No “Silver Bullet,” but a Much Better Explanation

A Silver Bullet Against Long Ages?

Now, if you are a biblical creationist like myself, you can see why the story of the Lost Squadron could be seen as powerful evidence against evolutionary, long-age ideas. Indeed, it is, which is why there is an exhibit about it built into the incredible Ark Encounter (the life-size Noah’s Ark) in Kentucky for visitors to see.

For some, it may seem like an evidentiary silver bullet they can pull out to challenge evolution or long-age-believing Bible skeptics at the drop of a hat. But is it really? Is there really any silver bullet in the origins debate?

You see, some might say, “What are long-age believers to do now that this damning evidence against their previous declarations has been overturned?” Well, that’s easy, just change the parameters of your calculations to make the evidence fit, as this 2014 article on the supposed “state of the art” of ice core measuring does.

The ability of an ice core to provide (sub-)annual information depends on the accumulation rate. It typically ranges from a few centimeters of ice per year in high-elevation areas of Antarctica to several meters at coastal sites of Greenland and on low latitude glaciers.1

A New Standard, but How Accurate?

So what does this mean now? Well, due to this update in their model, if someone uses the Lost Squadron to support a young earth view, opponents can simply cite this new study to claim that the planes were buried deeper because they landed close to the Greenland coast.

This new “several meters” of snowfall per year figure, which could be interpreted as much as 3–6 meters per year, falls into a range that would account for their rapid burial. Voilà—no more silver bullet.

However, if ice core dating methods are so fluid that annual layers could be as thin as a few centimeters or as wide as 6 meters per year, how reliable is it as a dating method? Why should anyone trust any supposed scientific “published figures” as accurate when the Lost Squadron demonstrated their former assumptions to be completely wrong? Remember, no one had proposed the possibility of ice building up at a rate of “several meters per year” as being reasonable before these planes were discovered.

Just as some geologists now accept rapid deposition of sedimentary rock layers to account for the obvious evidence (like a 30-foot-tall tree extending through meters of what used to be considered millions of years of rock deposition), long-age scientists simply change their paradigms regarding ice deposition to suit their needs.

Remember, no one had proposed the possibility of ice building up at a rate of “several meters per year” as being reasonable before these planes were discovered.

This highlights the fact that these types of dating methods are not “scientific” in the way most people understand empirical science to operate. Science done according to the scientific method can be observed, can be repeated, and always obtains the same results.

Historical Science Can Yield Wildly Different Results

The example I’ve used many times is the idea of setting up an experiment to determine at what temperature water boils. And no matter who does the experiment, if it is done with the same parameters (same mineral consistency, same altitude, etc.), the result will always be the same. For example, pure water at sea level boils at 100º Celsius every time.

However, whenever you discuss something that supposedly happened in the past and no one was there to observe it, it falls into the category of historical science, where people are really making “best guesses” about what they think may have happened in the past to explain what they see in the present.

As we’ve shown, the previous guesses from long-age scientists based on their evolutionary presuppositions regarding ice core measurements were way off. Case in point, the Lost Squadron weren’t the only WW2 planes that were abandoned on the ice in Greenland during the war.

Another less-known example is a B-17 Flying Fortress named My Gal Sal, which crash-landed because of bad weather on June 27, 1942 (the same year the Lost Squadron was, well, lost). The bomber belly-landed on the southwestern coast of the ice cap near what was known then as the Bluie West One airfield (now the Narsarsuaq Airport).

Like the Lost Squadron’s fate, the crew was rescued, but the plane was abandoned. Years later, however, she was also still visible and accessible on the surface. My Gal Sal was revisited in 1965 by a team looking to remove some components from it in order to test them in regard to the effects of the environment.

Like Glacier Girl, she was also later retrieved and restored many years after that (in 1995). However, unlike the Lost Squadron, My Gal Sal was still sitting on the surface where she landed with no significant ice built up around her. And yet, she was sitting quite close to the coast, where scientists are now citing several meters of buildup may occur per year.

So, since ice buildup happens at wildly different rates depending on multiple factors and this has been documented in history, it cannot be trusted as a dating method for periods for ancient history.

Is There a Better Way to Understand Deep Ice Layer Deposits?

Could there be a better way to interpret the massive amount of ice and snow that we see today and evidence that indicates much more ice once covered various land masses on earth in the past, without automatically assuming millions of years of earth history occurred to account for them?

Why yes, there is, and it begins with the historical account of Noah’s flood laid out in Genesis 6–9 in the Bible. Why?

First, let’s think about what we’ve been discussing in this series. The P-38 Lightning from the Lost Squadron that was eventually retrieved and restored was renamed Glacier Girl in reference to where she’d been buried for so long, inside a glacier in Greenland.

The question of how glaciers form, how long it would take to form them, and when and why they did, is linked to the subject of an ice age or—for many long-age believers—the idea of several ice ages having occurred over millennia, which is also linked to ice core dating methods.

The Britannica website outlines it this way:

Ice age, any geologic period during which thick ice sheets cover vast areas of land. Such periods of large-scale glaciation may last several million years and drastically reshape surface features of entire continents. A number of major ice ages have occurred throughout Earth history. The earliest known took place during Precambrian time dating back more than 570 million years.2

Ice Age Explanations

So here we see the typical long-age interpretation of the facts we see today, namely the current ice sheets and other details such as till deposits, moraines, and large areas of scraped rock. These examples are all evidence of glaciers once having grown over vast areas of the planet and then retreating to their current locations.

Biblical creationists have no problems with the facts observed and believe the interpretation of glaciers growing and shrinking, thus leaving such evidence behind, is quite legitimate. What we would disagree with is the time frames proposed and the idea of multiple ice ages having occurred rather than a single ice age taking place a relatively short time ago (beginning approximately 4,300 years ago, just after Noah’s flood).

