Theory for the rapid dissipation of North America’s Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets






The homepage for North Cascades National Park, states that Glacier Peak and Mount Baker in Washington State had significant eruptions about 12,000 years ago. Other researchers in the Northwest United States have found evidence of a large flood from about 12,000 years ago. This flood on the Columbia Plateau may have been one of the largest floods the world has ever seen. But this is only half of the story. There is evidence that at the same time, there was a very large flood on the east coast of the United States. And there may have been more flooding along the Mississippi River Valley. One of the first questions that come to mind is, “Where did all of this water come from?” I believe it came from the rapid melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. This brings up the next question of, “What caused the rapid melting of the ice sheets?” We know from the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980 that vast amounts of volcanic dust can be thrown into the atmosphere during an eruption. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines it released so much ash that it actually cooled the Earth by about one degree, for several months. However I believe that in some circumstances, these eruptions may actually raise the Earth’s temperature. The Mount Baker eruption about 12,000 years ago was even bigger than Mount Saint Helens. At the time much of Canada and the Northern United States was covered by the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets. Ice is very shiny and reflects most sunlight back into space. Now suppose the Mount Baker eruption happened in June, when the sun is at it strongest in Northern Latitudes. As the ash was spread across North America by prevailing winds, it would settle on the ice and make it much darker. This would cause the ice to absorb much more sunlight. The result would be a massive melting of the ice sheet across North America and even into Europe. As the ice melted less sunlight would be reflected; this would raise temperatures even more. This could cause a runaway effect that would just keep feeding on itself. I see evidence of a massive flood that happened in North Carolina and Virginia thousands of years ago. If you were to fly over Smith Mountain Lake Dam in Virginia you would see concentric rings of hills expanding out downstream from the Dam. I believe these were created as a result of a very large flood on the Roanoke River. As the water poured through the Smith Mountain pass it would have spread out into an alluvial plane, creating huge ripples. This is what may have caused the concentric rings. At the same time the Roanoke River flooded, many other rivers also flooded in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. As the water from this huge flood spread out across the coastal plane it may have formed the Pocosins or “Carolina Bays” that are found throughout eastern North Carolina and other states. There have been natural diamonds found along the Roanoke River in alluvial deposits. Another place where natural diamonds have been found, is in the gold fields of Northern California. The diamonds in California are believed to have been carried down from Canada in ice sheets and then washed down river to California. I think the same thing is true of the diamonds that have been found along the Roanoke River. Scientists have discovered that the ice sheets in North America actually expanded and contracted many times. It is possible that the ice could slowly build up over many centuries, only to be wiped out by a volcanic eruption in the Pacific Northwest. For instance the latest eruption may only have been about 8000 years ago. There could have been other eruptions about 12,000 years ago and 20,000 years ago. Over millions of years there could have been hundreds of these eruptions that affected the ice sheets. This large volume of water could be what caused all of the “reworked” fossils that we find in North Carolina. In Halifax County I find sharks teeth and other fossils that appear to have been exposed during the Pleistocene and then covered back up again. NOTE: This is all theory on my part. None of my ideas about the Roanoke River flooding have been verified by the scientific community.

RETURN TO LINKS PAGE


RETURN TO HOMEPAGE