Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — Startling Meteorological Theory—Can the Weather Be Controlled! [ARTICLE]

Startling Meteorological Theory—Can the Weather Be Controlled!

Notwithstanding tlie services in the different churches of the city, and the attraction of other amusements, a full house assembled in the hall of the Young Men’s Christian Association to hear the first lecture of tho season, which was delivered by Rev. L. B. Woolfolk, of Lexington, Ky. The lecturer showed perfect familiarity with his subject, and held the undivided attention of his audience for over an lieur, and at the close was greeted with prolonged applause. He began by stating that during two years’ residence in tho Rocky Mountains, the cradle of storms, he beheld the phenomena of nature unveiled to observation as they are nowhere else. Hie generalizations, based upon these observations, had led him to the conclusion that the weather is subject to the control of man, in respect of wet and dry, heat and cold, storm and calm. In the present lecture he would restrict himself to the proposition that, by cannonades, man can so control the temperature as to maintain a genial summer v arm th during the entire winter. The temperature, he said, was dependent upon the winds, the south wind bringingwith it thetemperature oi the troplcS, aria the north wind bearing with it arctic cold. If man can keep the south wind upon the surface, the weather would be always genial. In the temperate zone the south wind is always on the surface of die earth except during storms. The storms of the temperate zone all arise out of the conflict of the tropical and polar currents, which become embanked against each -other.This embankment and mutual compression and struggle of the two currents can only end by the polar current cutting a track through the tropical current, through which to pour its mass south toward the tropics. All our winter storms are eruptions of the polar current. The mass of the polar current is much less than that of the southerly winds, and it never cuts but one track at once, and, at all points away from the storm track, the tropical current is flowing northwise on the surface of the earth, bearing with it the genial temperature of the southern latitudes. If, therefore, man can, by cannonades, keep open tlie track of the polar current at one place, a genial climate will be maintained in all other areas of the temperate zone. The lecturer then proceeded to show how the track of the polar current is opened by either of three natural causes —by mechanical pressure, by electricity, and by growing vegetation—and described a number of interesting phenomena observed by himself in illustration. But he proceeded to show that a cannonade was the most efficient of all agencies for breaking a vortex through which the polar current will pour its mass. This was the only agency that could prevent the two air currents from ever becoming embanked. He then cited many facts to show that the cannon-firing of winter battles has always broken a track for the polar current aver the area of conflict, and that simultaneously the south wind was flowing northward at all other pointe. He proposed to keep up a cannonade upon one of the Aleutian Islands, so as to keep the storm track of the polar current constantly open in the Pacific Ocean . By this means the two currents would never become embanked and the tropical current all round the earth would set up a steady flow toward the open track. z This modification of the direction of thd south winds would greatly benefit the northern hemisphere. The deserts Of Asia and North America would have regular and seasonable rains; vegetation would continue throughout winter, and the warm winds, blowing up the Atlantic into and across the Arctic Ocean, would drive before them the warm water of the Southern seas to mitigate the cold of frigid regions. The subject was well illustrated with diagrams, by the aid of which the ideas of tlie lecturer were made perfectly clear to the audience. The earnestness and argument of the speaker produced a deep impression upon his hearers, and at the close of the lecture the entire audience rose to its feet in testimony of its conviction of the practicability of the theory. Justice cannot be done to the lecturer in this brief abstract. It is to be hoped that the subject will be thoroughly investigated by scientists and tlie practicability of controlling tlie weather by cannonades be tested by experiment.—Cincinnati Timet