Posted: Oct 23, 2019 5:37 pm
When I was young and part of a creationist cult, a major talking point 'proving' Noah's Flood was that "palm trees have been found in Arctic permafrost with intact fruit", which supposedly indicated a pre-Flood 'hothouse climate'. I later learned that this idea was borrowed by the cult from Henry Morris' "The Genesis Flood" and from George McCready Price's writings. I also was told several decades ago that the palm tree trunks were actually mummies (what exactly is mummified wood?), and that the claim of frozen fruit was nonsense.
In recent years geologists have found the Eocene thermal maximum of about 45 million years ago, and that roughly 25 million years ago the Arctic and Antarctic began to freeze. Another creationist staple was that the substantial numbers of large animals found in permafrost or recently melted permafrost were 'quick frozen' in mysterious ways. I recently saw information on the melting of a big hole in Siberian permafrost that shows that large parts of the Arctic during glacial times became rather strange places where spotty melting of permafrost resulted in semi-melted ponds dotting the landscape, which became traps for all manner of animals such as mammoths, so the 'quick frozen mammoths' of Henry Morris et al are now satisfactorily explained.
Given all that, can anyone point me to sources that speak of the above in detail? In particular, that explain how up to a kilometer or more of permafrost accumulated in the Arctic? Especially when Eocene sea levels were up to 60 meters higher than today? I'm especially interested in tracking down where all the now-frozen mud came from. In areas where mountains have eroded and dumped sediments, the sources are fairly well known. How about for Arctic permafrost sediments?
What got me thinking about this stuff was an article on the increased rate of melting of permafrost:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1 ... n=trending
I'm somewhat grateful that I'll probably be dead by the time the shit hits the fan big time.
In recent years geologists have found the Eocene thermal maximum of about 45 million years ago, and that roughly 25 million years ago the Arctic and Antarctic began to freeze. Another creationist staple was that the substantial numbers of large animals found in permafrost or recently melted permafrost were 'quick frozen' in mysterious ways. I recently saw information on the melting of a big hole in Siberian permafrost that shows that large parts of the Arctic during glacial times became rather strange places where spotty melting of permafrost resulted in semi-melted ponds dotting the landscape, which became traps for all manner of animals such as mammoths, so the 'quick frozen mammoths' of Henry Morris et al are now satisfactorily explained.
Given all that, can anyone point me to sources that speak of the above in detail? In particular, that explain how up to a kilometer or more of permafrost accumulated in the Arctic? Especially when Eocene sea levels were up to 60 meters higher than today? I'm especially interested in tracking down where all the now-frozen mud came from. In areas where mountains have eroded and dumped sediments, the sources are fairly well known. How about for Arctic permafrost sediments?
What got me thinking about this stuff was an article on the increased rate of melting of permafrost:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1 ... n=trending
I'm somewhat grateful that I'll probably be dead by the time the shit hits the fan big time.