The Ice Age: Causes and Consequences | The Institute for Creation Research

The Ice Age: Causes and Consequences

The Ice Age has been a longstanding problem for uniformitarian thinking, with many unsolved mysteries. No mere tweaking of today's climate conditions would cause such a catastrophe. A creationist model based on the revealed events of Scripture, however, offers a possible answer.

The great Flood of Noah's day accomplished a complete reworking of earth's surface and an alteration of all its hydrologic and meteorlogic systems. The Ice Age likely occurred soon after the Flood, perhaps in the days of Job, for references to ice and snow abound in his book (see, for example, Job 38:29). Job didn't live in a glaciated area, but he evidently knew about icy conditions farther north.

The key to the Ice Age was temperature--not cold, but warm. Ice comes from snow, and snow from moisture in the air, which in turn comes through evaporation, which comes from warm water. The Flood oceans were quite warm due to the introduction of huge volumes of superheated water from the "fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11) and frictional heating by shifting continents, etc.

Warmer water evaporates much more rapidly than cold. The immediate post-Flood time was marked by frequent major storms fed by excessive evaporation. Polar ice caps built up as water vapor condensed and fell as snow. Pressure packed it into ice, which spread as glaciers. The earth was not completely frozen, but the polar ice caps were much larger then. Large-scale volcanism in the Flood's latter stages clouded the atmosphere with volcanic dust, reflecting solar radiation back into space. This prohibited snow and ice from melting.

The Ice Age commenced and continued until the oceans gave up their excess heat and the atmosphere cleared. Water trapped as ice on the continents lowered the sea level by an estimated four to six hundred feet, no doubt exposing the continental shelves. During the Ice Age, all the continents were probably connected by land bridges.

What happened when the Ice Age ended? The volume of ice returned to liquid form and reentered the ocean, raising sea level and drowning all areas near the ocean. Today, we find numerous remains of civilizations that evidently had been built in coastal areas soon after the Flood.

In recent years such ruins were found in the Black Sea, leading many to speculate that Noah's Flood was responsible. But this could not be. Ignored were waterborne sediments thousands of feet thick underneath the Black Sea that are the legacy of Noah's Flood. The ruins were built after Noah, but were inundated by major flooding as the rising Ice Age meltwater overtopped the natural dam near today’s Istanbul. A similar scenario explains the Mediterranean Sea. The rising waters breeched the "dam" at Gibraltar and flooded a low-lying floodplain with inland lakes. Great Britain was part of Europe. The Hudson Bay was dry. Large islands in the Pacific were connected with the mainland.

Genesis 10:25 states that in Peleg's day "was the earth divided." This certainly could not imply that in Peleg's day the Atlantic Ocean was opened up, for this would have caused another flood to rival Noah's. Perhaps what Scripture is saying is that in Peleg's day the Ice Age ended, increasing the volume of water in the oceans, raising sea level, drowning land bridges, and "dividing" the continents.

As the great Flood of Noah's day ended, God instructed the animals and man to multiply and occupy the entire planet. Man's refusal was overcome at Babel as God enforced migration, graciously working through nature, for at this time the Ice Age connected all the land, facilitating travel. As the globe filled with occupants, the ice melted, dividing the continents and trapping the migrants in place. God made it possible for both animals and man to obey His command.

* Dr. Morris is President of the Institute for Creation Research.

Cite this article: Morris, J. 2009. The Ice Age: Causes and Consequences. Acts & Facts. 38 (8): 15.

The Latest
NEWS
Was an Insect Ancestor Discovered?
There is nothing simple about an animal group called the euarthropods (phylum Euarthropoda), which includes insects, crustaceans, and extinct trilobites. Evolutionists...

NEWS
October 2024 ICR Wallpaper
"The people who walked in darkness Have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, Upon them a light...

NEWS
Collapsed Utah Arch Prompts Questions about Arch Formation
We lost a natural wonder to gravity and erosion on Thursday, August 8, 2024.1 Those who visited Double Arch, also called “Hole in the...

ACTS & FACTS
ICR 2024 Resource Catalog
At the Institute for Creation Research, our mission is not only to conduct research demonstrating how science confirms Scripture but also to share this...

CREATION.LIVE PODCAST
Beetle Blasts and Biomimetics | Creation.Live Podcast: Episode...
Though tiny, the bombardier beetle is a fascinating masterclass in design. Evolutionists claim that this explosive insect came about by chance,...

NEWS
Another Arch Collapse at a National Park
Erosion and other natural forces upon sedimentary formations such as exposed cliffs and arches belie the millions of years during which they allegedly...

CREATION PODCAST
Living in Light of Genesis | The Creation Podcast: Episode 82
The world tells us that the book of Genesis is, if not entirely, at least partially a myth. We are told that history, archaeology, and science...

NEWS
Does Pauli Exclusion Rescue Dino Protein?
Perhaps no other fossil discoveries have rocked the world of paleontology more than original organics like proteins in old bones. ICR helps curate a...

NEWS
Support the ICR Discovery Center on North Texas Giving Day 2024!
It's North Texas Giving Day! We invite you to support our unique creation museum and planetarium in Dallas, TX—the ICR Discovery Center. Your...

NEWS
Evolution's Hypothetical Last Universal Common Ancestor
Evolutionists utilize a theoretical tree of life that takes people, plants, and animals back into deep evolutionary time to an unobserved, unknown,...