use for family travel of all kinds, but it still remains
predominantly a means of north-south seasonal migration.

Like the sap in a mighty oak, automobile trailers begin to
leave their northern outposts with the first autumn frost.
Trickling along the roads at first singly, then in increasing
numbers, by Thanksgiving time they flood the main highways
to the South. They line up by the thousands in Florida’s regi-
mented trailer parks through the winter months, their carefree
occupants basking in that delightful winter atmosphere. Early
March finds them moving back northward with the robins,
fanning out in all directions to reach their New York, Michigan,
or Minnesota homes for the opening of spring. There they stay
from the time the leaves open until they change.colour and
flut ter to the ground in autumn.

Development of the trailer seemed for a while to offer
Americans as nomadic a life as they might wish. People in their
fifties and sixties quit struggling against the rigours of northern
winter life, rented or sold their houses, and took to a trailer
existence. South in winter, north in summer—they were then
as free as the birds to choose the temperature of their environ-
ment.

Younger couples by other hundreds of thousands were forced
from their homes during the long period of economie depression
and by widespread droughts in the plains States. These hordes
headed westward, as have nearly all migratory masses since the
beginnings of the race in Central Asia. Constant streams of them
poured into California and the Pacific North-west, with the
whole family and a few household belongings piled into the
most ramshackle conveyances imaginable. Without funds or
chance to work, these wanderers soon swamped all relief
facilities in the Coastal States. Camping in any available spot,
but especially along the mountain streams, by their unsanitary
life they raised real disease hazards for the surrounding com-
munities and forced Govemmental attention to focus on their
problems.

For several years West Coast authorities struggled with the
handling of this nomad population without much success.
Booming war industries have now provided temporary employ-
ment and means of support for many of them, but their basic
peacetime problems still remain. Similar medical problems arise
from the thousands of migratory labourers who follow seasonal
employment northward from early spring to late autumn, with

167
  no home except the tents or trailers they and their families
' occupy. From strawberry-picking in February, they move north-
ward by easy stages with the ripening of the crops, both in the
East and in the Far West.

States and smaller settled communities have found it necessary
to put the same restrictions and obligations upon these homeless
migrants as they do upon their own permanent inhabitants. In
a sparsely settled country few hygienic restrictions are needed,
but when many millions of people are concerned, careful watdï
must be kept of the factors which promote the spread of disease.
The trailer and free movement of families from place to place
threatened to become such a menace, in addition to creating
difficult school and public service problems; hence rules and
regulations are gradually being worked out, again placing on
these people their proper responsibilities as members of a civi-
lized society. The complete freedom thus seemingly offered by
the trailer in its early years is gradually being r^placed by the
cares of a settled life, as indeed it must in any densely populated
land.

In spite of these problems, however, America is on the move
again. Perhaps because of our driving climate, we have never
been a people to strike deep roots into the soil of a given locality
like the more fixed populations of the Old World. Few of our
homesteads are handed down for generations within the same
family. Being thus somewhat nomadic by dispositibn, we should
be well able to avoid any climatic or weather situation not to our
liking. We have at hand the means and the disposition: it only
remains for us to acquire the knowledge as to when and where
we should move.

There are several large classes of northerners who would
benefit from seasonal or permanent southward migration. The
largest of these includes the millions of elderly people whose
tissue fires have pretty well burned out or become choked with
the clinkers of degenerative disease. With their arteriosclerosis,
diabetes, chronic nephritis, heart troubles, and a host of other
chronic ailments, they are no longer fit for the physical struggle
it takes to survive the stormy cold of northern winters. Younger
and more resilient individuals match the rigours of winter with
a heightening of their own vitality and bodily vigour, but the
winter battle is too strenuous for the brittle oldster. With his
lowered rate of internal heat production, he chills easily; and
with each chilling his already sluggish white blood cells become
still more inactive, leaving him especially susceptible to pneu-
monia, bronchitis, and other respiratory infections.

168
  Untold numbers of elderly northemers have found benefk
from wintering in the South or from moving there for permanent
residence. Many others should realize the value of such a move
in giving them a more prolonged and healthful existence for
their declining years. Day-by-day activities in Southern warmth
follo\V a less energetic pattern and fit better the slower combustion
rate of body tissues in the later decades t>f life. The energetic
northemer finds it difficult to keep up his working enthusiasm
after a few months in tropical warmth. Money-making schemes
seem less enticing when the body heat generated in their planning
and executkm is difficult to dispose of. So the retired northerner
who finds icfle life such a bore should go south and let the warmth
fit him to a slower tempo of affairs.

Such advice is particularly appropriate for any person whose
arteries have hardened under the stress of northern life and
whose heart has narrow limits to the work it can perform.
Such people, and their diabetic brethren, would add years and
increased comfort to their lives by getting away from the in-
vigoration of cool climates. The farther they move into tropical
heat the better it will be for them. Southern Florida, the Browns-
ville district of Texas, or Southern California—these should be
their havens of refuge within the borders of the United States.
Northern Florida and the northern Gulf coast offer a delightful
climate for winter vacationing, but only during the summer
months is their warmth sufficiënt to subdue an active body
metabolism.

Migration to Cuba, Puerto Rico, or Panama would be still
more effective, but few Americans care to go beyond the borders
of their homeland for permanent residence. Wintering in some
tropical country would be helpful, but the return to northern
homes could not safely be made before April or May, when ail
danger of cold weather has passed. Several weeks or months
of tropical warmth would bring a sharp lowering of the body’s
resistance to respiratory infections, leaving the returning in-
dividual overly susceptible to colds, bronchitis, sinusitis, and
pneumonia.

The millions of people affiieted with repeated respiratory
troubles each winter form another large group who would benefit
greatly from permanent or seasonal change of climate. They
should not seek tropical warmth, however, but rather a non-
stormy region with moderately invigorating climate. Within
the United States such climatic conditions exist only in the
South-west, within about 200 miles of the Mexican border from
El Paso to the Pacific coast. Cyclonic weather disturbances

169
  practically never bring their sudden changes in temperature
and barometric pressure to that region. Peoplc living there are
in the main rcmarkably free from the respiratory and rheumatic
troubles storm changes bring elsewhere.

Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque, or other valley cities of that
region offer delightful wintering spots for respiratory disease
sufferers, but for year-round residence a more elevated or
slightly more northern location should be chosen so as to avoid
the severe daytime heat of the summer months. The Southern
California climate is also good, except along the immediate
Coastal fringe where the constant inshore winds laden with ocean
moisture exercise a bad influence. This ocean mafeture is es-
pecially bad during the midwinter months, when thick fogs
oftcn prevail. A permanent residence for sufferers from respira-
tory disease should thus be located well back from the coast
(30 miles or so), and preferably 2,000-3,000 feet above sea-level.
The South-western climate is the best America has to offer people
whose lives are made miscrable by one respiratory infection
after another through the stormy winter months. Similar benefits
are offered European sufferers by the mild climate of the
Meditcrranean Basin and northern Africa.

Many persons have found their sinusitis or chronic bronchitis
made worse instead of better by a midwinter sojourn in the
Caribbean or Gulf toast regions. This happens for two reasons.
First, the warmth lowers their tissue vitality and allows the
infections they carry in chronic form to become more active or
acute; second, hurricane-type storms sweep westward across the
West Indies through the autumn and early winter, bringing
somewhat the samc influences on man as do the cyclonic storms
of northern winters.

terranean countries are about on a par with those of our
Southern States bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Italy has
much the same latitude range as New England, but its
climate is more like that of Georgia. Most people think
of Tunis and Algiers as located in tropical heat—and so they
are—but their latitude differs little from that of St. Louis or
Washington.

The Mediterranean region receives a moderate number of
Atlantic storms during the winter months, but depressive heat
rules constantly throughout the long summer just as in our
States on the Gulf of Mexico. Across West Central Europe, on
the other hand, storms coming in over the Gulf Stream bring
frequent weather changes throughout the year, moderating both
the heat of summer and the cold of winter. Toward the east of
Europe weather changes lessen, while seasonal contrasts are
exaggerated; both summer heat and winter cold become more
protracted and severe.

Seasonal extremes of heat and cold also occur over most of
Central Asia. Cold waves penetrate well down from the frozen
northern tundras, but their exit over the plains of India or
China is barred by lofty highlands. As a result, cyclonic stormi-
ness is low over Southern and eastern Asia and the climate is
monotonously regular. During the winters we spent in Peking
cold dry winds blew outward from the interior for weeks at
a time, with the barometer standing constantly high. The
winds were reversed through the summer months, as moist
tropical air flowed north-westward toward the superheated
interior. Those were the summer monsoon winds which lay
a blanket of depressing, moist heat over Japan and China every
year. Similar monsoon currents also flow up across India during
the summer months.

All Southern and eastern Asia is thus oppressed by severe
summer' heat, without cold stormy winters to counterbalance.
The result is a human inertia and energy level only slightly
better than the tropics permit. A few storms do generate on
the high slopes of the Himalayas and highlands of Tibet, follow-
ing down the Yangtze Valley and out over Southern Japan.
These help make the upland portions of China’s Yangtze Valley
one of the most stimulating parts of eastern Asia.

Southern Australia and New Zealand are among the earth’s
most favoured regions so far as climatic effects directly upon
man are concemed. Summer heat and winter cold are moderated
by nearby oceans; cyclonic storms bring ample weather variety
at all seasons. Health hazards of winter are much less than in

148
  the northern United States, where severe cold and the year’s
most intense storminess bring a sharp peak in respiratory
diseases and heart failure. Central Australia, except along the
eastern fringe, is very sparsely inhabited; and in the north,
tropical heat exerts its typical effects. Man’s progress in Southern
Australia during the last century has been astounding, but the
favourable land area is so small that no really large population
mass can ever be properly supported. On the streets of London
one has difïiculty in differentiating the Australians from the
Americans or Canadians except by their speech; all have that
springy step and keenness of eye found only in people from
really invigorating climates.

