Ice Core Science

As debate over climate change brews, teams of scientists are working to recreate a history of our earth’s climate. But does the history they are finding disprove the biblical account of earth’s history? 

A key tool in this quest is the history frozen within the ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica. By using a hollow drill scientists are able to drill down and extract long, thin cylinders of ice, called “ice cores”.The cores are made up of layers of ice, appearing something like a translucent tube of Life Savers. Scientists observe that the top layers are formed by annual snowfall. If ancient layers of ice were similarly formed by annual snowfalls and if the chemical composition, levels of pollutants and concentrations of pollens and dust within each layer were a result of the climate at that time, ice cores provide key data to recreating the earth’s climate history over a large expanse of time. 

One ice core illustrates the process. On July 1, 1993 a team of scientists finished drilling and extracting the GISP2 ice core near the centre of Greenland. The entire ice core is 3km long and weighs about 40 tonnes. But how many years does it represent, what does it say about our climate history and what does that history say about the veracity of the biblical account of creation?

It’s not always easy to count the number of layers in an ice core precisely. Scientists use different measurement techniques to compare the results, but these measurements don’t always fully agree and some of the measurement techniques can’t be used further down the core.Also, layers become very thin deeper in the ice—to the point where scientists can’t visually distinguish any layers at all so they employ an indirect way of counting the layers. After checking and adjusting their results, as well as having some friendly arguments along the way, the team of scientists finally arrived at the conclusion that the GISP2 ice core had about 110,000 layers. The scientists then made a critical decision on how to interpret the layers—they assumed all the layers represented individual years. Thus the scientists interpreted their counting of layers in the GISP2 ice core to represent 110,000 years. 

Some have pointed to the ice core dating as evidence that the biblical record is inaccurate. Careful analysis of these scientific studies, however, reveals the apparent challenge is not as conclusive as it is often claimed to be. This is for three reasons. 

Firstly, the work of counting the layers is not a straightforward, precise process. It's more of an art than a science, and that art is strongly impacted by the assumptions and scientific models of those doing the counting. 

Secondly, scientists make the assumption that each single layer represents one year in the history of the ice core. Consequently, the scientific conclusion that the GISP2 ice core represents 110,000 years of climate history, for example, hinges on whether this assumption is true. The scientists themselves acknowledge that it's possible for weather conditions like storms to produce multiple layers of ice in any one particular year.These layers are usually thinner and closely packed together, like the layers that are found at the bottom of the ice core. The impact of forming ice during periods when the earth’s weather varied substantially is not possible to calculate without an independent, detailed record of that variability. This means that the current scientific estimate for the age of the ice core potentially varies dramatically from its actual age. 

Third, there is another explanation for layers in the ice cores. The global Flood recorded in Genesis caused extreme and wildly erratic weather conditions. It likely would have been followed by an Ice Age when the massive ice sheets were formed in Greenland and Antarctica In a short period of time this post-Flood Ice Age would have caused large amounts of snowfall and many layers of ice to be formed through the storms that occurred during this time. This would mean that the series of layers in the ice core could be formed in only a few thousand years.

We have two explanations for the age of the ice cores. The really important question is: which one of them provides the closest estimate for the true age of the cores? The reality is that scientists do not know for certain that their interpretation of the data collected from the ice cores is accurate. As Professor Richard Alley states, “All scientific ideas are subject to revision; we should never be absolutely sure that the truth has been reached.” The reason for this is because scientific conclusions are based on unverifiable assumptions, reductionist models and equivocal data. To paraphrase a wise person, there are assumptions that seem right to a modern scientist but they lead to false conclusions. 

So where can we find the truth regarding the history of the earth? We must examine multiple sources of data. One source is ice cores but we can only verify scientific interpretations of the ice core evidence if we have historical records that we can reconcile these interpretations with. Do we have such a historical record that has proven itself to be accurate? The historic source for ancient history that has been demonstrated to be accurate is, of course, the Bible. Despite significant efforts to discredit it, the validity of the historical accounts in the Bible has proven to be reliable time and time again. And part of that account is the Flood record, key elements of which have been corroborated in the written and oral traditions of multiple cultures around the globe, such as characters in the Chinese language. Scientific interpretations of ice core data that have not been reconciled with the implications of such a global flood on weather patterns and ice formations are potentially wildly off the mark. 

Ice cores are a fascinating area of study. The data extracted—particularly of relatively recent periods when we have collaborating historic evidence to verify weather conditions and exceptional weather events—is valuable in studying recent climate variations. The science around ice cores becomes much more speculative, however, when we extrapolate data into periods during which far less is known about the earth’s condition and when we exclude from our analysis data from the biblical record.  

Dr Sven Ostring is director of Personal Ministries, Sabbath School, Stewardship and Discipleship for the Greater Sydney Conference.