Evidence of age - 1. Ice Cores

[philadiddle]

Okay. So how do you get varying summer and winter varying isotope layers in a place like Antarctica where it's always cold? The highest temperature ever recorded there is just below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. There are no places in Antarctica that have an average monthly temperature above freezing!

With ice constantly shifting, moving, thawing, adding I still don't see how you can get accurate readings. But with the temperatures always cold, how can you measure differences? You would think, from two different climates and the rarity of a 'warm' summer in Antarctica, you wouldn't be able to get any measurable layers.

The temperature doesn't have to be above freezing for the level of oxygen-18 to change. There is still a 40-60 degree difference in temperature which affects the Oxygen-18 levels. Again, we observe this, I'm not making it up.

If you go back to the OP and click the link to the other explanations you will see where the core samples are taken from. We don't take them from the middle of the ocean where ice is constantly moving around and breaking up.

 

[Saucy]

Oh no I don't think you're making it up. I'm trying to see if these "observations" can be (not intentionally) misleading or something that's considered a fact when really it's just a theory with very little basis to it. I will have to do more research on ice core samples because I'm not understanding something.

Scientists have taken over 200,000 samples from the cores themselves and tested them to check on the isotope levels?

 

[philadiddle]

Oh no I don't think you're making it up. I'm trying to see if these "observations" can be (not intentionally) misleading or something that's considered a fact when really it's just a theory with very little basis to it. I will have to do more research on ice core samples because I'm not understanding something.

Fair enough, let us know what you find out and what your sources are.

Scientists have taken over 200,000 samples from the cores themselves and tested them to check on the isotope levels?

Yes they have measured the isotopes in the hundreds of thousands of layers. The problem for you is actually much bigger than I originally said. Ice cores don't just go back 120,000 years. Here is a paper on research that goes back 250,000 years:
http://notendur.hi.is/oi/AG-326 2006 readings/Ice sheets and glacial cycles/Dansgaard_NATURE93.pdf

And here is a research paper explaining the findings in 420,000 years of ice layers:
http://www.daycreek.com/dc/images/1999.pdf

Please note, these papers use actual calculations and real data from the field. They also reference other scientific publications. AiG articles tend to just cherry pick data and are often just opinion pieces with hypothetical explanations. I hope your research goes well.

 

[Saucy]

I found a blog post about climate change (and isn't biased towards creationism) and how unreliable it is, quoting from Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection (CLOR) in Warsaw, Poland, in written testimony submitted to a U.S. Senate committee in March 2004 said:

Determinations of CO2 in polar ice cores are commonly used for estimations of the pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric levels. Perusal of these determinations convinced me that glaciological studies are not able to provide a reliable reconstruction of CO2 concentrations in the ancient atmosphere. This is because the ice cores do not fulfill the essential closed system criteria. One of them is a lack of liquid water in ice, which could dramatically change the chemical composition the air bubbles trapped between the ice crystals. This criterion, is not met, as even the coldest Antarctic ice (down to -73°C) contains liquid water. More than 20 physico-chemical processes, mostly related to the presence of liquid water, contribute to the alteration of the original chemical composition of the air inclusions in polar ice.

The Global Warming Heretic: Why ice core samples are an unreliable proxy for CO2 measurements

From the Institute of Creation Research:

The Greenland Society of Atlanta has recently attempted to excavate a 10-foot diameter shaft in the Greenland ice pack to remove two B-17 Flying Fortresses and six P-38 Lightning fighters trapped under an estimated 250 feet of ice for almost 50 years (Bloomberg, 1989). Aside from the fascination with salvaging several vintage aircraft for parts and movie rights, the fact that these aircraft were buried so deeply in such a short time focuses attention on the time scales used to estimate the chronologies of ice.
If the aircraft were buried under about 250 feet of ice and snow in about 50 years, this means the ice sheet has been accumulating at an average rate of five feet per year. The Greenland ice sheet averages almost 4000 feet thick. If we were to assume the ice sheet has been accumulating at this rate since its beginning, it would take less than 1000 years for it to form and the recent-creation model might seem to be vindicated.

