mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== The following is Charles Ginenthal's response to the most recent work of Sean Mewhinney related to ice core evidence and the basis theories of Immanuel Velikovsky. Thus, as opposed to the talk.origins "Velikovsky FAQ" which nobody in the neo catastrophism movement regards as worthy of any sort of a response (at least to my knowledge), we do reply to serious challenges. _________________________________________________________________ MINDS IN DENIAL PART I SEAN MEWHINNEY'S CRITIQUE BASED ON BOMBASTIC SUBTERFUGE, EVASION AND DENIAL By Charles Ginenthal A "group ... only becomes a true conspiracy in the legal sense when it creates 'lies that look like the truth.'" Robert Anton Wilson Cosmic Trigger II (1995), p.150 "He's a wonderful talker, who has the art of telling you nothing in a great harangue". Jean Batiste Moliere Le Misanthrope (1666) Act II, Scene 5 HYPOCRISY Some time ago, Sean Mewhinney presented a critique of both Velikovsky's and my work entitled "Minds in Ablation" henceforth "Minds", which has been posted on the Internet. It is a paper in five parts made up of many other lesser parts, and single spaced runs to 47 pages with many additional pages of diagrams and tables, etc. In all it would be about the length of one issue of this Journal. Since this work is well written and footnoted, I felt it was of great enough importance, touching on certain fundamental questions related to Velikovskian research in a provocative way, that it should be put complete and uncensored on the record. I therefore offered Mewhinney the opportunity to publish it in full in The Velikovskian. This offer he refused. Rereading his work, I noted that Mewhinney himself stated of his earlier work: "I hoped it [my work would]... reach at least some of the people who read Velikovskian journal with reason...(1) In essence Mewhinney claimed that he wanted to reach people in the Velikovsky movement with his various researches but, given the chance to do so, refused. This seemed strange enough, but then I learned that he had offered the entire work to AEON, a Velikovskian journal. Duardu Cardona, its editor, after reading it, also felt "Minds" should be published in The Velikovskian. I once again offered Mewhinney the chance to publish all that he had sent to AEON, but he then offered another reason for refusing publication; he claimed he had more to write. If that was indeed his reason in the case of The Velikovskian, then why had he sent this same material to AEON in the first place? The work he was willing to expose in AEON somehow was not the work he was willing to expose in this journal. I do still have his papers in full and have made photocopies which I will sell (for the same price which I paid to get them, ten dollars. Send a check or money order made out to Charles Ginenthal and send it to this journal requesting "Minds"). In this way Mewhinney's papers will reach as many Velikovskians as possible who desire an original copy of his work. ICE CORES OR CRYSTALLINE SPHERES Several former critics of Velikovsky have raised the spectra of ancient eclipses, especially solar eclipses, as a clear indication that the earth's orbit and axial tilt have never changed. If as they claimed, the orbit or axial tilt were different prior to about 776 B.C., then it would be impossible to find eclipses earlier than that time that follow the present orbital motions and axial position of the Earth. And so they pointed to eclipses prior to that time that they claimed, were a disproof of Velikovsky's theory. Some of these individuals held prestigious positions in various well known universities, but as Velikovsky pointed out to them, neither the precise times, nor the precise areas of the Earth for these eclipses were known. Before any of their assertions regarding these eclipses could be employed as a disproof, these critical points of time and location had to be fully verified, but they simply were not. Similarly, other records of the past have been called upon to perform the very same type of unsupported debunking of Velikovsky. In particular ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica and tree rings could do the same job only if they were corroborated by solid supporting evidence. That is, all dating systems require , or better yet demand independent corroboration by other processes or phenomena. That, in fact, is the heart of good science. If a dating system is contradicted by other dating systems, then it cannot be employed as unqualified disproof of Velikovsky nor a proof of uniformitarian gradual climate change during these same ancient times. Sean Mewhinney, to his credit, has diligently researched and presented ice core evidence as a fundamental objection and contradiction to Velikovsky's thesis. (2) This kind of ice core evidence was also presented in KRONOS (3) What Mewhinney produced in his long analysis appeared, on the surface at least, to show that the ice core evidence was a definitive indication that Velikovsky's thesis was finally and fully destroyed. Thereafter, I responded in this journal(4) to Mewhinney's opus by outlining a number of fundamental contradictions to his evidence and showed that what at first looked like an excellent case against Velikovsky was no different than the case made by eclipse data. Mewhinney responded in part 1 of his newest criticism entitled "Ice Cores and Ideology." Here, I anticipated that he would take up the various challenges and disprove or try to disprove each phenomena I had presented with evidence and citations from the scientific literature, nonetheless, this is not what transpired. Mewhinney in fact ignored each and every one of the specific points I had raised, choosing instead to attack the messenger. For example, Mewhinney in his original Internet paper wrote about my statement regarding vegetation growing on Greenland during the hipsithermal. "Well yes, in fact, that is precisely what his own sources tell me. I have referred several times to a passage Ginenthal quoted from Charlesworth, mentioning, among other things, 'peats and relics in Greenland.' At the point where Ginenthal's quotation stops, in the very next sentence, Charlesworth makes this statement; 'this optimum in Greenland was only slightly warmer and had no plant formation or species that does not now live there'... This blows his whole case out of the water from the start, so Ginenthal suppresses it. The whole thing is an exercise in perversity."(5) What Mewhinney in his desire to discredit me as well as my work called an "exercise in perversity," was namely the suppression of this one sentence by Charlesworth, "this optimum in Greenland was only slightly warmer and had no plant formation or species that does not now live there". This only shows he read my paper in extreme haste and angrily, because he failed to notice the very sentence with which I opened the entire discussion in "ICE," page 78 wherein I wrote: "But it is assumed Greenland was glaciated all this time and had no plants that do not grow there now ever lived there during the hipsithermal." This is almost exactly what Charlesworth had written on this matter. So, in fact, I left out nothing and pointed out Mewhinney's misrepresentation of my work to him on the E-Mail Internet discussion group and, for my efforts, was told "You [Ginenthal] can't get away with that." But even in this characterization Mewhinney understood he was simply wrong and dropped that material from the paper he thereafter circulated. Nevertheless, he never demurred nor disavowed the position he has taken, that to fail to deal with or to suppress a sentence made by one's critic is an act of "perversity." This gives us an insight into the working of Mewhinney's thought processes and the standards of evidence by which we shall evaluate Mewhinney criticisms. The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) I wish to explain the concepts involved vis a vis, uniformitarianism verses Velikovskian catastrophism to see if the evidence truly suggests that Velikovsky's hypothesis is wrong as Mewhinney wishes to present. (2) I want to see how well much of Mewhinney's evidence stands up to an analysis of it strictly in terms of the evidence. Hence, the question for this first unit is: has Mewhinney really presented a case in defense of his ice core data or are the ice cores, in reality, crystalline spheres performing the same function that Aristotle employed when over 2000 years ago, they were invented to create a world in which cataclysms could never occur? The title of this paper contains the provocative subtitle "Sean Mewhinney's Critique Based on Bombastic Subterfuge, Evasion and Denial." This is a very strong accusation and that is what I will now prove, namely that Mewhinney does not face contrary evidence to his ice cores but rather, that he employs various subterfuges, evasions and denials as escape mechanisms. The first form of proof of subterfuge and evasion can be found in the very title of Part 1 of "Minds", as is presented by Mewhinney namely "Ice Cores and Ideology." Thus, he informs us in the title he will be dealing with my "ICE" article by disposing of the evidence I raised regarding his ice core papers. Interestingly, the way he disposes of it is by never discussing the germane points I did in fact raise and acting as though they do not exist. This approach exhibits and requires a great deal of denial by Mewhinney not only to his readers but also to himself. Moliere cited at the beginning of this paper "He is a wonderful talker, who has the art of telling you nothing in a great harangue." Let us therefore, examine the mechanisms of Mewhinney's art, his great harangue. If anyone thinks I am well satisfied over what I am about to present they are quite right. I feel even as a ethnic Jew like the statement attributed to Mark Twain, "the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces." OXYGEN ISOTOPE LAYERS SNOW LAYERING OR DIFFUSION LAYERING The basis assumption underlying the ice cores as indicators of climate on Earth is based on the process of oxygen isotopes in snow layers. However, there are other processes well outlined in the scientific literature that are a direct contradiction to the process accepted by glaciologists as the cause for such layers. Mewhinney explained this snow layering process in his first paper in Catastrophism And Ancient History: "Except for losses from ablation [melting], snow falling on most land in the polar regions of this planet is locked into ice caps for many thousands of years. There is sinks beneath the weight of succeeding snows is compacted into ice, and slowly flows downhill. Preserved in the ice is a wealth of information about past climatic conditions... In 1954 Willi Dansgaard proposed using oxygen isotope ratios to study the climatic history of the Greenland ice cap. This is the basis tool of ice core research today. "Condensation [by cooling] preferentially removes the heavier isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen from water vapor. As more and more moisture condenses out of a mass of water vapor, it becomes progressively further depleted in these heavier isotopes. Usually it is the ratio of 180 to 160 that is measured. Since 180 comprises only about 0.2 percent of oxygen occurring in nature, instead of giving the actual ratio scientists express their results in terms of the depletion of 180 relative to standard means ocean water in parts per thousand (0/00. It is denoted [delta] 180. The 180 value of precipitation is always a negative number (If we were measuring enrichment it would be positive). "Since cooling promotes condensation, the cooler the rain or snow the more negative its 180 value. The relation is not so simple that ancient temperatures can be read off from an ice sample, but a change in temperatures will be reflected in a change in oxygen isotope ratios." (6) In essence, Mewhinney accepted as fully established the process that Oxygen 18 to Oxygen 16 isotope ratios are caused by snow derived from ocean water leaving layers in the ice caps of polar regions. Velikovsky's theory