How Did the Ice Ages End?<\/p>\n
With a Bang, Not a Whimper, Believes Maverick Researcher Randall CarlsonBy Cynthia Logan<\/p>\n
CAPTIONS: The edge of the Greenland icesheet, Kangerlussuaq, Greenland (Photo by L. Chang). A 3000-ton erratic basalt boulder in eastern Washington State, borne to this spot by a massive iceberg carried in raging floodwaters from melting glacial ice further north.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n SIDEBAR: John Anthony West has complained that Ph.D. candidates in Egyptology spend way too much time on subjects like Tutankhamun\u2019s underwear, and far too little on subjects of real significance, like the true meaning of Egypt\u2019s monuments. We end up knowing more and more about less and less, he has argued. The pattern is repeated throughout the entire scientific establishment, as researchers, in order to advance their careers, feel the need to specialize in ever-narrower areas of interest. The smart doctoral candidates politely defer to experts in other fields, and stick to their specialty. Nobody seems willing, or able, to address the big picture. The consequence: certain entrenched mythologies are never challenged. One of the most persistent is the notion that there is NO real evidence that the ice ages ended with great planetary catastrophes, as recently as 12,000 years ago. At least one scholar, however, begs to differ.<\/em><\/p>\n Randall Carlson, an independent researcher in the tradition of John Anthony West, Graham Hancock, or even nineteenth century scholar Ignatius <\/em>Donnelly (Atlantis: The Antediluvian World), has taken up the challenge of finding out\u2014big-picture-wise\u2014what we actually know and what we do not. Working diligently\u2014albeit outside the academic system\u2014for over a third of a century, Carlson has applied his formidable intellect and energies to analyzing the vast array of peer reviewed scientific literature in many related fields. In the process, he has uncovered a mountain of startling research, which, though fully vetted, has been virtually ignored by an establishment, seemingly more devoted to preserving paradigms and privilege, than the truth. <\/em><\/p>\n To collect even more compelling evidence, Carlson has deployed a small army of volunteers to pursue some large-scale field research, mostly in America\u2019s Pacific Northwest. Not surprisingly, he has become something of an authority on the case for a severe planetary cataclysm at the end of the last ice age, as well as such hot-button items as global warming. A familiar presence on the Internet, Carlson is consulted by many, including popular YouTube host Joe Rogan. Graham Hancock swears by Carlson\u2019s research and\u00a0 devotes a major part of his forthcoming book <\/em>The Magicians of the Gods to it.<\/em><\/p>\n Recently, <\/em>Atlantis Rising Magazine asked longtime contributing writer Cynthia Logan to catch up with Randall Carlson and get his story for our readers. \u2014ED<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n How\u2019s this for an inconvenient truth? Carbon dioxide accounts for just .04 percent of atmospheric greenhouse gas. And while methane has been introduced as a major contributor (often with a good deal of smirking), the dominant greenhouse gas is, according to climate scholar Randall Carlson, water vapor. So why are we all counting our carbons? The lay geologist believes we have a climate bureaucracy whose \u2018Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory\u2019 employs tunnel vision when it comes to the bigger picture. \u201cSince the advent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)\u2026 it has become typical to denigrate anyone who questions the consensus that carbon dioxide is the sole or even the dominant driver of climate change,\u201d he writes. He believes global warming is driven by political interests to control energy distribution and consumption. He scoffs at the claim that the climate debate is over; in his mind, it\u2019s barely begun. \u201cThe so-called consensus is completely manufactured. It doesn\u2019t exist. Solar physicists say the IPCC leaves out the Sun, so how realistic are those models? Questionnaires sent out to obtain consensus were slanted.\u201d<\/p>\n Seems radical, but before dissing or dismissing his viewpoint, a few facts are in order. First, he does believe humans are affecting the climate, but would like our contribution to be factored into a larger perspective. Second, he thinks it\u2019s critically important to examine assumptions and claims made \u201cby those who clearly stand to gain by the implementation of carbon remediation measures.