Here's a good article where I got the above quote from. Can I request that you read the article rather than me post the whole thing on here? It's not too long. Thanks!
Ice Cores and the Age of the Earth

Nothing in the ice-core data from either Greenland or Antarctica requires the earth to be of great age. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that the ice cores are revealing important information about conditions following the Flood of Genesis and the recent formation of thick ice sheets. Reports of ice-core data containing records of climatic changes as far back as 160,000 years in the past are dependent upon interpretations of these data which could be seriously wrong, if the Genesis Flood occurred as described in the Bible. Further research on ice-core data should be a high priority for creationist researchers.

 

[philadiddle]

I found a blog post about climate change (and isn't biased towards creationism) and how unreliable it is, quoting from Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection (CLOR) in Warsaw, Poland, in written testimony submitted to a U.S. Senate committee in March 2004 said:

The Global Warming Heretic: Why ice core samples are an unreliable proxy for CO2 measurements

Can you explain to me how this applies to the ages of the ice layers?

From the Institute of Creation Research:
The Greenland Society of Atlanta has recently attempted to excavate a 10-foot diameter shaft in the Greenland ice pack to remove two B-17 Flying Fortresses and six P-38 Lightning fighters trapped under an estimated 250 feet of ice for almost 50 years (Bloomberg, 1989). Aside from the fascination with salvaging several vintage aircraft for parts and movie rights, the fact that these aircraft were buried so deeply in such a short time focuses attention on the time scales used to estimate the chronologies of ice.
If the aircraft were buried under about 250 feet of ice and snow in about 50 years, this means the ice sheet has been accumulating at an average rate of five feet per year. The Greenland ice sheet averages almost 4000 feet thick. If we were to assume the ice sheet has been accumulating at this rate since its beginning, it would take less than 1000 years for it to form and the recent-creation model might seem to be vindicated.
Here's a good article where I got the above quote from. Can I request that you read the article rather than me post the whole thing on here? It's not too long. Thanks!
Ice Cores and the Age of the Earth

In the OP I posted a link to a more detailed explanation in two parts. The second part looks closely at this and I even mentioned the lost squadron in the OP, knowing that it is the most common criticism creationists have.

Nothing in the ice-core data from either Greenland or Antarctica requires the earth to be of great age.

Nothing about the ice core data requires the earth to be of great age, but it requires the ice to be hundreds of thousands of years old, as I already explained.

In fact, there are good reasons to believe that the ice cores are revealing important information about conditions following the Flood of Genesis and the recent formation of thick ice sheets.

What are these reasons?

Reports of ice-core data containing records of climatic changes as far back as 160,000 years in the past are dependent upon interpretations of these data which could be seriously wrong, if the Genesis Flood occurred as described in the Bible. Further research on ice-core data should be a high priority for creationist researchers.

Note the bolded part. They don't say it could be seriously wrong because of any data that they have or any research they've done. They say it could be seriously wrong if their unsupported religious views are correct. Note the difference in the research paper that I linked to about the ice sheets that are 420,000 years old and the links that you gave. One is actual research with details about how the research was conducted, what was found, what calculations were made, and what conclusions must be drawn based on the data. The other is an opinion piece based on a bias opinion. As honestly as possible please tell me which is the research and which is the bias opinion piece.

 

[Saucy]

I honestly don't know

 

[philadiddle]

An interesting thing I noticed; researches look at several lines of evidence for the age of ice, such as the dust, the change in the atmosphere, the alternating bands of isotopes etc. The creationist reaction is usually "You can't assume the past was the same, you don't know what the conditions were like back then."

