From: tcc@sentex.net (Douglas Cox)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,alt.fan.publius,alt.atheism,alt.christnet
Subject: Re: glaciers
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 1996 15:58:24 GMT
Organization: TCC
Lines: 218
Message-ID: <4j3qav$9eh@granite.sentex.net>
Reply-To: tcc@sentex.net

On Fri Mar 22, 1996, chris@xerox.com (Chris Heiny) wrote:

>In article <4ikp3r$j75@granite.sentex.net>, tcc@sentex.net 
>(Douglas Cox) writes:
>>In article <4ifraf$f9v@ray.atw.fullfeed.com>, John Hoffman
>><hoffman@mail.atw.fullfeed.com> writes:

>>>Sir,

>>>I read with interest your posting about the ice age in
>>> Wisconsin.  There are many local evidences of glaciation
>>> in the area of Wisconsin in which I live, including such
>>>landscape features as kames, eskers, and drumlins.

>>Why do you think that drumlins, for example, are "evidence" of
>>glaciation? Or, for that matter, kames, or eskers, etc?

>Because, Douglas, we see drumlins, kames, and eskers being
>formed today only in glacial environments, and we see those
>drumlins, kames and eskers that formed in the past only in
>association with other evidences of glacial presence.  We do
>not see *any* of these features forming in non-glacial environments
>today.

But, no one has actually seen drumlins being formed by ice movement in
Antarctica or Greenland, have they? Or eskers, or kames, or even the
rounded stones such as one sees in drift gravel. Some have gone to
these regions looking for these effects, but have not found them. Oh
yes, a few "true believers" amongst the glacialists have labelled some
minor moraine ridges formed in tunnels beneath the ice as "eskers," in
some cases, but these bear no resembence to real ones, IMO. Usually,
the stones deposited by the glaciers are angular, not rounded and
smooth; the internal stratification, if present, is different, and the
scale of the structures that have been reported is so vastly
different, any hopeful comparison to the real thing seems pathetic.
And there are no great waterfalls plunging down through holes in the
ice, eroding deep, cylindrical holes or "moulins" (i.e., potholes)
into the hard rocks beneath the ice. All those mechanisms are
evidently fabrications, and are imaginary, and hypothetical, existing
only in the minds of the glacialists who have derived their ideas from
books, written by others.

>If we were to find a drumlin in, say, the Amazonian rain forest,
>with no evidence of glaciation contemperaneous with the formation
>of the drumlin (esker, or kame, or moraine, or col, or whatever
>-single- glacially formed feature you want), then that might be
>evidence for your assertions that they are formed by the deluge.

L. Agassiz thought he had found evidence of glaciation (erratic
boulders, scratched rocks, fluted valleys etc.) in Brazil in 1865.
Similar "evidence" was found in British Guiana. And equatorial Africa.

These discoveries ought to have suggested that the theory was wrong,
but no... 

The old diluvial theory attributed the drift phenomena to the flood,
and it was supposed that the currents of the flood deposited the
stratified drift, and the fossils included in it. In the glacial
theory of Agassiz, the assumption made in the diluvial theory about a
sedimentary origin of the stratified drift was retained. The glacial
theory, then, retains the same flaws as the older diluvial theory. My
theory of a disintegration origin of the drift, and the boulders in
it, and the patterns of cross strata, etc., does not make this flawed
assumption which leads to so many inconsistencies and contradictions
in both of these theories.

>>One of the interesting things about drumlins, which are streamlined
>>hills, is that some of them consist of stratified gravel, similar to
>>that which occurs in kames and eskers; however, since this stratified
>>gravel is supposed (in the glacial theory) to have been deposited in
>>streams that flowed from a melting glacier,

>No Douglas, this is not required by glacial theory.  Glacial theory
>simply requires that the ice overrun a stratified deposit, one
>that is poorly consolidated or unconsolidated.  This stratified
>deposit may be formed by outwash from that glacier or another on, it
>may have been formed underneath the glacier itself, or it may have
>formed long before the glacier by normal deposition (river, stream,
>lake, sand dune, ocean, whatever).

It seems from your argument that at least two ice ages, or at least,
ice advances, are needed to explain a stratified drumlin. In the first
one, the bedrock becomes ground up into drift gravel, and this drift
is deposited when the ice melts. In the second, the ice sliding over
the previously deposited drift, streamlines the surface into drumlin
forms. But the second ice sheet must have done this in a simply
marvelous fashion, as the weight of the vast ice sheet moving over the
country did not disturb the delicate patterns of cross laminations in
the sand within the stratified drumlins. Furthermore, the second ice
advance, that shaped the surface of the land into drumlins, must not
have deposited any drift whatsoever when it melted. If it did, the
streamlined surface would have been buried or modified by the
deposits, but that is not what we see; the streamlining is undisturbed
by the deposits of the last ice sheet. What happened to them? No one
knows. 

The drumlin forming process in terms of the glacial theory is thus
seen to be extremely complicated. Therefore this process also seems
highly unlikely to have occurred over vast areas, and to have produced
the thousands of drumlins that occur in the world's drumlinized
terrain. A complicated series of events such as the glacial theorists
invoke for drumlins is not an advantage in any theory of science, but
a symptom of flawed reasoning or assumptions, IMO. Complicated,
special circumstances such as the above are detrimental to any
interpretations of drumlins in terms of the glacial theory. 