Truly favourable climates are thus seen to be limited to only
a few areas of the earth and to perhaps a third of its human
population. North America has the largest and most in-
vigorating of these regions, with West Central Europe a close
second. It is probably not by chance that people of these two
regions so dominate world affairs. In them energy and initiative
run high, combined with a restlessness which is forever seeking
new outlets of expression. At the opposite pole of human
energetics lie the broad expanses of tropical lowlands. In them
another third of the earth’s population is held captive by the
insurmountable difïiculty of losing body heat. This third of
mankind seems to exist only for exploitation by the energetic
third. In between lie the people of the middle third, living under
climates which hold them to a neutral course. China, Southern
South America, South Africa, and the Mediterranean countries
seem destined to pursue a middle course in human affairs. As
for Russia and Japan, these nations are at the peak of their
military successes—one in holding off and then driving back
supposedly invincible Nazi armies, the other in sweeping rapidly
throughout the Far East and toward India. But only time can
teil whether they will have sufficiënt climate-given energy to
keep up their successes.

The North American and European stimulating areas are
also blessed by a wealth of natural resources for man’s use in
his ceaseless activities. Not content with their home resources,
however, these energetic people also reach out to exploit the
earth’s natural wealth in other regions where the native resi-
dents are too listless to do so themselves. World dominance is
thus firmly based on the driving force of climate. Were the
storms of Central Asia suddenly shifted across the plains of
China, the people of that great nation would in all likelihood
become more prominent in world affairs, make better use of

H9
  their own great natural resources, and drive the Japanese out
of their country in short order.

chapter 19

THERMOMETERS AND HISTORY

JVEVOLUTION and conquest have always been considered
to spring from the deep inner urgings of people: in the one case
from the desire for freedom from tyranny and in the other from
the desire of a few men for power. Such is really the case, but
the development and growth of these urgings are linked in
a most surprising fashion to the rise and fall of the mercury in
thermometers. Stormy cold has driven oppressed people into
open revolt time after time, just as enervating heat has had
them pliant under the oppressor’s heel. Group after group of
the world’s people have been pushed out on to the roads of
conquest and expansion by optimal climatic conditions, only
to be halted or forced back into oblivion again by less favourable
temperatures. History’s most vivid example of this is frequently
pointed to to-day because of the Nazis’ experiences with Soviet
winter and Soviet man-power; I refer to Napoleon’s attempted
conquest of the vast Russian nation.

The French military leader, turning back in 1812 from his
unsuccessful attempts to invade England, began mighty
preparations for conquest of the one Continental power still
beyond his grasp. Little did he realize that the intense summer
heat and benumbing winter cold of the Russian plains would
offer a more effective obstacle to his ambition than any human
force which had yet opposed him. Prevailing westerly winds
coming in from the Atlantic Ocean provide western Europe
with an equable climate—cool summers and mild winters. In
Russia, on the other hand, summers are often severely hot and
the winters long and cold.

The Grand Army with which Napoleon began his invasion
was a motley mixture, drawn from all the countries of Europe.
None too well welded together, it was by no means the compact
striking force he was accustomed to using in his campaigns of
conquest. Quick manoeuvres and surprise blows were his chief

150
  battle assets, but this army was inclined to be cumbersome and
sluggish. With it he crossed the Niemen River on June 24-th
(1812) to begin his most disastrous venture.

No sooner was he on Russian soil than his army became
enveloped in the first severe heat wave of that fatal summer.
Men died of heatstroke by the hundreds, while it is said that
fully a third of his cavalry mounts were lost in the first ten days.
Green forage was supposed to have produced the colic by which
the horses died, but the same heat which killed the men was
more likely responsible, for colic often accompanies heat
prostration. Mobility for an army in those days depended upon
live, healthy horses; without them the transport of equipment
and supplies bogged down and the quick-striking cavalry lost
its value. Not for Napoleon were the oil-burning monsters of
Hitler, which provide unlimited horse-power regardless of
weather—as long as the oil supply lasts.

Napoleon’s first brush with the Russians disclosed the dis-
astrous effects of the ten days of heat. Both men and horses
moved sluggishly, causing failure of his battle strategy. Time
after time through the summer this loss of mobility in his army
permitted the Russian forces to escape the traps he set for them.
The Cossack ponies, on the other hand, were inured to such
weather and allowed the Russians to harass Napoleon’s forces
without often being pressed into pitched battle.

To-day we know that severe heat quickly devitalizes people
and animals, lowering their internal combustion rate, reducing
the amount of energy available for action, causing the blood
pressure to fall and the individual to become in every way more
like the easy-going tropical native. The heat did far more during
that summer to drag down Napoleon’s forces than did Russian
arms. Weakened by the long summer, he finally came to actual
defeat on the field of battle and began his ill-fated retreat back
to the Niemen. Benumbing Russian cold then came in November
to complete the destruction of his Grand Army, turning the
retreat of his ragged forces into a pitiful rout from which only
a handful survived. It was severe heat which began the ruin of
his Russian venture and freezing cold which gave it the finishing
touches.

The hand of temperature has been evident at other times
through human history. People have rebelled against despotic
repression during years of cold and have been more inclined to
yield to the grasping power of tyrants when prolonged warmth
has drained away their vitality and energy. The French Revo-
lution itself had this temperature basis. Thermometer records at

151
  Paris are not available for the eighteenth and first half of the
nineteenth centuries, but at Zwannenberg (less than 300 miles
north) monthly means are on record back to 1743. During the
34 years from 1750 to 1783 only 8 scattered years had
mean annual temperatures below normal, and in each by
only a fraction of a degree. In 1784, however, there began
a prolonged cold period which reached ap. all-time low in 1789.
It was in this year that the French Revolution broke out. For
the 33 years beginning with 1784, only seven intermittent
years had temperatures above the average level and then only
slightly so. Thus the French Revolution and period of
Napoleonic conquest took place in the only period of pro-
longed cold in almost a century.

In 9 of the 12 years following 1816, however, warmth
again prevailed. Most of the liberties won during the revo-
lution were lost in these years of shift back toward despotism.
Severe cold and storms returned again for a brief stay over
Europe in 1829 an^ early 1830, which was followed by an
outburst of revolutionary activity over almost the whole
continent. Vigorous but short-lived revolts occurred from
France to Poland. Warmth quickly returned to quell their
ardour, however, with only one year in the next 17 below
normal. Again in 1848 a year of severe cold and storms caused
smouldering discontent to flame forth into another wave of
uprisings over the continent.

The history óf temperature effects antedates by many
centuries the invention of the thermometer and the .existence
of carefully kept scientific records. The high civilization of
early Babylonia flourished at the head of the Persian Gulf
from about 2900 to 1750 b.c.; that of Troy rosé about 2500 b.c.
and declined a thousand years later. The period from 2500 to
1500 B.c. coincides with one of the millenniums of cold men-
tioned in a preceding chapter. It was followed by prolonged
warmth during which little of note was accomplished by man.
About 750 b.c., however, the Assyrian Empire blossomed
forth (750-612) followed by the Second Babylonian Empire
of the Ghaldeans (612-538 b.c.) and the Persian Empire
(53°~33?b-c.)-

The rise of early Greece also began to gain headway about
750 b.c., with her golden age continuing to 390 b.c. Macedonia
rosé to the north as Greece declined, and slightly later Rome
took over leadership from a still more northerly climate. There
were thus two millenniums of ancient grandeur: In the first,
civilization reached its highest development well south on the

152
  Persian Gulf and in the southem iEgean Islands; in the second,
high tide again returned to the people around the Persian Gulf,
but important developments also took place farther to the
north-west—in Greece, Macedonia, and Italy. Each of these
cold periods of high tide in accomplishment were followèd by
centuries of stagnation and confusion during which man seemed
unable to make any real headway. The last of these periods
of heat and futility has aptly been called the Dark Age.

Frigid surroundings are as inimical to human accomplishment
as enervating heat. With the prolonged warmth starting in the
fifth century a.d., the people of central and northern Europe
began a wild ferment of activity. Relieved of the benumbing
cold which legend records for preceding centuries, they now
multiplied rapidly and pushed southward and to the west in
ever-increasing numbers. They early battered down the gates
of Rome and overran the broad empire Caesar’s legions had
conquered. Even the people of Scandinavia blossomed
forth during the warmest centuries of this period, sending
forth the Norsemen and Vikings to conquer and colonize the
coast of Europe as far as Italy and westward to the New
World.

Optimal temperature conditions seemed to prevail farthest
north during the ninth and tenth centuries, for it was then that
the people from Scandinavia colonized Greenland and Iceland
and left their mark on so many points along the coast of Europe.
During this period wave after wave of immigrants from northern
Europe settled in the British Isles and helped give the population
its present varied character. As tempcratures began lo recede
agaiq in the later* Dark Age centuries, the exodus from northern
Europe slowed down, returning cold subdued the Vikings, and
other Powers slowly emerged in middle European latitudes.
Another permanent north-westward shift had taken place, how-
ever, for in the new cold epoch vigorous young nations of central
and western Europe took over from decadent Mediterranean
peoples the torch of civilization.

The pathway of Atlantic storms, which in early times was
down the Mediteranean basin and on across Asia Minor,
shifted far northward to Scandinavia in the warmth of the
Viking centuries, and then settled back across the British Isles
and west-central Europe for the centuries since the time of the
Renaissance. Early in the sixteenth century nations under its
influence began a remarkable period of exploration and con-
quest into all the far corners of the earth. They ruthlessly
exploited any wealth found and later started colonies which

153
  grew rapidly into new centres of population. Historical develop-
ments of this last cold period have dealt predominantly with
the doings of people living in the cooler half of the temperate
zones.

Asiatic history, although less well studied than that of Europe,
has shown similarly timed undulations. Vague records of high
developments in Southern China coincide in time approximately
with the early civilizations at the head of the Persian Gulf,

4,000   to 5,000 years ago. Advanced civilizations existed in
Siam, Indo-China, and India during the early Greek period,
although their architectural remains stand to-day in an en-
vironment of people submerged in tropical lethargy. The Great
Wall of China was constructed through the centuries of Roman
decay in the West to hold back the increasing pressure of
northern Asiatic barbarians. Shortly after the period of Viking
conquests in Europe, Mongol hordes swept down over China
from the north much as the barbarians of northern Europe had
somewhat earlier harassed the Romans. The celebrated Ming
Dynasty brought China one of her golden ages at about the
same time the Renaissance and revival of learning awakened
European peoples.

The sway of temperature, so evident through the intermediate
and more distant past, has again come into prominence in
recent years. Rising warmth over the earth is upsetting the
comparative equilibrium recent generations have enjoyed.
World power seems to be embarking again on its course toward
more northern regions, with the two greatest of the northern
giants now locked in deadly struggle for supremacy.

