Evidence of Inflated Ice Core Ages Uniformitarian age models assign about 85% of an ice core’s timescale to the bottom half of the core. For the three deep Antarctic cores (EPICA Dome C, Vostok, and Dome Fuji), this amounts to multiple hundreds of thousands of years. If these age scales are inflated, as creationists argue, then uniformitarian age assignments will cause volcanic tephra deposits in these cores to appear extremely infrequent in the distant past. This is indeed the case and is strong evidence that uniformitarian age assignments are greatly inflated. Uniformitarian glaciologists hope to drill another long ice core in East Antarctica, one reaching ice they believe to be 1.5 million years old. If successful, I predict the same odd pattern in tephra spacing will appear in this core, too. Moreover, if a tephra layer exists near the bottom of this new ice core, the inflated uniformitarian timescale will likely make the duration of the volcanic event that deposited the tephra layer seem absurdly long. Hebert, J. 2018. Tephra and inflated ice core ages. Journal of Creation 32 (3): 4-6. Hebert, J. 2022. Plans underway to drill supposed 1.5-million-year-old Antarctic ice. Journal of Creation 36 (2): 8-9. Future Work Future creationist modeling of post-Flood ice sheets could be improved by incorporating isostatic adjustments and uneven topography into the Mahaffy model. Also the more realistic Blatter-Pattyn higher-order ice sheet model, which does not assume an isothermal ice sheet, could be used for this purpose. I have already spent much time writing a Blatter-Pattyn IDL code, but I have had difficulties with numerical instabilities. I believe the problem is related to the fact that the softness or hardness of the ice can vary over many orders of magnitude as the ice grows in thickness. An open-source code for this model is also available, but I have had difficulty getting it to work, and online help seems unavailable. Also, a professional glaciologist graciously gave me chemical species measurements from the EPICA Dome C core, under certain provisions that I have agreed to honor. I have already begun an attempt to see if a creation-based model of the EPICA Dome C core can make better sense of the chemical diffusion patterns reported in the technical literature. This is a much greater challenge than analyzing tephra, however, because diffusion broadens a chemical layer while thinning of the ice simultaneously makes the chemical layer thinner. Hence, an analysis must correctly account for both broadening and thinning of chemical species in the ice before any conclusions can be drawn. Abstract In 1990 the Institute for Creation Research published Michael Oard’s monograph An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood, which showed that warm post-Flood oceans and residual postFlood volcanism provide the necessary conditions for an Ice Age. ICR then published additional paleoclimate work, including computer simulations by Drs. Larry Vardiman and Wes Brewer confirming that much warmer oceans can greatly increase snowfall. Within the last decade, ICR has done much to expand on this pioneering research. A serious problem with evidence for the dominant uniformitarian ice age theory was revealed, with enormous implications for uniformitarian dating methods, as well as for the “global warming” debate. Ice Age fossil tree pollen indicates that thick Ice Age forests were much rarer than at present, consistent with the total destruction of all the world’s trees during the Flood. Tephra layers in deep Antarctic ice cores provide strong evidence that uniformitarian age assignments are greatly inflated. Creationist modeling of ice sheets has also been greatly improved. Additional possible future improvements in creationist ice sheet modelling are also discussed. Refuting Milankovitch The Milankovitch ice age theory is widely-accepted because of the famous 1976 “Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” Sciencepaper. The paper’s Milankovitch-confirming results were critically dependent upon an assumed age of 700 ka for the most recent geomagnetic reversal. However, uniformitarians revised this age to 780 ka in the early 1990s. ICR demonstrated that this revision invalidated the original results (below). Ages assigned to deep-sea sediment core MD97-2120 (“A” on the map below) were tied to ages for other cores, which ultimately were tied back to the Milankovitch theory, and this is typical uniformitarian practice. Without convincing evidence for the theory, all such age assignments are called into question, even by uniformitarian reckoning. Also, the Milankovitch theory is one of the main arguments for high equilibrium climate sensitivity, which is at the heart of global warming concerns. Hebert, J. 2015. The Dating “Pedigree” of Seafloor Sediment Core MD97-2120: A Case Study. Creation Research Society Quarterly 51 (3): 152-164. Hebert, J. 2016. Revisiting an Iconic Argument for Milankovitch Climate Forcing: Should the “Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” Paper Be Retracted? Part 3. Answers Research Journal 9: 229-255. Hebert, J. 2016. Milankovitch Meltdown: Toppling an Iconic Old-Earth Argument, Part 2. Acts & Facts 45 (12). “Missing” Ice Age Forests Explained Because all the world’s trees were destroyed during the Flood, and because thick, naturallyseeded forests require hundreds of years to grow, thick forests should be rare during the post-Flood Ice Age. Analysis of Ice Age fossil pollen suggests this is indeed the case. As shown in the figure below, thick, mature “closed” forests were very rare at the height of the “last” ice age, which is the only Ice Age in the Creation model. Image Credit: Jonathan Adams. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U. S. Dept. of Energy. Hebert, J., 2019. “Missing” Ice Age Forests: Evidence for the Flood? Creation Research Society Quarterly 56 (1): 48-51. Hebert, J. 2020. Missing Ice Age Forests Fit Flood/Ice Age Model. Acts & Facts 49 (6). Improving Creationist Ice Sheet Models I used a simple computer code to calculate the thicknesses of annual layers in Dr. Larry Vardiman’s 1-D ice sheet model. I also used a basic, non-steady-state isothermal computer model (the 1976 Mahaffy model) to simulate the rapid growth of a thick ice dome during the 4500 years since the Genesis Flood. I also used the Mahaffy model to simulate the rapid post-Flood growth of a long ice ridge. This second paper also proposes combining the Mahaffy computer and Dansgaard-Johnsen analytical ice sheet models to obtain a creationist estimate of annual layer thicknesses near an ice divide. Preliminary unpublished efforts in this regard reveal that, for the case of an ice dome, thinning of ice near the divide is negligible compared to the thinning predicted by uniformitarian models. Vardiman, L. 1994. An Analytic Young-Earth Flow Model of Ice Sheet Formation During the “Ice Age”. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism. Robert E. Walsh, editor. Creation Science Fellowship. Pittsburgh, PA: 561-568. Hebert, J. 2021. Using Vardiman’s Young-Earth Ice Sheet Model and a Simple Computer Code to Estimate Annual Layer Thicknesses. Creation Research Society Quarterly 57 (3): 175-185. Hebert, J. 2022. Towards a More Realistic Young-Earth Ice Sheet Model: A Shallow, Isothermal Ice Dome with a Frozen Base. Creation Research Society Quarterly 58 (4): 262272. Hebert, J. 2023. Towards a More Realistic Young-Earth Ice Sheet Model: A Shallow, Isothermal Ice Ridge with a Frozen Base. Creation Research Society Quarterly 59 (4): 241251. ICR (2014-2023): A Decade of Advancing the Flood-Ice Age Model 9th International Conference on Creationism: July 16-19, 2023 Jake Hebert, Ph.D. Research Scientist Institute for Creation Research Dallas, TX 75229 jhebert@ICR.org
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=