suggests that the ice sheets were not built up over millions of years but only over a year or so during a stupendous catastrophe which caused areas of the ocean to boil(7) while at the same period a "shower of meteorites flew toward the earth"(8) both processes would have evaporated and hurled enormous amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere. Immense hurricanes(9) would have carried this water vapor to various regions of the Earth, and in the polar regions this would have fallen as snow(10) to form the great ice sheet of today. This totally different interpretation of the build up of the ice sheets would not create a series of annual 180 layers in terms of the gradualistic method outlined by Mewhinney. The layering of 180 had to be created, in terms of Velikovsky's hypothesis, by a very different process. Therefore, to show how this other process worked, I discussed (in my "ICE" paper) the findings presented by Fred Hall who cited a paper in Science that showed the variations of the oxygen isotope ratios in the ice layers are not related to climate at all, wherein he wrote in AEON that a, "Vastly different picture is presented by specialists who actually have to deal with the subtleties of the ice cores. To begin with, there is far too much mixing of gases over time to allow for Ellenberger's [and Mewhinney's] simplistic assumption. I refer the reader, for example, to the December 23, 1988 issue of Science and the article "Gravitational Separation of Gases and Isotopes in Polar Ice" by H. Craig, Y. Horibe and T. Sower, pp. 1675ff. "What will be absolutely clear to the objective reader of this article is that the atmospheric gases left in deposited layers [of snow] do not remain in those layers. Rather, due to gravity, they are diffused downward, tending to accumulate on top of more dense layers of ice below. "The accumulating firm [ice-snow granules] acts like a giant columnar sieve through which the gravitational enrichment can be maintained by molecular diffusion. At a given borehole, the time between the fresh fall of new snow and its conversion to nascent ice is roughly the height of the firn layers in [meters] divided by the annual accumulation of new ice in meters per year. This results in conversion times of centuries for firn layers inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles, and millennium for those well inside [the] same, which is to say during these long spans of time, a continuing gas-filtering process is going on eliminating any possibility of using the presence of such gases to count annual layers over thousands of year."(Emphasis added)(11) Here then was a totally different process of layering of oxygen isotopes in ice sheets which Hall had outlined that was in complete contradiction to what Mewhinney had presented, and was presented several years prior to Mewhinney's first published paper on this matter. Therefore, one would naturally expect him to explain away this contradictory process when he had the first opportunity to do so in his 1990 articles in Catastrophism And Ancient History six years later. In Part II of his "Ice Cores and Common Sense" paper he does in fact deal with Hall's work (pp. 135-137) but search as one may for any discussion of this filtration process analysis of the oxygen isotope layering one will not find a single word that deals with it. Why? One would ask. Isn't this an important question especially since the journal Science felt it was significant enough to publish? Mewhinney does deal with other materials presented by Hall and is very severe about Hall's work saying, "Recently in the course of his "Solar System Studies" (Part 2, AEON, vol I, No. 4, p.34), another Velikovskian, Fred Hall, has given us his thoughts on ice cores. These thoughts are extremely confused, and he manages to crowd a number of foolish absurdities into a few lines [Mewhinney, "Common Sense... Part II,"op. cit., p. 135] As far as Mewhinney is concerned, the omitting the evidence presented by Hall in AEON regarding the filtration process discussed in Science is not confused. While he manages to crowd into his criticism of Hall several alleged errors, in giving his thoughts, Mewhinney apparently forgot or perhaps evaded this matter. Let us nevertheless be generous with Mewhinney for the moment and allow that he had somehow overlooked Hall's discussion of this Science article. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said when it comes to my "ICE" paper in which I specifically repeated Hall's citation of this filtration process(12) but I then went further into that Science article and stated: "According to the cited article, the percentage of gases in the pores at the base of the firn layer, where ice becomes solid, were much higher than those obtained in atmospheric gases. One of these gases turned out to be oxygen-18. The oxygen-18 had diffused downward and condensed at the bottom. The maximum enrichment of the heavy isotopes (nitrogen-15 and oxygen-18) observed followed patterns predicted for gravitational equilibrium at the base of the firn layer, as calculated from the depth of the transition layer and the temperature of the firn. (H. Craig, Y. Horibe and T. Sowers "Gravitational Separation of gases and isotopes in Polar Ice Caps," Science, Dec 23, 1988) p.1675. "The authors then showed examples where oxygen measurements are totally inconsistent with present-day atmospheric content in temperature regimes expected. to be almost exactly the same as at the present: 02 trapped in 2,000 year-old ice from Camp Century, Greenland has an 180/160 enrichment given by (180) = 0.61 per [millimeter] versus present-day atmospheric 02. (Ibid.) "They claimed that this evidence supports the concept that the layer of oxygen-16 and oxygen-18 relate to filtration and condensation in the pores of the firn and not to accumulation of oxygen-16 and oxygen-18 layers from snow containing different amounts of these isotopes. The past 2,000 year-old record should not be so different from the present-day record if the climate layering concept is correct. "If this is the process responsible for oxygen isotope layers, the entire argument presented by Ellenberger and Mewhinney is wrong. How do they explain away this evidence? To date, they have simply ignored it! Warm and cold snaps occur repeatedly over the Greenland ice cap and therefore, rapid meltings and freezings will leave several deposits of oxygen16 or oxygen-18 in the ice, based on the gas diffusion processes attested to by Craig, Horibe and Sowers. That is, instead of having one layer of oxygen-16 or oxygen-18 per year, three or four layers may be produced by this method each year, thus, the record is actually a reflection of this diffusion process and not of the climate... The age of the ice based on this concept could be quite different from what we are led to believe." (13) Now it is specifically pointed out that Mewhinney had ignored this material. Here there can be no doubt that Mewhinney read Halls as well as my citation, and analysis of the Science article. One would expect that in his "Minds in Ablation," papers especially in the "Ice Cores and Ideology" section there would be an attempt at a careful discussion and analysis of this basis dichotomy in the scientific literature of the layering methodology in ice cores. This is what I expected as would any observer. Since this was such a fundamental negation of the process he had presented, I thought that he would have taken up the challenge and lay to rest this matter of what he had presented in "Common Sense About Ice Cores." Although I read all five of his papers in "Minds in Ablation" and especially "Ice Cores and Ideology" from the beginning to the end with much interest regarding this matter, there is no mention of these facts. Mewhinney attacked my work for omitting a single sentence which I had actually introduced the entire discussion of that matter as an "exercise in perversity." Based on his own standard, if omitting one sentence of evidence is an exercise in perversity, what is omitting entire paragraphs and pages of evidence? Has Mewhinney not by his own behavior displayed your own perversity? What is one to do with such work when one employs such subterfuge, such massive evasion and wholesale denial of these facts? I say Mewhinney's failure to cite this evidence is dishonest. Though I had specifically challenged him to deal with this evidence, Mewhinney once again deftly ignored this matter as if it did not exist either in Hall's or in my work. This is not honest scholarship. In fact, he is being false. Furthermore, along these same lines of research into the mechanism by which the oxygen isotope layers are produced, Zbigniew Jaworowski, who has long been involved in ice core research, has presented a very similar point regarding oxygen isotope layers in ice cores. "The short-term peaks of 180 in the ice sheets have been ascribed to annual summer/winter layering of snow formed at higher or lower temperatures. These peaks have been used for dating glacial ice, assuming that the sample increments of ice cores represent the original mean isotropic composition of precipitation and that the increments are in a steady-state closed system. "EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE, HOWEVER, SUGGESTED THAT THIS ASSUMPTION IS NOT VALID, because of dramatic metamorphosis of snow and ice in ice sheets as a result of changing temperature and pressure... "Important isotopic changes were found experimentally in firn (partially compacted snow that forms the glacier surface) exposed to even 10 times lower thermal gradients [as those found in the ice caps]. Such changes may occur several times a year, reflecting sunny and overcast period would lead to false age estimates of ice." (Capitalization and Emphasis added)(14) Based on the two processes, namely, gas filtration and that of recrystalization and sublimation, the layers accepted as being one year old may be only a few months old. That is, the age of all the layers that can be seen in the ice cores may reflect thousands of years and hot tens of thousands of years, or that the ice may date back to 3,500 years ago rather than over 100,000 years in Greenland and Antarctica. Here it is made clear as Jaworowski directly proved, that after snow is laid down on the ice cap, processes of sub-surface recrystalization of melted snow to form new ice, and sublimation of ice directly from a solid to a gas in the ice cap releases oxygen isotopes which can migrate to other levels in the firn, as well as melting of ice flows to different levels where it recrystalizes. This makes a sorry mess of the original isotopic distribution laid down with the snow. He has told us that in laboratories such "isotopic changes were found experimentally in firn exposed to even 10 times lower thermal gradients" as those found in glaciers. Taken together with the evidence of filtration of gases downward in the ice cap described by Hall there is clear evidence that Mewhinney simply will not deal with facts that contradict his assertions. CORROBORATION OR DISCONFIRMATION OF ICE CORES FROM VOLCANIC MATERIAL IN ICE Nevertheless if Mewhinney's view of how the ice cores are formed over long periods of time is valid, then the various signals in the ice should correlate with various dated events outside the ice caps. That is, for ice cores to be true indications of climate they must be corroborated by other evidence similar to the eclipse data. Volcanoes, discharge dust and sulfur gases high into the atmosphere. These should be found in the proper ice layers if Mewhinney is correct, and the dating of these eruptions should be unequivocal as support. Mewhinney does discuss such volcanic products in the ice.