Personal liberty and the democratie way of life reached a high
peak in early Greece; they were lost in the autocratie despotism
of the Dark Ages, but achieved a slow recovery following the
European Renaissance. It was perhaps at the time of Wilson’s
visit to Europe in 1920 that the democratie ideal of personal
freedom reached its widest acceptance. Self-determination of
national groups and the right to a representative type of govern-
ment was insisted upon by Wilson as a basis for future world
security. For a while it looked as though real altruism
might be given a chance in world affairs through the
acceptance of these principles and establishment of the League
of Nations.

This optimistic high tide soon passed to ebb, however, as the
rise of one dictator after another indicated a very evident turn
back toward despotism. The turn gained initial 'momentum
during the post-war years of European upset and economie

154
  depression, with unseasonable warmth widely prevailing. Con-
ditions steadied down through the more prosperous and colder
last half of the decade. Even more excessive warmth began in
1929, however, initiating the severe and prolonged economie
depression which held the whole world in its grip for several
years. With the discouragement of these hard times, people
again seemed willing to listen to the glowing demagogie promises
of would-be dictators.

It was during this period of severe ebb-tide in the morale of
western nations that Japan thought she saw her chance for
imperial expansion in the Oriënt. Her great dream of empire
had blossomed under the stimulus of subnormal temperatures
many years before. Nipponese thermometer records go back
only to 1879 (at Nagasaki). Up until 1899 temperatures there
were above the long-term average, but from 1899 to 1914 every
single year was colder than normal. During this period she embarked
upon her career of imperial expansion, fighting Russia for
control of Southern Manchuria and in 1914 grabbing all German
possessions in the Far East. Some of the latter she was forced to
give up in the Versailles peace settlement. Again in 1925 she
demanded valuable rights and concessions in China, but was
baulked by vigilant Western powers.

All the evidence of this chapter emphasizes the intricate
meshing of environmental factors which makes human life
what it is. It could not exist unless the earth had been able to
hold an atmosphere, unless the earth were tilted on its axis at
just. the right angle. Variations in atmospheric composition,
some of them extremely small, would kill man and all his fellow
creatures, while the air itself is just dense enough to protect
people from the potentially lethal radiations of outer space.
The earth’s great blanket is under continuous bombardment by
these radiations, as well as by the radiations resulting from
sunspots, and their effect plays an important role in the weather
which in turn affects man’s activity and health. Since the sun-
spots themselves seem largely controlled by the positions of the
planets, life—and more particularly human life—is seen to be
part of a vast organic unit, a uilit which includes at least the entire
solar system. Whether celestial bodies outside our own tiny
system also influence our lives has not yet been studied, but
this possibility cannot be excluded.

Without subscribing to the unfounded tenets of astrology,
which hold that the detailed events of every person’s life are
pre-ordained by the positions of planets at his birth, we now
have a scientifically discovered and direct chain of influences
meshing our daily lives into the larger forces of our own solar
universe. The chain cannot be over-emphasized; the planets
in their shifting positions around the sun cause the sunspots to
wax and wane. As a result there arise variations in solar radia-

133
  tions to the earth and changes in temperature and storminess.
These weather changes, both short-cycle and over longer periods,
markedly influence our body functioning.

CHAPTER 17

ICE AGES AND GLIMATES OF THE FUTURE

Short-cycle weather changes and the slower
alternations of unseasonable warmth and cold every few years
are rather well explained on the basis of solar-system forces.
Our knowledge is inadequate, however, to explain other changes
extending through the centuries or covering thóusancfs of years.
Most definite of all climatic fluctuations were the slow undula-
tions from one ice age to another. In the most recent of these
the North Polar ice cap spread down over North America as
far as the present courses of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers.
These rivers were raging torrents as they carried away the
melting ice and snow from the ice cap’s fringe. The Ohio River
cut several different channels for itself here at Gincinnati as the
glacier edge alternately advanced and receded through that
era.

Several times these ice ages have returned to the earth,
causing polar cold to prevail far down into what are now tem-
perate regions and compressing the tropics into a much narrower
belt. In the intervening warm periods tropical warmth has
expanded outward toward the poles and the ice caps may have
completely disappeared. It is estimated that only about 30,000
years have elapsed since the last ice age was at its crest. Where
Cincinnati now sits, with its mild winters and hot summers, was
then a grinding, crackling glacier front with a climate similar
to that of Southern Greenland to-day.

Although men were present here on earth long before the last
ice age, their numbers were small and there is little evidence
from which to construct a story of their activities. Since humanity
has actually stepped out of the shadows only within the last

10,000   years, we can devote chief attention to climatic fluctua-
tions within that period. They have been present, but in a much
less drastic form than the changes from ice age to inter-glacial

134
  warmth. Evidence left by receding ice caps and glaciers, by silt
deposits along rivers‘fed from melting ice, by salt layers along
inland lakes, by the growth rings of our giant redwoods in the
South-west—all these and information gleaned from recorded
history point to several prolonged cold periods altemating with
centuries of warmth.

Through the last 10,000 years these slow undulations have
occurred with fair regularity, the glaciers and ice caps receding
rapidly for a thousand years or so and then halting or even
advancing somewhat for the next thousand. It was this stair-step
recession which left the long moraines of piled-up gravel and
boulders at intervals over the course of the receding ice cap here
in America. To-day the last ice age is represented only by
isolated mountain glaciers and by the small ice sheets
covering most of Greenland and Antarctica. Another cycle
or two of recurring warmth may well cause their complete
disappearance.

The last millennium of warmth feil within the time of recorded
history, covering the Dark Age period from the fall of Rome to
the Renaissance (from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries a.d.).
During this warmth cereal grains were regularly grown and
ripened in Iceland and wine-making was carried on in parts of
Great Britain where it has not been possible to ripen grapes
through the succeeding centuries. The shores of Iceland were
largely free of ice packs for the finst several hundred years after
its settlement, but since the fourteenth century its northern
shore has again been icebound and its climate has become too
rigorous for erop raising.

The climate of Greenland in the ninth and tenth centuries,
when the Norse settlements flourished there, apparently differed
from the climate of more recent times. Early in the eleventh
century, however, the colonies rapidly declined, with increasing
evidence of rickets in the skeletons of those buried during the
settlements’ decline. The dead were buried deep in the unfrozen
earth during the ninth and tenth centuries, but after that the
graves gradually became shallower as the summer thaws pene-
trated less deeply.

Many of those Norse bodies in Greenland were found almost
perfectly preserved when rising world temperatures had again
thawed out the earth to make their excavation possible a few
years ago. Recent excavations in earth which had been solidly
frozen for almost a thousand years have given us a glimpse of
those settlements as they declined in the oncoming cold. In that
ancient warmth the people carried on extensive cattle-raising—

135
  an activity quite impossible in the Greenland of more recent
times.

The scanty records indicate terrible winters of snow and ice
in northem Europe preceding the Dark Age warmth, while the
civilizations of early Greece and Rome were flourishing in regions
which are now too enervating for sustained effort. Egyptian
writings of those centuries teil about winds and storms which can
only 'mean that the cyclonic storms to-day travelling eastward
over Central Europe then passed down the Mediterranean Basin
and on across Asia Minor. Palestine' and the other eastern
Mediterranean countries had a more copious rainfall, better
distributed through the year, than has been the case in modern
times.

The heat of the Dark Ages was at its worst about a.d. 850.
By a.d* 1000 there were evidences in Greenland of returning
cold, and by a.d. 1400 the ice packs had again closed in on
northem Iceland. Through the centuries since the time of the
Renaissance and the revival of learning, cold has largely pre-
vailed. Actual thermometer records go back only two hundred
years, but within that time they show lowest temperatures to
have occurred around 1850, about a thousand years after the
peak of Dark Age heat.

What about the trends of modern times? The records definitely
show that temperatures over the earth have been rising almost
universally for the last eighty years or so, slowly at first but
much more rapidly in recent years and especially during the
last twenty years. Climates have indeed altered since Grand-
father’s day. The winters are milder and the summers hotter.
My father in his later years often mentioned the rigours of his
boyhood winters, contrasting them with the milder tempera-
tures of the twenties and early thirties before his death in 1933.
Even in my own childhood and youth the silky crunch of sub-
zero snow was encountered many times each winter, whereas
now the blankets of snow are wet and sloshy.

Up until very recent years everyone ridiculed the idea of
climatic change. It was claimed that people in later life would
remember more vividly the extremely cold spells, but forget
the milder winters which had failed to leave so strong an im-
print. False impressions of this kind are known to be fostered by
such tricks of memory, so the matter was always treated as
a joke. Ellsworth Huntington and certain other investigators
had great difficulty getting even scientific people to believe their
evidence of past fluctuations. Meteorologists, however, finally
began examining world temperature records of past decades.

136
  The facts revealed by such examination quickly dissipated all
opposition, for they showed beyond doubt that the winters ot
Grandfather’s day really were colder; mean temperatures were
lower and the cold waves more severe and frequent. The
temperature rise is by no means a steady, even one; wide
changes occur with the eleven-year sunspot cycies. But the cold
phase of each succeeding cycle is a little less cold, and each
warm phase is a little warmer.

When we consider what this rise means to us, we come face
to face with a situation emphasized in the last chapter: Man
exists solely because of a fortunate balance of Chemical and
physical factors in his environment. A mere io° F. rise in
tropical temperatures would make life practically impossible for
him and all other warm-blooded animals whenever humidity
accompanied the heat. In my experimental hot room I have
found 90°-9i° F., with 60 per cent. water saturation of the air,
to be the highest level at which warm-blooded animals can live
without a sharp rise in death rate and cómplete loss of repro-
ductive capacity. On several occasions the electric Controls have
failed to operate and temperatures of 97°-98° F. have wiped
out my whole hot-room animal colony within a few hours.

Severe summer heat waves sometimes leave us with an
exceedingly narrow margin of safety even here in middle
temperate America. When heatstroke cases begin to appear in
the hospital, a rise of another 50 F. in air temperatures would
produce a holocaust of deaths. In the summer of 1934, Death
had whole population masses almost within his grasp as
temperatures in middle United States latitudes soarcd past
the ioo° F. level for the daytime maximum. Cattle, horses,
hogs, dogs, birds—all were dying or endangered along with
man.

