In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - Is Global Warming Occurring? If So, What Causes It?

Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.

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[ Frequently Asked Questions > Is Global Warming Occurring? If So, What Causes It? ]

Is Global Warming Occurring? If So, What Causes It?

Global warming—an emotionally charged social, political, economic, and ecological issue—is occurring. However, most who jump to the conclusion that man is the primary cause of global warming also believe that the earth is billions of years old. They are alarmed that man is ruining a billion-year-old earth in just a few decades. No, global warming began at the peak of the Ice Age, a few centuries after the flood. As more ice melts, the long-term warming trend will continue with many short-term fluctuations.

Global warming will alter world economies, and poorer countries may be less able to advance. Thousands of researchers with conflicting solutions to the problem are competing for funds. However, before billions of dollars are spent, global warming’s cause should be clearly understood.

All can agree that the Sun’s output varies and yearly records show wide temperature fluctuations. Nevertheless, the slow, warming trend—seen over centuries, not years—will continue, but for a surprising reason. We should first understand why the earth has so much ice—7 million cubic miles. Of the world’s ice, 88% is in Antarctica and 10% in Greenland. If all that ice melts, sea level will rise at least 200 feet.¹

The global flood produced the special conditions that caused the Ice Age: temporarily cold continents and warm oceans. [See pages 109–145.] Crashing hydroplates at the end of the flood crushed and thickened continents and buckled up the earth’s major mountains, making the continents higher and, consequently, colder than they are today. Also, after the flood, oceans were warmer than today, primarily because so much magma spilled onto the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Warm oceans produced extensive evaporation and precipitation, which on the cold continents resulted in extreme snowfall rates that built up glaciers. Heavy cloud cover and volcanic dust further cooled the continents.

Large temperature differences between cold continents and warm oceans generated strong wind systems that quickly carried the moist air up and over the continents where much of the water vapor cooled, condensed, and fell as snow. Each winter’s glacial advances were followed by summer’s glacial retreats; these yearly cycles left marks on earth that some mistakenly associate with multiple ice ages (4–30, depending on location).

Antarctic Lakes

Historical evidence, described in Figure 214, also shows that snow depths on Antarctica increased recently and rapidly. As they did, lakes were quickly covered and insulated from the cold antarctic air. The result today is more than 300 unfrozen lakes in Antarctica. One, Lake Vostok, the seventh largest lake in the world, has the volume of Lake Michigan.⁶

How could Antarctica have one or, more surprisingly, at least 300 unfrozen lakes buried under snow and ice—a “preposterous”⁷ discovery made in the 1990s? To answer this requires answering two basic questions:

How could a lake form on Antarctica?

After all these years, why would even one Antarctic lake still be unfrozen?

The flood provides the obvious answer to the first question. When the flood waters drained into the newly formed ocean basins, every continental basin, including those on Antarctica, were left full of water—some with warm and salty water. Therefore, Antarctica had lakes immediately after the flood. Those who deny a global flood must find a way to warm Antarctica enough to create lakes. According to the plate tectonic theory, Antarctica has always been at the South Pole, so proponents of that theory cannot claim that Antarctica drifted in from warm latitudes. Nor did volcanic activity provide the necessary heat, because Antarctica has few volcanoes and most are not near those 155 lakes.

Once a thin sheet of ice forms on a lake in Antarctica, a “race” begins between (1) ice growing downward and (2) snow building upward. Either the lake will become a solid block of ice, or the insulating snow on top of the lake will become thick enough to prevent the lake from freezing. Each year, the ice will grow downward and thicken, at a steady but diminishing rate. Simultaneously, snow will build up above the lake. If the snow’s thickness reaches about 2,000 feet before the downward growing ice touches the lake bottom, the lake will be insulated enough to not completely freeze, because the slight amount of geothermal heat coming up through the floor of the lake will prevent complete freezing.

Of course, the annual snowfall, the average air temperature, and the lake’s initial depth and salt content will determine the winner. Today, Antarctica has less than 2 inches of precipitation each year, and the average air temperature is 20°F (-6.7°C) in the summer and -30°F (-34.4°C) in the winter. Under today’s conditions, the ice should win that race on Antarctica, especially if the initial lake is shallow. If the lake is deep or salty, snow has a better chance of winning. However, those who do not think there was a global flood have difficulty explaining how deep or salty lakes developed on Antarctica.

