WAS THERE A POST-FLOOD ICE AGE?                

by Beata Smith

 

Creation science is widely promoting a post-flood ice age.  Very few criticisms of it have been publicly voiced.  I would like to provide some of that criticism, since I believe it is important to uphold the truth, and to search it out.  What should we be teaching the next generation, and what should our scientists and historians, etc., be searching for when studying our past?

Much of the post-flood ice age idea I attribute to Michael Oard, since he has written  several books aboout it.  There are others who have also contributed to the idea, and this paper is not limited to Mr. Oard's work alone.

Mr. Oard's hypothesis is that much volcanic dust cooled the earth, and that rapid evaporation of warm oceans produced vast amounts of precipitation. He says that these happened during 500 to 700 years following the Flood, producing an “Ice Age”. In effect, Mr. Oard is saying that volcanism did not nearly cease when God ended the Flood, but that it continued to decrease very slowly until it reached its present level. Further, he says that precipitation was still exceedingly heavy for at least 500 years after the great Flood. These requirements alone should be enough to cause serious doubt about Mr. Oard's post-flood ice age.

This following analyzation is meant to just scratch the surface, and it is far from being even half-way complete. It would be preferable to have more help from specialists and scientists, as there are many specific areas of study in which it would benefit to have more detailed examples and analogies based on them. Mr. Oard's specialty, meteorology, can only contribute a small part in a complete study of the post-flood climate change. I also welcome criticism of my paper, in search of the truth. My handicaps are many; for example, I am not a degreed scientist, and  the information that I can use readily is almost all from the internet.

Persons studying climate change post-flood have severe handicaps; that it is uncertain how the global climate pre-flood remained uniformly tropical or sub-tropical; and how our climate of today came to be after the Flood, including the freezing climate of the poles and higher latitudes. Neither does anyone know for certain how quickly these changes came about after the Flood.


COMPUTER SIMULATIONS

Dr. Larry Vardiman tried to use computer-generated climate simulations and mathematical calculations to show that this post-flood ice age could be possible (Climates Before and After the Flood).  This does not prove that the post-flood event actually happened, as we have no idea of the severity, timing of events, or even the numbers and exact kinds of events involved in the Flood catastrophe, itself. There are just too many very significant unknowns.  Mr. Oard agrees that there is too little data to be able to simulate this climate change (An Ice Age caused by the Genesis Flood, pages 19 and 20).  We can not, therefore, even remotely simulate something scientifically accurate representing the event and afterward. As Answers in Genesis has so rightly stated concerning monkey-to-man evolution, “Unfortunately for evolutionary theorists, they have yet to show how actual land-going, weight-bearing appendages—or any of the other unique structures of land life—could have evolved by chance! Ultimately, building a robot that transitions from sea to land doesn’t prove a sea-to-land transition any more than an illustration of an ape slowly evolving into an upright-walking human proves that we descended from apes!” http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/070308_salamander_robot.html We could apply this logic also to the computer-generated climate simulation model of the Flood and it's after effects on the world's climate. So far, I still have not been shown convincingly how a post-flood ice age, or any ice age, could have happened.



VOLCANISM: HOW MUCH IS REQUIRED?

According to Mr. Oard's books (An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood, p. 68 and  Frozen in Time, p. 73), volcanism would had to have continued at the same, globally mortifying level as during the Flood for another 200 years afterward. Following that, he says there was another 200 years of volcanic activity ½ as devastating as that during the Flood, and at about 500 years after the Flood, worldwide volcanic activity would be down to a mere ¼ the level and output as it had been during the Flood!  This he does not say in words, but the numbers can be extrapolated from his graphs on those pages mentioned.  This is astonishing, and has very little, if any, geologic evidence. Considering the enormity of Flood-era volcanic action, has any one ever wondered about the feasibility of this? Has anyone considered the absolute devastation to life on earth this kind of activity would most surely bring? The sedimentary rocks mixed with volcanic show that most if not all of the gigantic volcanic disturbances happened during the Flood. The evidence for other major activity very soon after that is minimal, if any.

There is no good reason or proof, either, that volcanic deposits with little or no inter-layered Flood sediment (like the Deccan traps in India) did not form very rapidly, as in days, or weeks, or in a few months. What is the evidence for long-term formation, over several hundreds of years? It is also unreasonable for Oard to require the presence of pillow lava to date volcanoes Flood-era (An Ice Age, p. 70).  Doing so, he assumes that the Flood waters had been high enough at the time of the eruption(s) . It could just as well have been that the volcano(es) erupted very quickly and before water was high enough.  *

The Deccan Traps are believed by some to be the result of plate tectonics upon the movement of the country of India-- some creation scientists believe this happened during the Flood. It could have happened during the rainfall or during the recession of the Flood waters. No one is certain about the timing of this formation, but it is wrong of Oard to eliminate these possibilities.


VOLCANIC DUST

Mr. Oard says that the dust would have to have remained in the atmosphere for centuries, about 300 to 500 years. Otherwise, there would not be an ice age. Luckily, or providentially, really, volcanic dust does not remain so long in the atmosphere, especially if there is precipitation. Dust does not linger in the air for more than a year or so, even when there is not an unusual fall of precipitation. During the Flood, there was a lot of precipitation. Oard requires a lot of precipitation during his ice age, rain or snow almost daily. The amount of precipitation Oard is suggesting would have washed all of the dust out of the atmosphere within a very few years, at the most, and that again is under the assumption that volcanic activity was unbelievably enormous, near Flood-era production, for the first couple hundred years.  I think that the Flood event had a very unique and thorough cleansing effect on the atmosphere—and on most everything else on the Earth!

Some ash appears to have fallen out of the sky very quickly, as indicated in the Ashfall Fossil Beds Museum in Nebraska. There is the more recent evidence of this in the Pompeii event.... Dinosaur National Monument in Utah shows how quickly volcanic debris or sand can be dumped nearby. Much loess and other volcanic debris is normally found directly on or near the volcano from which it came, suggesting that those particles normally don't linger very long or drift very far. There is no evidence to tell us that hundreds of thousands of tons of ash or poisonous aerosols traveled around the globe several times or lingered in the atmosphere for centuries before falling, and during continuous years of heavy precipitation.



VOLCANIC AEROSOLS

Volcanic dust and aerosols, especially sulfates, would act as seeds to cloud formation. http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/sulmeth.htm and http://intl.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1129726v1?ck=nck NASA has shown, through satellite images, that dark-colored aerosols decrease cloud formation and others, such as sulfates, which reflect more sunlight, increase cloud formation. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17335 These sulfate aerosols are what Oard depends on to cool the land off once the volcanic dust particles have already settled. However, they initiate cloud formation, and cloud cover not only acts as a reflector of the sun's heat, but also as an insulator, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The aerosol-induced cloud cover would bring more cleansing rain to the inner continents as well as the coasts, since many large volcanoes producing the aerosols were not near the coasts.  

Basaltic volcanoes produce more sulfur in the atmosphere than any other.  There were some very large basaltic eruptions that probably happened during the Flood.  The sulfur-rich haze these volcanoes can produce would have remained in the atmosphere for at least one year, if conditions were like today, which they were not, during the Flood.  We do not know of the effect this atmospheric pollution had on the climate, because we do not know all of the atmospheric conditions that prevailed during the Flood, or how it had been before that.  It had the potential to cool the waters and the earth if the gases remained in the atmosphere for a year or longer.  As has been observed from more modern eruptions, volcanic gases do not appear to remain in the atmosphere for more than a year, or a few years.  There would have to have been gigantic basaltic eruptions, every year or two, for hundreds of years for the post-flood ice age to happen. 