While a rise of io° F. in earth temperatures would render the
tropical lowlands uninhabitable, a fall of io° F. below present
levels would bring on another ice age and bury large Con-
tinental areas under miles of snow and ice. This happened
several times in the past, blotting out whole species of animal
life. Humanity was then scarce and even in the most propitious
climates led a furtive existence of exposure to the elements.
To-day mankind is numerous and has encroached into the
regions of climatic extremes where existence is sorely handi-
capped. Severe climatic change might well wipe man out in
such marginal zones. Not so many thousands of years ago polar
cold congealed American life well below the Ohio and Missouri
river latitudes, for these rivers marked the Southern boundary

137
  of the ice sheet. It is difficult indeed to imagine Kentucky with
Greenland’s icy cold, but such was then the case.

Man’s chief enemies—aside from his own fellow men—are
the innumerable hosts of bacteria and other micro-organisms
lurking everywhere around him. Many bacteria are ffiendly,
performing functions essential for our welfare. The unfriendly
ones are largely those which reproduce and do best at or near
body temperature (98° F.); they thus thrive best in the tropical
moist heat which is most depressive to our own tissue vitality.
Any considerable rise in earth temperatures would thus also
upset the balance between us and our bacterial foes, increasing
their advantages in the struggle. Conditions would become
more propitious for their growth in food and water outside the
body, while our resistance to their invasive attacks would be
still further weakened. Eventual elimination of the human race
may well take place through the attacks of these swarming
billions of microscopie invaders.

A rise in earth temperatures and further outward expansion
of the broad belt of tropical heat would also bring still another
increase in human handicaps. As the B vitamin requirement is
so much higher in tropical heat, we would need a food supply
richer in these elements; but meat animals grow poorly in the
heat and yield meat deficiënt in these vitamin catalysts. The
cereal grains, our other important B vitamin source, also do
poorly in hot climates. So here would be an additional de-
vitalizing factor puliing man down in a world of even moderately
rising temperatures.

Of course, a io° F. change is not likely to occur universally,
but the dangers of such a change will probably exist to a smaller
degree as the earth’s temperatures slowly rise. It has been
estimated that a rise of only 2° F. in over-all earth temperatures
would clear the polar seas of all ice and raise the oceans’ level
about 150 feet. Dr. Arthur P. Coleman of the Royal Ontario
Museum in Toronto has drawn a vivid word painting of the
result: “With a little imagination, one can picture Oslo or
Rio de Janeiro, seaports with high ground in the rear to which
to retreat, as sending palatial holiday cruisers to see New York’s
deserted skyscrapers rising as steep-walled bird rocks from
a shallow sea

Real-estate owners need not worry for the time being, for
this is still a possibility of the distant future. Temperature rises
of two degrees and more have occurred in restricted regions of
the earth but, luckily for us, not for the entire globe as a whole.
Still, these changes in temperatures and in storminess are pro-

138
  ducing noticeable effects to-day. They result in marked
alterations in inland rainfall. On the western plains of America,
for instance, deep low-pressure storm centres are needed if'
moisture is to be carried that far inland by air currents from the
Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. Periods of heat and
lessened storminess therefore mean an expansion of our desert
areas in the South-west. Early settlers on the plains teil of the
grass being stirrup-high even as late as the middle of the last
century; to-day the erop is scanty and short. Much of this
change may have been due to over-grazing, but reduced rain-
fall and more severe summer heat have also played a large
part.

As I drove from Kansas up through Nebraska and South
Dakota in July of 1934, swirling dust clouds obscured the sun
and nearby landscape, and shifting topsoil buried fences,
buildings, and roads under ever-changing drifts. There I saw
deserts in the making—it was truly a gruesome sight. The soil
of Kansas shows that the plains experienced similar periods of
long-continued drought and blowing topsoil centuries before
there was any cultivation or over-grazing upon which to lay
the blame. No narrow band of planted trees is likcly to halt,
or in any way affect, these major shifts in inland ciimates. They
seem linked rather to the changes in world weather taking place
under fluctuating outside influences from the solar system.

As earth temperatures rise and cyclonic storminess lessens,
rainfall in the Southern and eastern sections of the United
States will tend to become more sharply seasonal in character.
Floods and soil erosion will be accentuated during the rainy
season. Drought conditions through the remainder of the year
will be much less favourable to agriculture than is the present
more even distribution of rainfall. Perhaps our Ohio River
flood of 1937 will pale into insignificance as we plunge another
century or two into the coming warmth.

Dust storms of northern China have for centuries been
carrying loose top soil eastward toward the ocean during the
dry winter seasons. In some places enormous banks of this
fluffy loess fill whole valleys, constituting the predominant
top soil there just as it does in Kansas. During the North China
dust storms the sun may be entirely obscured or just faintly
visible through the swirling clouds. A sprinkle of rain at such
times often showered us with pellets of mud. Dust originating
a thousand miles inland was carried hundreds of miles out to
sea over the Gulf of Peichili.

Americans berated the Chinese for permitting farming

139
  methods which made possible this shifting of top soil. But our
own dust storms of recent years have brought home to us the
futility of our puny efforts to hold back the mighty forces of
Nature. Our fertile plains became an American Dust Bowl,
generating clouds of fluffy top soil 1,000-2,000 miles wide which
swept eastward across the continent and out over the Atlantic
Ocean.

I smiled as I saw these enormous dust storms sweep over
Gincinnati, with showers of mud pellets or layers of powdery
clay coating everything in sight. We Americans had been so
sure of our wisdom as we blamed the Chinese people for their
dust storms, floods, and famines. Now they can smile at us as
we experience in a minor way the adverse natural forces with
which they have been contending for centuries. Intelligent
Chinese look upon us as rather raw barbarians, lacking in the
refinements of real civilization and much given to telling the
other person what he should do for his own good. They hope
that another few centuries of living experience may mellow us
somewhat and increase our tolerance of the mistakes others
make when faced with difficult situations. Until recently in our
national history an exuberance of energy and a great wealth
of natural resources had enabled us to make good on our
boastful and egotistic attitude. Perhaps the climatic changes
now apparently brewing will bring to us a degree of wholesome
humility.

You need no longer doubt the validity of climatic change.
Huntington prefers to call it pulsation rather than change,
emphasizing its cyclic character instead of any one-way trend,
and he is quite right.

  does not require a warming of the air in winter oir the cooling
of it in summer. I refer to reflective radiant conditioning, as
demonstrated a few years ago in my laboratory, in which all
warming or cooling of the room occupants is done entirely
through radiant channels.

Heat or infra red rays travel through the air at the speed of
light or radio waves (186,000 miles a second) without any
appreciable warming influence. Their warming effect occurs
only when they strike some solid body which can absorb the
beams. The absorbed rays cause the atoms of the object to move
violently, and the resulting kinetic energy of motion produces
heat. A person’s heat loss can readily be controlled through
radiant channels alone, no matter how hot or cold the surround-
ing air may be, if arrangements are made to govern the amount
of this radiant heat falling upon or leaving his skin surfaces.

Everyone knows the sharp contrast in comfort between standing
in deep shade and out in the hot summer sun, even though
actual air temperatures may be the same in both cases. And in
cold winter air, it matters greatly whether you are on the sunny
side of a building or in its shadow. Those enjoying winter sports
on the mountain slopes of Switzerland or Idaho are kept warm
by the sun’s radiating heat waves reaching them through zero
air. European air-conditioning engineers made some use of this
principle by imbedding hot water pipes in the ceilings or floors
so that the warmed surfaces might radiate heat to the occupants.
Remember that this is radiant heat, the kind which does not
raise the temperature of the air between its source and the
absorbing object. They thus succeeded in achieving comfort at
air temperatures ten degrees cooler than those required by
American air-conditioning methods.

Scientists at one large industrial concern in America tried for
several years to perfect a method for winter heating and summer
cooling through control of wall temperatures. Using metal wall
surfaces, they could make lightly clad persons quite comfortable
in zero air by having the walls radiate heat. Many persons
understand this sort of situation in which heat rays pass through
air, strike the body, and warm it as a result, but they find it
difïicult to grasp how heat may be removed from the body by
radiation. The main point is that the body, like any other object,
can lose heat by emitting infra red rays, and, if the walls of a
room are cooled instead of heated, these rays are removed from
the room confines as fast as they are given off from the skin.

The researchers proved this by placing persons in the room
at no° F. Then they lowered the wall temperature. Despite

118
  the sizzüng heat, the subjects relaxed comfortably because their
bodies were able to eliminate the excess heat by radiation. These
tests were interesting and valuable. Judging by their skin sensa-
tions, occupants of the experimental room often could not
guess whether they were in cold air or warm. For some reason,
the hot air was not even disagreeable to breathe when body
skin surfaces were losing heat readily to the cold walls. In quite
thorough fashion, the scientists demonstrated that bodily
comfort could be obtained by control of wall temperatures
regardless of prevailing air conditions.

The studies were finally abandoned for two reasons. There
was no way of controlling wall temperatures within reasonable
economie limits, either for construction costs or for maintenance;
and walls chilled for hot summer weather were always wet with
water which condensed upon their cooled surfaces. Obviously,
no heating system will sell if its hot-weather operation causes
wall surfaces to drip with moisture.

In my laboratories the radiant idea was carried a step further.
Instead of using hot or cold wall surfaces, I covered all the
inside walls of an experimental chamber with aluminum foil.
It is a highly efficiënt, mirror-like reflector of all heat rays, so
much so that its surface temperature rises very little even when
intense heat is directed at it from a close-up source. On two side
walls of the foil-lined room, I installed steel plates which could
be chilled by fluid circulated from an outside compressor unit.
The air in this room was kept hot and moist at all times (930 F.
and 70 per cent. saturated) by means of an automatic con-
ditioning unit. In another foil-lined room, arrangements were
made to chili the air down to freezing temperatures, with
ordinary electric radiant heaters as a source of heat rays.

I found that a person could be quite comfortable in the tropical
moist heat of the hot room when he lost body heat solely by
radiation to the cold plates—either directly or by reflection
from the foil wall surfaces. With all the cold plates in operation,
loss of body heat was so rapid that actual chilling resulted if a
person sat quietly reading for an hour. Rats and mice grew just
as rapidly, and with as high vitality, as in the 65° F. air of my
ordinary cold room. An assistant, in caring for the animals,
found that she needed a sweater to keep from being chilled—and
this in air at 93° F.!

