Radar Reveals Former Warm Landscape Under Greenland

Under the world’s fastest moving glacier, radar has revealed a network of V-shaped canyons carved by temperate rivers.

Live Science posted a new radar map showing “a secret network of rivers,” “frozen in time” under Jakobsvahn Isbrae glacier in Greenland. Today, the landscape is covered in ice 2,000 meters thick. The scientists claim these rivers, trending east to west, are 3.5 million years old, because that’s when the ice sheets began forming according to the secular geological timeline.

The radar revealed a secret world, frozen in ice. Beneath Jakobshavn lies a stunning landscape of jaw-dropping canyons, some of which are roughly the size of the Grand Canyon; dramatic ravines; and a lacework of mountain streams. By analyzing the shape of the valleys and canyons beneath the ice, the team determined that these features were likely formed by rivers cutting the rock away over time, rather than by the glacier.

Some observations, though, call the millions-of-years timing into question:

1. The canyons are V-shaped. This indicates they were carved by rivers, not by glaciers. But wouldn’t the current glaciers have modified the margins after millions of years?
2. The pattern of dendritic river channels influences the Jakobsvahn Isbrae glacier’s flow. “Without the channels present underneath, the glacier may not exist in its current location or orientation,” a researcher said. The glacier is currently flowing at the breakneck speed of 11 miles per year. Wouldn’t the glacier have erased the river channels or made them U-shaped by now?
3. The glacier is melting quickly and contributing to sea level rise, the article says, worrying scientists about climate change. Yet the pattern of rivers clearly suggests a much warmer world long before humans could have contributed to warming.

Michael Cooper, a grad student from the University of Bristol who helped produce the map, envisions a Greenland that was once truly green and rich with life. Without doubting the time, reporter Tia Ghose accentuates the difference between then and now:

Thus, the landscape must have formed at least 3.5 million years ago, prior to the ice sheet’s formation. At that time, the area may have been much warmer and home to forests and shrubland, Cooper said.

“I imagine the landscape would have been home to a lot of life,” Cooper said.

Once again, the hidden world may become exposed. “Climate scientists have zeroed in on this fast-moving glacier in recent years because it may be a harbinger of climate change to come,” writes Ghose.

Another Live Science article describes the long-standing debate about where Earth got its water, a situation unique among the rocky planets.

This is another reason why so many doubt the consensus about global warming (if you’re wondering about the “97% of climate scientists who agree climate change is real,” watch this 5-minute video at Prager University). Here is a landscape that was clearly much warmer than it is now, probably rich with life that got along just fine, at a time when human activity had no influence on the climate.

We should also doubt the consensus on dates. The millions-of-years dates are required by evolutionary theory. At the current melting rate, it would not take millions of years to expose Greenland. Nor would it take millions of years to accumulate all the current ice. Millions of years is the problem, not the solution. Scientific progress often comes by doubting the consensus, not by accepting it uncritically.