But then they turn around and make arguments like "If the aircraft were buried under about 250 feet of ice and snow in about 50 years, this means the ice sheet has been accumulating at an average rate of five feet per year. The Greenland ice sheet averages almost 4000 feet thick. If we were to assume the ice sheet has been accumulating at this rate since its beginning, it would take less than 1000 years for it to form and the recent-creation model might seem to be vindicated."

It's an interesting double standard.

 

[Saucy]

If you read the whole article (and I probably should've posted this as it was an important part of the article, you would've seen:

However, life is never as simple as implied above. In making our calculations, we did not take into account the compaction of the snow into ice as it is weighted down by the snow above. Neither did we consider the thinning of ice layers as the tremendous weight above forces the ice at lower levels to squeeze out horizontally. More importantly, we did not consider the average precipitation rate and actual depths of ice for different locations on the Greenland ice sheet.
When these factors are taken into account, the average annual thickness of ice at Camp Century located near the northern tip of Greenland is believed to vary from about fourteen inches near the surface to less than two inches near the bottom (Hammer, et al., 1978). If, for simplicity, we assume the average annual thickness to be the mean between the annual thickness at the top and at the bottom (about eight inches), this still gives an age of less than 6000 years for the 4000-foot-thick ice sheet to form under uniformitarian conditions.
This is in relatively good agreement with the number of annual oscillations of ð18O currently observed in Greenland cores. Although occasional ambiguities occur, it is relatively easy to count annual layers downward from the surface through considerable depths in the Greenland ice sheet. This is possible because of the large precipitation rates in Greenland and the preservation of the annual effects.
It is also possible with a high degree of accuracy to cross check the counting of annual layers with occasional peaks in acidity and particulates from the fallout of historic volcanic events. Hammer, et al. (1978) have correlated the peaks in the mean acidity of annual layers from 553 to 1972 A.D. with historic volcanic events. About a dozen historical volcanic eruptions are evident in the ice core from Crete in central Greenland. Several unknown eruptions are also documented in the ice core record.
The confidence in the chronology becomes less the lower in the ice sheet one goes, however. The amplitude of the annual oscillations slowly decreases relative to other factors, and historic markers are fewer and farther apart. Glaciologists estimate that uncertainties in identification of layers will probably limit the number of countable layers to less than about 8,500 (Hammer, et al., 1978).

 

[Saucy]

The claims that layers of ice were formed 160,000 years ago or more come primarily from interpretation of ice cores in Antarctica (Jouzel, et al., 1987; Barnola, et al., l987). The Soviet Antarctic Expeditions at Vostok in East Antarctica recovered an ice core which was almost 7,000 feet long in a region where the total ice thickness is about 12,000 feet (Lorius, et al., 1979; Lorius, et al., 1985). Since the current precipitation rate is so much less than Greenland (on the order of one inch per year) the crude calculation of age, without corrections for compression and horizontal motion for the lowest layers is more than 100,000 years.
However, such estimates are critically based on the assumption that the accumulation rate has not varied greatly over the past. Unlike the Greenland ice cores, annual oscillations of ð18O and other parameters cannot be traced deeply into the ice sheet on Antarctica. In Greenland, the high precipitation rates not only provide relatively thick annual layers for analysis, but the accumulating snow quickly seals off the ice beneath and protects the record from metamorphosis by pressure and temperature changes in the atmosphere. In Antarctica, by the time the ice has been buried deeply enough to no longer be influenced by the atmosphere, annual variations have been greatly dampened by diffusion (Epstein, et al., 1965; Johnsen, et al., 1972).
The technique used to estimate the age of an ice layer deep in the ice sheet is to measure its ð18O content and compute the atmospheric temperature which is observed to produce such concentrations today (Jouzel and Merlivat, 1984). Through a second-known relation between temperature and precipitation rate, again observed in today's atmosphere, the accumulation rate for a given layer is calculated (Lorius, et al., 1985). Once the accumulation rate is calculated for each layer, the depth and age for each layer in the ice is calculated by integrating the annual accumulation downward from the surface.
There are several historical markers in Antarctica which can be used to cross check these calculations for the past few thousand years. But historical volcanic events are not known beyond a few thousand years in the past which provide any certainty to the calculation of age. This method would be reasonably reliable if precipitation rates had been similar in the past. However, some creationist models predict significant quantities of snow immediately after the Flood (Oard, 1990). Perhaps as much as 95% of the ice near the poles could have accumulated in the first 500 years or so after the Flood.