Metal cages, wooden objects, and clothing in this hot room
were cooled by radiation of their heat to the cold plates, while
all foil surfaces remained at the 930 air temperature. A person’s
clothing thus became several degrees cooler than the air im-

119
  mediately in contact with it. This is a resnlt difficult to ïmagine,
but it actually occurred. As one entered from severe outside
summer heat, no immediate difference was noticed; but within
a few minutes a feeling of cool comfort developed as clothing
temperatures dropped and more rapid loss of body heat became
possible. No shock whatever was experienced on passing from
the room’s comfort into outside heat, for air conditions were
approximately the same inside and out. Here was adequate
summer comfort without air cooling and the shock and hazards
it brings to those entering or leaving the conditioned confines.

In the other foil-lined room, radiant heat furnished delightful
shirt-sleeve comfort while air temperatures remained near
freezing. A pleasing phase of this set-up was that one had cold
air to breathe while the remainder of the body was properly
warm. By sufficiently increasing the input of radiant heat (still
keeping air temperatures low) a person would find himself
perspiring freely while surrounded by cool air. Under such
excessive radiant heat load, animals showed the same slow
growth and lowered vitality as in ordinary tropical moist
heat.

Reflective radiant conditioning, effectively demonstrated in my
experimental chambers, offers alluring advantages for both
winter and summer use. In the first place it removes the necessity
of setting up sharp differences between air conditions indoors
and out; this was the particular point I had hoped to achieve
because of its health implications. Another very definite advan-
tage is the marked reduction in power load needed either for
winter heating or for summer cooling. Different engineers and
architects have estimated that the fuel or power load would be
reduced 60-80 per cent., since little is wasted in warming or
cooling the air mass or wall materiais. Such reduction would
bring conditions easily within the gas or electric field, thus doing
away entirely with the home use of coal and all the resulting
smoke nuisances.

Another benefit of reflective radiant conditioning would be
its saving in insulation costs. Since the reflective foil surfaces
remain cold in winter air and hot in summer—at practically the
same temperatures as those of the outside air—heat transfer
through the wall would be small. In addition, the foil surface
radiates on into the room very little of the heat which comes to
it through the wall. Thus, the surface is highly reflective for rays
striking its surface, but has almost no power to emit heat which
may actually be in the foil itself. In this conditioning system the
walls need be constructed to turn wind and rain, but with little

120
  consideration for heat-transfer values. This is sharply different
from the expensive insulation needed for efficiënt air conditioning.

One installation of reflective radiant conditioning has been
made under actual field conditions. This was in an operating
room of a large hospital where surgeons and nurses enjoyed
delightful comfort even while midsummer air temperatures in
the room remained above 90° F. Certain further developments
are needed, however, before this type of indoor conditioning
can come into wide üse. Means of decorating the foil surfaces
must be found, for few people will be willing to have shiny walls
in their homes; but such decoration must not interfere with the
foil’s mirror-like reflectivity. Scientists must develop paints
which are heat-transparent in thin coatings. Certain lacquers
can be used safely on the foil surface, but pigments must be found
to put colour into a room. Finally, the system calls for a'heat-
transparent plastic to protect the heating and cooling plates
from room air, since in radiant conditioning it is desired to leave
air tempertaures as little changed as possible. One material
already in use has been found to be about 50 per cent. trans-
parent to heat rays (that is, it allows about half the heat rays
striking it to pass through), and careful search in plastic labora-
tories will probably yield another of the desired efficiency. With
such sealing-in of the plates, the only heat entering or leaving
the room will be that in a radiant form.

A housing research unit in the engineering college of another
university is at present equipping a small cottage for radiant
conditioning along the lines followed in my experimental
chambers, with a conventional air-conditioning system in an
adjoining companion cottage. There comparative operating
costs and working efficiency will be studied under actual
field conditions, and the method made ready for practical
application.

It has been quite definitely shown that skin sensations of heat
or cold depend upon the rate of heat gain or loss and not on the
manner in which the heat arrivés or départs. Air, clothing,
or other materials feel hot or cold according to the rate at which
they conduct heat to or from the skin by direct contact. But
radiant heat from a distant source—such as the sun—also feels
warm because it too adds to the skin’s heat. These principles
explain why one can feel cool at 930 F. In my foil-lined hot
room, with the air kept at 930 F., a distinct sensation of cold can
be obtained by holding the palm of the hand out in front of the
cold plate. Even though the hand be entirely surrounded by
hot, moist air, the radiant heat loss from the skin to the cool

121
  plate causes a definitely chilly feeling on the palm. It seems to
matter little to the body through what avenue its heat is lost,
just so the total rate of loss be adequate.

Of course, air conditioning is not concerned solely with
heating or cooling of the air, but heat control does constitute its
major concern. Humidity changes and air motion are only
secondary factors to facilitate the warming or cooling effect
upon the body. Cleansing or filtration of the air, however, is
another separate and important part of air conditioning, one
which is greatly needed in the dirty atmosphere of our industrial
cities. Other air-conditioning gadgets of limited application are
the ozonizers and sterilizing lights now being installed in many
places. Sterilizing curtains of ultra-violet light have been found
especially useful in hospitals to prevent the carrying of disease
germs from one patiënt to another by air currents.

Still another proper function of air conditioning is the supply-
ing of fresh air to the room. No one yet knows just what the
difference is between fresh and stale air ëxcept that one is
pleasant to breathe and the other is disagreeable. Gertainly
staleness is not an oxygen lack, nor need it be concerned with an
accumulation of body odours.

Staleness of air has been thought by some to be related to the
degree of oxygen ionization. Ordinary outdoor oxygen exists
in several different forms—as 02, 03, and 04. Its reactivity
increases sharply the greater the number of atoms there are
associated together. Ozone is presumed to be 04 and is the most
active form of oxygen known. “Stale” air at once becomes
“fresh” when passed through a proper ionizing chamber to
reactivate its oxygen. Temperature plays an important part in
this ionization, for the active forms go back into the inactive
more readily when the temperature is high. One of the quickest
ways to make room air lifeless and undesirable for breathing is
to pass it over hot metal surfaces, as is done in many warm-air
heating plants. Room air thus tends to retain its freshness much
better if it is kept cool. Radiant conditioning offers a distinct
advantage here, for indoor winter air can be kept cold and fresh
much more readily when the room occupants are being warmed
by radiant heat. In fact, Windows could be kept open in mid-
winter provided no noticeable draughts were present.

Filtration or proper cleansing of outside air as it is taken into
a room prevents dirt accumulation both in human air passages
and on room furnishings. Such cleansing is badly needed in
industrial or densely built-up urban regions. Many people
carefully filter all the air taken in during the day but throw their

122
  bedroom Windows wide open at night, when the outdoor air
is foulest. The housewife can see her window curtains disin-
tegrate where the night air strikes them, yet she seldom considers
that the foul air may exert a similar corrosive action on the tissues
of her respiratory tract. During winter nights, when the “smog”
hangs thick over a city, one’s nasal linings become heavily
coated with the black soot and ash mixture coming from the
neighbourhood chimneys—unless, perchance, the incoming air
is filtered at night as well as through the day. Our handkerchiefs
usually teil the story with their first morning use.

In homes equipped with warm-air heating systems, which
include a fan to circulate the air through the house, the Windows
should be kept shut both night and day during the winter
season; then all incoming air is properly cleansed. Bedroom
temperatures should be lowered during sleeping hours, it is
true, for people usually sleep best when they have cool air to
breathe. But it seems inadvisable to allow all the city’s flue
products free access to your bed-chamber in order to have a
night supply of cool air. Americans have greatly overdone the
fresh-air idea, anyway, particularly with respect to the wide-
open bedroom Windows. Ten degrees of night-time cooling
should be ample, whereas many of us during the winter sleep
in air thirty to fifty degrees colder than we breathe through
the day.

Many people consider summer cooling prohibitive in cost,
but it is no more expensive than winter heating. The difference
lies in the fact that winter heating is essential while summer
cooling is more or less a luxury. Hot-weather comfort is particu-
larly costly in tropical climates, where the cooling load is heavy
and electric rates aie high. Radiant conditioning will be especially
appropriate there, both on the basis of its lower power require-
ment and because it avoids contrasts between indoor and outside
air.

While proper conditioning of man’s indoor habitat may add
greatly to his comfort and health, it is questionable whether it
can go far toward overcoming the more profound effects of given
climates upon whole masses of people. The lucky few will always
enjoy efficiënt conditioning, but only the poorest makeshift
arrangements must suffice for the unfortunate many. Even with
all the wealth and mechanical productivity of America, indoor
conditioning is still rudimentary in the great majority of house-
holds.

In case you plan to join the lucky few, be sure your job is well
engineered for your particular needs. Accustom yourself to

123
  temperatures around 7o°-72°F.; if any members of the house-
hold are chilly at -these temperatures,* have them wear warmer
clothing. Overheating is just as harmful for some as chilling is
for others. Bare arms or legs are quite often responsible for
complaints. Women produce less heat than men and usually
chili more easily; so they should be the ones to wear the heavier
clothing indoors. Where both sexes live or work together indoors,
the men should be in shirt sleeves or wearing only a light jacket,
and the women should put on work coats as warm as they need
for comfort. Many offices and homes are kept far too warm
simply because some occupant would rather complain than put
on moré clothing. Granny should have her warm corner and
shawl while the youngsters do their homework off in a cool
study.

Glassrooms at school should be made comfortable for the
children rather than the teacher. Being older and less active,
the teacher usually desires higher room temperatures; however,
her needs should be met by additional clothing rather than by
keeping the room too warm for the children. In school buildings
with central heating and thermostatic control it is probably
wisest to keep temperature regulation out of the teacher’s
hands.

People with chronic rheumatic or sinus infection are always
extra-sensitive to chilling. They chili at temperatures quite
comfortable for normal persons, but this chilling is just as bad
for them as real cold would be. The best solution to their problem
is warmer clothing. Except in hospitals and sick-rooms, tem-
peratures should be adapted to the comfort of the normal well
people rather than to the complaining few.

By making indoor atmospheres more uniform and stable,
air-conditioning engineers have added greatly to our comfort.
Progress toward reflective radiant conditioning in the years
ahead may allow us to hold these gains and add to them other
notable advances. I predict that some day we shall see interior
conditioning done largely by radiant means, with a health
betterment and cost saving which will make us wonder why we
struggled so long trying to do the job through heating or cooling
of room air.

