Icecore and other related dating schemes:
Part VII

Greenland icecores less than 6000 years old, with or without
Velikovsky and/or catastrophism:


Another aspect of this evidence that must be pointed out: Ice
does not melt from below unless volcanism is heating the rock in
contact with the ice at the bottom of a glacier. Ice melts from
the top or sides, downward and inward. There can be no doubt
that much or all of the Greenland and Antarctica icecaps melted
during this 3,000-to-5,000-year warm period. Of greatest
significance is that the icecaps melted from the top downward.
This simply means that the icecap melted and flowed away as
water and that, during this entire period, no ice layers could
have ever formed. Since more ice was being lost than was forming
during this timeframe, no ice layers from before 8,000 to 3,000
years ago could have remained even if Velikovsky's theory is
completely disregarded. The layers of ice that Ellenberger and
Mewhinney are presenting as evidence against Velikovsky, based
on their own gradualistic processes, could never have existed,
yet this has not stopped them from arguing that the layers are
there. Ellenberger and Mewhinney have dismissed this fundamental
melting evidence!



In addition, since the hipsithermal melted many icecaps from
top to bottom, then the ice core record would have a gigantic
hiatus between the formation of more modern ice and ancient ice.
While turning their assumptions to fact, ignoring this required
hiatus, the ice core advocates claim that there is a full record
of year-by-year ice layers going back to the ancient past. This
is neither reasonable nor possible. The immense melting of the
icecaps during the hipsithermal would have melted away untold
thousands of years of ice, if not all of it.



The hipsithermal lasted about 5,500 years. If we employ a very
conservative 1.5 meter loss of ice per year, we get 7,500 meters
of ice lost in 5,000 years, or over 24,500 feet of ice lost. If
we assume that the ablation of the icecap lasted for only 4,000
years, we still lose 6,000 meters or over 19,500 feet of ice.
For 3,000 years, we lose 4,500 meters, almost 15,000 feet of
ice. The 4 to 5 F rise clearly melted the ice even more than
these figures suggest. Since the Greenland glacier presently
averages a depth of about 5,000 feet, with a few high points at
10,000 feet, at one-third of our melting figures, the present
icecap would either melt away completely or almost completely.
We would get the same results with 0.5 meters per year of melt.74



What stopped this higher temperature from melting away nearly
the entire icecap? Why did such a long period of greater heat
not melt away several thousands of feet of ice?