(15) He further discusses volcanic acid signals as well associated with volcanic eruptions. "Explosive volcanic eruptions eject great volumes of ash and sulfates, some of which reach the stratosphere. The eruption of Tambora in 1815 was the most violent in modern times. Ash from Tambora was so thick that 'In many spots within 600 km of the volcano, the sky remained pitch dark for 1 or 2 days.... "Most of this ash settled out within a couple of weeks, but a haze of particles high in the stratosphere strong enough to substantially reduce the direct transmission of sunlight persisted for as long as two years afterward. "Aerosols from any eruption within 15 or 20 degrees of the equator will show up in the opposite hemisphere and gradually be dispersed around the globe, eventually reaching the poles. As particles descend to the troposphere they are washed out by precipitation. Sulfates form major eruptions, raise the acidity of the ice in which they a redeposited far above background level. This in turn raises the electrical conductivity of the ice, or of its meltwater. Major individual eruptions raise the acidity above normal levels for many months, and are easily detectible if one is sampling for conductivity with a time interval of one year or less."(16) Ellenberger also presented this corroborating view of volcanic dust and acid as evidence of their uniformitarian nature of how ice caps form. "Extreme acidity peaks are produced by major volcanic eruptions which inject volcanic acid gases into the stratosphere. These gases travel to the high latitudes, being converted en route, and are incorporated into the ice through snowfall. This disposition can be detected either as elevated specific conductivities measured on melted ice samples, or as elevated acidities revealed by an electric current through the solid ice. Every major known historically-dated eruption since A.D. 536 is attested to in the Greenland ice cores at the correct level...."(17) Therefore, based on their research, Mewhinney and Ellenberger claim to know that volcanic eruptions in the past, especially dated to the time of Velikovsky's catastrophe, are charted in the ice cores. Nevertheless, after citing Mewhinney on this question, I pointed out directly that dating past eruptions by their acid signals in the ice suffered from a major obstacle, namely the dating of the tephra or clastic material found near volcanoes by which their eruptions are in fact dated: "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 ther- moluminence and by other methods. According to Glen 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 distal and proximal tephra layers.' (Glen W. Berger, "Dating volcanic Ash by Use of Thermoluminescence," Geology, Vol 20, (Jan 1992), p. 11) "As late as 1992 [two years after Mewhinney claimed volcanic eruptions could be dated], the dating of volcanic eruptions was not known 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" [Ginenthal, "Ice Core Evidence," op. cit., p. 69] Now here, once again Mewhinney was offered a statement from the scientific literature ,which I directly pointed out these acid signals to him. Here was yet another opportunity for Mewhinney to explain how volcanic eruptions could be used to corroborate the dust and acid signals in the ice cores. Again as I perused his papers searching to find his coming to grips with this. I began to wonder. I could not find a word regarding this because as the reader has probably guessed by now, there is not any mention of it. Isn't this again an exercise in perversity? What is the basis for Mewhinney's omission of this evidence that challenged his views? Mewhinney likes to cite M.G.L. Baillie in his criticisms of us in his "Minds" article. Yet here is what Baillie of the science Paleocology Centre School of Geosciences, Queen's University at Belfast, Northern Ireland has to say on this same subject: "In 1988 a series of environmental downturns, indicated by "narrowest ring events in Irish oak tree-rings, were found to occur in the proximity of large acid anomalies in the Camp Century and Dye 3 ice cores from Summit, Greenland. The original suggestion that these events were caused directly by large explosive volcanic eruptions has continued to cause controversy. ...the inability of volcanologists to date volcanoes with high temporal precision limits all such discussions" (Emphasis added).(18) But even such admissions have not penetrated Mewhinney's mind. When we compare the forthrightness of Baillie in facing this fundamental issue respecting the dating of past volcanic eruptions with that of Mewhinney in suppressing this evidence, it becomes clear that Mewhinney does not share the same standards for evidence as Baillie. There is yet a further problem with dating volcanic signals in the ice cores which is also relevant to finding corroboration of ice dating precision. The question is, even if the dating of the volcanic tephra was correct, how can one be sure the particular volcanic signal in the Greenland or Antarctic ice is truly that of the particular volcano said to be the one that erupted at that particular time? This I also presented as an issue for Mewhinney's interpretation of the relevance of this data. "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' (Walter Sullivan, "Santorini Volcano Ash Traced Afar, Gives A Date of 1623 B.C." The New York Times, (June 7, 1994), p. C8) 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 7,000 B.C." (Ibid) 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 B.C. may have come from ...[T]he one believed to have come occurred at Santorini...[T]here are exceptions to know acid signals in the ice core... The earliest exactly dated eruption was that of Vesuvius... in A.D. 79." (Ibid)... 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... Mewhinney suggest[s] that such a record can clearly disprove Velikovsky hypothesis."(19) Here was a fundamental correlation problem that existed in the Greenland ice cores. And here once more was a new opportunity presented to Mewhinney to refute and explain away this data with evidence. Look as one might through the length and breath of Mewhinney "Minds", for a response to my criticism of this work, and one will seek in vain for a mention of this evidence. Isn't this further omission perversity Sean? What words would you employ to characterize your failure to deal with these facts? Mewhinney turns to one well known volcanic eruption as a correlation and support for ice cores, namely Thera: "A prominent [volcanic acid] peak stood out at 1390 +/- 50 B.C. with no other comparable peak within hundreds of years on either side, they identified it as the signature of the Thera eruption. This was in 1980." (20) Mewhinney next turns to how corroboration then came from tree ring dating related to climate and new evidence from the Greenland ice sheet which supposedly confirmed the validity of the uniformitarian analysis of Thera. He goes on to cite the dendrochronological work of Valmore La Marche and Katherine Hirschboeck that Thera caused a severe cold spell which is found in the American Southwest's bristlecone pines dated to about 1627 B.C. (21) He also explains how a similar date was also found in the Greenland ice which would corroborate Thera's eruption date of 1645 B.C. with an estimated standard deviation of plus or minus 7 years and an estimated error limit of plus or minus 20 years (22) And as final corroboration of the Thera event he cites Baillie and Monro who found very narrow tree rings from Irish oak trees beginning in 1627 B.C. (23) To all this he adds: "These developments do not seem to have been properly digested as yet by those whose comments have appeared in Velikovskian organs."(24) What Mewhinney has failed to report is that I presented direct statements by M.G.L. Baillie in the ADDENDA to my paper wherein Mewhinney's criticism was answered. "At this juncture, I wish to emphasize that the points I raised regarding the volcanic acid signal found in the Greenland ice core are not matters of conjecture but matters of fact. Mike G.L. Baillie ... made these same points in the Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum (1990-1991 issue). Here are the points he specifically raised as I noted them: "Concerning Thera... "1. The exact date of the eruptions is not known. "2. The nature of any environmental effects due to the eruption are by no means fully quantified. "3. The eruption is virtually certain to have taken place between 1700 B.C. and 1520 B.C. "4. 1628 B.C. (or one or two years earlier) cannot be ruled out as a possible date for the eruption." (Mike G. L. Baillie, "Dendrochronology and Thera: The Scientific case," Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum Vol. 4, (1990-1991), p. 24)(25) I further cited Baillie that for Thera "none of the lines of evidence for the environmental effects could specify which volcano was responsible. This was self-evident and all the relevant workers known this." (ibid. p. 23)(26) Baille emphasizes that "despite all the controversy about the dating of Thera, no one knows the correct answer." (Ibid., p.24)(27) I also pointed out Baillie's citation of the paper by J.S.Vogel, et al., who "have now suggested at least three other eruptions [from other volcanos] which, on the basis of radiocarbon evidence, may have taken place at about the same time as Thera" (Ibid for Bailley: Also see J.S. Vogel, et al., "Vesuvius/Aviello: One Possible source of 17th Century B.C. Climatic Disturbances," Nature, Vol. 344, (1990), pp. 534-537)(28) As a final point on the Thera issue, I presented this statement by Baillie: "Just how reliable are the ice core estimates of global acid fallout [on the Greenland icecap]? On this latter point, I agree with Dr. [Bernard] Newgrosh. THE FAILURE OF HAMMER ET AL. TO DUPLICATE EITHER THE 1390+/- 50 B.C. EVENT OR THE 1645 +/- 20 B.C. [ACID SIGNAL] EVENT IN PARALLEL (ICE) CORES RADICALLY DENTS THE CREDIBILITY OF THEIR ESTIMATES OF GLOBAL ACID FALLOUT FOR THESE PREHISTORIC ERUPTIONS." (Capitalization added) (Baillie ibid)(29) In the most fundamental terms, ice cores drilled parallel to the one from which the Thera acid signal was supposedly derived show absolutely no acid signal at the level required for Thera or for that [matter] of any other volcano(30) All these citations from Baillie or the scientific literature were in my paper for Mewhinney to discuss, analyze, criticize in any way he chose to deal with them respecting his position on Thera. What he chose to do was not discuss this evidence, nor analyze the data, nor even criticize a word of it. What he chose to do was act as though not a word of it existed. The unreality of such behavior speaks volumes of Mewhinney's character. Mewhinney cites Baillie and others on the validity of tree-rings as they relate to the ice core data. When I specifically quote Baillie in my "ICE" criticism of Mewhinney's analysis which is a full debunking of his position by the very authority he cites, what does he do? He not only ignores my work, but that of the very same authority he had originally relied upon. Thus, when it suits Mewhinney, Baillie's work is employed as a source to support the validity of ice cores. However when Baillie's work does not suit him, because it denies the validity of the ice cores, Mewhinney simply escapes the dilemma this causes for him by acting as if none of Baillie's evidence exists. This is irresponsible scholarship, manipulation but above all, disingenuousness. For anyone who may think Baillie has in any way changed his views respecting or that new evidence has been uncovered to change the data, I cannot but recommend his 1998 paper in Natural Catastrophes During Bronze Age Civilization (Oxford Eng. 1998), especially page 110. There one will learn about the extreme weakness of the ice cores, radio carbon, and other evidence as precise markers of past climates. Therefore, the deeper ice cores cannot be corroborated by acid signal dates as Mewhinney would have us believe with specific ancient volcanic eruptions. Mewhinney's failure to come squarely to grips with his own authority indicates that the proper rules of scholarship and evidence have been cast to the winds and the cards he holds in his hands are there to mislead and bluff his way regarding this matter. VARVES AS CORROBORATION OR DISCONFIMATION OF ICE CORES Certainly there are other relevant forms of evidence Mewhinney could have turned to that corroborate the ice cores as markers of time and climate. For example, he