\u201d He also believes we should consider dissenting voices trying to remind us the climate has always changed, and that sometimes those changes have been extreme and catastrophic. Third, for nearly forty years Carlson has interviewed scientists from many disciplines, and has traveled to see and explore evidence for himself. He doesn\u2019t watch much TV (unless it\u2019s something relevant to his research, usually on PBS) and reads constantly. In fact, he\u2019s read two or three scientific articles almost every single day since the 1970s<\/em>. Asked about his credentials, he responds; \u201cI have a command of the facts and thousands of references at my fingertips. I\u2019m willing to sit down with anybody and discuss any of this.\u201d<\/p>\n When he says \u2018any of this,\u2019 he means more than climatology. Randall Carlson is a curious person and has from an early age sought to assemble a vast cosmic puzzle whose pieces include astronomy, history, geology and mathematics (all of which he has studied formally), as well as architecture, archaeology, ancient civilizations, sacred geometry, numerology, literature, mythology\u2014and catastrophism. And he\u2019s not just an eclectic; the guy connects the dots. \u201cThere\u2019s an overspecialization in science today,\u201d says Carlson. \u201cAn oceanographer doesn\u2019t have the correspondences of astronomy, geology, and other disciplines; you\u2019re an astronomer, but have you ever looked at geology? Don\u2019t bring in ad hominin<\/em> arguments\u2014I\u2019ve invested huge amounts of time\u2014this is what I do for recreation. I\u2019m obsessively curious about these things.\u201d<\/p>\n Carlson traces his interest in catastrophism to the plastic View-Master he received for his fifth birthday. Essentially a stereoscope utilizing circular reels with paired images on color film, it shows scenes in 3D. \u201cMy favorite set of View-Master reels was a series of 21 dinosaur scenes\u2014after depicting an encounter and impending battle between a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the narrative introduces the imagery of global Catastrophe, way ahead of its time in the early 1950s.\u201d<\/p>\n After high school, Carlson spent three months hitchhiking through Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. \u201cI came back with the impression that there is a story in this landscape; it felt compelling,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAncient history, mythology, and symbolism interested me as well.\u201d Carlson was also curious about the \u2018lost continent\u2019 of Atlantis and read numerous books on the subject, including German physicist Otto Muck\u2019s Secret of Atlantis<\/em>. \u201cMuck\u2019s theory was that Earth had been hit by an asteroid that came in from the Northwest, sinking the island of Atlantis in the process,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe meteor broke up, and pieces were splayed across the southeastern United States, creating the Carolina Bays\u2014tens of thousands of shallow elliptical depressions along parallel axes from northwest to southeast.\u201d Since \u2018the Bays are basically his backyard, Carlson began to research them during the 1980s at Fernbank Science Center, a resource established for the public.<\/p>\n Carlson had learned that in 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia, a bolide (the term encompasses \u2018all species of cosmic creatures\u2019: asteroids, meteorites, comets, etc.) had exploded in the atmosphere with the force of a large hydrogen bomb, leveling 830 square miles of old-growth forest. He thinks the event \u201cranks up there in importance with the moon landing, the World Wars, and the invention of the atomic bomb.\u201d The area was so remote it wasn\u2019t until 1927 that the first Russian scientists got to the site. Once they did, they found numerous, shallow elliptical depressions similar to the Carolina Bays: Carlson surmises they were produced by shockwaves hitting the ground. He notes that after the Apollo mission, there was a major shift in the prevailing paradigm; \u201cmoon craters had been thought to be volcanic. After Apollo we knew they\u2019d been created by meteor strikes. Since Earth is much bigger than the moon, it would be more vulnerable than the moon, so there was nothing fantastical about thinking Earth had been struck a few times.