Do Long-Age Believers Have a Good Explanation for an Ice Age?

A huge problem for long-age believers is that they have no viable mechanism to explain how an ice age could be triggered on our planet. An example comes from no less than the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website.

Based on their research, NOAA produces instructional materials for teachers to help them explain difficult topics to students. In a worksheet on their website titled What Causes Ice Ages, they state the following:

There really is no simple answer to the question of why ice ages occur.3

Although they provide a list of things that they think may have contributed to glacier growth in the past (like perhaps the earth’s orbit was further from the sun occasionally, or the sun itself perhaps produced less energy periodically), all the ideas pertain to mechanisms that would supposedly have caused the earth’s overall temperature to have been cooler in the past.

However, cooler temperatures alone on our planet would not cause an ice age. An ice age requires massive amounts of water from our oceans to be transported onto the earth’s surface through precipitation in the form of ice and snow so that glaciers can build and grow their great mass.

But cold oceans don’t produce much precipitation, while warmer oceans do. The NOAA teacher’s guide seems to recognize the difficulty their proposals face, as they include the following in their lesson:

Many theories have been proposed to explain the causes of ice ages. Any credible theory must explain what caused the ice to build up, how and why the ice advanced and retreated at different times during a glaciation and why the ice eventually disappeared.4

Here they have hit it on the head, which is why all their proposals thus far have failed. If earth’s “temperature switch” was simply turned down, so to speak, the result wouldn’t be an ice age with massive glaciers growing; what it would produce would be a frozen barren tundra.

What Are the Requirements for an Ice Age?

An ice age requires two very specific conditions simultaneously—warm oceans and colder land masses. Why? As I said previously, warm oceans would initiate lots of precipitation, while cold land masses would cause that precipitation to fall in the form of ice and snow which would then accumulate on the colder surface rather than melting and inevitably finding its way back into the oceans.

Now, what historical event could have caused these conditions? Well, as I said earlier, the great flood of Noah’s day that is recorded in Genesis 6–9. The Bible describes the beginning of the flood initiated by the “fountains of the great deep” breaking apart.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. (Genesis 7:11)

Now, we know what happens when the earth’s surface is cracked open because we’ve seen it during volcanic eruptions. Ripping apart the earth results in hot magma rising to the surface, resulting in warmer oceans wherever it occurs underwater.

This could also have been the mechanism for the 40 days of rain described in Scripture: Super-heated steam may have risen into the atmosphere and poured back down in a torrential downpour of rain.

This downpour would have caused massive flooding. The flooding would have ripped up all the biomass, caused rapid deposition of sedimentary layers, and buried organisms trapped in those sediments rapidly. Indeed, the physical evidence of a global flood, as described in the Bible, would be billions of organisms buried in sedimentary rock (which is laid down by water) all over the earth.

Other Effects

Volcanic eruptions can create other atmospheric and climatic effects because of the debris they spew out and jettison into the air. Certain fine particles can reflect sunlight and produce cloud cover, which creates cooler temperatures.

UCAR’s Center for Science Education has an article on volcanoes and climate which states,5

The gases and dust particles thrown into the atmosphere during large volcanic eruptions can influence climate. Particles spewed from volcanoes, like dust and ash, can cause temporary cooling by shading incoming solar radiation if the particles were launched high enough into the atmosphere.

Also, they emphasize that this can have global consequences.

Even though volcanoes are in specific places on Earth, their effects can be more widely distributed as gases, dust, and ash get into the atmosphere. Because of atmospheric circulation patterns, eruptions in the tropics can have an effect on the climate in both hemispheres.6

What We See in God’s Word Matches What We See in God’s World

So here we see from biblical history a perfect mechanism for creating an ice age on our planet, triggered by Noah’s flood. After the flood was over and the continents collided and thrust up out of the oceans, the water would have shed, scouring the landscape.

So here we see from biblical history a perfect mechanism for creating an ice age on our planet, triggered by Noah’s flood.

The now warmer oceans would have resulted in increased precipitation, and the massive amounts of dust in the atmosphere would have created cooler temperatures on land, causing snow to fall on the continents which gradually accumulated into massive glaciers.

After the dust settled (literally), the atmosphere eventually stabilized, the oceans reached their former, more regular temperatures, and the glaciers retreated, leaving behind materials shed from inside the massive bodies they had previously collected as they melted.

So generally, biblical creationists believe biblical and scientific evidence demonstrates one ice age happened after the flood that lasted a maximum of a few hundred years from beginning to end.

Much of the remains of the massive accumulation of compressed ice during that time is still present nearer the poles. This is what long-age scientists are examining and interpreting as evidence of deep time based on their evolutionary, long-age assumptions as to how long such deposition occurs.

However, warmer oceans in the past would have almost certainly resulted in even more rapid and extreme amounts of snow and ice accumulating than we can even imagine today, especially in the first few centuries of the post-flood ice age.

Remember, before the discovery of the Lost Squadron, no one believed several meters of ice per year could accumulate in such a short time because they were assuming that snowfall distribution has been uniform throughout deep time.

And yet, all those previous long-age calculations were shot down in flames by the discovery of the legendary WW2 planes which revealed the assumptions about steady ice accumulation as almost completely unreliable.

The Lost Squadron Changed the Game

So, while the Lost Squadron may not be the silver bullet versus long ages that many Bible believers are perhaps looking for, it is still a fascinating story that definitely put severe cracks into the deep-time paradigm promoted in Western academia.

This should remind us once again that the biblical creation account provides us with a far better explanation of the past than any interpretation of man. It is the true history of the world, given to us by our Creator, Savior, and Redeemer: Jesus.