glaciers and the flood

You raised two issues. First, the one about glaciers following valleys. You have three issues going here:1) Pressure in a fixed-volume, constant density material (ok, water ice isn't truly fixed-volume, but let's pretend that it is for now) is linearly proportional to depth (regardless of how wide it is). If you have a glacer that is 100 feet deep on a mountain, and one that is 5,000 feet deep spreading across a continent, the pressure at the bottom of the second glacier will be 50 times greater than that at the bottom of the of the first glacier. Consequently, one would expect it to be much easier to shear rock beneath as it moves. Furthermore, glaciers have varying degrees of plasticity; large glaciers have much faster flow rates in the centers and upper regions than the edges and lower regions. Wherever "fast" moving ice hits rock, the ice slows, and exerts tremendous pressure on it. Consequently, one would expect strong tension on any part that sticks up.2) You have a much, much greater volume moving total. Moving through small valleys isn't really an option when you're having literally thousands of feet of of ice moving. The ice dams that formed the Columbia River Gorge when they broke were as much as 2000 feet high. These are hardly the deepest blocks of ice that spread across North America, however - hudson bay had as much as 2 miles of ice over it at once point.3) I don't know if this pertains to the great lakes in general, but many indirect effects of glaciation are caused due to the force that all of the ice exerted, causing the continents themselves to sink into the mantle. The midwest is currently slowly rising.Issue number two: Migratory birds. This is an easy one. Nature expands to fill a vaccum. There is food in northern latitudes in the summers. If they can survive on that food, they've got themselves a niche which otherwise wouldn't be as heavily competed for.

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If you say that Macro Evolution can account for this by rapid adaptation, and the genome can mutate positivly over several generations to capitalize on the newly available habitat, then why do we see extinctions of species instead of rapid species mutation to capitalize on the changing enviroment we witness today?

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The last ice age began 70,000 years ago, and peaked 20,000 years ago. That's about 50,000 years to adapt. With your average small wild species breeding once yearly, that's 50,000 generations to develop things like thicker coats or winter camouflage. I don't think even most creationists would call thicker coats or winter camouflage as "macroevolution". Just so you know, macroevolution is a creationist term - we are still trying to figure out just where they draw the line.

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I'm not discounting any of the claims for long ice ages or the percieved number of major glacial movements, the information seems competent but these few quesions I hope will be addressed without the usual "call him an idiot" first response that seems standard protocol for any in this forum that investigate Creationism with an open mind.

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That's not how we treat people here. Who would we debate with if we did that? Everyone would leave [This message has been edited by Rei, 10-20-2003]

I was wondering if the ice sheets would form up like the Rosby Waves effect in winter as large high pressure systems build in Canada and push down across the plains states. In this same manner wouldn't the ice sheets form a similiar shape with the center of the leading edge protruding and moving faster across the surface earth. If this is posible (and I obviously don't know if it is), wouldn't it tend to cut a grove in the surface as the leading point of the leading edge moved, causing some orderly direction to the otherwise random caious of the southernly moving mass?I was supposing that there might be several of these leading edge "fingers" of ice moving similiar to what I've seen on Mt. Rainer and just like if you push your hand through sand several times in the same direction you get the formation of trenches, we should see this effect on the plains states topography instead of what's actually there now.I was also wondering why we don't see a deposit ridge or some type of smooth ridged mountain range running laterally across the United States corosponding to the termination point of the ice sheets similiar to the heap that a Dozer leaves if it pushes material along and then does a sudden retreat backwards.I also think the Nisqually Glacier behaves closer to a continental glacier than what you have compared. Even though the glacier is only about 200 ft thick vs. 5000 ft thick at the leading edge of the continental glacier as you stated, the pressure at the leading edge of the Nisqually glacier also has the gravitational addition of 8000 feet of ice behind it pushing due to the slant angle of the mountain verses the flat angle of a continental glacier travel path. With this additional force, the 18 major glaciers and dozens of minor ones on Rainer all exhibit the tendency to keep carving through the rock in redundant travel paths. I know that the magitude of 2 cubic miles of ice is far less than the millions of cubic miles involved in a continental glacier of ice age proportions, but wouldn't the force concentration on the earth's surface be very similiar on Mt. Rainer verses the leading edges of the ice age glaciers?[This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 10-20-2003]

