Icecore and other related dating schemes: Part VI Present melting rates of Greenland icecaps indicate they would not have survived the hipsothermal: In essence, the condition described by Pat Epps, in which the snow-firn layer was saturated with water, occurs over the entire icecap every summer and contaminates all the ice. But what no one has discussed regarding ice cores, as far as I know, is the period known as the hipsithermal, which lasted from 8,000 to about 2,800 years ago, when the temperature was greater by 4 to 5 F.34 According to P. Borisov, a meteorology and climatology professor at Leningrad State University: During the last 18,000 years, the warming was particularly appreciable during the Middle Holocene. This covered the time period of 9,000 to 2,500 years ago and culminated about 6,000 to 4,000 years ago, i.e., when the first pyramids were already being built in Egypt. It should be noted that the dating of the beginning of the culmination of warming varies. [H.] Gross dates it at about 7,500 years ago, [with] the culmination [lasting] until 4,500 years ago; whereas, according to M. A. Lavrova, the culmination began about 6,000 years ago...[and] lasted until 4,000 years ago. The most perturbing questions of the stage under consideration are: Was the Arctic Basin iceless during the culmination of the optimum?...What was, in relation to this, the reaction of the climatic conditions on the continents? Many scientists hold that, during the climatic optimum, the Arctic Basin was free of ice. C. Brooks substantiates his assertion by the fact that there was a relatively rich flora and no ice on Spitsbergen; there were warm water [mollusks] and the temperature of the open Arctic Basin and its coast was higher than it is today. At the same time, a [2 to 2.5 C] rise in...the surface water [for the mollusks to live] and of the layer of air nearest [to] the ground...has been very well demonstrated by a number of independently conducted studies using different methods. The permafrost, which covers the Arctic Basin, greatly deteriorated during the period of its warming. Thus, in the north and northwest of Siberia, the melting reached a depth of [200 to 300 meters]. The mountain glaciers diminished considerably and, in some places, disappeared altogether. How did the climate react to the disappearance of ice in the Arctic Basin? The vegetative zones advanced toward the pole. On the Eurasian continent, this latitudinal shift amounted to [4 to 5] in the west and to [1 to 2] in the east. Some plant species advanced their northern boundaries as much as 1,000 [kilometers]. Forests extended right up to the Barents Coast and the oak linden and filbert reached the shores of the White Sea. The information available warrants the assumption that, on the European continent, the tundra and forest-tundra zones disappeared completely. In the northern part of Asia, plant fossils were found only 80 [kilometers] from Cape Chelyuskin and peat-moss was discovered on Novaya Zemlya. In Inner Alaska and the Yukon, the absolute age of the peat deposits is estimated at 5,000 years. Hornwort has been found in deposits 5,400 years old, in northeast Canada, at a latitude of [64 19"N] and longitude [102 4"W]. Now hornwort only extends to latitude [59 14"N, a difference of 350 miles].... The culmination of the climate optimum of the Middle Holocene began to fade 4,000 years ago, and the ice sheet of Arctic Basin began to reappear about 3,000 years ago.35 (Emphasis added.) Velikovsky also documented warmer climate, up to the last catastrophe he described 2,800 years ago.36 According to C. E. P. Brooks, the hipsithermal ended in one year with a climate catastrophe: Then came an unusually...cold winter, the icecap obtained a footing, and perhaps in the course of a single season, covered the greater part of the Arctic Ocean. The result was a sudden great change in the climate of Europe; the conditions of today came in "with the appearance of a catastrophe." The icecap, once formed, kept the winter temperature below the critical point by its own power of persistence.37 Since the Arctic climate, from around 8,000 to 2,800 years ago, was much warmer than at present and underwent a catastrophic end, this means that every summer, if there was an icecap covering Greenland prior to Velikovsky's catastrophe, it had to melt even more strongly, for longer summer periods, starting more to the north than at present, but the amount of the melting occurred during the entire period of Velikovsky's catastrophic scenarios. This precludes that any uncontaminated signal of the climate could be derived from any ice of this period in Greenland. Ice melts for seven to eight weeks at Thule presently. Because it was warmer during this