Was There Really an Ice Age?

When I had just turned 7, my family and I drove from Michigan up the Al-Can (it wasn’t paved yet, so it didn’t deserve the respectful name “the Alaska-Canada Highway) to begin a new life in Anchorage, AK. In my opinion, there isn’t a better place to grow up. We were surrounded by mountains, bordered the second-largest-tide inlet of ocean, and it was just a couple minutes’ drive to get to a glacier!

The whole world up there bears the marks of the great glaciers that once filled in and carved out all the valleys. When did the glaciers do this, and why aren’t they still there anymore?

Was there really an Ice Age?

If it happened, what was this period of earth’s history like? What would cause an ice age? Can we tell how long ago it happened? Let’s explore these questions and what the Bible has to say about it all.

Back in the late 1700s evolutionary scientists had developed the idea that the earth formed from volcanoes and therefore had been cooling down slowly ever since. This idea, called Plutonism is still the most popular non-special-creation model today. But in the 1830s evidence and memories of a time when glaciers covered much of the earth started showing up more and more. It wasn’t until the 1870s that the amount of proof led evolutionary scientists to acknowledge that there had been ice over much of the world in the past.

I ran into a very interesting page from Ice Age skeptics who point out that a lot of the geology that we find around the world can’t be explained by a bunch of glaciers over millions of years. But that doesn’t tell us an Ice Age (following a Great Flood) didn’t really happen.

Here’s what we see around the world that makes us believe that in the recent geological past a lot more of the world was covered with glaciers than right now. There are still (even with people burning fossil fuels) a lot of glaciers around the world and we can study what happens as they ooze down mountains, expanding and retreating. The National Snow and Ice Data Center, explains a lot of what we see glaciers doing in the present and the effects left behind when a glacier has been somewhere.

Icebergs are breaking off glaciers at Cape York, Greenland. The picture was taken from a helicopter.

Here’s a short page from Scandinavia explaining the formations an average glacier leaves behind when it melts with a coded picture. I really liked the mention of the drainage notches along the ridge line. It would be fun to keep an eye out for them when you see a glacial landscape. 

The University of Wisconsin has a great set of pictures showing the formations that glaciers carve out.  Just click on one of the types listed on the left to see lots more pictures.

Some of our most spectacular landscapes we have around the world were carved out by glaciers. The Matterhorn, Yosemite, The Great Lakes, New York’s Finger Lakes, the outlines of Ireland, England and Scandinavia were all carved out by glaciers.

A fun Good Search is to look at photos taken in the Karakoram Range to the west of the Himalayas.

So we can tell where glaciers used to be by recognizing these formations around the world

Ice age Earth at glacial maximum. Based on: “Ice age terrestrial carbon changes revisited” by Thomas J. Crowley

We can even see where ice sheets flowed over what is now ocean. This page shows the ice river that ran between Scotland and Scandinavia, scroll to the bottom of the page to see the ocean floor picture.

Find out what Creation Scientists have to say about the Ice Age in Part 2.

God asked Job: Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder;  To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man;  To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth?  Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?  Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?  The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. Job 28:25-30

For more check out:

United Nations Environment Programme: Glacial Periods and the Evolution of  Modern-day Deserts