could have turned to the evidence from the varve record. In one of his new "Minds" papers he, in fact, points to varve dating as a very good way to record and date past climates. I looked at this dating-climate archive precisely as it relates to ice cores in my "ICE" paper citing Scott Lehman who wrote: "[In September, 1992] came the first report from one of two teams drilling on Greenland, confirming that much of the period 8,000 [to] 40,000 years ago was marked by sudden [5 to 10C] switches in temperature over the ice sheet. In February came news from other teams that the switches were in fact jittery, embracing large oscillations in climate dating in some cases less than [five] years. And then in July, came the further discovery that the past 8,000 years of relatively stable climate have been an oddity-the last time that there was as little ice on Earth as today (the last inter-glacial period), temperatures over Greenland varied even more wildly than during the glacial period shifting as much as [10 to 12 C] in just decades and remaining in place for as little as 70 years. Although climate modelers and geologists are racing to understand and test the implication of the new ice core data, one thing seems certain - the heat carrying capacity of the Atlantic Ocean must somehow be involved in producing the sudden climate changes around Greenland." (Scott Lehman, "Ice Sheets, Wayward Winds and Sea Change," Nature, Vol. 365, (Sept 9, 1993), p. 108)(31) Here then was a clear and unmistakable series of violent temperature oscillation signals in the Greenland ice sheet and naturally one would expect the varve record of North America, at least, to reflect these many great temperature swings. However, if as Velikovsky claimed the ice was laid down in about a year, then there would be absolutely no correlation of the varve record with that of Greenland's ice core archive. On this question I cited Hans Oeschger who has been deeply involved in ice core analysis of climate whom I quoted directly regarding these temperature oscillations in the varve record: "such pronounced correlations are not found in climate records from the North American continent." (Hans Oeschger, "Long-Term Climate Stability: Environmental System Studies," The Ocean in Human Affairs, S. Fred Singer ed., (New York 1990), p. 65)(32) The insufficiency of the validity of the ice core evidence could not be more pronounced. All through the ice, except for supposedly about the past 8,000 years, evidence suggested tremendous temperature oscillations. In essence, the vast historical ice core record of Greenland exhibited these oscillations but the North American varve record showed that these swings did not occur. Now might I add that the North American varve record is not a record of only one area. Numerous varve cores going back into the great past are found in lakes and bogs all over the continent but these do not exhibit these major climatic swings. Is it possible that the oceans cooled and then heated up so greatly but did not affect the temperature regime across North America? This is simply not reasonable because land heats up and cools down more rapidly than oceans.(33) Surely these many, many temperature swings had to affect the North American climate and cause plants to grow in various regions of the continent to shed pollen into lakes and bogs that reflected these climatic oscillations. But Oeschger tells us the ice cap oscillations are not found in the many varve records. The varve record contradicts the ice core record for thousands upon thousands of years. This is contradiction not corroboration. Naturally, one would expect Mewhinney to explain this negation of the record with which he has criticized Velikovsky. Yet, if one looks through every page, and every word he has written, no mention of this is presented by Mewhinney. Again, when it suits Mewhinney's purpose, he cites the validity of varve records to discredit Velikovsky. However, when the varve record contradicts the validity of the ice cores Mewhinney feigns, and acts as if they were never presented by me, and therefore that the varve contradiction to the ice cores does not exist. If this was not enough, about a year prior to his presenting his critique via electronic media and the mail service, I had presented in my book The Extinction of the Mammoth direct evidence that these many temperature oscillations were also not found in the Devils Hole cores taken from a cave filled with ground water in Nevada. According to Walter S. Broecker whom I cited, this archive of climate "is more firm than any other available isotopic age in this [time] range" (Walter S. Broecker, "Upset for Milankovitch Theory, Nature Vol 359, (1992), p. 180)(34) Therefore, since the varve record of North America contradicts the Greenland ice core data respecting these large temperature oscillations, one would expect at least this evidence to show up in the Devils Hole data. The Devils Hole waters are derived from a broad area of sources. It is not a local record as we will see below. Wind currents from the north Pacific off Canada and Alaska and the Pacific south of the United States carry water vapor to the Great Basis in which Devils Hole is located. These rain waters pass through the ground as ground water from all across the Great Basin and collect in Devils Hole cavern. The waters thus reflect the temperature of a vast region namely, much of the Pacific Ocean of the northern hemisphere and the western portion of North America. Since these waters build up calcium carbonate layers in Devils Hole, they are an excellent record of this hemisphere's climate over about the last half million years. But as Isaac J. Winograd pointed out in EOS Vol 77, (April 23, 1996), Supp., p. F169, once again not a single temperature oscillation reported in the Greenland ice cap was found.(35) Therefore, there are now two major climate records (the varve record of North America and the Devils Hole record of the Great Basin) that contradict the view presented by Mewhinney that the ice cores are a valid record of climate change through thousands upon thousands of years. HEINRICH LAYERS AND THE GREENLAND ICE CORES What would cause the Greenland ice cores to exhibit these great temperature swings but not the North American continent as exemplified by varves or Devils Hole. In my book on the mammoth extinction I pointed out that there are layers of detritus found all across the North Atlantic sea bed. These are called Heinrich layers and were caused by immense flotillas of icebergs. About seven such layers exist in the sediments of the North Atlantic as far south as Spain.(36) The release of such armadas of icebergs must naturally cool down the Atlantic Ocean abruptly and should leave a powerful signature of snow oscillation in the Greenland ice cap from which its snow is derived. Thus the question is: Does the timing of these Heinrich events correlate in a powerful way with these dated periods when the North Atlantic was suddenly filled with perhaps hundreds of thousands of icebergs at once? This could be a powerful documented correlation to establish the correctness of the ice cores as a reliable record of past climate. Unfortunately, such is not the case, as Gerald Bend, et al, state: "Sediments in the North Atlantic Ocean contain a series of layers that are rich in ice-rafted debris and usually poor in foraminifera . Here we present evidence... [of a ] record marked decrease in sea surface temperature and salinity, decreases in flux of plantonic foraminifera to the sediments and short-lived massive discharges of icebergs, clearly marked by the presence of ice-rafted detrital carbonate [which] can be traced for more than 3,000 km, [1,900 miles] a remarkable distance, attesting to extreme cooling of surface waters and enormous amounts of drifting ice. The cause of these events is puzzling. They may reflect repeated rapid advances in the Lauren-tide ice sheet, perhaps associated with reduction in air temperature, yet temperature records from Greenland ice cores appear to exhibit only a weak corresponding signal...."(37) The North Atlantic Ocean during these Heinrich events became so cool that the innumerable foraminifera that lived there prior to and after these events could not do so, but only those few adapted to extremely cold water. Thus, the North Atlantic Ocean water had to be, as the researchers pointed out, an indication of "extreme cooling of surface waters." This of course, is the area from which Greenland derives its moisture to generate the snow falling on the island. Why then does this "extreme cooling of surface waters," show no strong signals with the extreme temperature swings in the ice caps? The entire basis of the ice core layering is based on the assumption that if the ocean water become extremely cold these will evaporate and create atmospheric moisture which in the cold atmosphere is further depleted of oxygen-18 and precipitates on the ice sheet of Greenland. Thus, here we have with the Heinrich layers an ideal condition for the deep cooling of the Atlantic Ocean and this should be exhibited by extremely strong cold signals in the ice cap. However, this is not the case. So if the extraordinary cold water created by Heinrich events make the ocean so cold that few foraminifera can live in these waters but cannot produce outstandingly strong indications in the ice cores, then the entire process by which the oxygen isotope layers were created is again called into question. Add this to the filtration, sublimation processed outlined by H. Craige et al, in Science and Jaworowski in 21st Century and the entire concept exhibits little or no substance. In retrospect we find that the large temperature oscillations in the Greenland ice cap show no corresponding oscillations in the North American varve record which is a basic contradiction to the ice core evidence , or in the Devils Hole core. Then we have clear evidence that the Atlantic Ocean, during Heinrich events, became extremely cold, but these cold snaps are only weakly reflected in the Greenland ice cap. Yet if these Heinrich events are related to the large temperature swings in the Greenland ice cap they would correlate directly with the large temperature oscillations in the Greenland cores, but this is not found. Thus both land based and ocean based climate signals fail to give the ice cores any substantial support. DENDROCHRONOLOGY AND VARVES AND GREENLAND ICE CORES VIS A VIS THE YOUNGER DRYAS The strongest confirmation for the Greenland ice core record is that of tree rings. Tree ring dating is believed to be an absolute chronology not subject to the vagaries of other dating methods. Therefore if, the Greenland ice core record receives strong confirmation from the tree ring dating method, it will have some basis for dating climate change. The tree ring chronology supposedly goes back almost to the end of the last Ice Age and should give basic support for the period after the Ice Age. There was, of course, a period after the Ice Age ended when the Earth went into a very cold period for hundreds of years. Grayson describes it thus: "The Younger Dryas takes its name from a herbaceous tundra plant, the mountain axens, genus Dryas. This plant is a marker for the apparently rapid replacement of forest by tundra that took place in northwestern Europe shortly after 11,000 years ago. Not only did forest give way to arctic grasses, herbs and shrubs here, but glaciers expanded in Norway and Scotland and temperatures, at least as inferred from studies of the Greenland ice cap, fell nearly 11[degrees] F. This North Atlantic cold snap lasted about 800 years; by 10,000 years ago it was over. Similar events seem to have occurred in northeastern North America and in the Southern Hemisphere....One thing, however, is clear: the Younger Dryas occurred at almost exactly the same time as the rise of Lake Bonneville to the [Lake] Gilbert level."(38) Grayson reported this in 1993. However, G. Landmann et al in 1996 found a large discrepancy with this dating in the Greenland ice cap.