Was There An Ice Age That Followed The Flood?
Bodie Hodge,
M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Introduction
Creationists and evolution
essentially agree there was an ice age. Creationists argue there was one major
Ice Age that followed the Flood of Noah. In the secular world, they believe in
a multitude of ice ages going back for what seems like an eternity. As a point
of clarification, when creationists typically discuss the post-Flood Ice Age,
it is denoted in caps, whereas the supposed secular ice ages are not capped to
distinguish which is being discussed.
Creationists hold to an Ice Age
that was triggered by the Flood. The Flood occurred about 2348 BC, which is about 4,300 years ago.[1]
The secularists’ most recent ice age was supposedly about 10,000 years ago (by
their dating system).
How Does an Ice Age Occur?
An ice age does not occur by
simply making the earth cold. If the earth got cold, you would have a cold
earth, not an ice age.
Instead, an ice age occurs when
you have warm oceans to get extra evaporation and thus, extra-accumulated
snowfall in winter, and cool summers
so that the accumulated snow and ice does not get a chance to melt off. Then
the following winter, additional accumulation piles on and it builds up into an
ice age. Warm oceans and cool summers are the primary reason for an ice age,
even though other factors are involved.
How Did the Flood Trigger the Ice Age?
Warm Oceans
The Flood would generate immense
amounts of heat as evidenced from its onset with the springs of the great deep
bursting forth. Continental movements would generate heat; volcanic activity
occurring while mountain building was occurring generates heat; and so forth.
The point is that it heats the
ocean water significantly. Naturally, the ocean would have more evaporation,
subsequently causing immense fog, excessive clouds, and storms with more rain,
ice, and snowfall than what we get currently.
Cool Summers
What about cooler summers? The
Flood explains this as well. But first, a little volcano knowledge is required.
For 200 years, we have known how
volcanoes affect our climate. When a volcano erupts, it sends ash particles and
dioxides (such as sulfur dioxide) into the atmosphere. If the eruption is
powerful enough, it sends these things to the upper atmosphere (stratosphere).
When these sub-microscopic items
get to that height it is difficult for them to wash out. It takes a long time.
So they linger and cause all sorts of problem for the climate, simply because
they reflect sunlight back to space causing the temperature of the globe to
cool.
As an example, Mount St. Helens,
a relatively small volcano, caused a drop of 0.1 degree in the global
temperature.[2] Remember
that Mount St. Helens was a small volcano acting alone, so we didn’t expect
much of a change; but notice that the global temperature went down for a short
time.
Larger volcanoes of the past have
had much more damaging effects. Some have dropped the global temperature by 1
degree (e.g., El Chichon), which is quite significant![3]
Mt. Tambora blasted in 1815 and caused summer to cease in the Northern Hemisphere
in 1816. It is called “the year without a summer,” and it was estimated to drop
the global temperature by 3 degrees![4]
As you can see, volcanoes that
send particles and dioxides into the upper atmosphere can cause severe weather
problems — specifically causing summers to be cooler. Most volcanoes we have in
modern times are acting alone.
But consider the mountain-building
period of the Flood of Noah’s day (e.g., Genesis 8:4,[5]
Psalm 104:8–9,[6]
etc.) involving immense volcanic activity acting
in conjunction for more than half of the year and surely some volcanic
activity that was post-Flood too — which would extend the effects. The point is
that immense amounts of fine ash and dioxides were put in the upper atmosphere
to linger for hundreds and hundreds of years.
The result was a lot of reflected
sunlight and cooler summers back to back for extended amounts of time.
Initially, you get accumulation at the poles, and then it extends downward from
the North Pole and upward from the South Pole. Then you get more that pile on
top of each other and compacts lower layers into ice layers (some layers even
combine with each other when the ice gets deep enough and this is called molecular diffusion). Some of these ice
layers glaciate. Some glaciers move horizontally or downhill as a result of the
weight of the ice above them.
Warm oceans and cool summers are
the key to the Ice Age.
When Did the Ice Age Peak and Retreat?
