Have uniformitarians rescued the ’Pacemaker of the Ice Ages’ paper? | The Institute for Creation Research

 
Have uniformitarians rescued the ’Pacemaker of the Ice Ages’ paper?

In Journal of Creation 33 (1): 102-109, April 2019

The current dominant Ice Age explanation is the astronomical, or Milankovitch, theory. This theory posits that slow changes in Earth’s rotational and orbital motions ‘pace’ the timing of ice ages by modulating the manner in which solar radiation incident on the earth is distributed with season and latitude. This theory is widely accepted because of an influential 1976 paper entitled “The Pacemaker of the Ice Ages”. However, the paper’s results were critically dependent upon an assumed age for the most recent geomagnetic reversal, an age which even uniformitarian scientists no longer accept as valid. If one re-does the calculations using the new uniformitarian age assignment, the results are greatly weakened. Although additional evidence for the Milankovitch theory seems weak, a 1997 paper seems to ‘rescue’ the results of this iconic paper. However, this ‘rescue’ may be influenced by ‘selection bias’ and arguably requires arbitrary, capricious handling of seafloor sediment data. Hence, these 1997 results are not terribly convincing.

Click here to read the full article text.

The Latest
NEWS
Insect Eyes Reflect Creation
Research into insect eyes continues to reveal amazing structure and function. For example, although fruit flies’ eyes are attached firmly to their...

NEWS
February 2026 ICR Wallpaper
"Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD you God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you...

NEWS
Microgravity's Effect on Bacteriophages Is Not Evolution
The word evolution is often used imprecisely, leading the public to believe that any biological change is evolution, and, therefore, it’s a fact.1...

NEWS
Engineered for Extremes: The Hidden Precision of a Salt Lake...
Water that is nearly five times saltier than the ocean is deadly to most animals. But in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, scientists have found a tiny...

CREATION PODCAST
Giant Sequoias: Too Complex to Be Accidental | The Creation Podcast:...
What living thing grows taller than a 25-story building, survives raging wildfires, and actually depends on those fires to reproduce? Giant sequoias...

NEWS
Bound by Design: How a Universal Temperature Law Reveals Life’s...
What if every living creature—from coral reefs and cold-water fish to mountain flowers and desert reptiles—followed the same hidden temperature...

NEWS
The Flood Explains 18,000 Dinosaur Tracks in Bolivia
A new discovery of 18,000 individual dinosaur tracks in the Bolivian El Molino Formation contains the highest number of theropod dinosaur tracks in...

NEWS
Prolonged 40-Year Growth in T. Rex: Evidence for Pre-Flood Longevity?
An open access 2026 PeerJ research paper claims that T. rex took 40 years to reach its full adult body size, in contrast to a much shorter previous...

NEWS
Recent Discovery of a Strange Microbe Gives No Clues to Evolution
Research into God’s living creation is dynamic and always surprising. This is true whether one peers into the deepest reaches of space or dives...

NEWS
Built to Adapt: What Microbial Flexibility Reveals about Biological...
Imagine a machine that keeps working even when its parts change slightly or its surroundings shift. Most human-made machines would fail under that kind...