(39) According to Zbigniew Jaworowski writing in 1997: "Dating of such important climatic events as the termination of the Younger Dryas period BASED ON DENDROCHRONOLOGY (examination of tree ring growth) AND LAKE SEDIMENTS, [varves] differ from recent ice core data from Greenland by up to about 900 years." (Capitalization added)(40) Now Mewhinney and Ellenberger have made substantial claims regarding the validity of the tree-ring dating as an absolute record of past climates. But as we can see, regarding this evidence, these same tree rings categorically call into question the validity of the ice cores. Is Mewhinney now going to say that when the tree ring discredit the validity of the ice cores, that this is not a negation to the ice core record? Of course, at this point it is rather clear that Mewhinney has developed a scotoma, a blind spot, to any evidence that discredits his ice cores. Therefore, since dendrochronology is supposed to be the best absolute chronology of the past (41) we have yet another fundamental contradiction to the validity of the Greenland ice cores. Furthermore, the varves in lakes, like the tree-ring chronology is also in disagreement with these ice cores, also by about up to 900 years. Mewhinney made a great deal in his Common Sense Part II article criticizing those who challenged an 18 year discrepancy between the Greenland ice core data and that of dendrochronology for the eruption of Thera. "Why should anyone insist on attributing absolute accuracy to the data of the Dye 3 core, contrary to the explicit statements of the glaciologists. We are talking about a discrepancy of 18 years at most between the ice-core and tree-ring dates.... An error of 18 years in the course of counting back 3,600 [years] is one half of 1 percent"(42) However, a discrepancy between the ice-core and tree-ring and also the varve dates of about 900 years in 11,000 years is 8 to 9 percent and that is a tremendous discrepancy. This is especially so since it is found that varves and tree ring records (two records) fail to corroborate the Greenland ice core archive. Why was it colder in two climate temperature systems of analysis but differed in that of the Greenland ice record, if these records corroborate ice cores? Thus not only during the last Ice Age do two climate temperature records North American varves and Devils Hole core contradict the deep Greenland ice core record, but even after the Ice Age ended, the Younger Dryas a period of 900 years is also contradicted by two land climate temperature records dendrochronology and varves. Now in my mammoth book, I did make a mistake when I cited Jaworowski on page 281. Instead of copying Jaworowski's citation number 16 re Landmann et al., I copied citation number 17, re Dansgaard. This Mewhinney will of course raise to a capital offense. I do apologize for the error in the mammoth book but not for the information re the discrepancy between tree-ring and ice core in that book and have presented it here where it is corrected. ICE MODELING VS. REALITY The entire validity of ice cores as archives of past climates is based on the assumption that the rate of snow buildup and burial and compaction to ice occurs at a rate that is measured today and thus retrocalculated into the past. This, too, is similar to eclipse data based on similar uniformitarian assumptions. The upper snow and firn layers and the upper few hundred feet of solid ice layers on the Greenland ice sheet are the most accessible for study and therefore should directly reflect the glaciologist's model of how the great ice sheet flows, but much more importantly, when the dated layers in the ice actually formed. Both the flow patterns the layering age depth patterns should conform with the glaciologist's model and expectations they attribute to the ice if their model is realistic. If this model of ice flow pattern and the ice's age based on depth should prove to be directly contradicted by clear-cut, objective evidence found in the Greenland ice sheet then the validity of the entire model becomes doubtful. The theoretical ice model predictions meticulously worked out by the glaciologists must stand up to fundamental artifacts found directly in the ice or the model is baseless and all that it presumes to explain is brought into question. The experiment that fully determined the validity of theoretical ice model was carried out between July 1942 and 1989-1990 by the recovery of an American P-38 war plane from the Greenland ice cap. On July 15, 1942 a squadron of six P-38 Lightnings with two B-17 Flying Fortress bombers ran into a blizzard as it flew from Greenland to Iceland. The storm was so violent that the commander of the squadron ordered the planes to return to their Greenland base. When they arrived at Greenland the airfield was experiencing blizzard conditions and landing there was simply too dangerous to attempt. Running out of fuel, the bombers and fighter planes all crash-landed on the ice cap 13.4 miles from the edge of the ice sheet. The difficulty and cost of getting these war machines off the ice cap was just too expensive and the planes were therefore deserted to be covered over year by year with snow. Thus, the evidence of the flow patterns and age-depth pattern expected by the glaciologist's model of the ice cap could be fully examined and tested. Based on this model, the glaciologists made very specific predictions about how far the planes would be carried toward the Greenland coast and how deeply they would be buried in the ice cap. As Pat Epp's leader of the final expeditions that removed a plane informed me on December 23, 1998 over the telephone, the glaciologist's predictions were an utter disaster, greater than the one that befell this squadron. Both the glaciologist's ice flow model and age-depth expectation were firmly and conclusively destroyed by what was ultimately found when these plans were finally and correctly located. A retelling of these events is found in David Hayes', The Lost Squadron, (Toronto Canada 1994). However, the glaciologist's model and predictions will be attested to below. Let us begin. According to Burt Avedon, who was on some of these expeditions which searched for and found the location of the squadron, an actual test was unwittingly conducted which told just how rapid the rate of ice flow was. He informs us that for the 1983 expedition, "When the money ran out and weather closed in, the group erected a 25-foot metal tower over the site of the relocated B-17 and abandoned the operation."(43) Based on ice modeling of Greenland's continental glacier when the party returned two years later to attempt a recovery, they had expected that the tower, which marked the squadron's position, to have moved only slightly. However, its position did not conform with the ice flow model because when they checked the "latitude and longitude measurements [it] said it couldn't be. The site was 410 feet from where the tower was sunk. Mountain glaciers might possibly drift that much, but not continental ones." (44) The rate of drift was 205 feet (61.5m) per year. Avedon, using the glaciologists flow pattern model in fact showed that the ice flow rate was actually greater than that of the tower because he pointed out that "We know the planes must have drifted in their snow-bound tomb over two miles in 42 years."(45) At that rate the squadron was moving about 251 feet per year in the ice. This was still a greater distance than the ice flow model allowed for a continental glacier. He went on to say "At that [251 foot per year] rate in another 240 years an iceberg would calve off the glacier into the sea with a B-17 or a P-38 on top for a hood ornament or bow- spit."(46) Since 251 feet per year over 240 years is 60,240 feet or 11.4 miles, with 2 miles covered by 42 previous years of flow and we know the squadron landed about 13.4 miles from the edge of the ice cap. Thus, the flow rate model stated the ice moved much less than 205 feet per year but the planes carried in the ice and the tower indicated that the ice was flowing much more rapidly than the model allowed. But much more significant for our purposes is the question of depth-age modeling. Remember the glaciologists maintain that their counts of layers much like that of tree rings give a fairly precise count of years into the past. Therefore, how deeply should the planes have been buried beneath the succeeding 40-plus years of ice and snow based on the model employed by glaciologists. On one of the expeditions "almost 30 experts spent months on the ice-cap to locate the planes."(47) According to Avedon: "Glaciologists using ice scopes from the University of Iceland at Reykjavik tried to calculate the depth of the mass [of metal found in the ice] "Men were lowered into crevasses to confirm the ice scope findings on the annual snowfall melt and buildup. Using long-wave equipment rather than short waves (that won't go through water) the group again confirmed the positive magnetic reading but were unable to determine the depth. "The expedition of 1983 picked up from there. After spending a week trying to relocate the aircraft, they drilled down to 80 feet [24m], which was the median depth [for the planes] forecast by the glaciologists." (Emphasis added)(48) The glaciologists had, based on their model of depth-age, claimed that in about 40 years the planes would be buried beneath 80 feet (24m) of snow and ice. As Avedon states elsewhere "THE GLACIOLOGIST SAID THAT THE PLANES WERE AT 80 FEET." (Capitalization added)(49) In no uncertain terms, Avedon reports that the glaciologists who came along on the earlier expeditions using their models of the rate of snow accumulation and ice build up were convinced that at most the planes lay some 80 feet below the surface. This was the basis for seeking them at that depth. The glaciologists told the rescuers this. They had put their model to a test. According to B. Fristrup ice buildup averages 15 centimeters about six inches in the far north of Greenland, which receive very little snowfall, and 90 centimeters 36 inches or three feet per year in the southern most part of the island, which receives much more snow. (50) With the planes a few hundred miles north of the southern tip of the island the glaciologist's model required that the snow ice accumulation was 67.5 centimeters, about two feet per year. Thus the correct extrapolation from their model after about 40 years, at two feet per year placed the planes at 80 feet below the surface. The planes were indeed located a few years after these extrapolations by the glaciologists were made. One P-38 warplane was removed but not at about 80 to 90 feet depth. Even if we use a 90 centimeter, three foot per year buildup of ice and snow accumulation after 46 years when contact was finally made, the planes would be at a depth of 138 feet. Therefore, it is quite clear that the ice modeling of the Greenland ice cap indicated a depth of 80 feet for the planes but this analysis failed to even come near the actual depth at which the squadron was ultimately located. According to David Hayes who wrote about the various expeditions, William Thuma, a geophysicist, in September 1985 who after the 80 foot level was reached failed to reveal the planes, using magnetic signals, and "having had time to run his data through computers and review the findings patiently, Thuma was able to draw a tentative conclusion about what they called site number four, the B-17 tower, which put the plane at a far greater depth than any one [glaciologists] had imagined. In the report he submitted... Thuma wrote 'it seems plausible that the aircraft at site #4 is at a depth of 258' (feet) (78.6m).'" (51) This was an immense departure from what was expected. Using a steam probe to melt the snow and ice "At 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 2, [1988] Thuma was operating the probe when he made contact with something at 250 feet. Two more contacts were made that night within a radius of ten feet. Two days later, having marked several more hits with flags, the approximate outline of an airplane wing took shape... "The Icelanders, using the first site as a reference point, located seven more objects with the ice scope. With mounting excitement [Pat] Epps and [Richard] Taylor compared the Icelanders' markers with the configuration of the squadron. They matched. 