The second question is answered when one realizes that for centuries after the flood, snowfall rates would be orders of magnitude greater than today, and many postflood lakes would be salty and deep. The more a lake freezes, the greater the salt’s concentration becomes in the remaining liquid, so its freezing temperature drops. Ice growth rates would quickly approach zero. Snow would win. One extensively studied subsurface lake in Antarctica, Lake Vida, has seven times the salt concentration of our oceans!⁸

Because Antarctica has so many subsurface lakes, conditions must have been favorable for liquid water to collect on Antarctica and lakes to form. This alone suggests that there was a global flood followed by extreme rates of snowfall—the Ice Age.

faq-globalwarming_pirireis_map.jpg Image Thumbnail

Figure 214. Ancient Map Shows Recent Antarctic Snow Accumulation. In 1929, this amazing map was discovered in an old palace in Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey. The map, drawn on gazelle skin, was signed in 1513 by Turkish admiral Piri Re’is (Pear-ee-RYE-us). The Admiral wrote on the map that it was based on 20 older maps, some dating back to the 4th Century B.C. and one used by Christopher Columbus. The Piri Re’is map shows, with amazing accuracy for the 16^th Century, parts of Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Antarctica. Surprisingly, details show that Piri Re’is must have had a source map that was drawn before snow was deep enough to cover the rugged Antarctic coastline. Forgery can be ruled out, because we would learn the shapes of those ice-covered coastlines only after the development of seismic techniques for penetrating deep ice.

The Atlantic Ocean runs down the center of the map. (Disregard the symbols and focus on coastlines.) Notice at the upper right of the map the bulge of Africa and the Iberian Peninsula (today’s Spain and Portugal). Next, locate a “skinny” South America. While some scales on the map are distorted and some marginal notes are incorrect, the shapes of the above continents are unmistakable. Finally, in the extreme south is part of the Antarctic coast called Queen Maud Land. Today, glaciers extend far beyond, and hide, that irregular coastline.

Copies of the Piri Re’is map are held by the U.S.Library of Congress and other leading libraries. Charles Hapgood⁹ gives many details of Piri Re’is and other old maps that show a relatively ice-free Antarctica: Oronteus Finaeus, 1531; Hadju Ahmed, 1559; and Mercator, 1569. These medieval maps, copied 2–3 centuries before 1819 (when textbooks say Antarctica was discovered) were probably based on much earlier source maps. These and other¹⁰ medieval maps also suggest much lower sea levels before the Ice Age. (The hydroplate theory explains why lowered sea levels were followed by the Ice Age.) The maps provide additional information on Antarctica’s mountain ranges, plateaus, bays, coastal islands, and former rivers—under about a mile of ice today. Obviously, the Antarctic ice cap grew rapidly and recently¹¹ as humans were exploring the earth.¹² The ice cap did not grow, as taught for the last century, over millions of years or before man allegedly evolved.

For a few centuries after the flood, the warm oceans cooled and mountain elevations diminished as the thickened continents sank into the mantle. Both changes steadily reduced the heavy snowfall toward today’s rates. Eventually, ice depths peaked. Then, as snow and ice decreased on earth, less of the Sun’s radiation was reflected off ice sheets and back into space.² More of the Sun’s heat warmed the earth, so even more ice melted, and the warming continued. This cycle will continue unless cost-effective ways are found to reduce the warming.

Does mankind’s burning of fossil fuels and production of greenhouse gases contribute to global warming? Yes, but no one really knows to what extent.³ Those who claim that man is the sole cause of global warming have not addressed the key question: Why did the earth once have so much ice? Apart from the worldwide flood, explanations for the Ice Age run into scientific problems. Scientists who have studied the Ice Age in great detail know these problems, although few others do.

Since the peak of the Ice Age, melting ice has raised sea level about 300 feet;⁴ man did not cause that rise. (Man began increasing CO₂ emissions thousands of years later, in about 1800, at the start of the Industrial Revolution.) Without some unexpected development, sea level will rise about 4 inches in the next 100 years and almost 200 feet in the next few thousand years.⁵ This steady rise will be apparent to all in a few decades. If increasing greenhouse gases turn out to be a major factor, the rise will be even faster.

Yes, atmospheric CO₂ (carbon dioxide) is increasing, but most of the increase is due to the warming of oceans, which then release some of the CO₂ they contain. (Oceans contain 50 times more CO₂ than the atmosphere.) In other words, CO₂ increases did not produce much global warming; warming produced most CO₂ increases.

Those who express opinions on the cause of global warming usually look at its effects today and, using a few relatively recent clues, try to determine its cause. The hydroplate explanation takes a broader, longer-range look, not just from effect back to cause, but also from cause directly to effect. We can have much greater confidence in our conclusion when, after considering all the data, including the Ice Age and its causes, the issue is seen identically in both directions. The flood also explains many other features on the earth.