The other side of this contribution from volcanic gases is the methane and carbon dioxide released, which are both "greenhouse gases" that can have a warming effect on climate.  Just what was the combination of gases emitted then, and how did they interact, and how were they mixed into the unique atmosphere during the Flood, we do not yet know.  What kinds of gases were released after the Flood, when, how much, and how often, we do not know, either.  It is important to have this  information in order to re-create climate situations in the past. 

  

TEMPERATURE OF THE FLOOD WATER

Many creationists believe that the pre-flood world was much warmer than today. Such voluminous additions of hot magma or lava, ash, steam, gas, and possibly hot liquid water, during the Flood would only make the world hotter, it would seem. Mr. Oard does not present this problem with his theory: that the earth or land itself would have had an enormous heat increase during the Flood, as we can evidence from the volcanic deposits. For instance, the Siberian traps are estimated to have contributed 1-4mill.km3 of lava across the continent, enough to have covered the entire earth ten feet deep. How much heat did that event add to the Asian continent? How long would that have taken to cool?  How much would it have heated up the Flood water above it?  Then there were other enormous volcanoes contributing their output during the same time. The amount of heat on land and in the atmosphere immediately above it must have been unimaginable, most deadly, and quite significant for figuring climate change, also. Then again, Oard says volcanism continued similarly during the ice age, and again this would add significant heat to the land and atmosphere... 

Adding such measures of heat to the land would soon also affect the Flood water temperature, as all of the Earth was covered in water. If the land was hot, and the “fountains” were hot, wouldn't all sea life boil? Much sea life did perish, but the question is, how hot was the water, and was it uniform in temperature, as most would assume, because of violent turbulence. This also, suggests a much cooler addition of Flood water, rather than hot, to ensure the survival of some sea creatures and to allow the Earth to settle into its present climate much more quickly.

Mr. Oard on pg. 75 of Frozen in Time says the water came from inside the earth's crust. He uses the interior temperature from the crust of the Earth to determine the temperature of the water. 10,000 ft under the crust is given here for an example, with the gradient of 10oF per 1000 feet.  The interior temperature of the earth is not known, however.  It may be much cooler than some are saying, and it may have variations of hot and cold spots.  We can say that volcanoes have erupted from very deep in the earth's mantle, some 700 km (over 2 million feet) deep (http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf062/sf062g11.htm).  This tells us that above this depth, the mantle was probably not molten, or not hot enough to melt.  With the postulated temperature gradient used by Mr. Oard, volcanoes at this depth would be spewing out water vapor at 20,000oF--this is much too hot. 

It is very likely that most of the “fountain” water came from under the ocean, where there are now ridges, trenches, and remains of volcanoes. These areas in the oceans are much larger than the area of volcanic activity on land. If the overall ocean temperature during the Flood were 55oF, as suggested on pg. 71 An Ice Age, then the incoming water from the “fountains” would have to have been greater than 100oF. This would be so if the initial average ocean temperature were as it is now. In fact we don't know what it was, and it may have been warmer.  We do not know if it was uniform in temperature, but that is possible, since we suspect a largely uniform temperature globally before the Flood. 

90% of our ocean water is between 32 and 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Only the top portion, heated by the sun, is much warmer. (http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Water/temp.html&edu=high)

Was the outflowing water under high pressure, and was it in fact hot? We do not know. It is possible that a large portion of water was added through volcanic action, as hot water, but if the fountains of the great deep brought forth cold or cool water, then Mr. Oard's ice age would not work! Incidentally, cold ocean floors may be an indicator that our Earth's interior is cool, not hot. Also, if the interior of the Earth were perpetually hot, as is commonly believed, the outer layers would eventually heat up, and, coupled with the sun's heat, would roast all things on the earth's surface! I think that the heat we observe from the interior of the earth is from the force of friction that happens to the substances upon high-pressure, upward movement to the surface.

Much Flood water came from rain. Larger raindrops take longer to warm up during their descent to the earth. How warm was this rain that came down in massive amounts for forty days and nights continually? How much of the Flood water came from rain? What caused the clouds and the rain?

It has also been suggested by Dr. Walt Brown, (In the Beginning) that if the fountain waters shot up high into the atmosphere, that the resulting precipitation would be very cold, and actually, he suggests ice, or hail. It is interesting to note that the April 2007 issue of Answers magazine also seems to suggest this high-altitude attainment of the fountain waters before they fell back as precipitation (not with words, but in the picture in the fold-out of the magazine). It would most likely have been cold precipitation, not hot.

Studies of Antarctic fossils have indicated the possibility that some of the rock strata was formed in “cool, ambient water.”(PALAIOS; June 1998; v. 13; no. 3; p. 276-286 © 1998 SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology ) It would be very beneficial if more scientists could examine the probable ambient temperature of fossils at the time of their fossilization. Is it known for certain, even, what the average ocean temperature was pre-flood? Was the surface temperature colder or hotter, was it uniform on the surface of the oceans, and how did the climate at that time affect ocean currents and therefore overall ocean temperature? The answers to these questions are crucial in considering Flood events and post-Flood climate change. This needs to be investigated and considered in any attempt to predict post-Flood climate change.


CLOUD COVERING AND WIND COOLING

During the Flood, there was massive atmospheric water or cloud coverage for at least forty days over perhaps the entire Earth.  There may have been much volcanic gas shielding the sun's rays in the stratosphere.  Those two things could have been significant alone as cooling mechanisms. Just how much of the sunlight was blocked out then, and what would be its effect in cooling things off on Earth? If the flood waters had been cool, or cooled, then the land underneath it would have been also. 10,000 feet of cool water all over the Earth would cool off all of the underlying land.

During the recession of the flood waters, there must have also been much cooling, from the driving wind and from the mixing of the water temperature with that of the atmosphere. The ocean, or flood, if hot (55oF or so, as is suggested in the post-flood ice age) would have dissipated much of this heat into the atmosphere at that time.


AMOUNT OF RAINFALL: FLOOD AGAIN!  IN ACID RAIN!

Mr. Oard says that the rate of precipitation during that time would have been between 20 to 100x what we experience today! (p. 39 Frozen) This requires the ocean to be much warmer than it is today. Furthermore, Oard says, “this (precipitation) would have to continue for many years,” or in other words for 500 years at least! Much of the world would be flooded yet again, for centuries. That would have been devastating for any and all life on our planet. Plants would not have enough sunlight due to volcanic dust, according to Oard, and they would have too much water, and this as acid rain.  (The vast amount of sulfur required in the atmosphere would certainly soon rain back down.)  That kills the food chain!  Again, global acid rain for 300 years would be severely crippling, if not impossible for life to multiply rapidly, as it had actually done after the Flood.

How much precipitation is Oard requesting? For the U.S., the overall average annual rainfall is around four feet a year. Twenty times this (Oard's lowest value) is eighty feet a year or more than six feet a month. Some areas in the mid-western U.S. were flooded during the summer of 1993 with only four feet of rain in a month. It is not hard to imagine what the full one hundred times our average rainfall amount would do—four hundred feet of rain a year on average! Oard goes on to say that this rate continued for about five hundred years, with no time to dry out. The 1998 summer flood in S.E. China recorded over five and a half feet of rain in two months (June-July), and it killed more than three thousand people. Oard's ice age hypothesis calls for more than that. It seems that he is setting up conditions similar to that of the Genesis Flood—again, but this time, right after it.

The average rainfall in the Fertile Crescent region of Arabia is around 12 in. per year. Twenty times this is still 240 in. per year—almost two feet a month. This is half of the above mentioned Chinese and U.S. flood situations. This assumes an even distribution of precipitation through the year.

