Smoky Mountain Bible Institute
Lesson #36
Welcome back class. Please get settled in and take a hold of your
pick point rock hammer and hand lens so that we can continue our study in
geology. We have a lot to cover this month as we continue our
discussion of the Ice Age and its effect on the earth.
First,
let’s examine the question of areas that are now desserts like the Sahara and
the Middle East, which were once very green, but are now very dry, and how that
might be connected with large inland lakes that no longer exist. Shorelines and evidence of sea life confirm
they once existed in these areas. The
North American continent had many of these massive lakes after the flood. They even have names such as Lake Agassiz
which once covered the center third of Canada Missoula Great Salt Lake
is a mere puddle compared to the massive lake of which it was once a part. These are just a few examples. If you start
to do some research on prehistoric lakes and land elevations below sea level,
you will find dozens of lakes, and sea salt being collected in areas hundreds
of feet below sea level in places where there is no historical record of
water. Sea salt hundreds of miles from
the nearest sea makes clear there was once a sea there. The Ice Age played a major role in filling
some of these lakes. How did these lakes
drain? Some were drained quickly cutting massive canyons, and others just
evaporated over hundreds or even thousands of years. We know this for two reasons. First, there is
evidence of animal and human life on the ancient deserted shore lines of many
of these lakes. Secondly, there is
evidence that the main reason the vast desert regions of the earth are so dry
is because of sustained dry weather cycles.
Being cut off from the ocean, these lakes could not sustain their water
cycle and when the water evaporated, it was carried to other places. After hundreds of thousands of years, these
lakes became dried-up basins that we know today by such names as Death Valley
or the Great Rift Valley .
Another
strange phenomenon to consider in conjunction with the Ice Age is mass
extinctions of disharmonious associations, like wooly mammoths, hippos, musk
ox, reindeer, giant beavers, saber tooth cats, all living in places like Great
Briton. All became extinct over a
relatively short time, a few hundred years or so. A mixture of harsh weather conditions and
lack of food would logically follow during a 500-year or so cooling,
ice-expanding part of the Ice Age. Many
of the animal kinds that got off the ark probably did not make it past the
first thousand years.
Ice
cores are used to argue for an old earth.
Many measurements of these cores are used to calculate old ages like
mass spectrometry, electroconductivity, deuterium excess, and CO2 levels. These dating methods all have unprovable
assumptions just like Carbon 14 and other dating methods discussed last
year. Ice cores have rings and it is
still argued by many that each ring signifies a layer of summer ice followed by
winter snow. When you examine the
numbers from this method, you can see why all old earth ice core dating methods
"melt down". One of the
deepest ice core samples ever drilled was 10,000 feet deep and contained
135,000 layers. Well, if you need
millions of years, that won't do you much good. That is why they use chemical
methods to make the deepest layers microscopically thin.
Here
is a little better way to calculate the ice core data. Ice and snow layers are
not representing years but are warm and cold indicators. Therefore, you can get multiple layers
depending on the weather patterns. We have a great example in two P-38 aircraft
that crash-landed on the ice cap in 1942.
They were both recovered in 1990 and after 48 years the planes were 263
feet deep under hundreds of layers of ice and snow. At an average cover rate of 5.5 feet per
year, the ice cap is only about 1824 years old using our oldest ice core of
10,000 feet. However, we must account
for the lower layers being compressed at some reasonable rate making them
thinner. Using this data makes it very
easy to estimate the current ice cap to be approximately 3600 to 4300 years
old.
I
thought I would spend a little time on global warming—so here it is. Weather comes in cycles, sometimes warm and
sometimes cold. In my lifetime, we saw
cooling in the 1970's and warming in the 1990's. We should be good stewards of
our environment, but I think it is a little misguided to think we have any
great influence or control over our weather patterns. That wraps up the Ice Age. Next month: Fossils.
In Christ
Pastor Portier