\u201d<\/p>\n In the early 90s Carlson majored in geology at DeKalb College in Georgia and, competing against roughly 500 other students, received the \u2018Outstanding Geology Student of the Year award for papers he wrote. \u201cProfessors there have had me guest lecture a number of times, so I must have something to offer academia,\u201d says the researcher, who now lives in Decatur, Georgia near Atlanta, where he and his brother own and operate Archetype Design \/ Build, Inc. \u201cI do the design work on a computer that creates awesome 3D modeling,\u201d says Carlson, a third generation master builder and longtime Freemason who deliberately avoided what he calls \u2018the AIA (American Institute of Architects) route,\u2019 electing to use the title architectural designer instead of Registered Architect. \u201cWe focus on residential and small commercial, making older buildings energy efficient\u2014putting in new windows, rainwater harvesting systems, a few photovoltaics.\u201d Though past commissions averaged half to a million dollars, they had a rough time during the recent financial recession. So Carlson pulled out another of his talents, tutoring homeschooled kids in math, science, and geology.<\/p>\n Those STEM skills come naturally to the Minnesota born, sixty-four-year-old who grew up among, as he recalls it, \u201ca rolling mosaic of hills, pasture, forest, meadow, agricultural fields, and countless lakes.\u201d He guesses the landscape was the product of the great Ice Age that ended ten thousand years ago, \u201cThe lakes were puddles of meltwater left from the final retreat of the vast ice sheets that reached northward to beyond the Arctic Circle, and all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific.\u201d Carlson points out that at times the area where he lived had been buried under more than a thousand feet of ice.<\/p>\n The scope of catastrophe and rapidity of the transition out of that ice age were of great scientific controversy in the nineteenth century and provide the background for what Carlson calls \u201ca heroic tale of one lone maverick geologist standing against the entire geological community.\u201d He mentions geology\u2019s founding fathers: Adam Sedgewick, Roderick Murchison, William Buckland, and Georges Cuvier\u2014men of leisure, theologians, and traveling ministers with rural routes who pioneered the field between 1820\u20131840. \u201cInterestingly and ironically, they were all catastrophists,\u201d he notes, adding that after the Civil War \u2018strict gradualism\u2019 (the idea that the formation of mountains, the building up of a seashore, the erosion of canyons, etc., occurs over eons) came to dominate the field. For Carlson, geology is \u201cthe science by which we decipher the extraordinary history of the Earth.\u201d His study of the discipline led him to \u201cread the landscape and to understand the story it had to tell.\u201d The story of the lone maverick goes like this: During the 1920s\u20131950s, geologist J. Harlan Bretz challenged the era of strict gradualism. Having discovered a series of giant, abandoned coulees in Washington State containing huge gravel and boulder bars, he concluded the only way to explain them was through a sudden, catastrophic flood. \u201cHe fought the geological establishment for 30 years, doggedly documenting the evidence,\u201d relates Carlson. \u201cBy the late 60s and early 70s newer, younger geologists weren\u2019t so invested in the gradualist paradigm and accepted Bretz\u2019 ideas, particularly after actually going into the field and seeing evidence for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n The catastrophe Bretz had correlated to the coulees he\u2019d found was the Missoula Flood, one of a number of giant floods that periodically swept across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge as the massive glaciers in the Canadian Rockies melted. The consensus today is that Glacial Lake Missoula burst through a 2000-foot ice dam and exploded downstream\u2014the waters running at a rate ten times the combined flow of all of the current rivers in the world. Impressive when you think about it\u2014but not impressive enough to drop Carlson\u2019s jaw. \u201cI believe the flood was much larger than can be attributed to a draining glacial lake,\u201d he says emphatically. Even with an oversized burst, he thinks there\u2019s a problem of scale not addressed by the conventional explanation. \u201cThe volumes and discharges were a thousand times greater than modern examples of glacially dammed outburst floods: we\u2019re talking about hundreds of millions of cubic feet of water per second!<\/em> An ice cap is frozen water\u2014if a bolide hit the ice cap it would melt the ice and launch water vapor into the stratosphere, causing torrential <\/em>rainfall. All over the U.S., even here in the southern Appalachians, there is evidence of this.