The report explains that researchers analysed a long continental drill core that coveres the period of the Pleistocene ice age.
Analyses of the longest continental sediment core ever collected in the Arctic, recently completed by an international team led by Julie Brigham-Grette of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, provide “absolutely new knowledge” of Arctic climate from 2.2 to 3.6 million years ago.
As soon as they quote dates of this magnitude it confirms that they are looking at the evidence through the lens of uniformitarianism—they are extrapolating present processes into the past. It’s this assumption that leads to age-interpretations of hundreds of millions of years. This philosophy ignores biblical history and the global Flood of Noah’s time, some 4,500 years ago. Biblical geologists interpret the period covered by their drill core as early post-Flood. (The Pliocene they mention may be very late Flood—the closing weeks of it.) The post-Flood Ice Age lasted for a period of some 700 years. It was driven by warmer oceans that were heated by the volcanic activity that occurred during the Flood.
And not surprisingly Brigham-Grette et al. discover exactly what creationist geologists have been talking about for decades: the climate in the Arctic was warmer in the past.
“One of our major findings is that the Arctic was very warm in the middle Pliocene and Early Pleistocene [~ 3.6 to 2.2 million years ago] when others have suggested atmospheric CO2 was not much higher than levels we see today.
In other words, CO2 was not a factor in the higher ocean temperature.
The problem is that because uniformitarians deny that the biblical Flood happened and ignore its consequences, they cannot expalin the Pleistocene Ice Age, for which the geologic evidence is very clear. So, even though their research shows that the warm oceans were not correlated with CO2 levels, that is not what they concluded. Rather, the authors still maintained that CO2 was factor because they already believed it was.
“In other words, the Earth system response to small changes in carbon dioxide is bigger than suggested by earlier climate models,”
This conclusion is almost unbelievable.
The quality of scientific research into past climates and the factors that drive them would be greatly improved if researchers were better read on biblical geology. As it is, researchers do not seem to be able to see that their models do not work (see Noah’s Flood and global warming).
Creationist models of the post-Flood Ice Age have been discussed in creationist literature for decades, and are the only models that provide a plausible mechanism for the cause of the Ice Age. (For more information go to Creation.com and search for Ice Age.) According to these models, earth’s past climate was not driven by CO2. Rather it was a consequence of the enormous global thermal disturbance of the Flood. In the centuries after the Flood the earth’s heat balance returned to equilibrium, and its climate stablilsed.
Update 15 May 2013:
Originally the text of this blog article incorrectly said the researchers found “the oceans were warmer” but it now correctly says they found “the climate in the Arctic was warmer in the past.” Thanks to Ashely Haworth-Roberts for pointing this out. Creation scientists have been talking about warmer climates in this area for a long time. See for example: The extinction of the Woolly Mammoths. And creationist scientists have long considered warm oceans as the cause of the warm climate. See for example Rapid changes in oxygen isotope content of ice cores which presents oxygen-isotope evidence from ice cores suggesting the oceans were warmer immediately after the Flood.
ashley haworth-roberts
“And not surprisingly Brigham-Grette et al. discover exactly what creationist geologists have been talking about for decades: the oceans were warmer.
“One of our major findings is that the Arctic was very warm in the middle Pliocene and Early Pleistocene [~ 3.6 to 2.2 million years ago] when others have suggested atmospheric CO2 was not much higher than levels we see today”.”
The researchers discovered no such thing. Their conclusions from the abundant evidence relate to AIR temperatures ie the prevailing CLIMATE (the oceans may have warmed but they did not discover such).
I’m afraid that your ‘warm oceans’ ahead of Pleistocene glaciations are young Earth creationist dogma rather than an evidence-based reality.
“The quality of scientific research into past climates and the factors that drive them would be greatly improved if researchers were better read on biblical geology.” In what way? The Bible says nothing about different climates before Noah’s Flood or after Noah’s Flood. In your earlier article that you link to you assert: “By ignoring the Flood they cannot explain the post-Flood (Pleistocene) Ice Age”. Scientists have explained this event – and also identified when it happened (certainly not within the last 5,000 years). Orbital factors, leading to more unmelted snow during northern hemisphere [summers], and cooling oceans being able to store more carbon dioxide (an ‘amplifying feedback’ mechanism, as mentioned in your previous article).