period, both the ice and the snow-firn layer had to have melted much more than at present. In KRONOS, Rose showed that one must drill in a region of little to no summer melting so as to meet acceptable criteria to evaluate climate from ice layers. Rose stated one of the drill site requirements for proper analysis of the climate records: "It had to be at a spot far enough north that there was negligible summer melting."38 Based on all of the above, there would have been extensive summer melting on the entire Greenland icecap from 8,000 to 2,800 years ago, or during the entire period of Velikovsky's catastrophes, if the icecaps existed. But Ellenberger and Mewhinney are oblivious to this, saying that they will determine climate evidence from ice that experts say should not show extensive summer melting. As Hans Oeschger explained, the Dye 3 ice core exhibited temperature "changes during the Wisconsin [Ice Age, which] need further confirmation by measurements on other ice cores to exclude artifacts due to melt layers."39 (Emphasis added.) This authority on ice cores claims that one must not assume temperature regimes from ice cores that have formed in areas of melt. However, long before the more northern cores were drilled in Greenland, Ellenberger and Mewhinney claimed that they knew the temperatures from cores which Oeschger had said needed confirmation. Therefore, even if the icecap existed before then, which I strongly doubt because of the ancient maps, the case presented by Ellenberger and Mewhinney ignores the fundamental evidence of possible melting contamination. Furthermore, since this climatic optimum period encompassed the entire globe, then the same conditions had to pertain to the Antarctic icecap. Now, not only does water percolating through the snow-firn porous layers contaminate the snow and firn with false readings of oxygen-16 and oxygen-18, it also dilutes acids in the snow and firn layers. That is, if acid is introduced from volcanic activity in the northern hemisphere and is incorporated into snow which falls on the icecap, then it must not be diluted with water in order to remove it from its original position in the snow and firn layers. But yearly summer melting may do that, destroy the original acid signal and, maybe, deposit dilute acid elsewhere. Thus, any acid signal found in the layers is of dubious origin. In Part I of Sean Mewhinney's "Ice Cores and Common Sense," he stated that volcanic aerosols from many well-known eruptions have left acidity markers in the Greenland ice, including those from "a major eruption at Candlemas Island roughly 3,200 years ago."40 Of great importance is the accurate dating of tephra, clastic material ejected from volcanoes, so as to definitively date volcanic eruptions. These are dated by themoluminescence and by other methods. According to Glenn W. Berger, "no single, reliable, physical dating technique has been available for the time range from a few hundred years up to several hundred thousand years for both distal and proximal tephra layers."41 As late as January, 1992, the dating of volcanic eruptions was known not to be completely reliable. Despite what Ellenberger and Mewhinney claim, approximate dates given by different methods do not legitimize the methods; unreliable methods remain unreliable even when their results tend to agree. Mewhinney omitted Bernard Newgrosh's evidence: "Nor do the ice cores record the largest `frost signature' in the BC record in the Mount St. Helens eruption, whose ash is radiocarbon-dated to c. 2035 BC."42 Mewhinney and Ellenberger suggested that volcanic eruptions in the latitudes of Mount St. Helen leave an acid signal in the Greenland icecap. But, as Newgrosh showed, such is not the case. If Velikovsky's acidic signatures are missing because, as Mewhinney and Ellenberger claim, they never happened, then where is the acid signature from a major 4,000-year-old eruption? Are we to also assume it never happened? If the ice cores were really accurate, this acid signal should have been detected. I believe that this volcanic signal made before Velikovsky's catastrophe was not detected because the deeper ice was not built up gradually, but rapidly and catastrophically. If the build-up was gradual, the signal would have been detected. This is not a small point, but, as we will see, the truly major points of evidence against what Ellenberger and Mewhinney suggest cannot be explained away. If the icecaps were built up suddenly, the acid and dust would have been deposited all through the ice and not at just one level. This is the fundamental error made by Ellenberger and Mewhinney. They have maintained, in the face of accurate maps of Greenland and Antarctica, that there existed immense icecaps over