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<br />1357 <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />an overall change in the temperature pat- <br />tern of the United States of a very marked <br />amount. As a matter of fact, this tempera- <br />ture change is going at such a rapid rate, <br />has been going at such a rapid rate, in <br />these fifty years, that if it were to con- <br />tinue it would alter the ice age conditions <br />far more rapidly than is necessary to pro- <br />duce actually the normal advance or recession <br />of an ice age. An ice age comes on when the <br />temperature on the earth changes something <br />like a tenth of a degree in a hundred, or <br />maybe even a thousand, years on the average. <br />But the temperature change now, in fifty <br />years, has been almost three degrees. So <br />you can see that if that were to continue we <br />would gallop far away from the present ice <br />age that we are Ii ving in. Actually we are <br />living in an ice age at the present time. <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />We are living in a period about thirty <br />percent of the way from a true ice free per- <br />iod to a full period of the maximum advance <br />of an ice age and if we were to recede far- <br />ther from the ice age conditions, it would <br />have a drastic effect on the climate of Colo- <br />rado. What I am pointing out now is that <br />our rate of change in this short term change <br />of weather trend is far, far more rapid <br />than the rate occurs actually, of progress <br />toward the long term ice age, and this sug- <br />gests that the future course may be very <br />different from the past course viewed in the <br />fifty year perspective. <br /> <br />The sun's activity, as I said, is very <br />high now, but we expect the sun's activities <br />to decline markedly in the years ahead. If <br />we are right about this and if, in addition, <br />we are right - some of us who suspect these <br />things are related to changes of weather - <br />then there is a very great possibility that <br />in the period around 1975 we shall see in <br />Colorado a drought greater than anything that <br />has occurred in this century and possibly <br />greater than anything that has occurred in the <br />past two or three hundred years. We may have a <br />period of as much as six years in which there <br />will not be greater rainfall falling in the Den- <br />ver area than something like six or seven inches. <br />You can imagine what this will do to agriculture, <br />to available. water resources, and so on. Now <br />I don't mean to say that at this moment we <br />