But, as we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, air
conditioning is merely a drop in the bucket when the small
and isolated spots of man-made comfort are compared with the
vast realms of space where climatic forces work supremely in-
different to man. The first five chapters have shown how these
forces affect people in the tropics; the following chapters em-

Ï24
  phasized the driving force and health toll of energizing cooler
climates. In the final part of this book we shall look at the larger
effects of climate and weather on mankind in general. People
who still think of man as a builder of his own destiny will not
like what we see.

125
  PART III

CHAPTER l6

  cautions against hearty beer drinking when the body tissues
have been dried out by previous perspiration. To quench one’s
hot-weather thirst with beer is liable to lead 1$ rather profound
intoxication, for the dried-out nervous tissue takes up the alcohol
and water quickly and becomes deadened before the alcohol
can be burned. A normal person will burn the small percentage
of alcohol in beer almost as fast as it can be absorbed into the
blood, and as a result beer intoxication is difficult. But when the
body tissues lose a great deal of water by profuse sweating,
absorption becomes much more rapid and even beer drinking
has its dangers.

One attack of heatstroke or prostration leaves an individual
far more susceptible to similar trouble in subsequent heat
waves. Since doctors have not yet found a way to overcome this
sensitivity, heat victims must take special care to avoid futurc
exposure. Proper intake of the B vitamins in adequate amounts
may protect them against future trouble to a considerable
degree.

City dwellers suffer much more during severe heat waves
than do residents of rural areas. This is largely bccausc the sun’s
daytime heat tends to be stored in the pavements and piled-up
masonry of the crowded buildings faster than it can be given off
at night. Trapped inside the buildings, it causcs indoor tem-
peratures to rise higher with each succeeding day of heat. In
open rural areas cach day’s load of heat is pretty thoroughly
re-radiated into outer space at night. Green vegetation also helps
in lessening the sevority of heat, for it is largely composed of
water which absorbs the heat without much changc of tem-
peraturc. The dry earth of cultivated fields, or the masonry and
pavement materials of the city, become much hotter under the
same intensity of sun’s heat than do growing plants.

Highest daytime temperatures are usually cncountcred in
desert regions, for the sand heats up quickly under the blazing
sun; but it also cools quickly at night as it radiates its daytime
heat off into space. Although tropical regions of heavy rainfall
receive just as much heat, the dense water-laden foliagc on all
sides keeps air temperatures from rising very high; but the
abundance of water everywhere, with its load of stored heat,
also makes the nights warm and oppressive. Tempcratc-zone
cities, with their towering and crowded buildings of concrete
and brick, offer the most severe summer heat problem. It was
this problem which led to the development of air-conditioning
for summer cooling.

One of the most acute heat problems faced by man is to be

101
  found inside the tanks engaged in desert warfare. When closed
for action, they quickly become veritable ovens in which the
occupants suffer 4 terrible torment. The steel turret readily
absorbs the sun’s heat and re-radiates it into the interior. Lining
the inside of the turret with aluminum foil should greatly lessen
this heating-up of the interior; it should also give considerable
protection against attack from flame-thrówers or the kerosene
bomb which now makes of the tank a blazing inferno. If tanks
were to be lined with foil and then provided with sufficiënt
mechanical cooling to remove the body heat the occupants
produce, it should be possible for the men to work inside in fair
comfort for hours. At present the heat problem presents a severe
limitation to tank operation in hot weather or tropical climates.

chapter 13

BAD MOODS AND FALLING BAROMETERS

We have seen in PREVious chapters that people
living in regions marked by frequent storms and the accompany-
ing wide changes in atmospheric pressure suffer particularly
from respiratory ailments, high blood pressure, and other upsets.
Acute appendicitis attacks are most likely to come when the
barometer is falling, so much so that knowing surgeons rather
expect an epidemie of cases on such days. This disease is most
severe and fulminates only in the world’s stormy areas; it is
mild and infrequent in the more stable climates of Europe and
most of the tropics.

But the effect of changing weather can show itself in signs far
more subtle than the symptoms of physical disease. People have
long known intuitively that their emotions and personalities
were influenced by their climatic surroundings. In fact, this
awareness is built firmly into the English language with such
phrases as “stormy emotions,” “tempestuous feelings,” and
“a face as dark as a thunder-cloud.” As so frequently is the case,
our closest companions among domesticated beasts provide us
with clear evidence of this phenomenon.

Farm animals are often good barometers of weather change,
exhibiting a growing restlessness and irritability as a storm
approaches. All country children realize this, but those raised

102
  in the city have missed the close touch with Nature which comes
from such daily associations. Cattle, horses, hogs, and other
domestic livestock are in their own ways just as natural as wild
animals which roam the untouched forests, and they can teach
us many valuable lessons if we will but take the trouble to stop,
look, and listen.

Time after time these friends on our Indiana farm demon-
strated that sudden weather change is an extremely disturbing
factor in daily life. We had with us for years one particular cow
which acted as an excellent weather gauge. During clear, settled
weather she was a docile and likeable creature, friendly and
co-operative; but on days of falling barometer and approaching
storm, she became most unruly and erratic.

Nell was an easy and voluminous milker of part Jersey heritage,
but too unreliable for me to handle in my very early years.
Almost as soon as I could reach, I began helping with the least
excitable cows at the morning and evening milking. They were
usually milked outdoors in good weather, and it was my duty
to bring them in from the pasture. Many snappy autumn
mornings I would warm my bare toes under some friendly
bossy before rousing her from her pasture bed.

In my later childhood Nell and I were particularly good
friends most of the time. I loved to play jokes on her and she
retaliated now and then with a well-placed kick which sent me
and the milk pail tumbling. There was no meanness about her,
though, for her big soulful eyes assured me all was forgiven as I
clambered up from each such balancing of the score. I soon
learned, however, to treat her with respect, especially on the
off-weather days, when her temper became brittle and her
sense of humour non-existent. On one such lowering June
morning she most unceremoniously boosted* my mother over a
six-foot gate, while we were trying to take away her week-old
calf. Even to-day, at eighty-two, mother becomes irate when
the memory of that undignified handling is revived.

One of my jokes on Nell still doublés me up with laughter
whenever I recall it. It occurred on one of thosc restless evenings
before a storm, when flies and mosquitoes had made milking
difficult and kept everyone on the move. Just at dusk I carried
out a basketful of com nubbins for the cows, since scarcity of
rain had made the pastures short. Corn to them was like candy
to hungry children, so they quickly gathered around for the
treat. To the first nubbin thrown out I had attached a long piece
of thread, and just as NelPs nose touched the corn I gently
pulled it away. She followed it a step or two, then her ears went

103
  forward in wonder. Puzzled by this mysterious behaviour of the
nubbin, she regarded it closely a few seconds, then cautiously
reached for it again. This time, as it moved away just beyond
reach of her hungry tongue, she emitted a low, rumbling groan.
A wild look came into her wondering eyes. One more twitch of
the corn and around the corner of the barn she fled with a terrified
bellow, tail pointing high. She might have been as puzzled, but
probably would not have been as emotional, if the trick had
been played on a rising-pressure day.

Horses, especially the more excitable ones, are also very likely
to behave in unexpected ways when the barometer is falling.
They become more irritable, fighting each other and frequently
disobeying orders. On stormy days they are most inclined to
bolt at the slightest opportunity and provide the disastrous
runaways which farm children remember so vividly throughout
their lives. Hogs, too, fight more among themselves on these
days—in fact, I suspect that an hourly count of their fights
through the week would provide a good measure of barometric
changes.

Man’s closest companion, the dog, becomes restless and goes
off on his longer scouting trips when a storm is approaching.
In one large American city with a leash-law all loose dogs are
picked up and taken to the pound. The pound-keeper insists
that dogs smell approaching storms and run out to take their
exercise while they can. His pick-ups are much more
numerous on days before bad weather begins. It is only the
restlessness common to all species, however, which drives the
dogs into unwonted activity when the barometer is falling. Like
the farm cattle and horses, dogs also are more perverse then and
likely to snap at a friendly hand. For safety’s saké, confine your
petting of strange canines to rising-pressure days.

Fishermen given to the telling of tall ‘tales become highly
excited about the way fish rise for bait at certain weather phases.
Anglers* journals have discussed the matter at great length,
finally concluding that barometric pressure change is probably
responsible. A dozen fishermen scattered over a lake may have
been casting for hours or days without luck and then have the
fish suddenly strike at every cast made. As a boy I recall that
fishing in our gravel pit was best the day before bad weather set
in, when the barometer had just begun to fall. Several of my
scientific friends who are rabid anglers take the matter quite
seriously.

People are no more immune to the psychological effect s of
weather change than lower creatures, although the notorious

104
  pride of Hom sapiens usually prevents him from admitting it.
We all like to blame our occasional “blues” on concrete, reassur-
ing things, such as worries about the future, and during domestic
squabbles each person is dead sure the other person is at fault.
A wiser course might be to take a look at the barometer, for
human beings respond just like other animals to falling atmos-
pheric pressures and approaching storms. Family mombers are
more irritable on lowering days, when husband and wife snap at
each other and the children seem perversity incarnate. All of
us remember the low-barometer evenings when we arrived home
exhausted from a day in which everything went wrong only to
find the whole family on edge and intolerant of every suggestion.
Each person is inclined to overlook his own irritable state and
blame any unpleasantness upon unreasonable attitudes of others.
Those are the evenings children are chastised because a parent
is tired and irritated, although it is true the children themselves
are more likely to be unduly perverse.

A heavy rain clears the air at such times in more ways than
one, for then the barometer usually begins to rise and good
nature again prevails in the home. Even in their sleep many
people are restless before a storm, tossing with vivid and night-
marish dreams. Our whole family sometimes awakens when a
low-pressure crisis comes along in the middle of the night, and
inquiry of other people next day frcquently reveals many
instances of similar behaviour. So, do not always blame a child’s
wakefulness or his refusal to eat what you thought good lor him
upon mere perversity—it may be only the weather!