these land masses before Velikovsky's Venus catastrophe. But the maps indicate that there were no major continental icecaps in these regions and, therefore, the icecaps were created in a short catastrophic event--not in tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but in less than a year. This is, I believe, the crux of the debate. If the icecaps were created as Velikovsky's scenario suggests, there should be clear evidence of this fact and that evidence should contradict the uniformitarian analysis and concept Ellenberger and Mewhinney have presented. There is a more important reason for being skeptical about volcanic acid, particularly during the period of Velikovsky's scenario. One of the basic premises of glaciologists is that they believe they know exactly which specific, ancient acid signal in the ice core belongs to a specific, ancient volcanic eruption (2,000 to 7,000 years old). But this is based purely on assumption. They cannot know with certainty whether or not this is the case because volcanic tephra dating techniques are not completely reliable. The glaciologists' entire concept is based on circular reasoning. I had pointed out to Ellenberger, while in Canada, that the volcanologists claimed the acid signal reported by Mewhinney for Santor¡ni (Thera) was 15 times greater than Santor¡ni could produce. So how can anyone claim to know the origin of any acid signal?! When we are forced to go back into ancient times--when precise reports of volcanic activity outside the civilized world were neither reported nor dated reliably--one can only guess which acid signal comes from which volcano. This point is made specifically clear by Walter Sullivan in a New York Times article: "Fifty-seven of 69 [volcanic] events recorded [in the Greenland ice core] for the last 2,000 years were matched with known eruptions."43 This means that over 18% of the eruptions are traced to unknown volcanic events. However, in the deeper ice, from 2,000 to 7,000 years ago, during the events of Velikovsky's scenario where this evidence is supposedly crucial, the correlation of acid signals with known volcanic eruptions was "only [30%] of the older record to 7000 BC."44 That is, 70% of the volcanic signals are of unknown origin. When seven out of ten signals are of unknown origin, there is a clear probability that the signals found in the ice may have originated from one of the seven unknown volcanic events. The entire case reflects circular reasoning. Sullivan is very careful to use terms which indicate that the precision related to the correlations is not truly known: "Ash believed to have come....A prominent ash layer at a depth corresponding to 4083 BC may have come from....[T]he one believed to have occurred at Santor¡ni....[T]here are exceptions to known acid signals in the ice core....The earliest exactly dated eruption was that of Vesuvius...in AD 79."45 This careful use of words reflects exactly what I presented above. By circular reasoning, each piece is fit into place. Ellenberger and Mewhinney have simply ignored this approach so as to provide us with their interpretation of data which is not proven. Sullivan has told us that, between 2,000 and 7,000 years ago--when Velikovsky's catastrophes had to have occurred, 70% of the volcanic acid signals cannot be matched with anything! Yet Ellenberger and Mewhinney suggest that such a record can clearly disprove Velikovsky's hypothesis. With 70% of the volcanic acid signal correlation missing during Velikovsky's catastrophic timeframe, very little is secure and the evidence touted by Ellenberger and Mewhinney proves either extremely inconclusive or without real merit. For example, Hapgood presented a list of glacial eruptions based on radiocarbon dates in The Path of the Pole.46 Here is an abbreviated sample: Date (Years) Place 8,620 ñ 350 Japan 11,520 ñ 400 Japan 11,720 ñ 220 Japan 12,750 ñ 350 Montana, United States 13,800 ñ 300 Costa Rica It is clear that, with eruption value variations between 220 to 400 years, the dating of volcanic eruptions is anything but precise. Yet Ellenberger and Mewhinney say that the volcanic eruptions are precisely dated. Why did they not give the tephra dates for the supposedly known volcanic eruptions--which happened between 2,000 and 7,000 years ago--and, more importantly, the variation range for these dates based on radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence, or another dating method? If they had, I believe that their assertions about the accuracy of this evidence would crumble. Let us put this evidence to a uniformitarian analysis. "During the 20th century, there have been eruptions in 1908, 1911, 1918, 1923, 1928, 1942, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1955 and 