Lizard Breath asked;"item I've seen in Southern Canada
and the Plains States is an abundance
of fertile top soil that's exploited
by farmers. I might not be
incorporating all of the dynamics of
glacier flows, but from what I've read
in these posts and their associated
URL's, 10 to 12 glacier episodes along
with countless minor flux's should
have transported the top soil into the
oceans or at least left most everything
North of 41 degrees unsuable for
agriculture..."The areas being farmed that Lizard Breathe talks about are where the retreating ice sheets of the youngest glacial advance dumped sediment eroded from further north in the Canadian Shield as glacial tills. Also, large parts of this area were once covered by large proglacial lakes, i.e. Lake Agassiz, in which huge amounts of sediments accumulated in front of the northward retreating ice sheets. In these areas, the fertile topsoil that is exploited by farmers was formed by the weathering of these glacial tills and large proglacial lake deposits, which were deposited as the ice sheets of the last glaciation retreated. Older soils were indeed either buried or eroded away. It just that the topsoils noted by lizard Breathe were created by about 7,000 to 10,000 years of weathering after last ice sheet retreated. Since they are younger than any of the glaciations, the glaciations couldn't have affected them. (NOTE: If the glacial deposits were as young as Young earth creationists argue they, the fertile topsoil that Lizard Breath talks about, wouldn't have had time to form.)As a person looks further north, the glacial deposits do become thinner and eventually the landscape was scoured down to bedrock and is virtually useless for agriculture. Large parts of the Canadian Shield have been scoured down to bedrock. Even if northern Canada was warm enough to support agricultural, it would be useless for farming there because of the shallow depth to bedrock or bare rock at the surface.One major farming region lies on the weathered lake plain of Lake Agassiz.Page Not Found - Removed | University of North Dakota
Page Not Found - Removed | University of North Dakota http://www.winona.msus.edu/geology/MRW/text/text96-121.htmlLizard Breath Then asked:"and created "super deposits"
of top soil threads in the central and
southern latitudes of the United states."The thickness of topsoil is only about 1 to 1.5 meters (3 to 5 ft). When this thin layer was eroded, it was mixed into the tremendous amount of non-topsoil material as the ice sheet eroded deeper into the ground beneath.The ice sheets mixed this material instead of nicely separating the material they eroded into topsoil and non-topsoil material. As a result, the topsoil is there, but it is completely mixed with and utterly diluted by non-topsoil sediments to the point that it impossible to recognize it unless a person happens to find a cobble-size clast of it within the till. Glacial processes
has dispersed the topsoil throughout glacial tills. Also, the topsoil has been reworked and spread throughout glacial outwash that fills large parts of the Mississippi river Valley; deposited offshore as deltas and in the Mississippi deep sea fan which covers a large part of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico; and spread about the landscape as wind-blown silt called "loess". The loess has been blown out of the Mississippi River Valley and blankets the landscape on either side of it. No "super deposits" of topsoil exist because older topsoil has been mixed into unweathered bedrock eroded along with the topsoil and either dispersed across the modern landscape as loess; buried within the Mississippi Alluvial Valley; or now submerged beneath the Gulf of Mexico as part of submerged delta or submarine fan systems.Lizard Breath Then asked:"The most fertile top soil area in the
United States other than the San Juaquin
Valley is the area south of the Great
Lakes running from as far east as
Buffalo NY to central Iowa. Even then,
the depth of the top soil is not
indicative of mass deposits although the
location of the most fertile area does
coincide with the average leading edge
termination point of the glacier sheets."A lot of this area is covered by loess, wind-blown silt, which was blown either out of the Mississippi River Valley or from Pleistocene age dune fields in the Sand Hill region in Nebraska and adjacent areas. The soils are fertile, in part, because they are only several thousand years old and the sediment, in which they are developed, hasn't been completely leached of their nutrients by weathering and soil processes.A good loess reference:E. Arthur Bettis, III , Daniel R. Muhs,
Helen M. Roberts and Ann G. Wintle, 2003,
Last Glacial loess in the conterminous USA,
Quaternary Science Reviews. Vol. 22,
No. 18-19, Pp. 1907-1946 (September 2003)Yours,Bill Birkeland