'They might not be the planes', Taylor pointed out, sounding uncharacteristically cautious. 'They might be behemoths [mammoths], for all we know. But if so, the behemoths died in a pattern that corresponds to how the planes landed in '42'"(52) In 1990, two years later, the salvage job was attempted and on June 6, they again made contact with their probe. At "256 feet," (53) which turned out to be a piece of the plane that was brought to the surface. In May 1992, two years later, at below 257 feet the P-38 was struck(54) and removed from the ice in sections over that summer. The planes were at a median depth of about 260 feet (78m) below the surface while the glaciologists earlier had maintained they would be found at a depth of only 80 feet ten years later at 100 feet. They were over two and one half times deeper than their ice age-depth model predicted! Thus, it becomes rather obvious that the modeling assumption of the glaciologists respecting the flow rate model and the depth-age correlation in the Greenland ice cap is contradicted by evidence of these direct measurements. Neither the distance the war planes and the iron tower moved fit their extrapolations from the model, but more significantly the depth-age correlation expected from their model was off by two and one half times. If the depth-age model is in such flagrant contradiction to the real depth-age then on what basis can anyone trust the rest of the readings regarding depth-ages which are promulgated as disproof of Velikovsky vis a vis Greenland ice cores. The model has simply failed this most crucial test of its validity. Of course, post hoc ergo propter hoc models can be substituted to make these contradictions fit the glaciologists' ice model, but such reevaluations to save the paradigm are merely exercises in wishful thinking especially in view of all the foregoing evidence that contradicts their model. CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT ICE CORES Baillie pointed out above that the acid signal supposedly associated with the Thera eruption found in one ice core was missing altogether in a core drilled parallel to it. Thus we encounter a significant contradiction between cores which as we have seen Mewhinney did not answer. However, in my "ICE" paper I presented yet another much larger contradiction between ice cores, explained to me by Winograd (personal communication) where I showed temperature swings found in pre-Holocene ice cores were contradicted by another one, I stated: "The most disturbing problem... is that for the last Interglacial period, climate swings were found in one core and were missing in another, a fundamental contradiction to the accuracy of the cores. "In order to explain away these temperature swings a three day conference was held by the European and American ice core teams to present papers that these swings may not have existed during the last interglacial Although this could not be proven definitively, one can see that the desire to remove this major contradiction to the uniformitarian interpretation of the ice core and climate is quite strong."(55) Here again Mewhinney had yet another chance to deal with this contradiction. Again, he simply omitted any discussion of this material from "Ice Cores and Idealogy" work. GAS EVIDENCE CULLED BY GLACIOLOGISTS There are also other problems related to sampling evidence in the ice cores which show directly how the evidence is actually culled in order to give only the results the glaciologists expect. Mewhinney has argued that gases in the Greenland ice show no unusually high concentrations of argon left by Venus or Mars as a disproof of Velikovsky's thesis.(56) What we now know as a result of Jaworowski's work shows us that only the gases expected in the amounts expected are presented by the glaciologists. "Until 1985 the published CO2 readings from air bubbles in pre-industrial ice ranged from 160 to about 700 ppmv, and occasionally even up to 2,450 ppmv. After 1985 high readings disappeared from the publications! To fit such a wide range of results to the anthropogenic climate warming theory, which was based on low pre-industrial CO2 levels, three methods were used: (1) rejection of high readings from sets of pre-industrial samples based on the credo: 'The lowest CO2 values best represent the CO2 concentrations in the originally trapped ice; (A Neftel, et al., Nature, Vol 295, (1982), p. 220)(2) rejection of low readings from sets of 20th century samples; and (3) interpretation of high readings from pre-industrial samples as representing the contemporary atmosphere rather than the pre-industrial one. "Publications on greenhouse gases in ice often exhibit similar symptoms to those of G.S. Callendar, cited above. [who claimed industrial CO2 would generate a modern greenhouse effect] But the most important deficiency of these studies is the ice matrix itself, which does not fulfill the absolutely essential closed-system criterion. This is because liquid water is present in ice even at low temperatures and because many chemical and physical processes occur in situ, in ice sheets and in recovered ice cores. These factors discussed in [five] References..., change the original composition of air entrapped in ice, making the ice core results unrepresentative of the original chemical composition of the ancient atmosphere." (Emphasis added) (57) Therefore, to find any of the gases in the ice core we require a "closed system". In a system in which physical and chemical processes make the gas results unrepresentative of the original atmosphere we cannot expect as Mewhinney has told us that argon gas amounts would be significantly higher in ice core samples. The various processes operating guarantee that the results are either wrong or culled out of existence. This is one of the major problems with all complex systems. One cannot know with certainty whether or not the results reflect atmospheric gases or physical-chemical processes operating in the ice. CONCLUSION TO ICE CORES One can plainly see the ice cores are not strong evidence of ancient climates. This was attested to not only by Jaworowski but also Baillie. Neither of these researchers are Velikovskians. Here is the conclusion reached by Zbigniew Jaworowski, Tom Segalstad, Nobuo Ono, in the journal The Science of the Total Environment. They specifically claim that glaciological studies were, "NOT ABLE TO PROVIDE A RELIABLE RECONSTRUCTION OF...PALEO-CLIMATES." (Capitalization Added)(58) Here one can see that ice cores are really crystalline spheres instead of reliable archives of ancient climate and that Mewhinney's work to discredit Velikovsky on the basis of such evidence is without support. Particularly disturbing is Mewhinney's selective disregard for all the ice core evidence I presented in "ICE" as it relates to the many specific cases outlined above. Is there any possible or conceivable way that Mewhinney was not thoroughly aware of what he was doing when he systematically omitted from his discussion of ice cores every single piece of evidence related directly to these matters which I had presented? Did Mewhinney in his heart of hearts really believe he could answer all this evidence with these bombastic evasions, subterfuges and denials which are really lies. Yet Mewhinney's first paper is titled "Ice Cores and Ideology," giving the impression that he had honestly responded to my "ICE" evidence. It could have better been titled "Ideology For Not Dealing With Ginenthal's Ice Core Evidence," "An Ice Core Paper That Only Deals in Bombastic Evasion, Denial And Subterfuge," or just what it is, "Anti-Velikovskian Ideology." What ever it is, it is not a paper that deals with the relevant facts presented in my "ICE" article. In the final analysis, Mewhinney has ended up exposing himself as irrational. I could rent my case here having shown that Mewhinney exhibits all the faults he accuses Velikovsky and me of but there are other facets of his work that also deserve attention. Interestingly, Mewhinney was able to criticize Velikovsky's view of a universal deluge based on ice core evidence in AEON as if all the critical issues I raised in "ICE" to expose Mewhinney's inept ice core work does not exist. As long as such wholesale denial of evidence operates , he will be able to continue presenting ice core criticisms.(59) PART II ICE AGE MILANKOVITCH CYCLES OR EPICYCLES Mewhinney's next effort is to demonstrate to his readers that Ice Ages are brought about by small uniformitarian changes in the orbit and axial tilt of the Earth over long stretches of time and not by sudden recent catastrophes as theorized by: Velikovsky. After all, if Ice Ages are the gradualistic result of these small Milankovitch patterns then there can be little or no case as support for the concept of Velikovskian cataclysmic Ice Ages. However, before beginning to deal with Mewhinney's evidence, I wish to present a small discussion of this theory and how it was derived.(60) According to Robert Claiborne "the first reasonably scholarly estimate of ice-age chronologies comes from Penck and Bruckner."(61) They employed the best evidence available and, "Arrived at an educated guess for Ice Age chronology. In round figures they said each ice Age lasted 60,000 years [With interglacials added, they achieved a]... Grand total for the whole process of 600,000 years. "These figures were, by any standard, based on the most shaky kind of evidence. It was therefore something of a surprise when a second chronology, based on quite different evidence, apparently confirmed the Penke-Bruckner estimates. This time scheme was the work of many hands, but most particularly the Serbian mathematician Milan Milankovich...(62) Claiborne goes on to show: "It took Milankovich nearly twenty years to work out his radiation tables... Painstakingly, he worked out graphs for half a dozen different latitudes and then picked out one of them. (Lat. 65N.) as the rationale for his theory. Milankovitch's stated reason for picking this particular graph [as opposed to graphs of other latitudes] was that 65N was where the glacial action was; that is, the various centers from which the great ice sheets had expanded lay at about that latitude. In fact, however, this was true of only the one in Scandinavia. Another in Scotland lay at about 58 N., while the two man centers in North America (where much more ice was) were at around 55 and 70, respectively. And quite apart from this factual inaccuracy, I wonder why Milankovitch if he knew all along that 65 N. was the key latitude, my suspicion is that he worked backward; that is, having first plotted out all his graphs, he then picked out the one that best fit the traditional glacial chronology of Penck and Bruckner.(63) Claiborne adds: "Though something less than water tight, this theory seemed plausible enough. It seemed even more plausible when all the 'troughs' of Milankovich's graph the presumed cool summer, ice-building periods turned out to fall just about where Penck and Bruckner's chronology had placed the ice ages. Well, almost all. There was, as matter of fact, several troughs which did not correspond to ice ages at all; Penck and Bruckner's 'Great Interglacial' included no less than five of them. To get around this, Milankovich's partisans (of which there were by this time quite a number) introduced a second... factor: they simply disregarded all the troughs that failed to reach a certain depth assuming that these periods of cool summer had not been quite cool enough for an ice buildup. "The next difficulty was raised by Sir George Simpson... He pointed out, in effect, that Milankovich had been using still another ... factor and it was the wrong one. It isn't the drop in solar radiation itself that would produce an ice age... but the fall in summer temperatures presumably produced by the drop in radiation. Now... temperatures anywhere on earth only in part reflect the radiation at that point; they also depend heavily on how much heat is carried to, or from, the region by the atmosphere and oceans. Milankovich, said Simpson, had under weighed this factor, so that his estimates of the drop in summer temperatures were four times too large. The actual drop would have been quite insufficient to build ice sheets."