\u201d<\/p>\n Carlson wanted to see the Missoula Flood area for himself. Physically active growing up\u2014swimming, canoeing, walking, bicycling, horseback riding, hiking, and camping, he is used to the demands of exploratory ventures. \u201cI\u2019ve made 10\u201312 trips to the Missoula Flood region now, covering some 50 thousand miles. You have to ride horseback and paddle in to get to some of these sites, and take aerial overflights\u2014some of these features are so big you don\u2019t get the perspective from the ground, but from five thousand feet you can see how vast they are.\u201d Last fall\u2019s adventure took him yet again to the Missoula Flood region, where he acted as a guide for Graham Hancock (author of the groundbreaking book, Fingerprints of the Gods<\/em>). While climbing outcrops, the two documented evidence of their shared theory that 12,900 years ago, a catastrophic climate shift known as \u2018The Younger Dryas\u2019 brought the planet out of the glacial age into the present interglacial age. \u201cIt was during this extreme transition that the great mass of glacial ice, some six-million cubic miles worldwide, rapidly melted down. So fast was this melting that scientists have not been able to explain the source of the energy it would have taken to melt it,\u201d relates Carlson, who, like Hancock, believes an asteroid or comet impact initiated the shift.<\/p>\n Like Otto Muck, Hancock theorized there had been a sophisticated civilization which disappeared when the Ice Age ended due to a catastrophe, but wasn\u2019t specific about what that event was, says Carlson, whose work will be featured in at least four chapters of Hancock\u2019s highly anticipated title, Magicians of the Gods<\/em>. \u201cIn the 1970s there were many scientists, oceanographers, etc., wanting to debunk Atlantis\u2014and to their credit, there was a lot of pseudoscience around Atlantis, so the thrust was to debunk fringe ideas. But they didn\u2019t give fair attention to Plato (who wrote about Atlantis in his dialogues, Critias <\/em>and Timaeus<\/em>). I was curious, so I went through several translations line by line, looking at references to geology and astronomy\u2014and I found it quite credible.\u201d<\/p>\n Carlson, himself a geo-mythologist, notes that Plato prefaces Timaeus <\/em>with the Greek myth of Phaeton, son of the Sun God Helios. In a nutshell, Phaeton, attempting to drive Helios\u2019 chariot, careened away from the ecliptic and set fire to the earth, causing massive destruction. Plato infers that the myth signifies the descent of a bolide but doesn\u2019t directly state that it caused the sinking of Atlantis. But Carlson, who believes the myth is based on human memory of a bolide, also thinks Plato intended readers to make that connection. \u201cWhat is more explicit is that Plato gives the date of destruction as 9000 years before Solon (a poet and lawgiver who lived in Athens around 600 BCE) was exiled to Egypt. From today, that would be 11,600 years ago\u2014coincidentally just when the Younger Dryas ended.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to providing a timeframe, Plato offered clues about Atlantis\u2019 location. \u201cHe wrote that it was \u2018west of the Pillars of Heracles,\u2019 which is the Straits of Gibraltar,\u201d relates Carlson, obviously enthused about sliding another piece into the puzzle. \u201cIn the mid-Atlantic Ocean we have the Azores plateau, 2,000 feet under the sea. The Azores are the tops of mountains emerging from the ocean. The thinnest crust on the planet is around the mid-Atlantic ridge; it\u2019s like a giant suture running halfway around the planet.\u201d During the Ice Age, the volume of ice mass was six million cubic miles; the land mass covered six-million square miles; and the weight was\u2014wait for it\u201423 quadrillion tons: that\u2019s 23 million, billion tons.<\/p>\n \u201cThe weight of so much meltwater along that suture would have crushed it down into the Earth\u2019s mantle, creating an isostacy, a vertical depression,\u201d says Carlson. Under such weight, a large island along the ridge certainly could have sunk beneath the ocean. (Interestingly, Hudson Bay is the depression left from the thickest part of the ice.) \u201cWith the scientific evidence we have today, there\u2019s nothing pseudoscientific in assuming it could be a historical reality that during the Ice Age there was a very benign, habitable, large island located in the mid-Atlantic where the Azores are situated,\u201d concludes Carlson. And that an impact from space unleashed a climate catastrophe that, in a planetary heartbeat, wiped out the advanced maritime civilization Plato described as inhabiting the lost island of Atlantis. Puts a bit of perspective into global warming, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n So if owning a Prius isn\u2019t a driving need, what does Carlson think we should be concerned about? \u201cLet\u2019s drop the climate hysteria and look at the carbon cycle,\u201d he suggests. \u201cWe\u2019re approaching 400 parts per million (ppm) atmospheric concentration. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution carbon dioxide has increased by just over 100 parts per million. That means that for every 100 thousand molecules of air, every ten years one molecule of CO2 has been added to the atmosphere.\u201d As he explained to radio host Joe Rogan, climate shifts even in recent history dwarf the changes we\u2019re now experiencing. \u201cThe onset of our modern geological epoch, the Holocene era, occurred 11,600 years ago, when a catastrophic warming spike jerked the planet out of the Ice Age,\u201d he states. The mega-meltdown caused a rapid rise in sea levels.<\/p>\n Closer to our own time, well documented global cooling launched the Dark Ages (A.D. 536\u2013544), culminating in the Justinian Plague, when one-third of Europe\u2019s population was wiped out\u2014and didn\u2019t recover until the world warmed up and agriculture rebounded.<\/p>\n During the Medieval Warming Period (1130\u20131150) people could eat more, grow strong, accumulate wealth, and build the Great Cathedrals. \u201cYou also had the Troubadours, schools of Kabbalah, the formation of the Knights Templar\u2014amazing spiritual things during the High Gothic, High Middle Ages,\u201d says Carlson, who is an expert in Sacred Architecture. Then, from about 1315\u20131320 the climate cooled, coinciding with the end of Gothic building. More agricultural collapses ensued; rotting crops and hunger led to the onset of the Black Plague, again decimating the European population. \u201cPhase One of the Little Ice Age hit around 1320 and continued for 150 years, after which there was a break and the Renaissance kicked in,\u201d says Carlson. \u201cPhase Two hit in the 1600s and was even colder than the first phase. During this time, glaciers expanded to the largest they\u2019d been in 10,000 years. They began to recede between 1840 \u00a0and 1860 and have been contracting continuously since then. There\u2019s been no real change in the rate of recession with the advent of fossil fuels, which we really began consuming in large amounts during the Second World War. The glaciers had been receding for almost 100 years prior to that. What we really need to consider is that we\u2019ve had the longest interglacial period in several hundred thousand years.\u201d<\/p>\n In a series of lectures he gave in 1997 at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, Carlson suggested that the tempo of global change fits the archaic model based on the Great Year, equivalent to one Precession of the Equinoxes (which move westward relative to fixed stars) opposite the motion of the Sun along the ecliptic (the phenomenon is now referred to as Earth\u2019s Precession). \u201cWhether we look at it from year to year, over decades or through the centuries, we find that at whatever scale we use, the climate has been vastly changing,\u201d says Carlson. \u201cWhen you have six- to seven-million cubic miles of ice melt over a few thousand years, it\u2019s reasonable to conclude that the sole driver of climate change is not carbon.\u201d<\/p>\n Could we be fixated on the details of a miniscule aspect of just one factor contributing to climate change? Could ours be a civilization future generations will seek to \u2018unearth\u2019? Only time will tell. For now, though, Carlson is a die-hard catastrophist; he\u2019s also an optimist. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ll see those mega-scale changes in our lifetimes,\u201d he affirms. Perhaps we yet have time to rediscover the mysteries of Atlantis and to develop commensurate understanding to accompany technological advances that will lead to mastering ourselves along with the climate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To learn more about Randall Carlson, visit Sacred Geometry International, cosmographicresearch.org<\/u> and geocosmicrex.com<\/u>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How Did the Ice Ages End? With a Bang, Not a Whimper, Believes Maverick Researcher Randall CarlsonBy Cynthia Logan CAPTIONS: The edge of the Greenland icesheet, Kangerlussuaq, Greenland (Photo by L. Chang). A 3000-ton erratic basalt boulder in eastern Washington State, borne to this spot by a massive iceberg carried in raging floodwaters from melting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5322],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}