1971, plus Mount St. Helens and Mount Pinatuba, which occurred after 1971."47 There are 13 eruptions per century. If we put half of the eruptions in the northern hemisphere and half in the southern hemisphere, then there are 6.5 eruptions in the northern hemisphere that may be found in the Greenland icecap and in tree ring chronologies. When we apply this known figure to the period between 2800 BP and 3500 BP, we would expect to have this same average number of eruptions going on for seven centuries. Let us now date these eruptions via carbon-14 analysis, with a plus-minus tolerance of 100 years. Now, so as to be over 95% accurate, this requires two standard deviations of plus-minus 100 years; in other words, plus-minus 200 years or a 400-year range for any dated volcanic eruption. This means that, for any dated volcanic eruption, there are 6.5 times four centuries, or 26 other volcanic eruptions that could be dated for the one chosen. Let us, then, remove 30% of all 26 volcanic eruptions that fit into this period (since 70% are of unknown origin) as possibly being linked to supposedly known volcanic events. This comes out to eight volcanic events removed from consideration, but also leaves us with 18 other volcanic events, each of which is of an unknown and an undated eruption, and each of which could be the one that actually occurred in place of the eight accepted events. All of this means that the Santorini volcano, which is supposed to have erupted in -1628 and to have left an acid signal in the Greenland icecap, as well as frost damage in tree rings of southwestern Bristlecone pines and Irish oaks, could just have easily been the effect of one of the 18 other volcanic eruptions that have never been discovered. In fact, the same analysis fits every supposedly known volcanic eruption for the 700-year period under discussion. Even if we cut this number in half, we still find that any of nine unknown eruptive signals in the Greenland ice core could be responsible for the one that has been assigned. Therefore, it is unrealistic and irrational to propose that the signals in the Greenland icecap, from this period of time, correlate with precisely dated volcanic eruptions since volcanic eruptions from this period cannot be precisely, nor even remotely, dated when any one signal in the ice core could have originated from 18 other unknown eruptions. How can anyone know that a volcanic signal found at one layer is precisely related to a known eruption without also reasoning that the ice core and the dating of volcanic eruptions are perfectly accurate? Since we are told that the dating of volcanic eruptions is not completely reliable, the acid signals of unknown origin become a significant impediment to concluding anything about the era of Velikovsky's catastrophes. It may very well be that the oxygen-16 and oxygen-18 layers are created by gas diffusion and that the volcanic signals come from other eruptions than those suggested, even from subsurface oceanic volcanoes that have never been fully evaluated for past eruption histories. Now, this long discussion regarding ice cores may leave the impression that I accept that Greenland and Antarctica had large icecaps during Velikovsky's time frame. I have merely been pointing out problems with the uniformitarian ice-layering process that has been proposed by Ellenberger and Mewhinney. What I wish to emphasize is that there is physical evidence that contradicts this gradualistic interpretation. What would happen in Greenland during the hipsithermal, running from about 8000 to about 3000 BP, under a temperature regime 4 or 5 F hotter than the present? According to Milankovich supporters, this temperature rise would end an Ice Age and melt away the glaciers over North America and Europe. However, when the climatologists discovered this type of temperature rise over the entire Arctic region, they stated that Greenland icecap survived. The continental icecaps melted away rapidly at the end of the Ice Age, but Greenland did not. Borisov had told us that the Siberian permafrost sank from 200 to 300 meters. Think of what would happen if this occurred all over the Arctic region. According to Clyde Orr, Jr., "the annual precipitation in the Arctic is less than in some desert areas. The Arctic gives the appearance of being a wasteland of lakes, bogs and marshes only because the ground, permanently frozen a few feet down, impedes drainage."48 But this did not stop drainage during the hipsithermal. Not only could water drain away but, with the sea ice removed, the Arctic climate became moist: "Coastal-area climates are especially influenced by the sea, where the prevailing winds blow inward over the land,...tending to be marine in nature. They are, thus, subject