This very heavy and continuous rainfall Oard calls for is supposed to have been welcomed by the earth which had just been completely saturated. There are areas on the earth, such as India, which receive very heavy monsoon rains half the year, but then the remaining months, the land dries off again. Of course, if this precipitation had fallen as snow, then it would not have caused immediate flooding. In the beginning (the first two hundred years or so) of Oard's post-flood ice age, it would have been too warm for snow, and there would have been heavy flooding—once again!


RAINBOW PROMISE?

If Oard's post-flood climactic situation were correct, then Noah would probably not have seen a rainbow. He would have looked up (if still alive), gagging and choking, at a sky black with ash! Then also it would have rained or snowed heavily almost every day for the next 500 years! Oard, himself, suggests this dark, “depressing” scenario in at least two of his books about the ice age. Somehow, I think that this rainbow which Noah saw was to give him the feelings of hope and comfort, not of doubt and depression!


DESSICATION

On page 84 Frozen in Time “desiccation” at the end of the ice age is mentioned, but the evidence for this rapid drying out in no way proves or even suggests a reason for a gradual, post-flood ice age onset. The rapid desiccation also could have happened at the end of the Flood, as the Bible says, when God caused a wind to drive away the flood waters (Gen.8:1).


ICE CORES: ACIDITY

One interesting piece of evidence is the ice itself. There have been several ice cores extracted from Greenland and from Antarctica which were almost two miles deep each. The data retrieved from them was done so under the presumption of long-ages and thus the truth of the claims made from them is severely hindered. One observation that was made is that dust composition in the ice directly affects the estimated accumulation temperature. Acidic ice corresponds to warmer temperatures, whereas alkaline ice, particularly containing calciferous dust, relates to colder periods. This would not be expected in Oard's ice age theory. However, there is a lot of calcium in the Flood deposits.


CLEAN ICE

However, the most obvious objection to Oard's theory is that the ice remains clean for almost the entire length. The overall dust content is smaller than Oard requires, especially in the lower part of the ice cores. They show no indication of abnormally massive volcanics occurring repeatedly for the first hundred years, nor for such an extensive period, ever. Again, this information is missing from his books. Isn't this enough evidence in itself to make one seriously doubt Mr. Oard's conclusions?




THE ILLUMINATING BOTTOM PORTION

Near the very bottom the ice becomes muddy. A pine needle was found at the bottom of one of the ice cores in Greenland. http://www.gfy.ku.dk/~www-glac/ngrip/billeder_eng.htm and http://www.gfy.ku.dk/~www-glac/ngrip/billeder_eng.htm Mr. Oard does not mention that. It is significant, suggesting that immediately before ice began accumulating, the ground was soft enough to allow pine tree roots to penetrate deeply. This suggests a quick freeze and very rapid accumulation of snow and ice.

In addition, four ice cores from Greenland have each shown “significant and RAPID” climate/temperature changes in the very bottom portion, considered the Eemian event (GRIP, GISP2, Camp Century, Dye 3). “Rapid” means ten years or less, according to the reports. The fact that four separate cores agree on this is compelling and shows that this information could probably be a valid representation of ice sheet formation at that time. Stratigraphic disturbances may account for some of the variation, but not all (Final Report, GRIP). There is also agreement about these rapid changes in the North Atlantic sediment cores. Deuterium content in the bottom of the GRIP ice core indicates that the basal, silty ice is “possibly the original buildup” of this ice sheet. The bottom layer is silty, with alternating layers of silty and clean ice on top of it. The Eemian ice contains tropical aerosols—some of the reasons used to label it as a “warm” ice age. This basal ice is low in oxygen and high in methane, indicating anaerobic activity. The GRIP report suggests that the ice sheet was formed on a marsh. This may be showing that the ice sheet formed quickly on top of a wet place and during a time in which there was much decaying matter on the ground below it.

There is much we can learn from ice cores. More analysis of them would be very beneficial to our understanding of what happened.


ANIMAL REMAINS: FOSSILIZATION

“Fossilization is a rare event, requiring, as a rule, sudden burial (as in the Flood) to prevent decomposition.” from: How did animals get from the Ark to places such as Australia?

by Don Batten (editor), Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland

First published in The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, Chapter 17

Since this is true, then why do creation scientists say that there were two dramatic and rapid and global burials in our history? They are saying that there was the Noachain Flood, and then there were dust storms and isolated flooding that happened hundreds of years after that, because of an Ice Age. This discredits the Noachain Flood. They say, again, that fossilization is rare. It requires a sudden burial. “Pleistocene” or “Ice Age” fossils are found all over the world, north to south, east to west, just as are the rest of the fossil record. They also say that most of the “Ice Age” animals died of natural causes. This does not produce fossils. When speaking of Ice Age fossils, most of the creation scientists would probably change their statements and say that most of the Ice Age animals were buried quickly at the end of the Ice Age. This inconsistency should be re-considered.

The requirements for labeling fossils as “Ice Age” seem to be that they have to have been found frozen, in a tar pit, or in a cave, or be found along with mammoth or saber-toothed cat fossils. This is very flimsy reasoning. Do we know for certain how the mammoths in Siberia froze and when? Do we have all the geologic and physical and chemical scientific understanding of how every tar pit and cave was formed, and of how the things buried in them came to be there? Are they saying that all our fossils of saber-toothed cats and mammoths and short-faced bears are only from after the Flood, with the insinuation that they will never be found among Flood remains?! These things should be re-considered. This also sounds a lot like evolutionary reasoning, requiring these particular animals to have adapted quickly to a harsh environment, only soon after to have been killed by it (the harsh climate)!!


DIVERSITY AND DISHARMONY

There is “unusual” diversity among the ice age fossils. This again, seems to indicate mild climate upon time of burial. The remains of the so-called Ice Age fauna are mixed, warm-weather-only along with other, more tolerant animals, and there are semi-aquatics and even fish found with land animals, burrowing animals found with surface-dwellers. Quite a mix, as we do find also among the fossils of “the Flood”. It is highly unlikely that such a mixture would have been rapidly buried together in very restrictive climactic conditions requiring cold and dryness, as in the “Ice Age”.

Also, dust storms are unlikely to arise in areas that support large numbers of “diverse” creatures, as they would have had to have plenty of food to sustain them, i.e. vegetation, which requires lots of water. Lots of water allows very little dust.

The fact that there is “disharmony” and much diversity among plants and animals in the previously glaciated or frozen areas is a problem for Mr. Oard's ice age theory. It is yet another fact that should cause serious doubt in our minds as to there ever being an ice age. Thinking hippos and burrowing rodents are disharmonious with woolly mammoths may be a wrong assumption. Woolly mammoths may have been limited to warmer climates. Oard does not convincingly coordinate his contradictions concerning “disharmonious associations”. GRADUAL CLIMATE CHANGE CANNOT EXPLAIN SUCH MASSIVE, DIVERSE, SIMULTANEOUS EXTINCTIONS ALL OVER THE WORLD.

The estimated seasons of death are all warm-weather, on page 153, Frozen. None of the remains give sufficient evidence to conclude winter or even mid-winter death, and the evidence for warmer-weather deaths is much more concrete. This also does not fit the near-end-of-ice-age mass extinction scenario Oard suggests.