Ice Cores and the Age of the Earth

 

[philadiddle]

So does this mean that all the ice core samples in the world that appear to have alternating years for over 400,000 years were really just formed in under 1000 years?

 

[Saucy]

I'm saying it's possible, as the article suggests, that 95% of the ice sheet accumulated during the flood and the five hundred years after the flood.

You have two varying rates of accumulation. Greenland has a lot more precipitation than does Antarctica. So how is it possible that you can have two core samples with the same data? It doesn't make sense. Unless they were caused by the same event.

They're arguing in the article that a single storm can lay down a layer that is misinterpreted as a single year.

It's sort of coincidental that when we use the Bombers as evidence for 100,000 years worth of ice, the old-earthers have an explanation:

The burial of the "lost squadron" of World War II under 250 feet of Greenland ice and snow in only 50 years has been offered as proof that the 10,000-foot-long Greenland ice cores cannot represent 100,000+ years of history.5 However, intrusions into the layers by localized forces and events does not invalidate them. In this case, the lost squadron crashed in a relatively warm area of southern Greenland where, unlike the sites of the three deep ice cores, several melts and refreezings per year can occur and seven times as much snow falls per year.

Soooo if that is proof that the layers over the planes formed in fifty years and it's possible to misinterpret the evidence, then why can't it be possible for other sites and drilling? If it's possible that a few melts and refreezing and heavy snow can obscure the record and make 50 years worth of layers look like 100,000 years, then it's very possible, especially in the volatile after-flood environment, while the continents were shifting rapidly, that the past several thousand years of ice accumulation can look like several hundred thousand years.

Again, the flood changes things. It changes the geological record, it changes the ice record, but if science doesn't take into account a supernatural happening of God, it's very easy for them to misinterpret the evidence. If several thousand feet of snow fell in one area because of the flood, but they look back at the last several hundred years of precipitation, they can easily say, "Wow, all this snow happened in a hundred thousand years!" not taking into account that the majority of it fell in only one year during and after the flood. As the waters receded and the snow melted away, the number of storms that impacted a certain region dwindled away to the current precipitation model.

So science looks at the current model. At the current rate, it would take "X" amount of years for the current level of snow and ice to accumulate. I understand why they do it that way, but the flood obscures the evidence greatly.

 

[philadiddle]

I'm saying it's possible, as the article suggests, that 95% of the ice sheet accumulated during the flood and the five hundred years after the flood.

Wouldn't the flood have laid down 1 thick layer of ice? How did a flood make 400,000 layers of alternating isotopes and dust layers, each with sub-layers of individual snowfalls?

You have two varying rates of accumulation. Greenland has a lot more precipitation than does Antarctica. So how is it possible that you can have two core samples with the same data? It doesn't make sense. Unless they were caused by the same event.

What is the data you are comparing that causes you to say they are the same?

They're arguing in the article that a single storm can lay down a layer that is misinterpreted as a single year.

No it can't be. A single storm wouldn't have differing ratios of isotopes in it. Nobody has every argued that the layer that a snowfall lays down is a year. That's just what creationists use as a strawman argument.

It's sort of coincidental that when we use the Bombers as evidence for 100,000 years worth of ice, the old-earthers have an explanation:

NOBODY HAS EVER ARGUED THAT THICKNESS = YEARS!!!! Again, this is a strawman that creationists dishonestly use to avoid dealing with the real data. Researchers use objective measures which I have repeated throughout this thread and which you and your sources have not disputed.