to lesser extremes of temperature."49 Consider, then, the entire Arctic Ocean without ice most the year and with longer, warmer spring, summer and fall seasons. There would be both more snowfall and more warm rainfall removing the snow cover and the ice cover. A marine climate would create a more temperate environment because water vapor over the Arctic region would act as a greenhouse gas, holding the day's heat within the atmosphere. Consider, then, 24 hours of sunlight, based on the present tilt of the Earth, for several months in a warm, marine, Arctic environment. The rainfall would occur often, removing the snow and ice due to the warmer air. Winters would still be dry periods because the cold allows for little snowfall. In such a climate, the icecap over Greenland would be removed rapidly. According to Borisov: The British paleoclimatologist, C. Brooks, holds that a rise of only [1 C] in the surface temperature of the Earth would be enough to make the entire ice sheet of the Arctic Basin unstable. The thermal processes are especially effective on the borderline between the melting and freezing of water. The phase conversions [from water to snow to ice], within one degree, are accompanied by big changes in the absorption of solar radiation at the surface of the sea. It has been calculated that, as a result of the melting of the sea ice, eight times as much heat is absorbed from solar radiation by the Arctic Basin as is necessary to reduce the thickness of the continental ice at the rate of 0.5 [meters] a year.50 According to Orr, Jr: A [one-degree] shift in mean annual temperature is equivalent to roughly [100] miles of latitude; one degree is the difference between the climates of Baltimore and Philadelphia....A [five-degree] rise, if maintained a few thousand years, would surely melt some of the six million square miles of ice and snow now collected at the poles, thereby raising the levels of the oceans throughout the world. Such an increase would, very likely, bring tropical conditions to most of the Earth.51 He described what has happened on the Earth based on only a 1 to 2 F rise over the last century and into the present one: During the last century, temperatures have risen in the Northern Hemisphere, as a whole, somewhere between [1 and 2 F]. The general change has been in the form of milder winters, with the colder areas receiving the most increase and warm areas being less affected. Spitsbergen and eastern Greenland have, in recent years, experienced average winter temperatures between [6 and 13 F], warmer than they were at the turn of the century. Spitsbergen's harbor used to be icebound from October through June; now it is open seven months a year. The growing season in Finland has increased some [20] days during the last [100] years. Lakes in northern Russia freeze seven days later and break up an average of five days earlier. Subzero temperatures are only half as common now in Montreal as they were in the late 1800s; the snowfall, which averaged 130 inches in the 1880s, has in recent years reached only about 80 inches. With only a few exceptions, glaciers from the Alps to Alaska have been shrinking. Some hotels built in Switzerland at the turn of the [last] century to front upon scenic wonderlands of ice now do not have glaciers in view. The Thames and Tiber rivers, once habitually ice-covered in winter, have not frozen over for years.... That the northern hemisphere has been warming is shown most dramatically by its fauna and flora. Birds, justly famous for reading weather signs, have shifted northward. The cardinal, tufted titmouse, mockingbird, and hooded warbler, once regarded as southern habitants, have been found in recent years in the northcentral states and even in New England. Species that used to migrate south with winter now stay north throughout the year. Northern Europe is being invaded by Mediterranean birds. Fifty years ago, the opossum was rarely seen north of Virginia; now opossums are common as far north as Boston. Deer, moose and badgers are moving north also. Even fish are migrating; whiting, king mackerel, halibut, and haddock range further north than they have ever been known to do before. The cod, once unknown in Greenland, is currently a food staple of the Eskimos. Larch, spruce, yellow birch, sugar maple, black ash and white pine-trees that demand cold weather--have been growing farther north also. Our Midwestern corn belt extends [500] miles further north; wheat cultivation has advanced some [200 to 300] miles into Canada. Once frozen Russian steppes that never knew a plow have been brought into production in recent years. Scandinavian mountainsides that were covered with ice for centuries are presently being plowed; forests have