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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2007
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Claim CD410:

Ice cores are claimed to have as many as 135,000 annual layers. Yet airplanes of the Lost Squadron were buried under 263 feet of ice in forty-eight years, or about 5.5 feet per year. This contradicts the presumption that the wafer-thin layers in the ice cores could be annual layers.

Source:

Vardiman, Larry. 1992. Ice cores and the age of the earth. Impact 226 (Apr.). http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=355

Response:

  1. Ice layers are counted by different methods (mainly, visible layers of hoar frost, visible dust layers, and layers of differing electrical conductivity) which have nothing to do with thickness. These methods corroborate each other and match with other independently determined dates (Seely 2003).

  2. The airplanes landed near the shore of Greenland, where snow accumulation is rapid, at about 2 m per year. Allowing for some compaction due to the weight of the snow, that accounts for the depth of snow under which they are buried. The planes are also on an active glacier and have moved about 2 km since landing. Ice core dating takes place on stable ice fields, not active glaciers. The interior of Greenland, where ice cores were taken, receives much less snow. In Antarctica, where ice cores dating back more than 100,000 years have been collected, the rate of snow accumulation is much less still.

  3. A report of "many hundreds" of layers in the ice above the Lost Squadron may also be explained by the airplanes' location on Greenland. That location is relatively warm because it is low and more southerly; its surface gets repeatedly melted during the summer, creating multiple melt layers per year. At the site of the GISP2 ice core, melting occurs only about once every couple centuries. Melt layers are easily distinguished in ice cores. The more than 100,000 layers in ice cores are definitely not melt layers (Seely 2003).

Links:

Kuechmann, F. C., 2000. Creationist comedy. http://noanswersingenesis.org.au/kuechmann_cretin_comedy.htm

References:

  1. Seely, Paul H. 2003. The GISP2 ice core: Ultimate proof that Noah's flood was not global. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 55(4): 252-260. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PSCF12-03Seely.pdf

Further Reading:

Seely, Paul H. 2003. The GISP2 ice core: Ultimate proof that Noah's flood was not global. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 55(4): 252-260. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PSCF12-03Seely.pdf

Brinkman, Matt, 1995. Ice core dating. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icecores.html
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created 2001-2-18, modified 2006-1-20