In Message 32, Lizard Breathe asked:"I was also wondering why we don't see
a deposit ridge or some type of smooth
ridged mountain range running laterally
across the United States corresponding to
the termination point of the ice sheets
similar to the heap that a Dozer leaves
if it pushes material along and then
does a sudden retreat backwards."Actually these ridges do exist and do extend laterally across most of the Untied States. They are called "end moraines" or "terminal moraines". The maps of glacial landforms for the Midwest and other parts of the United States clearly demonstrate that they do exist.For the Untied States, go look at:Soller, David R., and Patricia H., 1997,
Map showing the thickness and character
of Quaternary sediments in the glaciated
United States east of the Rocky Mountains;
northern and central plains states (90
degrees to 102 degrees west longitude).
Miscellaneous Investigations Series.
no. I-1970-C. U. S. Geological Survey,
Reston, VA, United StatesandSoller, David R., and Patricia H., 1998,
Digital representation of a map showing the
thickness and character of Quaternary
sediments in the glaciated United States
east of the Rocky Mountains. Digital Data
Series no. DDS-0038, U. S. Geological
Survey : Reston, VA, United States.Similar end moraines are found in Eurasia and elsewhere in the world.For an on-line example, the distribution of end moraines, colored in brown, can be seen in:
http://go.owu.edu/~jbkrygie/krygier_html...This figure is part of:
http://go.owu.edu/...geog_111/geog_111_lo/geog_111_lo14.htmlOther end moraines can be seen mapped as dark green arcuate features in:
Page not found – Illinois Natural History Surveyand http://www.museum.state.il.us/RiverWeb/landings/...However, glaciers did not bulldoze either rock or sediment in front of them. Rather they erode this material at their bases; transport it "downstream"; and dump the sediment at their terminus where they melt. Glaciers are conveyor belts, not bulldozers. How this process works are illustrated at:The origin of terminal moraines is illustrated in "DEPOSITIONAL PROCESSES" at:
http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/depproc1/1. "Glacial Landforms" at:
http://jove.geol.niu.edu/...9_info/429trips/NIF/Glaciers.htmand figures at:
http://jove.geol.niu.edu/.../NIF/Glaciers_files/image006.gif
http://jove.geol.niu.edu/.../NIF/Glaciers_files/image008.gif2. End Moraines-the End of the Glacial Ride
http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/...geobits-pub/geobit2/geobit2.html3. figure 3 at:
http://www.homepage.montana.edu/...glac/depproc1/moraine.JPG"Figure 3 compares a glacier with a conveyer
belt. This shows how material that gets put
into transport is carried by a glacier to it's
terminus. Debris gets deposited at a glaciers
terminus by melt out of the slow moving ice.
Debris can also be "rafted" on top of a glacier
to it's terminus where it gets deposited.
Debris rich ice can become separated from a
glacier and become incorporated in a terminal
moraine."4. Also, it is illustrated at;
http://craton.geol.brocku.ca/...1F90/glaciers/figure152.html5.Finally discussed in "Sedimentary environments of terrestial end moraines" at:
http://www.inqua.au.dk/cog/sed-env.html6. Depositional Landforms Moraines
http://www.geology.iupui.edu/...powerpoints/deposition_1.pptYours,Bill Birkeland{Shortened display form of 2 URLs, to restore page width to normal - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-23-2003]

Hey Bill,This is good stuff. Thanks for the post.