been inching up the mountain sides.... In Waterton Glacier International Park, along the United States-Canadian border, during the first half of this century, several of the largest glaciers completely disappeared while others shrank anywhere from [60 to 75%].52 (Emphasis added.) With a 1 to 2 F temperature shift, the average winter temperature rose 6 to 13 F over Spitsbergen and Greenland. According to Borisov, between 1890 and 1940, there was a 1 to 2 F rise over the Earth which averaged 0.6 C.53 But what was its rise in the polar latitudes? The rise in the air temperature was particularly noticeable in the high latitudes, especially in winter. In the 40-odd years [between 1896 and 1938]...the mean annual temperature [in the Arctic basin] had risen 3.9 C, the December temperature [rose] 9.4 C [and] the summer temperature changed hardly at all.54 (Emphasis added.) Confirming this, Brooks stated that the "magnitude of the change in the Arctic is shown by the mean winter temperatures of Spitsbergen, which rose by 16 F between 1911 [to] 1920 and 1931 [to] 1935. The edge of the main area of Arctic ice receded toward the pole by some hundreds of miles."55 It is clear that small temperature rises over the Earth have their most pronounced effects not in the tropics or temperate zones but in the polar regions. With an overall circulation model, R. L. Newson showed that if the Arctic icecap melted and the ocean temperature was kept at the freezing point of ocean water, the winter air temperature over Canada and Siberia would rise 10 to 30 C and, over the Arctic Ocean, it would rise 20 to 40 C.56 Employing a different circulation model, M. Warshaw and R. R. Rapp found that the temperatures over the Arctic basin would be similar to those found by Newson.57 What, then, would ensue with a 4 to 5 F rise? According to James L. Dyson, during the hipsithermal, the "mean annual temperature of Svalbard [Spitsbergen] rose above the freezing point."58 The end result: a temperate climate. Measurements on Greenland's northeastern glaciers, carried out between 1952 and 1954, showed that they were losing nearly 100 gm/ cm2 [grams per square centimeter] averaged over the whole glacier surface for one year--equivalent to a depth of water of nearly one meter. Since all parts of the glacier showed a greater loss of ice in one year than was compensated by accumulation of snow, the whole of the glacier is said to be in the ablation area.59 The ablated ice is replaced by ice farther in, toward the center of the Greenland icecap. During the early Middle Ages, according to Borisov, the Arctic "summer temperatures were [1 to 2 C] higher."60 According to Brooks: Icelanders settled in Greenland in the [10th century AD]....The settlers brought with them cattle and sheep, which were successfully reared at first, and they even attempted to grow grain, but, before very long, the colonies became dependent on supplies from Norway. Norway, itself, was passing through a time of stress, however, and the visits of ships became fewer and fewer, until some time in the [15th] century [when] they ceased altogether and the colonies were lost sight of. For many centuries, their fate was unknown, but the history of the Eastern Settlement has now been made out by excavations of a Danish archaeological expedition at Herjolfsnes, near Cape Farewell. The most important evidence is derived from the excavation of the church yard, in soil which is now frozen solid throughout the year, but which, when the bodies were buried, must have thawed for a time in summer, because the coffins, shrouds, and...bodies were penetrated by the roots of the plants. At first, the ground thawed to a considerable depth, for the early coffins were buried...deeply. After a time, these early remains were permanently frozen in, and later burials lie nearer and nearer to the surface....Finally, at least [500] years ago, the ground became permanently frozen and has remained in that condition ever since, thus preserving the bodies.61 This is what occurs with a 1 to 2 C rise over four centuries. The central icecap was unable to maintain the ice in the ablation zone during this longer period. What would happen to Greenland with a 4 to 5 F rise in Earth temperature for, perhaps, 5,000 years? As J. B. Charlesworth explained: During the Optimum period [hipsithermal], the distribution of ice in Europe was drastically different from now. This snowline in Norway was [400 to 500 meters] higher and the Scandinavian glaciers melted away almost completely....