Creationists tend to say the Flood
triggered the Ice Age. But that doesn’t mean the Ice Age was in full effect
immediately. It took time to accumulate up to a maximum (called maximum
glaciation) estimated to reduce the ocean levels by as much as 350 feet. Then, it took time to wane.
Surely, there were some minor fluctuations
during the Ice Age where increases and decreases in ice occurred. During the
Ice Age, there were times when it retreated even though the general trend was a
growing ice extent. Conversely, there were times when ice sheets were growing
when the general trend was reducing.
Even in later times, these
fluctuations are felt. For example, there is the Little Ice Age where growth of
glaciers was occurring in medieval times. This brings us to two important
questions: When did the Ice Age peak? And when did it end (finish its retreat)?
Frankly, the Bible doesn’t tell
us. Thus, we are presented with various scientific models to try to answer the
question. Naturally, not all models agree with each other.
When did the Ice Age end? Some
might argue that it never really ended, since we still have glaciers and ice
sheets today (even the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are still growing — others
are waning!).
This answer doesn’t really help
us much, so let’s refine the question. When did the retreat of the Ice Age finally
get to a point of approximate equilibrium? In other words, when did the ice and
snow melt off to a point that it remains relatively stable (not growing and not
reducing much). This depends on the when the peak of the Ice Age was, and so it
brings us back to the first question.
Some weather experts (Dr. Jake
Hebert,[7]
Dr. Larry Vardiman,[8]
and retired meteorologist Mike Oard[9])
working with weather data have independently suggested a build up and peak of
about 500 years after the Flood, with about 200 or so years for the ice to melt
off and retreat to a more stable equilibrium (still having minor ebbs and
flows).
A competing model by geologist
Dr. Andrew Snelling and writer/editor Mike Matthews, based on radiometric
dating, have suggested a peak about 250 years after the Flood and about 100
years after that to equalize.[10]
Either way, it is a matter of hundreds of years after the Flood. Keep in mind
that models are not absolute and are subject to change.
One thing we would like to see an
expert research in more detail is based on observations we see today. Some ice
sheets are growing while others are retreating. Is it possible that the ice was
growing and retreating in different areas, causing some areas to be affected by
the Ice Age at one time and other areas affected by it later? After all, what
we see in the rock record is an overall ice extent, but did this peak occur all at once in the past? Perhaps future
research would be helpful.
[1]
According to Ussher’s date.
[2]
Jack Williams, “The Epic Volcano Eruption That Led to the ‘Year Without a
Summer,’ ” The Washington Post,
April 24, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/04/24/the-epic-volcano-eruption-that-led-to-the-year-without-a-summer/.
[3]
Ibid. Keep in mind that the those arguing for a global warming and climate
change see only tenths of a degree change, which is quite common in
fluctuations that usually match the suns output — but consider a tenth of
degree versus an entire degree with this volcano!
[4]
Ibid.
[5] Then the ark rested in the seventh
month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.
[6]
The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to the place which You established
for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass over, so that they will not
return to cover the earth (NASB).
[7]
Jake Hebert, “Ice
Cores, Seafloor Sediments, and the Age of the Earth,” Part 2, Acts &
Facts 43 (7), 2014, http://www.icr.org/article/8181.
[8]
See Larry Vardiman, “An Analytical Young-Earth Flow Model of the Ice Sheet
Formation During the ‘Ice-Age,’ ” in Proceedings
of the Third International Conference on Creationism, Robert Walsh, ed. (Pittsburg,
PA: Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., 1994), p. 561–568; Larry Vardiman, “Ice
Cores and the Age of the Earth,” Acts & Facts 21 (4), 1992, http://www.icr.org/article/ice-cores-age-earth/.
[9]
Mike Oard, An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood (El Cajon, CA: Institute
for Creation Research, 1990), p. 23–38.
[10]
Andrew Snelling and Mike Matthews, “When was the Ice Age in Biblical History?” Answers magazine, vol. 8 no. 2, April–June,
2013, p. 46–52.
