Abstract
IT appears to me that the position taken up by Sir Robert Ball in his book, “The Cause of an Ice Age,” is seriously misrepresented by Sir H. Howorth in one paragraph of the criticism which appears in NATURE of October 17. Sir H. Howorth says, that the fact of the invariability of the ratio of the heat received by our hemisphere in summer to that received in winter cannot be the cause of variability in climate; “if, as we are told in the book over and over again, this particular proportion (63:37) is the cause of the Ice age, we must be living in an Ice age now, and we must always have been living in an Ice age.” Now it is nowhere asserted by Sir Robert Ball that the invariability or the magnitude of this ratio is the cause of an Ice age, but it is very clearly explained that he assumes the cause of an Ice age to be a particular range of positions of the line of equinoxes combined with a high value of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, and that the fact that the above ratio is 63: 37, and not unity, as appears to have been supposed to be the case, is relevant only so far as it inclines us to regard the changes of climate due to the causes just mentioned as much greater than we might otherwise have regarded them.
Article PDF
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
HOBSON, E. The Cause of an Ice Age. Nature 52, 643 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/052643b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/052643b0
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.