Soooo if that is proof that the layers over the planes formed in fifty years and it's possible to misinterpret the evidence, then why can't it be possible for other sites and drilling? If it's possible that a few melts and refreezing and heavy snow can obscure the record and make 50 years worth of layers look like 100,000 years, then it's very possible, especially in the volatile after-flood environment, while the continents were shifting rapidly, that the past several thousand years of ice accumulation can look like several hundred thousand years.

Other than creationists, who has ever said that the depth over those planes is equal to 100,000 years of ice? Again, this is a strawman argument.

Again, the flood changes things. It changes the geological record, it changes the ice record, but if science doesn't take into account a supernatural happening of God, it's very easy for them to misinterpret the evidence.

The flood would change things. But as we look down into the ice we don't see any changes in how the ice formed 4,400 years ago. It is the same pattern that we observe happening today.

If several thousand feet of snow fell in one area because of the flood, but they look back at the last several hundred years of precipitation, they can easily say, "Wow, all this snow happened in a hundred thousand years!" not taking into account that the majority of it fell in only one year during and after the flood. As the waters receded and the snow melted away, the number of storms that impacted a certain region dwindled away to the current precipitation model.

No this is completely wrong and you have ignored everything I've said so far. If several thousand feet of snow fell in one year there would not be alternating ratios of oxygen-16 and oxygen-18. Nobody looks at thickness to determine age. They look at the differences in how ice forms in the summer and winter to determine the alternating seasons.

So science looks at the current model. At the current rate, it would take "X" amount of years for the current level of snow and ice to accumulate. I understand why they do it that way, but the flood obscures the evidence greatly.

Who does it that way? Name a research team who has done it that way.

If you are going to challenge what I post then fine, it makes for some good conversations. But if you are just going to ignore what I post and argue against strawman versions of what I said, then let me know now. It feels like the conversation has gone like this:

Me: "Seasons are determined by alternating bands of isotopes and several other seasonal indicators in the frost."

You: "Explain the isotopes to me."

Me: [insert explanation]

You: "I understand why they would want thickness to equal years, but that is an assumption."

Me: "Nobody has argued that thickness equals years, there are seasonal factors that the flood model can't create."

You: "In fact, if you look at the thickness over these planes, it's not what scientists would have expected."

Me: "NOBODY IS ARGUING THICKNESS!!! ADDRESS THE ACTUAL METHODS USED!!!!"

 

[Saucy]

No it can't be. A single storm wouldn't have differing ratios of isotopes in it. Nobody has every argued that the layer that a snowfall lays down is a year. That's just what creationists use as a strawman argument.

Are you sure about that? When I commented that Antarctica is always freaking cold, the average temperature at any month never reaching above freezing, you said that the isotopes still change. Usually storms form along cold or warm fronts. Storms stir up dust, bring wind, and follow a huge shift in temperature depending on the season. In the spring time there are more warm front and in the autumn there are more cold fronts.

How can you tell the difference between a few weeks or much warmer weather versus a summer layer from a summer that was well below average? Are you saying that winter is always winter and summer is always summer and that there were no possible changes in that could effect the layers you see? A single warm front can't bring unstable weather and change the isotopes to where you see it reflected in the ice?

Ice shifts. It moves. It breaks, melts, refreezes. I live in Michigan so I know this for a fact. I've gone ice fishing enough to know the different ice patterns you get. In one winter, you can tell from the ice and snow on the ground after shoveling your driveway the different storms you had. There can be hard, compact snow lower down, separated by dust layers and on top the more recent snow. Sometimes the snow, even well below zero, seems to go away, albeit very slowly.

 

[Saucy]

So that tells me that either every temperature spike will be recorded in the ice or it isn't. If every temperature spike is recorded, then even two spikes in one year immediately cuts the number of years the ice formed in half.