[O]nly the highest summits reached the snowline. In Iceland, the Vatnajokull shrank possibly to a few icecaps on the highest lava-cones....The ice in Spitsbergen is, likewise, a distinct [and relatively new] glaciation, though it may have persisted in Northeast Land since kames and till are associated with raised beaches.62 Charlesworth presented a broad picture of the fact that, during the hipsithermal, there were warmer seas and warmer lands, reduced to completely removed glaciers all across the Arctic and near-Arctic regions: The postglacial warm period has been the subject of two international congresses, a botanical one...and a geological one....A. G. Nathorst, on the evidence of the flora, the freshwater and marine mollusks, and a few invertebrates, showed that it extended over the North Atlantic region.... Warm mollusks inhabited the "raised beach sea" about the North Atlantic. Alien species, no longer living in the local waters, tenanted Spitsbergen seas.... Marine algae...also spread as far north as these islands and Atlantic algae in the northern part of the White Sea....During the same...period,...other warm shells lived off King Charles Land, Franz Joseph Land, Novaya Zemlya, North Siberia, and in the White Sea, where [temperate shelled species] today [are] restricted to its warmer parts.... The same warm sea is registered by the occupance of [temperate-type mollusks] in the raised beaches of Ellesmere [Island] and of warmer shells in Baffin [Island], Melville Peninsula and Southampton Island.... Greenland shells, when the sea stood 10 [meters] higher than now, were then thicker and bigger and included more southerly forms. [The mollusks,] whose present northern limit is Newfoundland, ranged north of the Arctic Circle and...into east Greenland, where the sea temperature was [the same as that] of a latitude [520 miles] farther south.... This general sea in the colder portion of the North Atlantic is [borne] out in other ways. The modern ice in [southwestern] and [northeastern] Greenland, and in Spitsbergen, has moraines which contain marine shells--including at Green Bay,...which no longer dwells in Spitsbergen waters....63 The evidence indicates that the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans had a temperature shift corresponding to the temperature range of warmer water located, at present, 750 miles farther south. It is believed that the Greenland icecap existed in such a warm temperature regime. But what about the land temperatures, as explained by the plants that grew in these northern latitudes? Charlesworth stated that higher land temperatures during the hipsithermal are exhibited by land vertebrates, such as reptiles, in Denmark and Scandinavia whose present distribution is Mediterranean-Pontian: A number of marsh and freshwater plants...had a wider distribution toward the north, as had the water chestnut,...e.g., in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Russia where the short autumns make it impossible to ripen the fruit today.... Trees grew [even farther north] in Norway's outermost islands and as far as Ingo Island, off North Cape.... The submediterranean oak,...whose northern limit today runs the Alsace, the Jura Mountains, east Alps, Bohemia and Hungary,...extended in the Optimum time possibly as far as the North [and the Baltic seas].... Additional evidence is given by...peats and relics in Greenland--the northern limits may have been displaced northward through several degrees of latitude...and [by] other plants in Novaya Zemlya, and by peat and ripe fruit stones [fruit pits]...in Spitsbergen that no longer ripen in these northern lands. Various plants were more generally distributed in Ellesmere [Island and] birch grew more widely in Iceland....64 The point to stress is that large trees should never be able to grow on islands north of the Arctic Circle. As explained by Ivan T. Sanderson, "pieces of large tree trunks of the types [found]...do not and cannot live at those latitudes today for purely biological reasons. The same goes for huge areas of Siberia."65 As Charlesworth explained above, fruit does not ripen during short autumns at these high latitudes. The spring and summer seasons had to be much longer for any seeds from these temperate trees to germinate and grow. Peats were found on Greenland, however, we are told that peat is formed "chiefly in temperate, humid climates by the accumulation and partial decomposition of vegetable remains under conditions of deficient drainage."66 According to Brooks, "peat bogs...require a rainfall of at least 40 inches a year and a mean temperature above 32 F."67 According to E. C. Pielou, there were temperate forests on the Seward Peninsula, in Alaska and the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, in Canada's Inuvik Region, facing the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean; and at Dubawnt Lake, in Canada's Keewatin Region, west of Hudson Bay.68 In essence, we have temperate