Another dilemma: Oard says that mammoth remains were also found as far south as Central America. He says that this shows that they were not adapted to just icy conditions, yet it has never been proven that mammoths lived in icy conditions in the first place. Mammoth fossils are also found in South Africa, and mammoth fossils have been found in Florida together with alligator fossils. Also, claiming that woolly mammoths were not quick-frozen because they are “associated with the ice age” is circular reasoning! (p. 149 Frozen)

Among the findings in Riverbluff Cave, Missouri, there are mammoths, peccaries, bears, cats, horses, turtles, snakes, bugs, vegetation... , and it is not uncommon to find mammoth remains with reptile fossils and fish fossils. These seem contrary to an ice age demise, being found buried together...for the reasons that this indicates a mild climate, common to them all. The explanation given at the Riverbluff Cave website, is that over centuries of time, animals died in the cave, the reptile and warm-weather type first, and then later when they say there was an ice age, the animals such as the short-faced bear and the mammoth and the cave lion died there. One must then ask them, “What event finally sealed up this cave?” I believe that they were all trapped there and sealed up together during the Flood, that they were all common inhabitants of the area at that time. I also would like to ask how fish happen to “fall” into other caves or burial sites. Since fossilization and carcass preservation is very rare, this would support the idea that “disharmony” is a miss-interpretation, and that there was a coincidental, catastrophic death which occurred in a mild climate all over the world, i.e., the world-wide Flood.


A COLD CLIMATE?

In fact, it has been said many times of this post-flood ice age that it was a warm one, most of the time, and that the coldest weather happened somewhere in the middle of the period. “Warm”?

Comparing two of Oard's charts presents a contradiction again: world ice volume versus time (p. 117 An Ice Age) to woolly mammoth population versus time. (p. 147 Frozen) As the ice volume declined, according to Mr. Oard, mammoth population continued to decline as well, even though he says they had been thriving and increasing during the time at which there was the same amount of ice before the decline. In other words, he says here that cold and ice did not kill the mammoths. In chapter 16 Frozen, he says it did. If the massive extinctions happened near the end of the ice age, as Oard says, when the climate was warming up again, one would expect the populations of now extinct fauna to have been growing again, not continuing to decline, as Oard says that cold climate was the major killer.

Creationist ice age advocates struggle to try to create a climate that is freezing, snowy, and windy, one which lasts for centuries or for thousands of years... They desperately try to explain why there is so much evidence for a temperate climate at the time of the extinctions, and a quick freeze following, contrary to their theories of gradual freezes or of one gradual freeze. (for example the saiga antelope in Alaska, the burrowing rodents, beavers, the hippos in Europe, the type of trees found floating around the northern Siberian shores, the type of food found in the mammoths' teeth and innards, the type of fly found frozen with mammoth carcasses, the thick, frozen loess which contains a lot of plant material and is still frozen and abundant in Siberia today...) These do not indicate a gradual freeze, but a sudden one.


BIOMES

This Ice Age is likened to “the age of the woolly mammoth.” That phrase sounds peculiarly like “the age of the dinosaurs,” a phrase used by evolutionists when assuming that dinosaurs lived in a separate time frame from most other animals and most known plants, rather than assuming that the dinosaurs or mammoths lived in a separate location from others, particularly at the time of their death. That the mammoths are found in surficial sediment might show that they occupied that particular biome which was last to be covered in the Flood; i.e. they might have lived on a high, vast plateau. Even within these Siberian biomes, there is “disharmony”, discussed earlier, indicating a mild climate upon the time of death.  Pre-flood biomes would have varied less than the ones we have around the world today, but there probably would have been areas which were exclusive to some animals, either because of incompatibility with other species or because of terrain.

Mr. Oard says mammoths are rarely found in glaciated areas (p. 191) yet he admits that they are, however, found in glaciated areas. That is not a good argument against a Flood demise, either. Also, on page 191(Frozen), isn't Oard implying that a steppe environment was NOT possible before the Flood? Why? Must the elephant kind live on a grassland, or could they also live in denser vegetation?  Many of the food particles taken from the mammoths have been from various types of trees.


FOOD SUPPLY

Neither does a gradual cooling explain that most of these “well dressed giants” (p.13 Frozen) died almost all at the same time, and nearly at the “end” of the ice age when there would have been no food and water to sustain at all, many years before then. They all would have dehydrated and starved to death long before the “end” of the ice age. Feeding and watering hundreds of thousands of mammoths and other grazing and burrowing animals would be impossible in a snow-covered, dark world. Winters in Siberia would have been even darker. Judging by the size of the tusks and some carcasses found in Siberia, these mammoths were very healthy and probably lived long lives.

Dima was a baby mammoth, one that would have been nursing from his mother. His carcass looks emaciated—the only one to look so, I think. This could be an indication that he had been separated from his mother, or that his mother had recently died, or that he was sick, or that his mother was sick or starving. Mr. Oard only suggests that Dima's condition indicates that the entire herd was starving. (p. 131 An Ice Age) He conveniently leaves out the other possibilities.


FROZEN CARCASSES

If “most (mammoths) died a normal death and decayed” (p. 151 Frozen), then we should not be finding so much of their remains. What happens today when animals die is an almost complete consummation of their carcasses, bones and all, and that ceases to provide us evidence of their previous, though recent, existence. The fact that there are so many remains of mammoths, rhinos, antelope, etc. suggests that there was a sudden, massive kill extending over several or over all the continents at once and a sudden freeze.

Finding protein strands on T-rex bones has caused a stir. Isn't the Siberian carcass treasury much better? These animals may have died at the same time as the dinosaurs.


SUFFOCATION

Curiously, of all those beasts that could be examined for cause of death, suffocation was the killer. Volcanic gases are hot and poisonous and could have caused the massive suffocation event, by excessive heat or oxygen depletion, or by landslide burial. A gradual freeze does not explain any of these phenomena well. A sudden and severe freeze could explain suffocation by oxygen depletion or shock. Drowning could also be the cause of suffocation, as most creatures died  this way during the great Flood. 

Curiously, the Siberian mammoths' and rhinos' remains are found surrounding the Siberian trap deposits. It is much more likely that the mammoths in Siberia died during the massive eruption of the Siberian traps, probably during the Flood.  They either suffocated from dust, gas, and heat after the eruption, or more likely, they were drowned by Flood water or a tidal wave during the Flood.  They were then very quickly frozen, even unto the present day. 

Effects of volcanism can be compared to the Mt. St. Helen's eruption. There were forests of trees torn off the land and dumped into Spirit Lake . Similarly, there is much timber found floating or caught in the ice off the northern Siberian coasts, some kinds that do not grow there in today's climate.

Volcanoes can cause landslides and tidal waves. Landslides could account for the buried upright trees, the mammoths buried standing up, some standing with broken bones, and some mammoths with their last bite still un-swallowed. It seems that a landslide, a very cold tidal wave, and rapid burial are the more likely explanations. The eruption of Krakatoa produced 100-foot tidal waves. How high were those tidal waves during the Flood? Weren't they probably well over 1000 feet high, and carrying a lot of sand and sediment (i.e., “loess” which soon became permafrost in Siberia)?

An excellent read about the mammoths and the Flood is In the Beginning, Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, by Dr. Walt Brown.  He presents a detailed hydroplate theory in which much hail is produced during the Flood.  I think it is possible that there was hail and rain both during the Flood.  In any case, the climate in Siberia had been warm, and during the great catastrophe, everything died, likely from drowning, and the temperature suddenly plunged to freezing, as it still is today.


FROZEN DUST STORMS?

The fact that the Siberian muck which mammoths are buried in is very wet and sticky when thawed suggests that the ground was not dry when it froze. It may have been saturated with water. Because Oard says that it was colder in Siberia during the Ice Age than it is now, the ground must have been frozen at the time he says the mammoths were dying off. Dust storms would not arise from land which was wet or “sticky” right before it froze. Blizzards might arise from winds carrying snow from nearby snow-covered ground. Dust storms, especially of the content and magnitude Oard calls for are highly unlikely, given these conditions. It is unlikely that there could have ever been a dust storm strong enough to cover a large mammoth completely before he could swallow his last bite. Also, why would dust storms be carrying a lot of vegetation? Still, an enormous landslide or tidal wave is more plausible.