(64) Claiborne also adds: "Another blow came in 1953. Forty years of astronomical observations have yielded new and more accurate figures on the irregularities of the earth's motions. Using these new figures and a computer, a Dutch-American astronomer, A.J.J. van Woerkom, recalculated Milankovich's curve and found a deep 'glacial' trough smack in the middle of the Great Interglacial. Clearly something was very wrong with either the Milankovich theory or the Penck-Bruckner chronology or both. "One of the reactions to this embarrassing fact throws an embarrassing light on the vaunted objectivity of science. The late Fredrick E. Zeuner, one of the great names in geochronology [related to varve chronology], and a strong partisan of the Penck-Bruckner time scheme, described the differences between van Woerkom's and Milankovich's curves -- including that troublesome interglacial 'glaciation' as 'negligible.' This was precisely the opposite of what van Woerdom had said. Some of the Milankovich partisans, however, were less impervious to facts than Zeuner. Recognizing that something had to give, they simply jettisoned the Penck-Bruckner chronology, at the same time restating the Milankovich theory so as to take account of Simpson's criticisms."(65) For those who wish to read a delightful expose of the fudging and unscholarly nature of how climatology actually works, read Robert Claiborne's Climate, Man and History especially pages 116-145, though dated, it is an excellent book. He also discusses the work of Walter Broecker and Cesare Emiliani, who have their own versions of why Milankovitch cycles cause Ice Ages. But he claims that Emiliani's theory also employs "many assumptions, conjectures and other types of... factors even a good climatic theory must employ."(66) He claims Broecker's "version of the Milankovitch theory which he has of course obtained by applying another set of ... factors to it."(67) So to begin with, we must be very clear that for all its popularity and acclaim, the Milankovitch theory is based on unproven "assumptions, conjectures, and other factors." These are rarely discussed in the popular literature. But what must above all first and foremost be understood is that we are not dealing with testable science but with a "climate model" in which the precise parameters cannot now be known. At this point we can begin to cite Mewhinney's criticisms in "Minds" because here at last he does discuss the evidence directly related to it: "The position that Ginenthal seems to be trying to articulate is that since there are 'discrepancies between these different [Devils Hole and ocean sediment] chronologies, we should chuck 'em all out, in favor of Immanuel Velikovsky's oracular revelations. But he is not consistent, because he is more interested in attaching Milankovitch than ice cores."(68) Now look at how Mewhinney has inverted the entire discussion. He claims that my "ICE" paper was primarily interested in attacking Milankovitch and not dealing with ice cores. This as anyone who has read my "ICE" article and the prior chapter of this paper can see is how Mewhinney has attempted to suggest that all that evidence on ice cores which he has ignored as if it does not exist. But he manages to finally say something we can at last analyze. He suggests that my position respecting the Devils Hole core contradiction with the ocean sediment cores is only a mere "discrepancy." What he has failed to be specific about, as a subterfuge, denial and evasion is the timing of these Devils Hole discrepancies with the ocean sediment cores because these are fundamental to Milankovitch. If a very cold period a bathythermal required by Milankovitch exists in the ocean sediment core is off by a number of years in the Devils Hole core (but still within a very cold period predicted by Milankovitch ) than the discrepancy would not be important. But if Milankovitch requires and directly predicts that both Devils Hole and marine cores show extremely warm periods -- hipsithermals or interglacials for a certain time and the cores contradict each other or that the ocean sediment core and Devils Hole archive both contradict Milankovitch, that would be a serious problem for that theory. In fact, if both cores contradict Milankovitch this becomes a momentous problem for the theory. Frankly, this is exactly what I pointed out to Mewhinney in "ICE" wherein I cited J. M. Landwehr, Isaac Winograd and T. B. Copen's letter in Nature. "We are puzzled by the table in the Scientific Correrspondence by Emiliani. He rejects the conventionally used (glacial, interglacial transitions) as time markers and focuses on bathythermals (the coldest portions of glacial cycles), which he deems to be sharper and therefore more precise time markers. He claims that bathy thermals in the Devils Hole 180 chronology occur at times when the orbital parameters of [the Earth's] obliquity [axial tilt] and eccentricity [to the Sun] are both low...thereby supporting the Milankovitch mechanism... "We show [in a table]... the seven astronomical 'low' events that Emiliani gives... We were puzzled as to why Emiliani omitted [from his table] two well-defined 'low' events... and note that they do not correspond to bathythermals in either the Devils Hole or the marine 180 chronologies. Indeed, the 'low' [or cold] event occurs during a peak interglacial time [when it was warmest]. We also note that Emiliani's designation of a 'low' event [for two periods] does not [even] fit the earlier stated definition. "Also show[n] in the figur are eight major 180 minima, denoting times of full glacial climate, found in the Devils Hole chronology, and the subset of six events that Emiliani gives... in his table. He does not mention the two Devils Hole isotope minima [at the time periods] which do not correspond to any astronomical 'low' event. In comparing the astronomical 'low' events predicted by the specific definition with the minimal isotope events in the Devils Hole chronology, one sees that though there are four 'matches,' there are six 'non-matches,' twice when a bathythermal would be predicted but did not happen and four times when one did occur but not during an astronomical 'low' event." (J.M. Landwehr, Isaac J. Winograd, T. B. Copen, "No Verification of Milankovitch," Nature, Vol 368, (April 14, 1994), p. 594)(69) Not only do the cores exhibit mere discrepancies with Milankovitch as Mewhinney would have us believe, but they contradict the theory. What one would have expected once Mewhinney made the admission of these discrepancies was that he would carefully explain them away by citing the scientific literature to show that they are not vital negations of Milankovitch. But this he did not do. Since he apparently could not explain these contradictions to Milankovitch, he evaded and denied their importance! He is acting precisely the way that Fredrick E. Zeuner dealt with the contradictions between van Woerkom's and Milankovitch's curves. But treating the discrepancies as "negligible' Mewhinney was being "impervious to those facts." Mewhinney adds "there is no aid or comfort from Devils Hole for diehard Velikovskians."(70) Let us see if there is any aid or comfort from Devils Hole for diehard anti-Velikovskians like Mewhinney. Let us see what scientists and others say who are "less impervious to facts" respecting the discrepancies which Mewhinney has not explained. Walter Broecker, one of the world's leading theorists of climate remarks in an article on the Devils Hole chronology as it relates to Milankovitch, entitled, "Upset for Milankovitch Theory" in Nature. "One of the fundamental tenets of paleoclimate modeling, the Milankovitch theory, is called into doubt by, isotope analyses of a calcite vein, [Devils Hole] just reported in Science Winograd and colleagues. The [Milankovitch] theory, which is backed up by a compelling bank of evidence, suggests that the ice ages are driven by periodic variations in the Earth's orbit. But the timing of the ice ages determined, with unprecedented accuracy in the new [Devils Hole] record cannot be reconciled with the planetary cyclicity."(71) Does Mewhinney really think that this statement by Broecker is without merit or substance? Broecker looked at these very same climatic discrepancies (really contradictions) between Devils Hole and Milankovitch and being impressed by the facts admitted what Mewhinney will not; the Devils Hole "record cannot be reconciled with Milankovitch." Mewhinney apparently needs to tell Broecker that he doesn't know what he is talking about with respect to the Devils Hole archive of climate as it relates to Milankovitch. Based on Devils Hole he agrees with my contention that this is not a poor little discrepancy but an irreconcilable negation of that theory. Broecker clearly needs lessons in climatology from Mewhinney. So too do the editors and referees of Nature need Mewhinney's advice who were so ignorant regarding this matter and published it. Richard A. Kerr, the editor of Science also has the temerity to disagree with Mewhinney on the importance of the Devils Hole record and Milankovitch "The Devils Hole Record traced climate swings of about the same length as the marine record, but they [sic] were out of step with the variations of Earth's orbit. Most Glaringly, these carbonates indicated a profound warming trend which appeared to signal the end of the penultimate ice age thousands of years before orbital variations could have begun to melt the ice. If the Devils Hole chronology was a true record of the world's ice ages, researchers would have to dump the astronomical mechanism and look for something new." (Emphasis added)(72) Kerr tells us that "If Devils Hole chronology is true... researchers would have to dump the [Milankovitch] astronomical mechanism," or in the words Mewhinney describes my contention "chuck 'em out." Kerr's concern regarding these contradictions to Milankovitch are well founded and admitted that Devils Hole evidence is a profound negation of that theory. Perhaps Mewhinney will be so good as to inform Kerr that he is misinformed and doesn't understand the evidence properly. Devils Hole receives its water from rainfall over a broad region and this water must seep through the ground before its oxygen isotopes will begin to register in the calcite forming on the walls of that cavern. The Devils Hole core evidence of past climate must therefore follow after the climatic changes. But while the temperature was still cold or glacial, Devils Hole was receiving rain water from the Pacific Ocean that was warm i.e., interglacial thousands of years prior to that ocean water becoming warm. Unlike Mewhinney, Kerr understood that this would be impossible and admitted the astronomical theory would have to be dumped. Mewhinney should tell Kerr he doesn't know what he is talking about. K.R. Ludwig, et al., of the U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado writing in Nature in a letter in response to N.J. Shakleton, also haven't gotten Mewhinney's message wherein they write: "The Devils Hole dates... remain a challenge to the Milankovitch hypothesis"(73) Mewhinney knows this is all untrue, and that Devils Hole is not a challenge to Milankovitch. Perhaps he will show Ludwig et al and the editors of Nature the error of their ways. Perhaps he will have a long talk with them to show that like Ginenthal, they need instruction in what real scientific evidence really indicates. In fact, Broecker was so deeply impressed and disconcerted by Devils Hole evidence that he was forced to admit "In my estimation the new Devils Hole chronology is more firm than any other available isotopic age in this range. Nowhere else has such a high degree of concordance between 234U -- 238U and 230 Th -- 234U ages been achieved. No other archive is better preserved. No other record has so many stratigraphically ordered radiometric ages..." [Though Broecker is a long time supporter of Milankovitch , he adds] "One side will have to give just to be safe climate modelers should start preparing themselves for a world without Milankovitch."