Ice age

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An Ice Age is a period of Earth's history when ice sheets supposedly covered a much larger part of the planet than is currently the case.

Old Earth believers claim that several such periods occurred over millions of years of geological time, but this view is disputed by a group of scientists who find evidence for Young Earth Creationism. See Creation Science and counterexamples to an Ice Age.

Conflicting theories

This theory was developed to attempt to reconcile atheistic insistence on an Old Earth with observed evidence suggesting a Young Earth.

Sea levels

During an Ice Age, sea levels were supposedly much lower due to the water being tied up in glaciers and ice caps would result in land bridges in some places where there are now oceans and straits.

Number of ages

According to atheistic geology, there have been many Ice Ages, the oldest hypothesized one being 2.3 billion years ago, and the most recent finishing around 11,500 years ago.[1][2]

Cooling and warming

If the Earth cools down, evaporation and therefore precipitation are reduced, so little snow will fall onto land to form ice sheets. If the Earth heats up, evaporation and precipitation are increased, but the precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, or melts rather than forming ice sheets.[2]

Agassiz

The theory was first proposed by Louis Agassiz in 1837 to try to explain geologic features which until then had been explained by the great flood.[4][5]

Geological evidence

Earth and rock worn and smoothed by ice sheets, along with U-shaped valleys and termination deposition debris, known as terminal moraine, are the main evidence for an Ice Age, and there is evidence of such glaciation covering northern Europe (including most of Britain), most of Canada, and into the northern parts of the eastern half of the United States.[1]

Creationism

Creationary scientists believe that there was a single Ice Age that lasted around 700 years following Noah's Flood.[2]

Creationists argue that the post-Flood environment provides the best explanation for an Ice Age, with the oceans being warmed by the addition of hot subterranean water, but the land being kept cool by volcanic dust in the atmosphere reflecting much of the sun's heat back to space. Thus evaporation and precipitation would be high, without the snow melting because the land was cooler.[2][6]

The Bible perhaps mentions this Ice Age:

From whose womb comes the ice?
    Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,
    when the surface of the deep is frozen?
Job 38:29-30 (NIV)

See also

Bibliography

  • Batten, Don, et al., 2007, What about the Ice Age?, The Creation Answers Book, Chapter 16
  • Oard, M.J., 1990. An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood, Technical Monograph, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA,

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 Ice Age, World Book Encyclopedia 2000 CD ROM
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Batten, 2007
  3. Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes
  4. Discovery of the Great Ice Age
  5. Aber, James S., Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
  6. Wieland, Carl, Tackling the big freeze, Interview with weather scientist Michael Oard, Creation 19(1):42–43, December 1996.