More problems with Oard's mammoth burial: there would have been permafrost at this time in the ice age and mammoths cannot be buried into frozen ground; even if the ground was not frozen then, the climate was supposedly warming up at that time, and it would never have frozen at all afterward. Then, it would not even be frozen today. I think that the woolly mammoths died in the Flood, were buried in Flood sediment, and began freezing even as the water was receding.


PERMINERALIZATION

Further, Oard requires mammoth bones to be permineralized to be considered Flood deposits, on page 191 in Frozen. Yet on the very next page, he says, “It is likely the vegetation, some of which is frozen and not permineralized, was rafted into the area during the Flood.” Mr. Oard is saying here that plants don't always have to be permineralized, but that mammoths always have to be, to be considered Flood deposits. Why has this inconsistency not been challenged until now?


OARD'S EVIDENCE AGAINST A QUICK FREEZE CRITICISED

Let me compare my notes with “Table 15.2”, p. 154 Frozen.

  1. “Mammoths associated with the ice age”: This is circular reasoning!! Paraphrased: 1. Some mammoths have long hair and therefore must have lived in a cold climate or “ice age”. 2. Therefore, there was an ice age, because there are woolly mammoths! Again, “the long-haired mammoth is used to 'prove' that there was an Ice Age and the 'Ice Age' is used to prove that woolly mammoths preferred cold, icy weather! * See below for a discussion about sebaceous glands and the woolly mammoth.

  2. “Carcasses rare” : The fact is, there ARE carcasses!! Who is looking, and who is reporting when they are found? Many are unreported. Even today, fresh carcasses of any one kind of animal are very rarely found, and then, they decay very quickly!

  3. “Carcasses partially decayed”: It must have taken a short time to freeze, but not enough time for complete decay. In a very short time after death, decay and scavenging (for the most part) ceased and everything was frozen into its present condition.

  4. “Fly pupae associated with bones and carcasses”: Same as #3. Fly pupae are of warm climate.

  5. “Signs of scavenging”: Same as #3. Could happen anytime. Anyway, aren't we still “scavenging”? Is it also certain in each case that scavenging occurred, or could there have been another reason for disfigurement, as might happen in sudden catastrophic burial, landslide, or other?

  6. “Different seasons of death”: Unfounded. Teeth used to determine “winter” is not conclusive. The rest could be grouped together under “warm weather deaths”(pgs. 152-154). Also, in tropical or temperate climates, distinctions between seasons are already very small. Is it known whether or not mammoth teeth had “seasonal” changes even before the Flood? ** See below for a discussion about teeth and seasonality.

  7. “Remains mostly woolly mammoths”: A woolly mammoth biome can explain this!


* Sebaceous glands and the woolly mammoth:

http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/report-37634.html Mammoths may not have had enough oil glands in their skin needed with their long hair to insulate them from cold, as other animals do which can adapt to cold. Long hair alone would not shield them from cold. The study that found oil glands in the mammoths says to have found them in the feet of the woolly mammoth. This has taken over one hundred years of research. I would think that the scientists would have looked elsewhere on the mammoth carcasses, but it seems that after one hundred years of searching, they have only found sebaceous glands in the feet. Now there are websites that claim the woolly mammoth had “numerous sebaceous glands”, “proving” they were able to withstand very cold temperatures of an “ice age”. “Numerous”?

http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/mammoth.html This site quotes Dr. Don Batten, creation scientist, who says that the woolly mammoth lacks sebaceous glands, needed to prevent the hair from getting wet (as in snow). Dr. Batten also says that we cannot judge whether the mammoth was equipped for either extreme in climate—tropical or ice age. I agree with these statements. However, he believes that there was a post-flood ice age, which requires cold climate and starvation to be the main causes of death. This position assumes a gradual extinction. I have already discussed the problems associated with these theoretical causes earlier in this paper.


How does this mammoth hair compare to that of the orangutan which lives exclusively in the tropical rain forest? http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2372(192511)6%3A4<236%3AOTNOMO>2.0.CO%3B2-F This article shows that sebaceous glands in the chest of orangutans are present at birth in both sexes, but that they disappear in mature females and in aging males. This shows that even though orangutans have them, the sebaceous glands are not always used.  Do we know if this is also true about the woolly mammoth?


** Teeth and seasonality:

http://www.vml.de/e/inhalt.php?ISBN=978-3-89646-619-8 This article shows that in only five out of sixty-three reindeer teeth specimens from Greenland that there seemed to be correlation between age and dental layers. These were in young specimens only. It also says that these correlations were observable in horse teeth, but only for specimens between 5 and 15 years old.

http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/thin_section/intro.html This article states the problems of using teeth to determine season of death, and states that this procedure is largely unreliable in determining season of death.

Using thickness of cementum layers to determine season of death also presents the same problems as using growth-rings in trees to determine the age of trees. There may be many “seasons” within one season, for example, depending on rainfall, for trees, or availability of food, for animals. There may be a lot of food one winter, for example, it might have more rain or more warmth than other years, and this could either extend the previous growth layer, with the appearance of no seasonal change between actual seasons. The opposite could also happen, ending up with more “seasons” than there actually were. If, in Mr. Oard's ice age, the conditions of the seasons were changing, as he requires, it becomes even more complicated and unlikely to be able to determine “season” of death. For example, he requires summers to be cooler, and winters to be warmer.


CROSSING THE OCEAN

The Bearing Straight crossing was not possible. Neither could Mr. Oard make up his mind whether they crossed early in the Ice Age, when the crossing was covered in water, as it is today, (p. 140 Frozen), or late in the ice age, when there was supposedly much ice over it (p. 130 Frozen). On the one hand, there wouldn't have been enough ice yet to dry up the pathway for walking, so the mammoths (and other mammals) would have to have swum across the Bearing Straight. On the other, it would have been too cold and infertile to migrate, and they would have starved and dehydrated along the way. I suppose the woolly mammoths (horses, and others) never did migrate across the Bering Straight.

Mr. Oard seems to say that he thinks they crossed late in the ice age. However, they also all died off “late in the ice age,” or if Oard would have explained what he meant, he would have told us that they died off soon after crossing into the Americas. There are many locations of mammoth and mastodon remains in the U.S., of differing types or species. Most scientists automatically claim they were from an Ice Age. If Oard's mammoths crossed late in the ice age, there should also have been all these other types of elephant kinds along with them—or there was not time for one kind to adapt into the different varieties we find today. Also, if the mammoths did spread from Alaska down into Mexico in such a short time, were they running?

Horses were introduced to the Americas in the 1500's. There are extinct horse fossils in Florida, and other parts of the U.S., which lived here before then. There would not have been enough time for them to repopulate a couple of continents before an ice age demise.

A more likely explanation is that parts of Siberia, “Beringia”, and Alaska were high-altitude land before the Flood standing out of the pre-flood ocean, connecting Asia with the West. Perhaps God allowed the ocean level to be a little higher after the Flood, then separating these continents. Or else maybe some of this land was sunken down into the ocean. Indeed, there were no more elephants, rhinos, camels, or horses in the West, until people later re-introduced them after the Flood.


CAVE MEN

Man has lived in caves in the past, and many still do. Modern cave homes are in hot or temperate climates, as in India and Spain. They are also in colder climates, as in central China. Cave homes are in arid or semi-arid climates most of the year. Where the climate is not so dry, cave dwelling is much less pleasant. For the rest, what may be at least 95% of us, mankind chooses not to live in caves. It is not always practical because of geography, climate, and other reasons. The majority of these Chinese “caves” are much like earth-sheltered homes, most of which are carved out of loess cliffs and hills. (About Chinese cave homes, see http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/home/3arcave.htm, and http://www.chinavista.com/experience/cave/cave1.html .)


