There were no ice caps in Noah's time. The earth was one uniform tropical temperature.
There is absolutely no proof of this.
When God created the earth, He sheared off a layer of water and ballooned it out into space.
[bible]Genesis 1:6[/bible]
Notice the division is top-to-bottom, not side-to-side.
[bible]Genesis 1:7[/bible]
The top layer, ballooned into space, became what we call a Water Canopy, that refracted the rays of the sun evenly over the surface of the earth, making it one tropical paradise.
Remember, until the Flood, it had never rained.
[bible]Genesis 2:4-6[/bible]
When the Flood occurred, God sent the Water Canopy crashing to the earth, with 40 days of torrential rainfall, coupled with water gushing up from inside the earth (the Grand Canyon possibly being one of the sources).
[bible]Genesis 7:11[/bible]
After the Flood, the ice caps appeared, the dinosaurs eventually died out, and we now have seasons.
Except, there is absolutely no proof that the vapor canopy ever existed, and if it did, life on earth would have been impossible:
from
www.godandscience.org:
Air can hold, at most, 55 grams of water per cubic meter. In contrast, liquid water is at a density of 1,000,000 grams per cubic meter. The ratio of the two numbers is 1:18,000. Therefore, a flood of 1 mile thickness (which would cover only 1/5 of Mount Everest), would require 18,000 miles of canopy. Besides the problem of gravity (which would bring the whole thing down), such a thick layer of water would completely block any light from the Sun from reaching the earth.
Even a canopy of only 40 feet of liquid water would double the earth's atmospheric pressure, which would kill many animals, including humans. This pressure would also increase the temperature on the earth to a scorching 220°F. Most animals and plants do not survive long at this temperature.
Another problem is getting the water out of the atmosphere and onto the ground without cooking everything on the earth. Each gram of water vapor that condenses to a liquid releases 539 calories of heat. For a global water layer of only 40 feet deep, 6.22 x 1021 grams of water would release 3.35 x 1024 calories, raising the temperature of the earth to 810°F. Such a scenario would definitely kill all life on earth, but would produce a tremendous air conditioning problem for Noah. And a 40 feet deep flood would certainly not be global.
And it most certainly did rain before the supposed global flood given the fact that agriculture originated long before Mesopotamia.
Even answersingenesis.org doesn't support the vapor canopy. I have to say I admire them for at least being intellectually honest in saying even they have problems with it, and it's based on science.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/flood12.asp
I'm referring specifically to the section entitled A major problem with the canopy theory.
Here's tons of proof bearing out not only that the global flood never happened, but that that the earth is older than a mere 6,000 years old:
WHEAT: From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat
The earliest archaeological evidence for wheat cultivation comes from the
Levant and
Turkey. Around 10,000 years ago,
[9] wild
einkorn and
emmer wheat were domesticated as part of the
origins of agriculture in the fertile crescent.
There's also this here:
http://www.nelstrop.co.uk/wheat.asp
It is known that bread wheat was being cultivated in 5000 BC in the Nile and its cultivation spread gradually to other parts of the world, reaching Britain in about 2000 BC, to Mexico by the 16th century and to North America by the 18th century.
RICE: From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice
Zhao explains that the collection of wild rice from an early date eventually led to its domestication and then the exclusive use of domesticated rice strains by circa 6400 B.C. at the latest (Zhao 1998). Stone tool evidence from the Yunchanyan site in
Hunan province suggests the possibility that Early
Neolithic groups cultivated rice as early as circa 9000 B.C. (Crawford and Shen 1998:862). Crawford and Shen point out that calibrated radiocarbon dates show that direct evidence of the earliest cultivated rice is no older than 7000 B.C. (Crawford and Shen 1998:862).
Jared Diamond, a biologist and popular science author, summarizes some of the work done by professional archaeologists mentioned above and estimates that the earliest attested domestication of rice took place in China by 7500 B.C.
[6]
BARLEY: From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barley
Earliest evidence of farming of barley comes from archelological site of
Indian subcontinent named
Mehrgarh, from 7000 BC.
So there you are, archaeological proof (which uses the exact same methods as YECers) that the vapor canopy is nothing more than a myth, and conclusive proof, based on evidence of agriculture dating back BEFORE the supposed date of creation that the hydrologic cycle was in place from the very beginning, no pun intended, in 3 different regions of the world: India, China, and the Fertile Crescent.
Also, how can a global flood, which surely would have killed off all plant life, explain the appearance of certain species of grapes that are native to only specific areas of the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape
Not to mention apples:
http://www.bestapples.com/varieties/index.html
Sure, trade explains some of it, such as the Fuji being introduced to the US from Japan, but how do you get all those different species AFTER a global flood?
Seems to me YECers who believe in a global flood don't realize that they're proposing evolution on a massive scale, since supposedly all life after the event originated from the animals on the ark. Funny that the only plant that's mentioned after the fact is grapes. So, where did all the trees, that are native to only specific parts of the world, come from?
I will state that I used to believe in a global flood, until I actually started reading more about it, and I no longer believe that it covered the entire world, as seen from a 21st century perspective. Not to mention the fact that I have a degree in history, so I've studied different regions of the world that had contemporary civilizations spread out all over the face of the globe. Did the flood happen at some point? Yes...but not one that covered every single square inch of the planet. There's just way too much archaeological evidence (too much in fact that I won't go into detail here) spread out all over the world that disproves a global flood.
Now, as far as the dinosaurs, they died out about 65 million years ago.