I. What is the Ice Age and How Long Did It Last?

“. . .the Post-Flood Ice Age began immediately after the Flood when the ocean temperatures (and possible atmospheric volcanic dust) favoured the build-up of ice on the continents. This build-up continued, it is estimated, for 500 years until it reached peak ice, and then began to melt back over the following 200 years.” 

(from Dr. Ron Neller “Why no mention of the Ice Age in the Bible?”)

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II. How many Ice Ages were there?

Many scientists hold to many ice ages (up to 50 or so) over millions of years. Creationists say that there was only one Ice Age happening right after Noah’s flood for a few hundred years.

“On land, most areas have evidence consistent with only one ice age. At the edge of the ice sheets, the glacial debris can be complicated, and it is here that they try to claim many ice ages. Yet, it is well known that the edge of an ice sheet advances, retreats, and surges rapidly forward creating complicated glacial sediments. It was admitted by five secular scientists that multiple ice ages are really an assumption.7 Instead of three or four ice ages in Alberta, Canada, these scientists concluded that there was only one.”

(from Michael J. Oard “What caused the Ice Age?”)

Humans don’t have to fear that there will be another Ice Age in the future.

 

III. What Caused the Ice Age?

“Secular scientists really can’t explain how an Ice Age happened, but can creation scientists? Yes, but first it needs to be placed within biblical earth history. The glacial features lie on top of sedimentary rock. This is a good indication that the Ice Age happened after the Flood. The conditions after the Flood were unique. Investigating them can help us find the answer.5”

The requirements for an ice age are lots of snow and below freezing temperatures on average in the summer, spring, and fall in order to maintain the ice sheets over hundreds of years.

“It is well accepted from the physical evidence that during the Ice Age there were many more volcanic eruptions than we have today. These would continually replenish the upper atmosphere with fine particles, probably stretching the cooling to several hundred years. So, the cooler summer requirement for the Ice Age is fulfilled.”

“The Flood water was heated through volcanism (hot lava), and hot water was added by the “fountains of the great deep”. The flood was a dynamic event, so after the Flood, the oceans would be mostly warm—from pole to pole and top to bottom. As a result there would be no sea ice on any of the oceans.

Warm water evaporates more quickly than cold; the warmer the water the quicker the evaporation. With the mid and high latitude oceans being much warmer than they are today, there would be many times more evaporation. As the moisture met the cooler continents it would trigger gigantic storms. This snow would dump along and poleward of the jet stream and storm tracks. It would eventually turn into ice primarily by summer melting and refreezing.”

(from Michael J. Oard)

 

IV. The Ice Age and the Dispersion of People and Animals

“The dispersal of the animal kinds to the various continents after disembarking the Ark is an important issue in any Flood model. Log mats have been proposed as a solution but may be less effective in transporting large animals, especially in light of potential post-Flood storms that would likely break up the vegetation mats. Land bridges seem to be a better solution for dispersal. This paper suggests that land bridges for animal and human migration were a consequence of the post-Flood Ice Age. The timing of the ice build-up, the lowering of sea levels and the dispersion at the Tower of Babel seem to have facilitated migration to the various continents...The timing of the land bridges was no mere coincidence. The Ice Age seems to have been an integral part of God’s plan to disperse the animals and humans to the separated continents.”

(from Timothy L. Clarey “The Ice Age as a mechanism for post-Flood dispersal”)

 

V. Other Matters the Biblical Ice Age Explains

1) “These ‘once-wet’ deserts [the great Sahara Desert, the deserts of central Australia, the semi-arid southwest United States] are extremely difficult for a uniformitarian earth scientist to explain, because their Ice Age models require a very cold and thus much drier climate than we have today.” 

“The highest amount of evaporation after the Flood would take place at mid and high latitudes, since this is where the temperature difference between sea surface and air would have been the greatest.”

“The evidence of a much lusher well-watered landscape with huge lakes at the time of the Ice Age—in regions that now have little rain—is an enduring mystery for scientists who believe the earth is millions of years old. However, it is the natural consequence of the global Flood and powerfully consistent with a biblical Ice Age model.”

(from Mike Oard “Well-watered deserts”)

2) “In deposits formed during the Ice Age, warmth-loving animals have been found at high latitudes (i.e. closer to the poles), while cold-loving animals have been found at lower latitudes.”

“Probably the most striking example of [...this] during the Ice Age is the association of hippopotamus fossils (figure 3) with reindeer, musk oxen, and woolly mammoths in England, France, and Germany.3,4”

“Secular scientists attempt to dodge the implications of [this problem]. Since they believe in multiple ice ages, one strategy is placing the hippos and other warmth-adapted creatures into the ‘interglacial’ phases and the cold-tolerant animals into the ‘glacial’ phases.8”

“The Ice Age caused by the Genesis Flood explains the most striking [...example]—hippopotamuses associated with cold-tolerant animals in northwest Europe."  (from Michael Oard “A strange mix of plants and animals during the Ice Age”)

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VI. Evidence in Greenland against million of years

Michael Oard gives evidence that the Greenland ice cores formed rapidly and were not formed over millions of years.

(from Michael Oard “New evidence for rapid Ice Age deposition on the Greenland Ice Sheet”)