The caves in which we find evidence of past human use, and which are not being used currently, other than for tourism, show no indication of additional man-added architecture, such as doorways or windows, which should be there if these caves had been used as homes.

( http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/ ) Without doors, caves in cold, wet climates would have been drafty and damp, and fires built near cave openings would not have warmed up much of the cave's interior.

What would have stopped Noah's descendants in the first centuries after the Flood from living in tents, or from building stone, mud, brick, or grass homes? They may have even used the wood from the Ark. They may have used timber from the newly grown forests only 50 years post-Flood and onward. Pg. 40 of An Ice Age says that immediately after the Flood the land was completely barren. It can take as little as 25 years for “barren” land to become a dense forest, with some large trees. There was no lack of resources and no lack of knowledge, as Noah, after all, was the craftsman of the Ark, with God's instruction!


CAVE ART

Most of those who have studied cave art have suggested that it was done for religious reasons. We may wonder why they were drawn in what seems like secretive places and why there are recurring themes. Perhaps cave painting was a trend in an artistic expression at the time. Perhaps some of the artists of different caves and rocks were the same people.

The fact that some of the paintings are so beautiful and that they are in places which are difficult to access, shows how skilled these people were. Some depictions are about farming, as some artwork depicts plows and men plowing. These cave artists may have come from farming communities, and not all were from hunter-gatherer communities. Even those of us who do live in self-sustaining cities, some still like to hunt, also, more for fun than for necessity. The plow illustrations, plus the fact that there are so many bull illustrations, indicate that there must have been warm summers, so that the ground would not be covered by snow all year or too hard to plow. Also, we do not know if the hunting scenes were drawn by hunter-gatherers. The people at that time and place could have had hunting parties for nostalgia, for wartime practice, or they may have been herdsmen, hunting while watching over their master's flocks, or for any number of other reasons. ( http://www.turcantabria.com/Datos/Historia-Arte/Cuevas/Cuevas Altamira/altamira-i.htm )

There are cave and rock illustrations of now extinct animals, which suggests that these animals must have lived in those areas after the Flood, unless these paintings and such were made before the Flood and somehow preserved. It is unlikely in the case of the mammoth and rhino paintings that mammoths and rhinos lived in these northern areas after the Flood. There is a small probability that the peoples who painted them were painting what they had seen in Babel, before they left. Nimrod was a mighty hunter. Perhaps this was in some way worshiped and also preserved in these paintings.


ANCIENT MAPS

The Ice Age mentioned in The Puzzle of Ancient Man, by Dr. Donald Chittick, (2006 ed. references Mr. Oard and devotes two chapters to this “ice age”). Chittick's claim is that the Piri Reis map shows mountains in Antarctica where there is now ice several miles thick. He says this is evidence of the ice age coming after the Flood, because Antarctica was “accurately” mapped without the ice cap in the early 1500s, using maps as old as perhaps 400B.C. However, it is none other than a representation of the east coast of South America, then turned upwards ninety degrees so as to fit on the gazelle skin on which it was printed. It is not at all depicting any part of Antarctica. The bottom portion of that map is Argentina, not Antarctica. If it were Antarctica, then the mapmaker chopped off the bottom half of Argentina and attached a new continent in it's place--unlikely!

The Orontius Finaeus world maps of 1531, heart shaped, are more accurate than the Piri Reis map and clearly show one austral continent, indicating that it was not then realized that there were two separate continents that far south. The landmass and its topographical features could belong to either continent, but more likely to Australia, since the tip of Argentina is not as close to, nor is it inside a bay of Antarctica. There are several islands which come closer to Australia from the north. The Lopo Homem map (1519) also shows only one austral continent. Map makers and voyagers at this time probably had not yet discovered or even approached Antarctica. There ought to be at least a disclaimer written in the adds for Mr. Chittick's book by the creation organizations which sell it.


LEGENDS

There are more than two hundred historical legends of a great flood, many of which involve one surviving man and his wife and children, who, alone, repopulate the world, and who save and replenish the Earth with land animals and birds. There are NO “ice age” legends among all the peoples of the world, save for the very recent compilation of the drama. There are no ancient tales of unusual darkness, rain, and cold combined, a cold that killed millions of animals and lasted for half a millenia. The duration of the Noachain Flood, on the other hand, was merely a year and a half, yet it's saga is still prevalent worldwide. One would expect there to also be ice age legends of old, especially since the people that lived in the time of the supposed post-flood ice age were descendants of Noah. Noah lived another 448 years after the Flood, and Shem lived 500 years after it. They would have lived in the ice age, according to Mr. Oard. Since each of these lived for over 100 years in the pre-Flood world, you would think that they would be telling their descendants who were living at the time of the supposed ice age, how things had been before the Flood, and that there would have been more legends or stories told about this strange, very dark, depressing, ash-laden, wet, snowy, cold....new world--but they did not, probably because it did not happen. The world as it is today is much more pleasant and habitable, and I do not think it took hundreds of years of shift to bring us to the climates we have today.  There may have been more and bigger lakes for a while, as some of the flood water may have been trapped in some spots, before completely drying up or draining off, but that should not produce an ice age, either.

http://www.creationism.org/flood/FrazerFolkloreOT_4.htm#FrazerOT4_StoriesNoAmerica


ANCIENT HISTORY

What we have are some records of Sumer, Ur, Akkad, the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Chinese, and Indian civilizations soon after the Flood, or hundreds of years after the Flood. Most of the depictions and writings from these civilizations will give clues to the climate at that time: half-dressed and bare-footed or sandaled people, lions, dragons or large lizards, horse-drawn chariots (imagine how hard this would be to do in the snow!), palm trees, elephants, tropical fruits,... This was not an Ice Age, and if this time was not, then there must never have been one. True, there was not ice in those areas in Oard's Ice Age, but with the glaciated areas being as close as they were imagined to have been, these areas also must have been quite cold in the post-flood ice age scenario.


WHAT WE DO KNOW FROM EARTH'S RECORDS:

What we do know about the “ice age” is this:

  1. that there was much, unusual diversity and robustness among plants and animals, including giants of some species, all over the world

  2. that they were thriving together in a temperate climate, likely year-round

  3. that there was an unprecedented amount of precipitation of water, snow, or ice added globally

  4. that there was a sudden, global, massive extinction of these flora and fauna

  5. and that at a time very near this extinction there was a freezing of large amounts of waters in the oceans and on land, and a plunge in global temperatures

  6. that most if not all of the so-called “ice age” fossils and remains are found buried in sediment

  7. the process of fossilization today is very scarce and requires very rapid burial


Consider these events all together. Why do these not sound like consequences of the global Flood? Why should centuries pass before everything froze? The Flood waters and precipitation would have provided ample inland waters to form land glaciers immediately. Secondary flooding would happen as with Lake Missoula and Grand Canyon when the global floodwaters continued to recede. Present-day deserts would have been wetter for a while...Skies would have been clear from dust, allowing rapid regrowth....


WHAT WE SHOULD KNOW FROM THE BIBLE (SOME DON'T):

A chronology of the Flood taken from the readings in Genesis7 and 8 are particularly helpful:

In the 600th year (of Noah's life), on the 2nd month, on the 17th day, all that were saved entered into the ark. On the same day, stated in this order, the fountains of the great deep were “broken open”, the windows of heaven were “opened”, and the rain began. That was the most dramatic Earth-shaping event that happened since the creation week.