 

[philadiddle]

So that tells me that either every temperature spike will be recorded in the ice or it isn't. If every temperature spike is recorded, then even two spikes in one year immediately cuts the number of years the ice formed in half.

What is the temperature range of the areas where the ice cores samples are taken from? What ratios of oxygen-16 and oxygen-18 do we see for the highs and lows?

How is the hoar frost affected by the sun in the summer and how differently does the ice look in the winter? Do temperature spikes affect this?

Can we use the alternating isotopes as a comparison for what we see in the differences in ice caused by the sun?

Now the question is; Will temperature spikes during the seasons throw off all the data enough to make it look like a whole other year? I hope you look into this yourself but to save you some time I can tell you that it doesn't.

Let's do some math (I'm rounding off the calculations). In the last 4,400 years there have been about 1,600,000 days. If there are 420,000 years of ice, then that means that the change in the ice to make it appear like summer, winter, summer, winter etc would have had to change every 2 days. (400,000 years times 2 seasons into 1.6 million days.) That means that the ratios of oxygen would change every couple days, and the sun would have to somehow imitate winter and summer every couple days.

In addition to this problem, it doesn't even snow every day, or even every week, which makes the problem even greater. On top of that, each seasonal band contains many sub-layers of snowfall. How could a great snowstorm after the flood make so many distinct layers? Wouldn't it just be one big layer?

So Saucy, you said you wanted to see objective evidence of age and that is exactly what I've shown you. Creationists have no answer for this, they just argue against their strawman version of ice core sampling. No scientist "wants" the ice to be hundreds of thousands of years old. There's no atheistic or evolutionary assumptions at work here. We have to conclude that the ice is that old.

 

[philadiddle]

A single warm front can't bring unstable weather and change the isotopes to where you see it reflected in the ice?

We would observe this happening if that is a possibility. Has anyone ever seen and measured this? Again, what use to measure age based on isotopes is what we observe. You are not basing your arguments on observation, you are basing them on what you want to be true.

 

[Saucy]

You are not basing your arguments on observation, you are basing them on what you want to be true.

I've already told you that it doesn't bother me whether or not the earth is young or old. I could care less. There could've been ice sitting there for billions of years for all I care. It doesn't affect whether or not God created the earth. No core sample can say that God doesn't exist

I have based my arguments on observations. I just think that the flood, with varying climate changes, warmer water in the oceans creating mega storms towards the poles. You would see varying large storms of varying temperatures that could lay down a lot of precipitation.

If you have a big storm with warmer or cooler air drop a lot of precipitation, wouldn't that show up as a layer of differing isotopes? Then another big storm comes along with a different temperature, laying down another layer with varying isotopes.

I know you're getting frustrated with me, but this sounds like common sense to me. If the slightest change in weather presents different isotopes, then every storm, every different varying weather condition would be present in the ice.

You can't have it both ways.

 

[philadiddle]

I have based my arguments on observations.

Let's put this to the test then. The purpose of this post is to see if that is true.

I just think that the flood, with varying climate changes, warmer water in the oceans creating mega storms towards the poles. You would see varying large storms of varying temperatures that could lay down a lot of precipitation.

When have you observed large amounts of precipitation making a layer of ice that seems to be hundreds of thousands of individual layers of ice? When have you observed a storm make layers of ice that alternate from light to dark and from different ratios of oxygen isotopes? You have observed that a storm can do this right?

If you have a big storm with warmer or cooler air drop a lot of precipitation, wouldn't that show up as a layer of differing isotopes?

Have you observed this happening? What study has been done to show that a big storm can simulate layers of seasonal alterations in isotope ratios? You have observed this right?

Then another big storm comes along with a different temperature, laying down another layer with varying isotopes.

Again, what observation have you made (or at least heard about) that could produce different isotopes from one storm to the next? How would that change the hoar frost that also seems to alternate as well? What observations support this?

