Details Relating to the Mild Ice Age Theory

79.  Abundant Food,  Multi-Continental,  Warm Climate.  Same as item 70.

Without explaining how, Michael Oard,¹²⁹ the author of this theory, claims that Siberia and Alaska must have had “mild winters” and little or no permafrost, because those normally frigid lands contain carcasses, abundant bones, large trees in growth positions, and insects and other animals that live in warmer climates.¹⁶⁸ “Mild winters,” a phrase Oard uses often, would still be deadly winters in Siberia and Alaska. Sustained and unseasonably warm winter days and nights are required—without a single exception in 700 years. Are “mild winters” reasonable at those high latitudes during the peak of the Ice Age?

How does food grow in a vast, barren wilderness during the long, dark winter? Each of the millions of mammoths required hundreds of pounds of suitable vegetation daily. Today’s bog vegetation is unsuitable and insufficient. Why didn’t earlier, milder dust storms—as during America’s Dust Bowl Era—destroy the mammoth’s food supply? Also, Oard’s logic avoids the catastrophic implications seen across a 3,000-mile stretch of three continents.  [See “Geographical Extent” on page 274.]

80.  Yedomas and Loess,  Peppered Tusks. Dust and snow storms would not embed “shrapnel” in mammoth tusks or deposit the vast amount of carbon and organic matter found in yedomas, especially inside the Arctic Circle during the Ice Age. Also, loess is qualitatively different from storm-generated dust. Loess particles are angular, giving them the ability to form vertical surfaces, such as in cliffs, loess dwellings, and furniture. [See Figure 163 on page 277.] Most dust particles are rounded by years of erosion.  What was the source of so much loess?

81.  Rock Ice.  Same as item 73.

82.  Frozen Muck.  This theory does not explain why 4,000-foot layers of muck have been found. If even a few hundred of feet of blowing dust accumulated in some places, that dust would have prevented the erosion of more dust directly below.  Why would so much vegetation be mixed in the blowing dust?

83.  Sudden Freezing.  Snow and dust are excellent insulators, because they trap so much air. Large animals suddenly buried in thick layers of snow and dust would be insulated from the cold atmosphere. Their residual body heat would promote decay, delay freezing, and hinder preservation.  [See Hoyle’s comments on page 286.]

84.  Suffocation.  Large animals killed in sudden snow or dust storms would die from exposure and starvation, not suffocation.

85.  -150°F.  Sudden storms that drop temperatures to -150°F are unheard of, even in Antarctica. [See “Why Did It Get So Cold So Quickly” on page 280.] If temperatures at the peak of the Ice Age (700 years after the flood) were that severe, why didn’t the mammoths (and other temperate animals buried nearby) die centuries earlier by starvation when temperatures were warmer than -150°F but still deadly cold?

According to this theory, the greatest temperature differences between oceans and continents would have been soon after the flood, not 700 years later, after the oceans had cooled. Storm intensities would have diminished during those 700 years. Mammoths, and the other temperate animals found with them, attempting to migrate from the “mountains of Ararat” to their present graveyards, should have died before they reached their destination and before 700 years had passed—long before the mammoth population increased to 10 million.

86.  Large Animals.  Same as item 77.

87.  Summer-Fall Deaths.  Oard acknowledges that most of the known times of deaths were in the late summer or early fall, even though the most dangerous season in Siberia and Alaska is winter, especially during the Ice Age.

88.  Vertical Compression. Burial in a dust storm should not produce—before or soon after death—the vertical compression, crushing, and bleeding found in Berezovka.

89.  Other/Migration to North America.  How did mammoths migrate from Siberia to North America? Oard argues that the maximum volume of ice stored on the continents during the Ice Age was much less than most experts estimate. (Their estimates, if correct, would lower today’s sea level 300–400 feet, enough to open a wide land bridge at the Bering Strait.)¹⁶⁹ Oard admits the difficulty he has explaining the migration,¹⁷⁰ but believes that at the peak of the mild Ice Age, a narrow land bridge briefly opened.¹⁷¹ At another point, he claims that “... mammoths and other animals had thrived and migrated over the entire Northern Hemisphere at the beginning of the Ice Age.”¹⁷² [emphasis added] (The hydroplate theory and simple geometry explain why sea level following the flood was much lower, making migrations between Asia and the Americas possible for a few centuries and creating the land bridge at the Bering Strait more than 1,000 miles wide.)

90.  Other/Deep Freezing. If the present cold temperatures of Siberia and Alaska began after a global flood about 5,000 years ago, trees and soil 1,900 feet below the Earth’s surface would not have had time to freeze, and the buried trees should have decayed. However, if preflood forests were buried in extremely cold, muddy hail at the beginning of the flood, as explained by the hydroplate theory, the deep frozen forests and soil, described on page 272, would be explained.

91.  Other/Cold Winds. This theory claims that a warm Arctic Ocean would produce warm winds that would make Siberia and Alaska tolerable. Actually, a warm Arctic Ocean would have the opposite effect. Strong updrafts over the Arctic Ocean would pull cold air from the surrounding continents in over coastal regions.

92.  Other/Population Increase.  It is doubtful that mammoths and their young migrated 4,500 miles from “the mountains of Ararat” to Siberia during the Ice Age and increased their numbers to 10 million—all in just 700 years. Where have such large animals, that did not need to migrate, ever increased their numbers that much and that quickly, even in a favorable environment? Extrapolating population growth rates and appealing to geometric progressions overlooks the requirements for abundant food, liquid water, and temperate habitats. Obviously, photosynthesis does not occur inside the Arctic Circle in the dead of winter, Ice Age or no Ice Age.