forests near the Arctic Ocean, across from Siberia to Norway and from Alaska to Hudson's Bay. Temperate forests were also found on Spitsbergen, the outermost islands of Norway, and there was rich vegetation on Ellesmere Island and Novaya Zemlya. Temperate conditions existed for thousands of years both east and west of Greenland and at all the Greenland latitudes. This, of course, would explain why mammoths and other large animals were able to live, during this period, throughout these land regions. Therefore, it is more than reasonable to expect that Greenland did not escape the fate of all these regions, that it lost its icecap and grew a lush vegetation. But it is assumed Greenland was glaciated all this time and no plants that do not grow there now ever lived there during the hipsithermal. Nonetheless, during an expedition to northeast Greenland, from a dike ridge of a glacier, crushed plant parts were being exuded through the ice. According to Louise A. Boyd, the material contained silt, which gave off a powerful odor like that of decaying vegetable matter and could be sensed 820 feet from the source. The silt was examined for fossils by Dr. Esa Hyyppa of the Geological Survey of Finland, who reported the following: Macroscopic Fossils. The silt examined contained two whole leaves, several leaf fragments and two fruits of Dryas octopetala; [also] a small, partly decayed leaf of a shrub species not definitely determinable...and an abundance of much decayed, small fragments of plant tissues, mostly leaf veins and root hairs....No remnants of tree vegetation were found."69 Scientists claimed that there could be "little doubt that the silt is being squeezed up from the base of the ice. As the local bedrock is gneiss, it seems probable that the source is a superficial deposit on the valley floor. The modern aspect of the flora precludes a preglacial time of origin for it."70 Northern Greenland had the same rich type of vegetation on lands where the glaciers had practically melted away. Then this region was covered over by ice, which pushed the vegetation toward the Greenland coast where it is being exuded through the ice. The northeastern corner of Greenland is actually the coldest region of this great island. Lister stated that it has a "continental climate [and is] remote from the influence of the sea...."71 The ocean ameliorates a land climate. That is why regions like the northcentral United States have such long, cold and bitter winters compared to the eastern seaboard. Northeastern Greenland, therefore, would have the coldest climate of the entire island. Not only did peat grow in abundance on Greenland, but, at the northeastern end of the island, the icecap did not exist so as to permit these plants to grow. However, Greenland is an island about 1,400 miles long north to south. If the coldest portion of the Greenland glacier melted completely away and permitted a rich vegetation to thrive, what must have happened 500 or 1,000 miles to the south of the island, where it was even warmer? It seems highly probable and reasonable to suggest that the melting away of glaciers in northeastern Greenland and in Ellesmere Island was accompanied by the melting of nearly all the Greenland icecap. If the coldest portion of the Greenland icecap melted away, it seems highly probable that the more southern, warmer regions also melted away and supported the same types of vegetation found along the Arctic Ocean--from Siberia to Norway to Hudson's Bay to Alaska. Icecaps in the northern hemisphere melt from the southern to the northern ends because the southern region is warmer. But glaciologists and climatologists expect us to accept that the coldest region of Greenland completely melted away while all the warmer regions did not. This is not only illogical, but also geophysically and thermodynamically absurd. According to Lister, during 1952 to 1954, Greenland was losing a meter of water in its ablation zone (or over a meter of ice, since ice is less dense than water) per year.72 As pointed out by Borisov, a 1 C rise of the Earth's surface temperature, when calculated, results in the melting of the sea ice, so eight times as much heat is absorbed from solar radiation but will "reduce the thickness of the continental ice at the rate of 0.5 meters a year."73 If we accept these calculations as reasonable, since one reflects what was measured at Greenland, and apply them to the Greenland icecap during the hipsithermal, we discover a most interesting result: the Greenland icecap would have melted away completely. Furthermore, Charlesworth told us that the hipsithermal was a "xeric" or "xerothermic" period, meaning a dry weather period, which implies that there was less snowfall to generate new ice.