ICR article image
Posted on 02/19/2014 8:52:15 AM PST by fishtank
Speedy Glaciers Trample Multiple Ice-Age Theories by Jake Hebert, Ph.D. *
From satellite images, researchers have concluded that the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier in Greenland has set a new speed record for glacial flow.1 The ice stream’s calculated average speed for summer 2012 was 46 meters per day—more than 6 feet per hour. While that may not sound very fast, it is the fastest recorded speed for any Antarctica or Greenland ice stream.
This news should interest Christians because rapid glacial flow helps to answer secular claims that certain geological features prove that many “Pleistocene” ice ages occurred over millions of years in Earth’s history.
Glaciers carve and grind rock and leave behind unsorted sediments called glacial drift after they melt. The presence of glacial drift in locations that are presently unglaciated is an argument for a past ice age, although other diagnostic features are needed to be certain since underwater landslides can sometimes mimic these features.2
Secular scientists now believe more than 50 ice ages (or glacial intervals) occurred during the last 2.6 million years.3 Although the geological evidence for a single ice age is very strong, the supposed evidence for multiple ice ages is actually quite weak. The main argument for these supposed multiple ice ages comes from the belief that subtle changes within the chemistry of tiny shells in the seafloor sediments—i.e., changes in the oxygen isotope ratio, the amount of one variety of oxygen atom compared to another variety within the shell—represent changes in climate that have occurred over hundreds of thousands of years.
However, there are serious difficulties with attempting to infer past climates from the chemistry of seafloor sediments. One obvious problem is that the equation that converts the measured oxygen isotope ratio within a shell into a temperature has a second unknown: the oxygen isotope ratio of the seawater at the time the shell was being formed.4 Of course, there is no way that one can travel back in time to actually measure this quantity. Many other serious problems with this technique could be cited.5
Secular scientists acknowledge that physical glacial evidence for these supposed earlier ice ages is generally absent, and they attribute this absence to destruction by subsequent glaciers.6
Furthermore, secular explanations for how these multiple ice ages were generated (even the currently popular astronomical or Milankovitch theory) are simply inadequate.7 However, conditions after the Genesis Flood would have been very conducive to an ice age.8
Despite the general absence of evidence for multiple ice ages, there are locations where glacial deposits are separated by deposits that are apparently not of direct glacial origin. Hence, secular scientists argue that glacial drift was deposited during an ice age, a large amount of time passed during which non-glacial sediments were deposited, and then another ice age occurred. However, these multiple-till layers can actually be the result of glacial advances and retreats within a single ice age, as even secular geologists have acknowledged.9
Conditions during the post-Flood Ice Age would have been especially conducive to rapid glacial movement at the edges of the vast ice sheets. Winters would have been mild for much of the Ice Age, and these mild temperatures would have caused the ice to be relatively warm at the peripheries. Because warm ice deforms more easily than colder ice, the edges of the ice sheets would have been more likely to slip. Likewise, impurities within ice also make deformation more likely, and these impurities would have been provided in large amounts by residual post-Flood volcanic activity. Also, as in the case of the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier, meltwater from the surface would have lubricated the bedrock-ice interface, making movement more likely. These factors would have favored rapid oscillations of the ice sheet edges, which in turn would have helped to produce the deposits that secular scientists erroneously interpret as evidence of multiple ice ages.10
Hence, today’s rapidly surging glaciers are a subtle reminder of the Ice Age and the event that caused it, God’s judgment of the world by a global flood in the days of Noah. They also chip away at secular science’s assertion of multiple ice ages over millions of years.
References
Perkins, S. Scienceshot: Glacial Speed Record. Posted on news.sciencemag.org February 3, 2014, accessed February 4, 2014. The iceberg that sank the Titanic is believed to have calved off this same Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier over a century ago.
Oard, M. J. 1997. A classic tillite reclassified as a submarine debris flow. Journal of Creation (formerly TJ). 11 (1): 7.