Perhaps the children of tropical natives are well behaved
because they are not subject to the frequent weather changes
which disturb temperate-zone residents. Human relationships
everywhere would be more peaceful and unruffled if people
would only realize the effect of weather on their dispositions and
make proper allowance for little flare-ups. Try it out on your
own family; you will soon have them laughing off situations
which previously led to disagreeable bitterness. When my wife
and I look at our children asleep after these quarrelsome even-
ings, we often wonder how we could have been so severe. But
our resolve always to keep good-natured with them usually lasts
only until the next period of low pressure.

People subject to severe headaches or fainting spells most often
have their -attacks when the barometer is falling. Attempts at
suicide are then much more likely to occur. Low spirits and an
inability to think clearly lead to a feeling of frustration and
hopelessness in many people. At such times life seems scarcely

105
  worth while; but as the storm passes on, everything assumes a
more cheerful aspect.

A few years ago in Tokyo statistics showed that people were
more forgetful on low-pressure days. When the barometer was
falling, bus and street-car passengers left more packages and
umbrellas on the vehicles and put an extra burden on the lost-
and-found department. Traffic accidents in American cities are
also most numerous in such weather, but in many cases the
drivers may be hurrying to reach their destinations before the
storm breaks. Industrial accidents, however, show this same
increased frequency on days of falling pressure. Even childbirths
seem precipitated in veritable epidemics at such times, according
to some of my obstetrical friends.

Some people, hypersensitive to weather change, respond to
every cloud which hides the sun. Sunshine and shadow keep their
emotions jumping from elation to depression, and on days of
steadily falling pressure they become morose and dejected. The
exact mechanism by which such weather changes affect human
beings in so many ways is not yet known. One of my fellow
investigators in this field, Dr. Petersen of Ghicago, believes it’s
all due to shifting Chemical balances in the blood and body
tissues, and he may be right. Other preliminary findings indicate
that our tissues take up more water at such times and a resulting
slight swelling of the brain may upset us emotionaily. Since the
evidence is not yet entirely convincing, we can only say that so
far we do not know.

When we are equipped for close study of pressure change
effects under controlled laboratory conditions, we will probably
find just why these things happen to us—and perhaps how they
may be avoided. They result only from several hours of falling
pressure acting on our tissues, for quick ascent in an elevator or
airplane is apparently harmless. Investigations of pressure effects
are being greatly stimulated by the marked increase in air
travel—both civilian and military—and no doubt researchers
will soon be able to report interesting results.

Even though the reason for such effects is a mystery still,
proper appreciation of their presence will take much of the stress
and unpleasantness out of life in stormy regions. In my own
family, greater tolerance is exercised on those days when we
know we can expect each other to be more restless and irritable.
I have learned in my own work that some days are good only for
routine jobs, while on others difficult tasks are readily accom-
plished. A falling barometer is particularly bad for the type of
cerebration required in writing, so much so indeed that para*

106
  graphs written under such conditions usually need complete
revision. For highest quality output give me an early moming
of rising pressure and a cup of fragrant coffee! Lines written then
are scarcely recognizable as my own after the caffeine effect has
worked off and the pressure has started to fall.

If you are in business, avoid your most difficult customer on
falling-pressure days. His instinctive reaction is most likely to
be curt and unfavourable; he will look upon you with a suspicious
eye. Gall on him when fair weather and a rising barometer are
standing by as your allies. If you must give a lecture or make
some other sort of public appearance, pray that the weather may
be clear and cool. At such times, even the feeblest attempt at
wit will be appreciated and your delivery will be at its peak.
Attack your most difficult problems on the mornings of rising-
pressure days, when to the favourable weather there is added
the barometer’s daily climb from its post-midnight low.

Some day, when we know more definitely just what falling
pressure does to our body efficiency, perhaps we will have
school buildings equipped for pressure control. Then we may
elimlnate those days when both teachers and pupils are ineffi-
ciënt, when everyone is restless, irritable, and susceptible to
wandering attention and blurred intellect. The control of indoor
pressure will probably be one of the future’s major developments
in indoor conditioning, and its first application should certainly
be to school buildings. We shall have more to say in a future
chapter about man’s effort to create made-to-order weather.

chapter 14

GLIMATE AND HUMAN REPRODUCTION

1 hose who have spent their lives studying the
dim corners of the subconscious mind teil us that stronger even
than man’s tremendous drive for self-preservation is the deep-
rooted urge to preserve his species on the face of the earth. The
destructive forces of the most violent wars, including the present
conflict, are puny when compared with the long-term interplay
of great forces which make for larger populations. By the year
2000 the world will probably house a half-billion more persons
  than it does to-day—wars or no wars. Despite the fact that
reproduction is one of the most vital of all human functions,
however, many of the factors influencing it are still a great
mystery to modern Science.

What are the reasons for vast population trends? Why is
fertility declining in England, France, and the United States
and rising in Japan and Russia? Although complete answers to
these and other questions are impossible, scientists have studied
certain factors affecting the general picture. Diet plays some part,
but the exact effect is not at all clear. Animal-breeders are
aware that proper food and vitamin supplies are highly important
for the best reproductivity. But in human beings we see highest
birth rates among the most poorly nourished third of the popula-
tion. For some unknown reason, women run down with advanced
tuberculosis or other weakening disease are often quite
fertile.

The economie factor is undoubtedly important. Perhaps you,
like many other moderns, feel that reproductive fertility is more
of a curse than a boon. Children are no longer economie assets,
it is true, since unlimited and cheap mechanical power has taken
over so much of the world’s work. Expensive staudards of living
make child-rearing and proper education a considerable econo-
mie burden, particularly if the children attend college. Hence
is it that married couples are coming more and more to consider
children a luxury which automatically deprives them of many
other pleasures in life. Most modern women look forward to a
first child as one of life’s greatest experiences, a few welcome the
second, but beyond that it is only the unusual mother who does
more than tolerate further progeny as an unwelcome result of
marital relationship.

86
  Pittsburgh, but the published findings were only of a general
nature and inconclusive.   *

I therefore decided to see what specific evidences of harm I
could find in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, choosing these two cities
for two reasons. Each has good soot-fall and death-rate data by
census tracts or soot-fall districts over a number of years, and
each has a local topography which presents sharp contrasts in
smoke density. Pollution is severe in the low-lying bottoms
districts of both cities and is relatively mild in their hilltop
suburbs, especially those situated to the west of the industrial
sections. The facts unearthed in this study leave no doubt of
smoke’s evil effects. The respiratory disease situation thus
uncovered is severe enough to demand vigorous action regardless
of cost as soon as the war emergency and coal shortage have
passed.

The threat is illustrated by the case of a friend of mine from
New York who recently stopped for a few days in Cincinnati on
his way to the South-west. The weather happened to be lowering,
with little movement in the muggy air—the kind that keeps our
smoke as a heavy blanket over the low-lying basin area of the
city. My friend developed an extremely severe respiratory
infection and frantically called for me by telephone from one
of the hotels down under the smoke. (The incident happened
just at a time when I was out seeking for evidences of its effect
upon the city’s population.) Unable to find me, he finally called
another physician, who sent him to a hilltop hospital.

This man claimed that he was always affected in this fashion
if he stopped in Cincinnati during the winter season, and he was
convinced that the smoke was responsible. This time he came
very near to pneumonia, with considcrable fever and acute
inflammation well down in the smaller air passages. Treatment
with the newer Chemicals which have proved so effective in
pneumococcic infections soon made him well again, but the
experience has only deepened his conviction that our city* smoke
is dangerous.

Smoke’s chief effects are naturally upon tissues of the respira-
tory system, from nose to lungs, for these are the body surfaces
brought into most intimate contact with the dirty air. My
search for harmful effects thus centred around pneumonia,
tuberculosis, and lung cancer, since these are the respiratory
diseases which kill and leave death records for study. Information
on sinusitis, bronchitis, and colds would be even more interesting,
but these milder diseases rarely kill and no records of their
incidence are available.

87
  The pneumonia situation is most striking in its relation to
smoke, so let’s look atit first. My New York friend was indeed
fortunate to have escaped pneumonia, for it strikes with great
frequency each winter among people living in the dirty air of
our congested industrial districts. During 1937 and 1938 in
Gincinnati there were 480 pneumonia deaths among 178,000
residents of our low-lying census tracts and only 160 among

277,000   people of the hültop suburbs! Three-quarters of the
city’s pneumonia deaths in only a little over a third of its
population!

This was at first thought to be due to overcrowding in the
basin area where family incomes are lowest. Pneumonia is a
contagious disease, it is true, and overcrowding does tend to
spread it from one victim to the next. But this does not explain
why the men in these areas should have almost three times as
much pneumonia as do the women living alongside them!
In the cleaner suburban districts men have only Slightly more
(5 per cent.) pneumonia than their wives, but as smoke pollution
increases, the male rate rises much faster than the female. In
the dirtiest sections the men have three to five times as much
pneumonia as the women!

This greater pneumonia hazard of the city labourer cannot
be due to his outdoor exposure to chilling, for men on Ohio’s
farms have only 5 per cent. more pneumonia than their wives
(just as in the clean city suburbs). Nor can it be a result of their
low economie status and faulty diet, for men are usually better
nourished than their wives. The only reasonable conclusion left
is that the high rate is due to the outdoor smoke-laden atmos-
phere in which the men as a rule spend the most time. Those
remaining indoors do not escape entirely but they are much
less affected.

In both Gincinnati and Pittsburgh the railroads enter largely
along valley routes, and industrial plants have naturally located
along the railroads. Major use of soft coal thus takes place in the
low-lying districts, and on days of little air motion the smoke
from these sources hangs suspended in the valley sections. In
both cities the pneumonia death rates fall rapidly with each
hundred feet of ascent up from the valley bottoms. The death
rate is three to ten times higher in the dirty basin districts than
out in the cleaner air of the suburbs.

Tuberculosis deaths are also far more common in the most
smoky parts of the city. The rates are many times higher than
out in the clean suburban air and are markedly higher for men
than for women. Negroes, many of whom have migrated from

88
  the South, cohgregate mainly in these dirty districts and have
tuberculosis and pneumonia death rates twice as high as the top
rates of the white population. Regardless of race, any group
migrating from Southern States will be far more susceptible to
respiratory infection than will native northerners, but these
migrants are particularly unfortunate when they settle in our
most polluted districts.

The distribution of soot-fall (both carbon particles and fly
ash) in various parts of the city bears a direct relation to pneu-
monia and tuberculosis deaths: The very districts having most
excessive soot-fall are the ones with highest respiratory death
rates, while in the cleanest suburban areas such deaths are
quite negligible in number.