Sidelined says, "Time to bump this topic back into view and see if we can get more input into the issues raised by it."D.T. Gish, in "Dinosaurs by Design" (1992) said that an armored dinosaur had been found in the ice of Antartica, proof of a Mesozoic age for the ice. But in reality, the fossil was found in the Mesozoic rocks of the Santa Marta formation (Weishampel, 1990).In fact, summer and winter bands in Antartic ice can be counted back clearly, year by year, for at least 30,000 years (Anderson and Borns, 1994) with an overall core length indicating a time span of several hundred thousand years. Dates obtained from counting annual layers in ice cores can be correlated with Carbon 14 contained in air bubbles trapped in the ice and with C-14 dates from tree ring correlations as far back as 12,000 years.The C-14 dating can be further correlated with annual sediment layers from glacial lakes and with pollen record dating of climatic changes in Europe and America, and with radiometric dates and sedimentation dates in deep sea cores. (Summaries by Anderson and Borns, 1994)"For a creationist to argue a 2000 BCE Ice Age in the face of available interlocking scientifically sound evidence takes a great deal of faith and very little reason." (A very liberal paraphrasing of D.U. Wise, American Scientist, March/April, 1998, vol.86,n. 2, pg.160-173)[This message has been edited by Abshalom, 12-23-2003]

And, for that matter, C-14 dates on leaves and insect parts actually contained in the individually counted layers in cores from Lake Suigetsu in Japan correlate with these same records. And they were counted back to 38,000 years ago, extrapolated to 45,000. Very tough for Mr Gish to explain, I'll bet....Kitigawa and van der Plicht, Science, vol 279, pp 1187-1190, (1998). It's free online if you register at Science | AAAS

The Greenland cap is in excess of 10,000 feet thick, and the preliminary layer count from the drill core there is at 125,000+years, with no layer indicating any immersion in water, salt or otherwise. The creationists on the Netscape CvsE board tried to tell me the layers were individual snow storms. When that failed, they tried to divide the mean annual snowfall into 10,000 feet to show the cap was much younger than claimed. Apparently, they've never heard of compaction.

I've been told the same thing: that the Bible is literal except where it's metaphorical.Right.A literal metaphor. Oxymoron anyone? I've started to wonder if English is their second language, or if they all have thte same strange, revisionist dictionary.

I posted this in the wrong place. My mistake.[This message has been edited by Bill Birkeland, 04-08-2004]

Reference I used to have online for Kitigawa et al on the lake varves {is \ was}
http://www.cio.phys.rug.nl/HTML-docs/Verslag/97/PE-04.htm
but it seems to be down now. another site I have found that has a copy of the above site is:
Lake VarvesIt is a christian website ...
and they also have an interesting page on volcanoes.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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AbbyLeever wrote:"Reference I used to have online for Kitigawa et al on the lake varves {is \ was}
http://www.cio.phys.rug.nl/HTML-docs/Verslag/97/PE-04.htm
but it seems to be down now."For the time being, a PDF copy of Kitagawa's research can obtained by clicking the below citation.H. Kitagawa and J. van der Plicht, 1998, Atmospheric
Radiocarbon Calibration to 45,000 yr B.P.: Late Glacial
Fluctuations and Cosmogenic Isotope Production. Science.
vol. 279, pp. 1187-1190 (20 February 1998)I suspect that the PDF file of his article is posted at this link only on a temporary basis. Thus, if a person wants a copy they should download it sooner than later.A couple of related articles available online as PDF files are:1. Towards an Absolute Chronology of the Last Glacial by
Olaf Joris and Berhard Weninger at:
Seite nicht gefunden – MONREPOS2.

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Yours

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Bill Birkeland

thank you -- that will help

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

but is the only mechanism acting on how deeply the planes are buried how much snow falls on top of them? Have you ever laid a weighty object on a block of ice?

Bill --the original site is back up:
http://www.cio.phys.rug.nl/HTML-docs/Verslag/97/PE-04.htmlooks like it has been rewritten to make it more accessible.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}