Rising carbon dioxide levels did not bring an end to glaciations, but – following warming as Earth’s orbit altered – almost certainly more carbon dioxide was released from the oceans as they warmed, exacerbating the warming trend.
Besides, without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere Earth’s mean temperature would be much much lower. Scientists are right to worry about atmospheric carbon dioxide levels now reaching 400 ppm – once again.
Tas Walker responds:
Hi Ashley,
Warm oceans is not dogma. It is a prediction of the Flood framework, and there is evidence that bears out that prediction. And yes, the article does speak about warm climate rather than warm ocean, so I have edited the text and added an update.
J. P. Tertius
>Warm oceans is not dogma.
>It is a prediction of the Flood framework,
>
I’m not familiar with that “warm ocean” aspect of Genesis Flood theory. It has been some years since I re-read Morris & Whitcomb’s THE GENESIS FLOOD. Do they discuss that idea? (If it is a prediction of the “Flood framework”, I assume that the answer is yes. But I just don’t recall that prediction from the book, but they cover so many topics and my memory is not what it used to be.)
Could you perhaps briefly summarize WHY that would be expected of the Noahic Flood?
And if I might include a second question which directly relates to a topic mentioned in BOTH your article and the Morris & Whitcomb volume, I’m curious about “uniformitarianism.” You defined it exactly as M&W did in THE GENESIS FLOOD: “uniformitarianism—they are extrapolating present processes into the past.”
So here is my question: If it is wrong to extrapolate present processes into the past, why are so many young earth arguments (including theirs) based upon uniformitarian arguments? For example, ALL of these young earth arguments REQUIRE uniformitarian assumptions and methodologies:
1) If one works backwards from present-day human population totals for the earth, they confirm a descent from a population of just eight people at the time of the flood in Ussher’s chronology.
2) Based upon the rate at which the moon is moving away from the earth today, the moon couldn’t be more than a few thousand years old.
3) We can measure how rapidly Niagara Falls is retreating as it erodes the underlying rock of the elevated spillway—and we can work backwards from that and calculate that the falls began at the mouth of the river where it enters the Atlantic Ocean and know that it was just a few thousand years ago. (And if it were really millions of years old, the falls would have reached the Great Lake which is upriver.)
I could list MANY MORE of such examples. Aren’t they ALL dependent on extrapolating constant rates in the present into the past and assuming them constants?
How is that not a UNIFORMITARIAN fallacy???
It seems like a double-standard. From the very first time I read Morris and Whitcomb as well as Dr. Gish, it seemed like they were saying that extrapolating present day processes and rates into the past was “the unformitarian fallacy” when mainstream geologists, physicists, and astronomers applied it but perfectly fine when used to support young earth arguments. WHY???
S.J.
My understanding is that “uniformitarianism” is not as much about rates as it is processes; that the founders of geology assumed that the erosional, depositional and volcanic processes they saw around them were in the same balance as they had been in the past. Therefore, since they observed that current erosion rates of rivers were slow, then landscapes must have taken a long time to erode. Since current riverine sedimentation is slow (on an averaged basis), then it must have taken a long time for rock layers to build up. Since volcanism is sporadic nowadays, all the volcanic layers must have taken a long time to build up as well. My understanding is that early uniformitarianism was a reaction against theories of catastrophic events in the past.
Geologists have moved away from process uiformitarianism to something called “actualism,” which Mike Oard jokingly calls, “uniformitarianism except when the evidence proves otherwise.” So, for example, catastrophic megafloods are now accepted, but only in an old age framework. The basic driver for old age assumptions is radiometric dating–all age dates are founded ultimately on that.
The biggest problem for radiometric dating is the increasing pace of discovery of biomolecules and soft tissues, including collagen and possibly even DNA, in fossils presumed tens to hundreds of mullions of years old, when published rates of decay predict such substances should be gone in tens to hundreds of thousands of years. It’s a big problem for conventional geologists, and it’s going to get worse for them–it seems almost every week now, a new discovery pops up.