Walker, M. and J. Lowe. 2007. Quaternary science 2007: a 50-year retrospective. Journal of the Geological Society. 164 (6): 1073-1092.
Wright, J. D. 2010. Cenozoic Climate – Oxygen Isotope Evidence. In Climates and Oceans. Turekian, K. K., compil. Amsterdam: Academic Press, 316-327.
Oard, M. J. 2007. Astronomical troubles for the astronomical hypothesis of ice ages. Journal of Creation. 21 (3): 19-23.
Stalker, A. MacS. and J. E. Harrison. 1977. Quaternary glaciation of the Waterton-Castle River region of Alberta. Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology. 25 (4): 882-906.
Oard, Astronomical troubles for the astronomical hypothesis of ice ages.
Hebert, J. 2013. Was There an Ice Age? Acts & Facts. 42 (12): 20.
Jackson, L. E., L. D. Andriashek and F. M. Phillips. 2011. Limits of successive Middle and Late Pleistocene continental ice sheets, interior plains of southern and central Alberta and adjacent areas. Developments in Quaternary Science. 15: 580.
Oard, M. J. 1990. An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood. El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 159-166.
* Dr. Hebert is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Article posted on February 19, 2014.
ICR article image
Looks more like an iceberg than a glacier... just wondering.
“Winters would have been mild for much of the Ice Age...”
Huh?
Icebergs come from glaciers. The picture looks like it is connected to land on the right; a glacier entering the water.
It should get a Gold Medal from the Sochi Winter Olympics..................
Drilling down one level, one might expect the winters to be quite severe for the first part of the “ice age”, and quite mild for the latter part of it. Assuming that “ice age” refers to the entire time that a larger portion of land mass is covered with the stuff.
Just more proof of Global Climate Change.
No matter what the weather happens to be it is proof of Global Climate Change. The size of Algore’s dump this morning is proof of Global Climate Change. Everything is proof of Global Climate Changes.
So “The science is settled” folks are going to have some trouble with this too?
Young Earth!
How long did these “parts” last?
Whether there were 50 or 1, doesn't that prove that there was global warming (and cooling) long before there were climate religious zealots???
Indeed, before the ice sheet even appeared, you'd expect the winters to have been very harsh, cold, snowy, etc. And, during the ice sheet retreat, the winters to be much warmer.
How long did it take for these ‘massive’ glaciers to form and then melt. How long were they in place to gauge the huge valleys we see as the result of glacial action?
These questions are critically important. The Flood is supposed to have occurred 4,000 years ago and many of these valley’s were occupied 3,000 years ago.
This calls to mind those signs at the Grand Canyon that claim it took millions of years to carve it. Then Mt Saint Helens happened, and carved a canyon 1/4th the size of the Grand Canyon overnight. Water is an incredibly destructive force.
Uniformitarianism excludes the possibility of catastrophe, or at least refuses to recognize the possibility of catastrophe. It’s not science. It’s philosophy that’s too dishonest to admit that fact.
Even the ICR uses this number and also says: "In Spirit lake, north of the volcano, an enormous water wave, initiated by one-eighth cubic mile of rockslide debris, stripped trees from slopes as high as 850 feet above the pre-eruption water level. The total energy output, on May 18, was equivalent to 400 million tons of TNT - approximately 20,000 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs."
Impressive. Let's compare to the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River travels over 1400 miles to the Gulf of California. The amount of rock that would need to be moved would be orders of magnitude greater, there would be hundreds of cubic miles of rock which would eventually end up in the Pacific Ocean. The amount of water required to move that much rock and disperse it into the ocean would be thousands of cubic miles of water. With that much force behind it there is no possible way that the Colorado River would make multiple "U" turns on its journey to the sea. That much force would cut a straight path with very shallow sloped sides, not deep canyons with vertical walls made of limestone, shale and sandstone.
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