Do ice cores really indicate over a hundred thousand years?

Claims that ice cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets indicate ages over a hundred thousand years need critical evaluation. Does the evidence support these claims? Could these ice sheets be only several thousand years old?

As snow builds up over the ice sheets, the snow turns into firn, a granular snow, that is compacted into ice over time and with additional overburden. The maximum depth of the Greenland ice sheet is about 3,400 m (11,155 ft) [1][2] The maximum known depth of the Antarctica ice sheet is about 4,476 m (14,685 ft) [3] The depth of the ice varies considerably over these icefields with the average being less than half the maximum.  

Greenland Ice Sheet

GRIP and GISP-2 are two deep ice cores drilled in the Greenland ice sheet.  GRIP was drilled to 3,029 m (9,938 ft) before hitting base rock and GISP was drilled to 3,053 m (10,016 ft). [4] The top 500 m (1,640 ft) of the Greenland ice cores have visible layering that becomes thinner with depth as ice is squeezed outward. [5] Assuming that each layer is an annual layer, then the approximate age of each layer can be obtained by counting them from the top like counting the rings on a cross section of a tree. [6] However, there is a problem with this approach. “Individual storm patterns are often misidentified as annual layers.” [7]

Secular old earth glaciologists postulate that the top 90% of the cores must be around 110,000 years old. [8]

Antarctica Ice Sheet

The ice core from Vostok 5G in East Antarctica is 3,623 m (11,886 ft) long. [9] This ice core has no visually discernable layering purportedly because of the low amount of precipitation at this site.

The WAIS ice core in West Antarctica is 3,405 m (11,171 ft) long. Layering is visible in the top portion of this core because of the high annual precipitation at this site. [10] The bottom portion of this core is too compressed that layering cannot be resolved.[11]

Secular old earth uniformitarians’ claim that Antarctica ice cores chronical 800,000 years. [12]

Counting visually indistinct annuals

So, how are the invisible annuals counted in the Greenland and Antarctica ice cores? Supposedly annuals may be counted by various indicators such as

·         Delta¹⁸O isotopes in the ice that increase in the precipitation during warm summer days and decrease on cold winter days.

·         Dust that is greater in the summer than winter.

·        Acid peaks that are "mainly caused by a combination of seasonal changes of H₂SO₄ and HNO₃.” [13]

However, these indicators may indicate individual storm patterns, not annuals as mentioned previously. Adding to this uncertainty, the chronologies from delta¹⁸O isotopes for the Greenland and Antarctica cores do not agree. [14]This lack of agreement creates problems for secular old earth proponents.

Secular uniformitarians that believe that earth is billions of years old [b] have made assumptions for chronological dating of the deep Greenland and Antarctica ice cores as follows:

·        All the ice was laid down at near the current rates.

·         Ice flow modeling that produces annual thicknesses supporting a predetermined old age.

·         Ice layers thin out to less than the thickness of a piece of paper by the bottom. [15]

·         Individual storm patterns are lost in the annual signals below where ice layering is visibly discernible. [16]

The result of the above assumptions is to force the desired old age answer. Yet a lot of uncertainty is here. [c] There is no proof that any of these assumptions are valid.

“Unfortunately, near the bottom of the cores, where the controversy over compression or expansion of the time frame is the greatest, the data are the least accessible and the least accurate.” [17] A distinct possibility exists that the precipitation rates creating the bottom annual layers were much higher than the current rates.

“Ice-core data can support only an undisputed chronology back several thousand years B.P.” [18]

Ice Sheets and the Ice Age

Although uniformitarians postulate multiple ice ages, [d] “there is strong evidence there was only one fairly recent ice age.” [19] They also lack a satisfactory model for what initiated the Ice Age. [20] [21] “Conditions in the past must have been radically different in order to produce an ice age.” [22]

Could the Bible hold the clue for explaining why the Ice Age occurred and the source of the present polar icecaps? Genesis describes a flood that covered the whole earth. Genesis 7:11-12 describes the source of this worldwide flood as

“...the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights” (KJV)

“All the fountains of the great deep” describes the sudden release of vast quantities of extremely hot water from deep inside the earth that heated the oceans. There is no reason to limit these fountains to hot water. These fountains also can describe a vast number of volcanoes spuing tremendous quantities of lava that also heated up the oceans. [e][f] Estimates of the ocean temperature immediately post flood are perhaps 10^oC[23] or 20⁰C or more [24] above the

present ocean. Significantly higher ocean temperatures in the post flood period mean much higher evaporation from the oceans leading to tremendous storms especially in the polar regions where the cool air can hold more moisture. These storms could dump tremendous amounts of snow far above what we experience today on the land in the upper and lower polar latitudes.

The volcanic aerosols and dust released into the atmosphere during the flood and residual volcanic activity post flood would reflect a large portion of the sun’s rays back into space reducing the amount of summer snow melt for years. [25] This would allow the ice sheets to grow for many years.