Most of the city’s lung cancers also develop in these same
dirty basin districts, people there being about three times more
likely to develop the disease than are suburban residents. This
form of cancer, too, is several times more frequent in men than
in women. That the non-contagious, non-infectious lung disease
should show the same relation to soot-fall as do tuberculosis and
pneumonia is strongly suggestive that air pollution may be the
damaging factor. That men, who are out in the dirty air much
more than women, should be so much more afflicted with all
three of the lung diseases only adds to the suspicion that air
pollution is largely responsible for these hcalth hazards of dirty
districts.

In presenting these findings, I do not intend to belittle the
evil effects of overcrowding, poverty, and malnutrition which
are so prevalent in our basin districts. The harmful effects of
smoke are only added to these other hazards which confront
the unfortunate residents of polluted regions. It is difficult to
assess accurately the relative importance of the various health
handicaps they face, but air pollution is probably responsible
for many respiratory illnesses than all other factors combined.
Since respiratory troubles are by far the most frequent causes of
ill health among people of temperate regions, it would scem
imperative that steps be taken to eliminate the smoke hazard
which so severely intensifies this type of illness in our polluted
urban districts. Urgency is dictated not only by common human
impulses, but also by a realization of the tremendous loss of man-
hours among workers in war industries who are stricken by the
smoky excrements of their own factories.

Perhaps most city residents have given*little thought to just
what materials they are taking in with the air they breathe.
The black smoke you see is largely carbon, and you have probably

89
  been told that carbon is harmless—may indeed'be beneficia!.
It is harmless if it is pure carbon, but that issuing from smoky
chimneys is far from pure. Coal-tar compounds in soft coal are
also liberated as gases under the same furnace conditions which
produce the black smoke. As these gases cool in the upper
chimney, they condense on the carbon and ash particles present
in the smoke and are thus carried out over the city. Soft-coal
soot from the chimneys of English homes has been found to be
almost half coal tar in some instances. High-volatile coals
liberate the largest amounts of both soot and coal tar when im-
properly fired; if burned smokelessly, then both tar and carbon
are consumed in the firebox. These tarry substances which
condense on smoke particles contain the cancer-producing
Chemicals used in experimental cancer studies and are coming
to be seriously suspected as a possible cause for the lung cancer
increase among the people of our city slums.

Along with the carbon in smoke goes a considerable amount
of so-called “fly ash” composed of much the same sort of silicate
compounds which killed so many hundreds of tunnel and quarry
workers exposed to the fine rock dust produced in blasting
operations. It was formerly thought that these particles irritated
the lungs because of their sharp cutting edges, but now their
action is considered to be a Chemical rather than a physical
irritation. Before proper precautions were instituted, these
particles produced deadly silicosis among tunnel workers. But
the ailment is seldom seen among city residents exposed to fly
ash. It is possible that a lower grade of irritation may be respon-
sible for their increased susceptibility to respiratory troubles.
Similar fly-ash irritation in the nasal sinuses probably plays a
large part in the prevalence of sinusitis among dwellers in our
coal-burning cities. One might expect suburban residents who
work daily in the downtown basin area to be affected almost as
much as the basin “natives.” Most of these people, however,
work in indoor atmospheres which are much less polluted and
sleep at night under cleaner air conditions.

Carbon soot has been decreasing in recent years, because more
factories and homes have installed mechanical stokers and
secured better burning of the cheap grades of soft coal. Atmos-
pheric fly ash, however, is thicker than ever because more violent
mechanical draughts in fireboxes and chimneys have carried larger
proportions of furnace ash out into the air. The great heating
plants of industrial, apartment, and office buildings add to the
fly-ash problem by their nightly blowing-out of the accumulated
material in their stacks. This material should be trapped and

90
  removed from below instead of being permitted to escape and
contaminate the sleeping city.

Still another important smoke constituent is the sulphur
which passes off in the form of oxide gases. Sulphur oxides
become highly irritating and corrosive acids when dissolved in
water. It was probably this type of irritation which affected the
noses and air-passage linings of St. Louis residents and, more
than any other factor, inspired that city’s successful anti-smoke
crusade. Coals burned there have a high sulphur content (3-5 per
cent.). At times the atmosphere became really choking from
these fumes. Out-of-towners usually transacted their business
as quickly as possible on such days and then rushed away to less
irritating atmospheres outside the city. Many centres are much
more fortunate in being supplied with coals of lower sulphur
content, but even so there is still enough of these acid fumes to
etch stone buildings and disintegrate outdoor paints and exposed
metal surfaces.

Fly ash, sulphur fumes, and carbon soot loaded with coal tar—
these are the damaging factors in city smoke as far as man himself
is concerned. Cutting off of sunlight is probably the least im-
portant loss, for normal winter cloudiness and the acute angle
at which winter sunlight strikes the earth in Cincinnati make it
necessary for us to get our vitamin D supply from food sources
during the smoky season. Considering the matter from the
respiratory disease standpoint alone, urban residents are fully
justified in taking any steps necessary for abolishing the smoke
pollution evil. Several cities are becoming greatly concerned
over the situation, and as usuai there are economie interests
which oppose the needed changes. A half-century ago
similar objections were raised against plans for purifiction of
city water supplies. It was only the clear-cut demonstration that
typhoid and other enteric fevers from polluted water were killing
thousands each year that forced the acceptance of water purifi-
cation. Similarly, purified city air will probably remain a mere
hope until enough citizens properly appreciate the hcalth
hazards of smoky atmospheres.

If any smoke-abatement programme is to lessen air pollution
hazards, it must consider certain fundamental factors. Carbon
soot and coal-tar compounds flow into city air almost exclusively
as a result of the faulty burning of high-volatile soft coals. Such
coals can be burned smokelessly with proper furnace equipment.
Hence, abatement campaigns are being conducted mainly along
the lines of prohibiting the use of high-volatile soft coals unless
proper equipment is available for burning them without smoke.

9i
  Few industrial plants (except for blast-furnace operation) use
any coals except the cheaper, high-volatile types which are
obtainable in' largest quantities. Proper equipment enables these
companies to burn such coals smokelessly and without loss of
unburned fuel through smokestacks. Increasing numbers of
home-owners are also installing efficiënt mechanical stokers for-
these cheap coals. All that is necessary to do away with the black
smoke evil completely is to insist that the rest of the homes and
the railroad engines either burn low-volatile coals or obtain
equipment for the proper handling of the high-volatile varieties.

Relief from black smoke, however, in no way lessons the fly-
ash problem. The ash content of coal is not related to its load
of volatile materials or its tendency to smoke when improperly
burned. In fact hard coals with almost no volatile matter may
yield just as much ash as the high-volatile soft coals. Entirely
separate steps must be taken to clear city atmospheres of fly-ash
hazards. Better settling chambers or traps for the flue ash, or the
use of water sprays to cleanse the chimney gases, will do the trick.
Relief may often be obtained simply by avoiding sudden air
blasts into the firebox. Many types of home stokers have only one
speed for their draught fan, and the sudden air blast as the fan comes
on carries large quantities of fine ash up the chimney. A more
gradual onset of the draught current would remedy this situation.

Washing of flue gases with water sprays would eliminate most
sulphur gases as well as solid soot and ash particles. In fact, this
is practically the only method by which the sulphur oxides could
be removed. Proper firing to eliminate visible smoke will in no
way lessen sulphur-oxide fumes—it might even slightly increase
them by providing for better oxidation of the last tracés of
sulphur in the coal. So St. Louis, even with her stringent anti-
smoke ordinance, may find her atmosphere just as choking and
corrosive as ever unless she compels spray washing of flue gases.
Her water supply would prove quite inadequate for such washing
in all her chimneys, but in the larger coal-burning plants water
could be used over and over again after proper treatment.

The amount of carbon soot deposited over Cincinnati has
been declining in recent years with the increase of stokers and
gas or oil fumaces. Greater use of coke has also helped. However,
fly ash has increased even more than carbon soot has decreased,
so the net health situation is worse instead of better. Evidently
some highly technical consideration must be given to smoke
elimination before genuine relief can be obtained.

One highly vocal objection raised by certain politicians and
economie groups is that nothing should be done which would

9*
  increase the financial burden of poor people residing in polluted
districts. To be sure, low-volatile coals and coke cost more than
the high-volatile varieties and are difficult to bum in the make-
shift stoves of slum districts. Newer types of firebox arrange-
ipents, however, will solve that problem; a two-chambered
firebox has been devised in which the coal bums freely on one
side while new coal on the other side is being coked by the heat.
Liberated gases are forced to burn in the flame of the open side.
When new coal is needed, it is placed in the burned-out side and
permitted to coke while the heat-treated coal on the other side
is burning. With such an arrangement, high-volatile coals could
be burned with little smoke in the poorest home.

Lacking storage space for fuel, the poor usually buy their coal
in small lots from hucksters. Hence, fuel costs dearly and high-
volatile coals are usually used which burn most freely in make-
shift stoves. Establishment of city-controlled fuel depots where
these people could obtain their own coal would provide better
fuel for the same money. New-type stoves to burn even high-
volatile coals smokelessly, and with more economical-combustion,
would save enough on two years’ fuel bill to pay for the new
stove. Thus the poor need not suffer. On the contrary, they
would enjoy lower heating costs and, from a health viewpoint,
would gain most from a lessening of the pollution evil.

We have not yet even considered the greatest pollution element
in city air, the element most responsible for lowcred visibility
and winter “smog.” This factor is the steam given off from
industrial power plants and locomotives. Soot-fall over Cincin-
nati is in the neighbourhood of a half million tons a year, while
the railroads alone liberate about ten times that much steam
into the city atmosphere. The steam quickly turns into invisible
water vapour during the summer when the air’s water-holding
capacity is high. Cold winter air holds little water vapour,
however, so all added steam then remains as fog to becloud our
atmosphere.

For several years I tried to find out just how much steam the
railroads actually produced daily in our metropolitan area.
Officials made evasive replies and continually referred my
inquiries from person to person, bringing me to an utter dead-
end as far as information was concerned. But during recent
hearings before a committee attempting to draft a municipal
anti-smoke ordinance, I did obtain the desired information in a
roundabout manner. Upon questioning, the railroad and coal
representatives revealed the approximate amount of coal used
annually by locomotives operating within the Cincinnati

93