Just because uniformitarian scientists accept there was an Ice Age, or many ice ages, does not mean they can explain its origin. They realize that an ice age requires much cooler summers, much more snow, and a climate change that persists for hundreds of years.

What would cause these factors to come together? It has been repeatedly shown that the disruption caused by the global Flood would lead naturally to this confluence.⁴ However, those who reject the Flood continue to extrapolate present processes millions of years into the past, processes such as climate change and variations in Earth’s orbital geometry. Over the years more than 60 theories have been proposed. Secular Ice Age expert J.K. Charlesworth said about Ice Age theories: “Pleistocene [Ice Age] phenomena have produced an absolute riot of theories ranging ‘from the remotely possible to the mutually contradictory and the palpably inadequate.”⁵

That was back in 1957, however, and many people believe we have made great progress since then. However, the cause of the Ice Age still is unknown, as ice age expert David Alt stated: “Although theories abound, no one really knows what causes ice ages.”⁶

One of the main challenges for the secular model is that colder air is also drier air. Even if they discover a cooling mechanism, the air would be too dry for enough snow to fall for an ice age. As an example, if the average summer temperature of Canada were to fall 12⁰C (22⁰F), the air would become 60% drier.⁷ But this is not a problem for the biblical model because the warm waters just after the Flood would lead to large amounts of evaporation and precipitation.

When secular scientists run their computer models to explore the Ice Age, they find it difficult for any of their models to develop an ice age. But when they force their models to decrease the amount of sunshine by 6%, snow and ice begins to build up. However, the snow and ice sometimes grows over areas that have never been glaciated, such as Tibet and the lowlands of the far north: “We now have glaciation [in their climate model], but mainly outside the area where it existed during the last ice age.”¹³ In stark contrast, the biblical model easily explains the lack of glaciation in these lowlands. The oceans were warm at the beginning of the Ice Age, so the land near them was too warm for glaciation, except in the high mountains.

Because secular Ice Age models ignore the effects of Noah’s Flood, they have numerous difficulties, only some of which are mentioned here. These models are unable to explain either the distribution of large ice sheets or how they developed, demonstrating that their foundational assumptions—uniformitarianism and millions of years—are flawed. However, the biblical post-Flood model provides very plausible explanations and mechanisms for the various Ice Age phenomena.

Noah’s worldwide flood also provides the explanation for dead things buried all over the world ie. the fossils, fossil fuels – oil and coal. As a result, it provides the right answer to the age of the earth. It is thousands not billions of years old. It also demonstrates God does control events on His planet and that He judged and destroyed a lawless humanity just 4000 years ago (all but eight people).

God’s word reveals that in the “last days” before Jesus returns the world will ridicule those that believe Noah’s Flood was a real event when God judged the world. Scripture reveals Jesus will return to judge the nations and He will rule and reign with the resurrected saints on this earth for 1000 years. At the end of His Millennial reign this fallen earth will be destroyed by fire. This immediately precedes the White Throne judgement of the ungodly. God then creates a new heaven and a new earth where the saints will live on for eternity. The ungodly end up in the Lake of Fire which is the second death.

“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,  And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.  For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 2 Peter 3:3-7.

4. Oard, M.J., What caused the Ice Age? Creation 36(3):52–55, 2014; creation.com/ice-age-cause.  5. Charlesworth, J.K., The Quaternary Era, Edward Arnold, London, UK, p. 1,532, 1957.  6. Alt, D., Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods, Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, MT, p. 180, 2001.