Estimates of how long the post flood heavy snowfall/ice buildup lasted vary but may have been as much as 500 years. [26] Then, as the ocean temperature continues to gradually decrease the great ice sheets would begin to retreat. This retreat is estimated to have proceeded for about 200 years. [27]

The post worldwide flood conditions can easily explain the cause of the ice age, the recession of the great ice sheets and the great depths of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets. Creation scientists estimate the Biblical worldwide flood to have occurred about 4,300 years ago based on the genealogies and dates of historical events referred to in Bible. Under the Biblical worldwide flood scenario, the polar ice sheets and their ice cores cannot be older than about 4,300 years.

Conclusions

Do ice cores really indicate hundreds of thousands of years? The evidence does not support this. It is only based on uniformitarian assumptions that cannot be proven.  

Notes:

[a] Secular sources generally believe that the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets are over a million years old with the oldest parts missing through flow thinning.

[b] There is much evidence in the RATE study that the earth is only thousands not billions of years old. [28]

[c] Because of the uncertainties with the delta ⁸O data in the ice cores, corroboration has been attempted against delta¹⁸O in varves (thin layers of sediment) from ocean bottom cores. After calibration of the delta¹⁸O data between the ice and ocean cores, the data has been said to agree. But the agreement has been forced by adjustments, so of course it agrees. It has been demonstrated as in the case of Mt. St. Helens that many hundreds of sediment layers can be formed in a brief time by one event.

[d] The Milankovitch (astronomical) theory held by most secular geologists proposes cyclic ice ages every 100,000 years because the earth’s orbital changes between nearly circular to slightly elliptical every 100,000 years; this makes slight changes in the amount of radiation the earth receives from the Sun.  “[T]he changes in summer sunshine at higher latitudes postulated by the theory are actually too small to cause the dramatic changes needed to produce ice sheets, the actual development of which the theory does not explain.” [29]

[e] “There are about 1,350 potentially active volcanoes worldwide, aside from the continuous belts of volcanoes on the ocean floor at spreading centers like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.” [30]

[f] “In the subterranean eruptions accompanying the Flood, great quantities of molten rock were released from the earth’s mantle, as evidenced in the abundance of igneous rocks and volcanic strata found throughout the geologic column.” [31]

Photo:

(a)   Eli Duke, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikipedia Commons

References:

[1] Oard, M., B.S., M.S., Are the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets old? Creation 35(4):46-49, October 2013

[2] Alley, R., Andrews, J., et. al, History of the Greenland Ice Sheet: paleoclimatic insights, Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 29, July 2010, Science Direct

[3] Ice Sheets, Australian Antarctic Program, Viewed on internet March 2024

[4]ice core, geology, britanica.com, viewed April 2024

[5] Oard, Are the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets old?

[6] Dating a Core, Australian Antarctic Program, Viewed on internet March 2024

[7] Morris, J., Ph.D., The Young Earth, (China: Master Books, 2007), 68-69

[8] Oard, M., B.S., M.S., Frozen in Time, (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2004), Chapter 12, Do Ice Cores Show Many Tens of Thousands of Years?

[9] Vostok General Information, National Science Foundation, NSF Ice Core Facility, Viewed on internet March 2024

[10] Ice Cores Yield Rich History of Climate Change, U.S. National Science Foundation, February 1, 2011, Viewed on internet March 2024

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ice cores and climate change, British Antarctic Society, Viewed on internet March 2024

[13] Electrical conductivity method (ECM) stratigraphic dating of the Byrd Station ice core, Antarctica, Cambridge Core, Viewed on internet April 2024

[14] Vardiman, L., Ph.D., Ice Cores and the Age of the Earth, (El Cajon, CA: The Institute for Creation Research, 1996), 23

[15] Oard, Are the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets old?

[16] Ibid.

[17] Vardiman, 32

[18] Vardiman, 65

[19] Oard, M., B.S., M.S., Frozen in Time, (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2004), Chapter 11, 109. Reprint of this chapter found also as Chapter 11, Only One Ice Age, through answersingenesis.org.

[20] Snelling, A., PhD, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Volume 2, (Dallas, TX: The Institute for Creation Research, 2009), 773

[21] Morris, H., Ph.D., editor, Scientific Creationism, (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1985), 127

[22] Herbert, J., Ph.D., Morris, J., PhD, et.al., In Depth Creation Basics & Beyond, (USA: The Institute for Creation Research, 2013), 240

[23] Ibid.

[24] Snelling, 773

[25] Ibid.

[26] Herbert, 241

[27] Ibid.

[28] DeYoung, D., Ph.D., Thousands... Not Billions, (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2005)

[29] Snelling, 771-772

[30] How many active volcanoes are there on Earth? USGS, Viewed on internet April 2024

[31] Morris, H., 127