If the slightest change in weather presents different isotopes, then every storm, every different varying weather condition would be present in the ice.

You can't have it both ways.

What would make you say "if the slightest change in weather presents different isotopes"? What observation have you made that supports that simply changing the weather changes the isotope ratio?

 

[shernren]

I sincerely apologize for having taken a weekend break. My day job and family affairs called me away. That and this stuff genuinely is difficult to understand, so I was taking my time.

Let's start with the basics. Oxygen has two main isotopes on Earth, O16 and O18. A water molecule with O16 in it has a molecular mass of 18, while a water molecule with O18 in it has a molecular mass of 20 - about 10% heavier. As such, O18 water molecules would prefer to be less mobile than O16 water molecules. So, for example, a plant tends to put out more O16 than O18 when it photosynthesizes (because O16 water would rather vaporize than O18 water), and rain falling over Florida has more O18 than rain falling over Canada (because more O18 condenses out first over the tropics, leaving O18 depleted water over the temperate regions).

The O18 concentration of the entire atmosphere is controlled by various factors such as the average temperature of the Earth and the extent of various O18-altering phenomena such as photosynthesis and the size of the ice caps (which tend to lock up O18 until they are melted). Now, it takes about a thousand years for the O18 content of the atmosphere to change significantly, but it only takes a year for O18 to get mixed thoroughly between the various regions of the world. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the O18 concentration of the atmosphere doesn't depend on where you are: as long as your measurements are more than a year apart, any random fluctuations will be evened out. Furthermore, the ratio of atmospheric O18 to seawater O18 is also constant - although this also happens only at the rate of processes such as photosynthesis and evaporation, i.e. it takes a year or two for oxygen levels to be correlated.

But the amount of O18 in ice at the ice caps depends on the average temperature in the year, or the few years, over which the ice was deposited. (This tends to be true at the lower levels of the GISP2 and Vostok ice cores, where individual layers tend to be harder to discriminate; I'm not sure if there is a seasonal signal in the higher levels.) Note that there is no contradiction: oxygen makes up 18% of our atmosphere but water only 1% or less, so it's quite possible for the amount of O18 in snow to change significantly while leaving the amount of O18 in the atmosphere roughly unchanged. (This is also how we discriminate between atmospheric O18 - check other oxygen-bearing molecules - and ice O18 - check only water molecules.)

With that in mind, check out the following graph:

I'll explain this graph in a few hours. Promise me you'll wait until then before accusing each other of intellectual incompetence?

 

[shernren]

Graaaah, CF.com ate my post. Basically, atmospheric O18 in GISP2 (near the North Pole) and Vostok (near the South Pole) are almost perfectly correlated not only with each other (which would require some super magic mixing of atmospheric oxygen), but with O18 ratios in shells left by plankton growing on the seabed off the coast of Ecuador.

Meanwhile, ice O18 drops in GISP2 - indicating a warming episode - always indicate rapid heating and rapid cooling. This happens because Greenland is closer to the Equator than Vostok is, and so it can be easily forced into a warming episode by sunlight alone. By contrast, Vostok is closer to the South Pole than Greenland is to the North Pole, and so it needs a little heating from the northern hemisphere to start a warming episode, which is why the warming episodes in Vostok have slow heating and slow cooling - and always come after long episodes of warming in Greenland, but almost never after short episodes of warming.

Is there a creationist model of global storms that can replicate these intricate patterns?

(Two more points. Firstly, Saucy, these ice cores are kilometers long. You can't do any ice fishing through 2,800 meters of ice, can you? That's why these ice cores don't melt or fissure. They are reliable records of historical climactic conditions - though, of course, the devil is in the details of the interpretation. Secondly, Phil, I don't know if there are seasonal signals in the top layers of the ice, but there certainly don't seem to be any in the bottom - the warming episodes in the GISP2 core range from 400 years to 12000 years long.)