>> that redeposited its load
>>of debris, the glacial theory appears to require that the ice sheet
>>was moving over the drift that was deposited when it melted. But, I
>>wonder how the glacier could have streamlined the drift, if the ice
>>had previously melted and flowed away in the streams? Seems to me
>>there may be an inherent inconsitency in the theory here; shouldn't
>>the streamlining (if continental glaciers are indeed capable of that
>>sort of thing) have occurred on the bedrock below, rather than on the
>>surface of the drift? But the bedrock is not streamlined. This is very
>>curious.

>Not curious at all, Douglas.  First off, glaciers are know to
>advance and retreat.  Contrary to what you claim, this does not
>mean that the ice "flowed away from the streams", but rather
>is indicative of the location of the terminus (or foot, or snout,
>or whatever) of the glacier.  The ice itself continues to flow,
>but the rate of melting/accumulation changes, in turn affecting
>the equilibrium position of the glacier.  Advance and retreat
>have been observed many times in both continental and
>alpine glaciers.  In several cases, glaciers have been observed
>to advance, push up a terminal moraine, then retreat, and then
>advance and overrun the previously produced moraine. Occasionally
>the ice flow will stagnate, or stall in place for a while, after
>which flow may resume.

Movements of ice sheets such as you describe could never account for
the patterns of drumlins that occur over wide areas, IMO. Have you
ever thought of comparing the patterns of orientation of the
striations on bedrock, with the patterns of drumlin orientations? The
scratches on bedrock frequently show crossing striations indicating
movements in different directions. This is completely different to the
patterns of flow revealed by drumlin patterns, and the two phenomena
require totally different causes. 

The striations on bedrock, which often show several different
directions of movement in one place, can be explained in my theory as
the effects of the expansion of the drift upon its formation by _in
situ_ disintegration. A volume increase of a few percent upon
disintegration of a large area could cause movements of a few feet or
so in the drift in some regions, and the underlying bedrock could
become striated as a result. The same expansion could also thrust up
ridges of gravel, which are known as eskers, and conical mounds, known
as kames, that resemble the little mounds that can be seen on the tops
of ice cubes in the freezer of a refrigerator. As the water freezes in
a rigid tray, its expansion pushes up mounds and ridges on the surface
of the ice cubes, that resemble kames and eskers in shape, and also in
their mechanism of formation.

The drumlin patterns cover wide areas, and show flow patterns
consistent with flooding, but not ice movement. The flow is uphill in
many areas, and may even be from out of the sea, as in Scotland and
Northern Ireland. This suggest currents of water were the cause, not
ice sheets.    

>>While the drumlins in some areas are composed of stratified drift
>>gravel, others consisit of bedrock. Still others are part drift, and
>>part bedrock; that is, there is a mantle of drift overlying a rock
>>core in some of them, or the stoss end of a drumlin may be bedrock,
>>while its tail consists of drift. All these types may occur together,
>>in the same drumlin swarm, having the same general size and shape, and
>>the same orientation pattern. It is very curious, IMO, that a glacier
>>could erode drumlins consisting of hard bedrock into the same form as
>>others in the vicinity that were presumably being formed from
>>unconsolidated gravel and delicately stratified sands.

>>At Rockwood, in Southern Ontario, there are hundreds of deep potholes
>>in dolomite rock; there are signs posted in a park in the area that
>>indicate the potholes formed when waterfalls called "moulins" plunged
>>down through crevasses in the ice, and eroded the rock below, drilling
>>deep, round holes, up to 20 feet in diameter. Now it seems that the
>>glacialists want these waterfalls or "moulins" to sometimes construct
>>great mounds of gravel, called "moulin kames." But here the same
>>process is is invoked to drill holes in the bedrock. Again, there
>>seems to be some inconsistency in the theory.

>>What is really strange, though, is that the potholes at Rockwood are
>>very near some large drumlins, composed of bedrock; the glacial
>>theory, remember, says the drumlins were eroded as the hypothetical
>>ice sheet moved across the region. In this case, it must have come
>>from the southeast, and flowed northwest, climbing up out of the basin
>>of Lake Ontario, creeping gently over the high cliffs of the Niagara
>>Escarpment, towards Rockwood. Now, if the ice moved in this manner,
>>how did all those waterfalls of moulins stay in one location long
>>enough for all those deep potholes to be drilled? And why did hundreds
>>of them form in such a small area? Hmmm...

>Hmm yourself, Douglas.  Stagnation of ice flow, as I mentioned above,
>has been observed many times in the field.  During a period of stagnation
>the ice doesn't move, permitting moulins to form.

>You really ought to familiarize yourself better with glacial
>theory, but somehow I doubt that you will.

On the contrary, real glaciers I have seen in the Alps of Europe and
in Canada deposit debris in moraine ridges consisting of angular
fragments, showing little or none of the characteristics of the drift,
with its rounded boulders and pebbles, that are characteristically
formed as a result of _in situ_ disintegration.

Another thing about the glacial theory that seems anomalous is the
nature of the fossils that occur in the drift. Often the kinds of
animals represented are not those that would suggest a cold climate as
required in the glacial theory. Bones and teeth of many large, extinct
and extant mammals such as lion, mastodon, giant beaver, horse,
hippopotamus, rodents, giant deer, and bear, etc., are characteristic.
Even fossil whale skeletons have been found in materials attributed to
the ice, in Michigan. 

--
Douglas Cox