The Ice Age

What does the worldview of naturalism tell us about the ice age(s)?

• Secular scientists tell us that there were five periods of ice, but only the last appears in mankind’s history.  It is considered to be one ice age with multiple glaciations.  The ice advanced and retreated as many as 40 times.  This is the Pleistocene era on your geological time scale chart and it supposedly began about 2-2.5 million years ago, reached a peak at about 18,000 years ago, and ended about 10,000-12,000 years ago.
• The ice age caused a lot of water to be tied up in ice, lowering the sea level dramatically.  When the ice melted, then the sea level rose
• The cause of the ice age is global cooling with lower temperatures at the earth’s surface and in the atmosphere.

There is no question that ice once covered large parts of North America, northern Europe, and northwest Asia, as well as areas of mountains where no ice exists today.  The evidence is there.  But secular scientists have presented no satisfactory theory that accounts for this history of glaciation that is evident on earth.

What is needed is to look at the evidence with different eyeglasses, to use different assumptions, and thus get a different interpretation of the evidence. 

But first we need to determine what conditions are needed in order develop an ice age.  Surprisingly, secular and creationist scientists now agree on the climate change that is needed to produce and maintain ice sheets.

• Snow must survive the summers
• Enough snow has to fall in the winter to survive to the following year.

Next we need to determine what circumstances might allow these conditions to exist.

• Warmer oceans would cause greater evaporation and hence greater precipitation.
• Cooler continents encourage snowfall.
• Reducing the amount of sunlight reaching earth’s surface by volcanism, greater cloudiness, or reduced carbon dioxide levels.
• Reflect more of the sunlight off the earth’s surface into the atmosphere.

Because these circumstances cannot be found in the uniformitarian, secular view of science and history, we must look for a time of catastrophe that gives us these circumstances…and that is after the flood.

• The floodgates of heaven and the fountains of the great deep added huge amounts of warm water to the existing seas, leaving a nice warm ocean.
• The continental land masses that emerged from the waters of the flood were barren which would cause greater reflection of the sun’s radiation once the snow begins.
• Volcanism was a major feature of the late flood times and the times soon after the flood.  This left large amounts of dust and gasses in the atmosphere.
• While volcanoes add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, those levels would rapidly drop as a new equilibrium is developed between the atmosphere and the oceans.
• Winds begin as the continents are exposed, and the storm tracks are established.

Now everything is set up for the beginning of an ice age caused by the Genesis flood.  The higher latitude continents will experience the first snow.  This will happen to the north of the storm tracks and in mountainous regions.  Lowlands near the warm oceans remain ice-free.

As the ice age progresses:

• Volcanism decreases.
• Oceans cool as circulation begins.  Surface water cools and sinks.  Warmer water rises to the surface, cools, and sinks.  As this circulation continues, the overall ocean temperature drops.
• Snow develops over large areas all at one time, rather than in small areas that spread out.
• Snow and ice builds up and extends further.  The climate of the time is unexpected (at least to us…to a meteorologist it would be expected.)  Winters would be warmer than today and summers cooler.  Ice sheets experienced a temperate, wet climate, and would move quickly.
• East Asia remains ice-free because of a combination of warm oceans, storm tracks, and geography.
• The regions south of the ice sheets, under and south of the storm tracks, experienced wet climates with heavy precipitation.  There is extensive evidence for this, including plant and animal remains.  Today these regions are largely desert.  Under the sands of the Sahara are lake and river beds that indicate rainfall hundreds of times greater than today.  In our area of the high great plains, precipitation was likely three times greater than today.
• As more water is tied up in ice, the sea level drops.  This is compounded by the fact that the continental land masses were still rising  (As a matter of fact, they still are today.)
• In the areas where large ice sheets develop, the land underneath is pushed back down by the weight of the ice, reducing the net drop in sea level for those areas.

Glacial Maximum is the time when the snow and ice reached its maximum total volume

• Sea level would be at its lowest.  This would be about 200-300 feet lower than today.
• Ice depth would be at its greatest  This would be about 2150 feet in the northern hemisphere and 3700 feet in Antarctica.
• Ocean temperatures would have cooled dramatically to temperatures close to today’s.

I have to be honest here…the calculations and formulas used to estimate the time to reach this point are far too complex for me to understand, let alone be able to be coherent in communicating them to you.  So you just get the results. ;)  But that’s all you want to hear anyway, right?

The range of time to reach glacial maximum would be 174 to 1765 years.  Using reasonable figures for the variables in the formulas tells us that 500 to 700 years would be a reasonable estimate for the time it takes to reach glacial maximum.

De-glaciation occurs when all of our circumstances that built ice are gone. 

• Ocean temperatures are close to freezing at the surface, less evaporation occurs, less clouds form, hence…the ice sheets begin to melt. 
• We also see a change in climate.  Winter temperatures get colder, summer temperatures get warmer, storms are windier and drier. 
• As a result, the Arctic Ocean begins to freeze.
• Also as a result, the areas south of the ice sheets begin to dry, and deserts begin to form.
• Greenland and Antarctica will retain their ice sheets.  Altitude, latitude, storms, and proximity to moisture will maintain those ice sheets.
• As melting occurs, the sea level would rise by 200-300 feet.
• The land previously covered by ice would rebound upward as the weight of the ice is removed. (As a matter of fact, Canada is still rebounding today.)  The NET change in sea level in the areas that were covered by ice is about 100-125 feet higher.

The time required for de-glaciation is similarly short…only 200-300 years would be required to completely melt the ice.

 

Have I surprised you a bit?  I know I was more than surprised!

 

Why does this disagree so dramatically from the naturalistic worldview?

• Their time estimates for the latest glacial period is about 2 to 2.5 million years long.  But their estimates are based only on their expanded time frame not on any physical principles.  The math and science of building the ice sheets cannot sustain the idea of 2 million years.

What about mammoths and mastodons and saber-tooth tigers?  They all appear to become extinct at this time.

• They weren’t killed in the flood because they aren’t in flood deposits.
• They didn’t die in the ice age because of cold temperatures because the glacial time wasn’t that cold.
• They actually thrived in the ice age because the climate was wetter with milder winters.  The fossils of the animals found living with these animals (like hippos and rhinos and alligators) confirms this.
• But when the ice sheets began melting and the arctic began freezing and the storms got drier and windier…
• The climate cooled dramatically and quickly.  This condition is called The Big Chill.
• These large animals were stressed by these conditions.  Many escaped, some didn’t.

Recommended reading

Frozen in Time by Michael J Oard (available in a couple of weeks in the church library, or can be read online at www.answersingenesis.org/articles/fit )          

An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood by Michael J Oard (technical, but you can skip the technical equations parts and just read the rest…it’s not difficult reading)