This order of physical disturbances given in the Bible is interesting, allowing the possibility that the fountains breaking up and/or the windows being opened somehow may have caused or brought rain. There was likely not enough water in the oceans alone to cover up even the lower mountains of the pre-flood world. If there was water coming from a source or sources other than the ocean, then it could have come from under the Earth's crust, or from space, as ice. The problem with ice coming from space is, how did it vanish after the Flood? It is more likely that the water came from somewhere under the Earth, and then returned again there later on, as is said in Psalm 104.

Was this water underneath cold, as we encounter deep in cave lakes, or was it hot, as we observe that spewed from tectonic action on land and sub-sea? Could it have been a combination of these? How we wish we had more clues, and more answers to these intriguing questions! All anyone is able to to, is to speculate as to where the additional water came from, and what temperature it was.

It lasted, according to Genesis, only forty days and forty nights. Next, God sent a wind over the earth, and the rain, the fountains, and the windows were stopped from acting further. The wind was very strong, able to drive off this water which covered this entire world, several miles deep. The wind which made the Red Sea crossable, a wall of water on either side, was very strong and directed. It could not be explained by natural forces. Likewise, the wind used at the end of the Flood was also a very abnormal event, one which natural forces cannot explain. This is also a curious part in Genesis: it says when the wind began, but it does not say when it ended. It may have lasted only for one day. It may have lasted five months (until the 600th year, 7th month, when the ark came to a rest, possibly implying that it was not rocked or moved anymore by wind), or the wind could have lasted longer. This again, is speculation. It is surprising to note the lack of consideration for the role of this wind in the Flood and its effects by creation scientists today. It may be a huge contributor to geologic changes and climate changes. Again, one can only speculate on the actual strength, temperature, source, locations, and direction(s) of this wind, but if more scientists would see the benefit, they would study our geology more carefully and try to determine at least a few more of these details, and incorporate this into our Biblical history.

The ark rested on the mountains on the 7th month, on the 17th day. This was before the mountain tops could even be seen, as that was later, in the 10th month, on the 1st day. From the second month until a time between the seventh and the tenth or eleventh month, the water was still in the mountains. This would be enough time for mountain glaciers to form, I would think. That is eight or nine months of freezing temperatures in the high altitudes affecting the water there. Since ice floats, the water below it would not have frozen, and it would have continued to flow off of the land for several months more. Glacial formation at this time would depend on the overall Flood water temperature. Also, because the water was high altitude for at least eight months, it would have been cooled at the surface, also reducing the temperature of the Flood water.

Forty days after this 10th month, or in the 11th month, Noah sent out the raven and then the dove. The dove returned the same day, and “the waters were (still) on the face of the whole earth.” ( Genesis 8:9) Face must mean surface. In other words, there was still much water, even though the mountain peaks were showing. One week after that, Noah sent the dove out again, which returned to him this time with an olive leaf. Another week later, Noah sent the dove a third time, and it did not return. This was the 600th year, the 11th month, the 2nd week. About two weeks later, Noah opened the covering of the ark. This was the 601st year, the 1st month, the 1st day. The face (surface) of the ground was dry then. After another month and twenty-seven days, “was the earth dried.” (Genesis 8:14) This was the 601st year, 2nd month, 27th day, and the earth was dry, not just on the surface, but also it was dry deep enough to walk out onto. This is when God spoke to Noah and told him to exit the ark, he and all that were there with him.

In all, the survivors were on the ark for one year and ten days. The first forty days were in the rainstorm. If one month were thirty days, it would have been for one month and ten days. The rest of the time, or for one entire year, the survivors waited in the ark for the waters to dry up. Again, it only took forty days to totally cover the earth. Destruction was complete in forty days, as would have happened also again to Nineveh, noted in Jonah's warning: “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” (Jonah 3:4)

If the Flood waters rose steadily to a height above two miles high in only forty days, burial would have been extremely quick; the water would have climbed more than three hundred feet each day! That is a flood like no other, even if kept at a pace.

After the Flood story, there is a chronology of persons leading to the fall of the Tower of Babel, 101 years after the Flood (Genesis 10 and 11). The birth of Peleg is at the time the world was divided. This was the dividing of the nations of people groups, the scattering of the people from Babel into other parts of the world. The people groups spread out into Asia, Europe and Africa, and possibly to the Americas and Canada. The dividing of the world at this time could not have meant the continental break up, because that would have caused another horrendous global devastation.

Page 127 of Frozen says that we should not expect to read about the Ice Age in the Bible, the Bible being the history of Middle-eastern peoples. It must be remembered that the Bible includes major catastrophes that effect the whole world. I think that it would have mentioned a second global devastation before the end times, but it only mentions one. There is no ice age in the Bible. Snow, ice, and frozen waters are written of in Job. This does not prove, as some suggest, that Job had to have seen glaciers of an “ice age” to have understood what God was saying. It is very possible that Job as well as the other sages, who were there to give him “advice”, knew their geography and the climates associated with different parts of the world. It is very possible that at that time the poles were frozen, and that they might have been very soon after the Flood ( not 300 or 500 years after). Obviously, one would not have had to travel too far to encounter snow in another country or in the mountains. Job knew about these things, either through his own observation or from hearing from others or from reading about them, or simply from trusting in God's wisdom.


“WAS THERE REALLY AN ICE AGE?”

“Was there really an ice age?” (pg. 33-34 of Frozen) is a very good question. The more solid evidence we can use to study the Flood is God's Word, coupled with geologic evidence and fossil remains, the better an idea we will have of what really happened. That numerous scientists, institutions, and others have carelessly loaded this “ice age” notion into their conception of historical fact is amazing. The “ice age” which was supposed to cover half of the North American continent and similarly much of the Asian continent, is very unlikely to ever have happened. Secular scientists may be more comfortable describing these features as due to glacial retreat, in order to discredit the global Flood.

The reason for the initial thrust of the ice age theories is because of the striated, scratched bedrock and smooth boulders, eskers, and drumlins found in those areas. These features are more likely the result of massive and rapid aquatic action, as the Flood waters receded off of the land very quickly, leaving these unmistakable marks of turbulence and flow and deposits from huge volumes of water, not solid ice. The geological “evidence” of rock stratification and moraine formation, etc., ought to be reconsidered as it is highly possible that these features arose during the receding of the Flood waters and the uplifting of parts of the earth's surface during mountain-building. (Douglas Cox wrote much about this, for example, in “Problems in the Glacial Theory”, http://www.sentex.net/~tcc/gtprob.html and in http://vinyl2.sentex.ca/~tcc/GT/GTDT.html

Also, “was there an Ice Age after the Flood?” http://vinyl2.sentex.ca/~tcc/GT/PFIA.html from The Creation Concept website.) Much of the evidence for "glacial" retreat, as the drumlins, boulder deposits and others, could more likely have been a result of fast-moving, deep currents, i.e. massive aquatic action.  I strongly recommend further reading on Mr. Cox's website about these things.  There is a lot of information there.


CONCLUSION

I believe that Oard's Ice Age was not possible. The amount of volcanics and precipitation Oard requires is too great to have been possible at all, and especially too much to happen together. Fossil remains indicate a uniformly warm global climate upon death. Geologic evidence neatly supports aquatic action, rather than massive glacial erosion over large areas of our continents. The Flood water was probably cold. There was enough time to form mountain glaciers when the Flood water was receding. Much cooling could have come from the great wind mentioned in Genesis 8. Wind currents which moved a vast, deep world full of water, have been ignored by those trying to determine the cause of our geography and our climate change. A good part of the post-flood climate cooling could also be attributed to mountain building during the end of the Flood, and the effects of mountains on climate. The major consideration is that the global climate situation is completely different than it was pre-flood. We now experience precipitation whereas the world before did not. Whatever that reason is, it may be another big clue about our present climate. We do not have a uniform climate all over the globe, as it once might have been. All in all, there obviously have been some mechanisms which interfered to cause our climate to vary and to be colder than it was before the Flood, but I believe that there never was a post-flood ice age.


Letter from Michael Oard


I have sent copies of this paper to several creation ministries, in the hopes that they will realize their mistake and be saved the embarrassment later on. However, the responses I received were next to nothing. Recently, though, I was very pleased to have been sent a response from Micheal Oard. His full comment follows. I have also added my response to this.


Mr. Oard:

“I will comment on what I read.  Under "computer simulations," he claims in the first sentence that I used computer simulations.  I wish I could use them, but I never have used a computer simulation for any of my ice age work.  I have always thought computer simulations were too simplistic and imperfect to use, until the past 5 years.  The National Center for Atmospheric Research now has some great models, but they are so sophisticated that it would take a team of atmospheric scientsts to use them and change the initial conditions and other parameters to simulate a post-Flood ice age.  Besides the people at this facility would not be helpful to a creationist endevour.  Larry Vardiman has found this out the hard way.

    Under the next topic "Volcanism: how much is required?" he says on the diminishing volcanism during the ice age that "This is astonishing, and has very little, if any, geological evidence."  First, I never put numbers to volcanism after the Flood by saying it decreased 1/2 in 200 years etc.  Second, Quaternary geologists recognize much evidence for volcanism during the ice age timeframe. I even quoted Charlesworth to this effect.

    Under that same topic I agree with him that the Deccan Traps formed rapidly.  I believe the Deccan Traps and all large igneous provinces (LIPs) formed in the Flood. On page 70 of "An Ice Age caused by the Genesis Flood," I was uncertain at the time (1987 when I wrote most of this book) of whether some of these LIPs were post-Flood, but now I am fairly certain that none are post-Flood.  He says, "It is also unreasonable for Oard to require the presence of pillow lavas to date volcanoes Flood-era."  The statement on page 70 of that book reads: "If they [volcanic flow] are fresh looking and show no surface signs of being erupted under the sea, such as the existence of pillow lavas, they probably are post-Flood."  My statement is not as dogmatic as the author asserts.  Writing that today, I would say it differently, since a marine eruption can lack pillow lavas if a great volume erupted rapidly.  But it is beside the point as there are abundant ice age volcanic products on land and within deep-sea sediments considered from the ice age time (Of course some of these may be late Flood).  Besides, there are plenty of indications of volcanism in the ice age portion of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets (see "The Frozen Record...").

    Under the section "Volcanic Dust", Mr Smith says that I wrote that volcanic dust would have "...remained in the atmosphere for centuries, about 300 to 500 years."  He then correctly points out that volcanic dust does not remain in the asmosphere for very long.  First, I have always said that it is the dust and aerosols in the stratosphere that caused the cooling.  Precipitation will scavenge out dust in the troposphere in a short time, but not the stratosphere, which it too high and stable for clouds and precipitation.  Gravitational settling will also cause the dust to fall out slowly from both troposphere and stratosphere, probably in less than one year.  However, it is the aerosols that remain from 1 to 5 years that are the most significant.  Second, I never said that this material will stay in the atmosphere for 300 to 500 years.  Because it falls out slowly, it must be replenished by copious post-Flood volcanism.  The total length of high loading of dust and especially aerosols is around 300 to 500 years.  Precipitation would not have washed out the aerosols, nor the dust, in the stratorpshere.  Instead of ignoring this "problem," Mr Smith misunderstands the situation. Third, I certainly do not believe that volcanism was "...unbelievably enormous, near Flood-era production, for the first couple hundred years." The Flood-era volcanism was monstrous.  Ice Age volcanism would be several orders of magnitude less, but still much higher than today.”

 

I pray this helps! God bless and have a great day.

 

My response (Mrs. Smith):


  1. I have corrected my mistake in my paper about the computer simulations. They were not used by Mr. Oard. Thank you, Mr. Oard, for clearing that up.


  1. I restate that Mr. Oard does claim the amount of volcanism that is written in my paper. He does not use words to do this, but the numbers are given in his graphs on the pages which I have indicated. Just exactly what he means (in numbers) when he says “Ice Age volcanism would be several orders of magnitude less, but still much higher than today,” is anyone's guess. Again, his graphs are more revealing. This is the same situation for amount of rainfall Mr. Oard projects.

  2. The evidence for much volcanism during the “ice age” assumes hundreds of thousands of years of time passage, and could easily be the evidence of the Flood. What is it that makes the ashfall and volcanic deposits more certainly ice age and not otherwise?

  3. Volcanic aerosols do not remain in the lower stratosphere, but eventually do fall down, and they are then rained back to earth if there happens to be precipitation at the time. The problem the post-flood ice age has with this requirement is that if the aerosols fall out every one to five years, as Mr. Oard says, then there would have to have been a deadly amount of volcanism occurring every one to five years to keep the aerosols covering the entire earth's upper atmosphere. This he says went on for at least 300 years. How much sulfur is that?


Here is some information from the USGS.

( http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html )

Potential effects of volcanic gases

The volcanic gases that pose the greatest potential hazard to people, animals, agriculture, and property are sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen fluoride. Locally, sulfur dioxide gas can lead to acid rain and air pollution downwind from a volcano. Globally, large explosive eruptions that inject a tremendous volume of sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere can lead to lower surface temperatures and promote depletion of the Earth's ozone layer. Because carbon dioxide gas is heavier than air, the gas may flow into in low-lying areas and collect in the soil. The concentration of carbon dioxide gas in these areas can be lethal to people, animals, and vegetation. A few historic eruptions have released sufficient fluorine-compounds to deform or kill animals that grazed on vegetation coated with volcanic ash; fluorine compounds tend to become concentrated on fine-grained ash particles, which can be ingested by animals.

Sulfur dioxide (SO2)

The effects of SO2 on people and the environment vary widely depending on (1) the amount of gas a volcano emits into the atmosphere; (2) whether the gas is injected into the troposphere or stratosphere; and (3) the regional or global wind and weather pattern that disperses the gas. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a colorless gas with a pungent odor that irritates skin and the tissues and mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and throat. Sulfur dioxide chiefly affects upper respiratory tract and bronchi. The World Health Organization recommends a concentration of no greater than 0.5 ppm over 24 hours for maximum exposure. A concentration of 6-12 ppm can cause immediate irritation of the nose and throat; 20 ppm can cause eye irritation; 10,000 ppm will irritate moist skin within minutes.

Emission rates of SO2 from an active volcano range from <20 tonnes/day to >10 million tonnes/day according to the style of volcanic activity and type and volume of magma involved. For example, the large explosive eruption of Mount Pinatubo on 15 June 1991 expelled 3-5 km 3 of dacite magma and injected about 17 million tonnes of SO2 into the stratosphere. The sulfur aerosols resulted in a 0.5-0.6°C cooling of the Earth's surface in the Northern Hemisphere. The sulfate aerosols also accelerated chemical reactions that, together with the increased stratospheric chlorine levels from human-made chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) pollution, destroyed ozone and led to some of the lowest ozone levels ever observed in the atmosphere.

At Kilauea Volcano, the recent effusive eruption of about 0.0005 km3/day (500,000 m3) of basalt magma releases about 2,000 tonnes of SO2 into the lower troposphere. Downwind from the vent, acid rain and air pollution is a persistent health problem when the volcano is erupting.