(74) But Mewhinney knows Broecker is wrong, and that the poor little Devils Hole "discrepancies" mean nothing and do not pose a grave challenge to Milankovitch. According to Mewhinney, all these scientists, science writers and editors of peer reviewed science journals are ignorant about the nature of Devils Hole chronology regarding Milankovitch while he with a true understanding of the evidence will tell them all they are mistaken. After all he can show them these are only "discrepancies between these different chronologies." Naturally, it is unthinkable to scientists imbued with uniformitarianism to let Milankovitch theory as the sole agent for the onset and ending of Ice Ages be relinquished and thus have to come up with an ad hoc solution. Indeed, something drastic was needed to salvage Milankovitch and its advocates were ready to present a comedy of errors in its defense which Mewhinney has grabbed on to and rushed into the breach to save. To escape this dilemma, Mewhinney offered one of these ad hoc, post hoc, ergo propter hoc arguments, namely that, "Devils Hole ground water reflects mainly the temperature of local precipitation."(75) At this point he cites an article and a paper which appeared in Science in which the Devils Hole archive is demoted to an indicator of "local" climate from "local precipitation" as Mewhinney puts it. In one of the articles Steven Clemens of Brown University suggests "that while the marine records trace the ebb and flow of the ice ages, Devils Hole may chronicle only the climate of a region as small as southwestern North America". (Emphasis added)(76) R. Lawrence Edwards, et al., in the other paper in the same Science issue using AMS protactinium dates on corals to support Milankovitch and marine core records also grasped at this same straw. "The Devils Hole oxygen isotope signal may reflect regional temperatures, whereas, the marine isotope record largely reflects the volume of continental ice sheets ..." (Emphasis added) (77) Notice both researchers use the words "may reflect" and "may chronicle" instead of prove local rainfall. But of this "local" precipitation Mewhinney has no doubts. What is most humorous with the approach of labeling the Devils Hole chronology a product of local rainfall is that the same researchers - Edwards et al., in the same paper admit it correlates with their oceanic coral chronology.(78) The illogic in this case is stunning. The coral chronology truly reflects ice buildup and ablation of glaciers on the continents during Ice Ages but that the Devils Hole chronology which is quite similar, reflects only local climate. Since the Devils Hole climate chronology is so similar to that of the marine coral climate chronology thousands of miles removed from it, it simply cannot reflect only local climatic rainfall. Nevertheless, let us fully accept for a moment the supposition that the Devils Hole archive is, as presented, a reflection only of local weather. Will that truly save the situation? No, the logic is as convoluted and confused as ever. We are told that the marine chronology is truly indicative of ice buildup on the continents. Therefore, when the oceans of the northern hemisphere, specifically the northern pacific, was cold, it caused the land to be more greatly covered by great and small ice caps. As we pointed out above, citing Clyde Orr, Jr., in uniformitarian terms, land masses cool down more rapidly than oceans. Therefore, it would be impossible for Devils Hole situated in Nevada to become greatly warmer than the Pacific Ocean during an Ice Age. Nevada should have been covered by tundra or tundra-like conditions; its nearby mountains blanketed in snow and glaciers and local rain or snow falling on this region would be extremely cold. But let us briefly recall that Kerr has told us that there was a "profound warming trend" at Devils Hole "thousands of years before orbital variations could have begun to melt the ice..." The lamentable facts in terms of local weather at Devils Hole on a continent require that it could never exhibit warm conditions during an Ice Age! Land becomes colder than water during an Ice Age and local weather on a tundra-like environment with numerous mountain glaciers in that area, from which Katabatic - icy cold - winds would descend, make it impossible for the Devils Hole region deep inside a continent to become warmer thousands of years earlier than the oceans. The supposition that such a scenario was even submitted in the pages of Science is an index of the Milankovitch advocate's desperation to employ any form of illogical thinking to save their theory. It is at this point that Mewhinney's statements on this matter are irrational because here is what he has to say about these various climate records. "The isotope signal in the marine record reflects mainly the volume of water withdrawn from the oceans and locked in the ice sheets, while the signal in the ice cores and Devil's Hole [sic] ground water reflect mainly the record of local precipitation. It takes a long time for massive ice sheets to melt, so the marine isotope record should lag behind the other two"(79) Mewhinney claims the marine record "should lag behind" the Devils Hole record. Kerr has told us the Devils Hole record "indicates a profound warming trend... thousands of years before the orbital variations could have begun to melt the ice." Instead of following or lagging behind the melting of the ice and the warming of the ocean as Mewhinney tells us it should, the Devils Hole anticipates (comes before) these two other cores could even indicate any warming. Mewhinney's view on this matter is completely contradicted by the evidence. Having looked at Kerr's evidence, how could he believe or expect anyone who read this same evidence accept what he had presented as correct about lagging when it is in total contradiction to what Kerr states. How could Devils Hole warm up thousands of years before the Ice Age had even begun to end? How could Devils Hole have local precipitation during an Ice Age that was warm? If, as Kerr states, orbital variations could not melt the ice, how could they warm the land around Devils Hole? Doesn't Mewhinney even think about what he reads or writes? When I spoke with Winograd on the telephone of this, he was kind enough to say that although the simple logic precluded the local weather concept, he would not characterize his colleague's actions. But he did tell me that he would present a clear answer to this assertion in Quaternary Research which I presented on the Internet. Mewhinney, of course, did not realize I was only presenting, as well as I could, the information Winograd gave me. Winograd, I hasten to remind the reader, is not nor has ever been interested in Velikovsky's theories. Here then is Mewhinney's criticism of what I offered: "To my amazement, he [Ginenthal] has emphasized [on the Internet] that it [the Devils Hole chronology] 'was found to correlate with Vostoc [sic] core linearly which is 114 degrees away from it [in latitude] by 92 percent and with SPECMAP by 86 percent'."(80) Therefore to allay Mewhinney's amazement I will simply quote Winograd et al's response to the charges in Science by Edwards et al and Clemens that the Devils Hole chronology reflects local weather, or local rainfall. "Perhaps the most convincing evidence that neither local nor regional hydrologic or synoptic climatological factors are the predominant ones influencing the DH [Devils Hole] - 11 180 signal is the strong linear correlation of this record with both SPECMAP...VOSTOK... as seen in Figures 7 and 8 [of the paper]... "Local or regional hydro logic, or synoptic - climatological factors are improbable as the predominant causes..."(81) If Mewhinney is still amazed that Winograd- et. al. make it quite clear that the Devils Hole climate chronology is an excellent archive of hemispheric climate and not of local weather then let him also tell Winograd, Landwehr, Ludwig, Copen and Riggs and the editors and referees of Quaternary Research that they also don't know what they are talking about on this matter but he does. Mewhinney's criticisms on this point are a catastrophe, not a Velikovskian catastrophe, but to use an oxymoron, a uniformitarian catastrophe. THE MARINE CHRONOLOGY AND MILANKOVITCH I feel there is a second reason Mewhinney failed to deal with Landwehr, Winograd and Copen's letter in Nature is that the basis of his argument in support of Milankovitch is that given to it by marine sediment cores which these researchers pointed out "two well-defined 'low' events... do not correspond to bathythermals in either the Devils Hole 180 chronology or the marine 18 0 chronology." (Emphasis added)(82) The germane point is that Mewhinney has chosen to present the view that marine sediments do support Milankovitch when it suits his purpose. However, when I present evidence in Nature that the marine sediments contradict Milankovitch in my "ICE" article and that these cores do not support it but clearly contradict Milankovitch, Mewhinney casually ignores this evidence and tells us just the opposite! If the basis of Milankovitch does rest on marine sediment cores then the fact that two low events do not show up in the marine sediment core at the places in the core (meaning times in the past) where they should is another strong contradiction to Mewhinney's basic argument. But, of course, he may say that they are just poor little "discrepancies". Nevertheless, let us take the marine cores at their face value, do they support Milankovitch? And let us add Greenland ice core evidence into the mix; do they explain Ice Ages via Milankovitch? No, because Milankovitch cycles take thousands of years to occur; they do not happen rapidly. Regarding this point. Tjeerd H. Van Andel writes: "The study of sediment cores from the deep Atlantic and ice cores from Greenland does not confirm the gradual transition from glacial to interglacial and back again that is implied by the astronomical [Milankovitch] cycles and partly documented by the oxygen isotope record. Instead as on the land the response of the North Atlantic Ocean atmosphere system increasingly looks like a series of abrupt flip-flops from one stage to another."(83) The foraminifera (shortened to forams) shells contain 180 and tell the temperature of the ocean into the past and is the basis of how marine core analysis, as well as the types of forams is conducted. Therefore, if the Atlantic Ocean warmed up or cooled down over thousands of years as Milankovitch suggests then the 180 should clearly indicate that the temperature of the ocean water changed gradually. This water would then fall as snow on Greenland and the ice cores there would reflect the gradual heating of the ocean as well. But Van Andel says that the changes in the 180 ocean and Greenland cores show abrupt oscillation in temperature. Now if Velikovsky is correct that the Greenland ice sheet was laid down rapidly and catastrophically and that the ocean sediments were greatly stirred by this catastrophe, then the ocean and Greenland cores would show this by exhibiting many rapid temperature changes, which is precisely what they do exhibit. Again the marine cores and ice cores from Greenland give no real support for Milankovitch but strong support for Velikovsky. When we add to the mixture the fact that neither the North American varve record nor the non-local broad hemispheric Devils Hole record show none of the great temperature swings, it becomes rather clear that the stirring up of the oceans and the short time span which created the Greenland ice cap fully support Velikovsky. HEMISPHERIC NEGATION OF MILANKOVITCH In Rose's work on Milankovitch he points to another fundamental contradiction to the theory. "A major puzzle for the Milankovitch theory is the apparent fact that the onset, the peaks, and the terminations of ice ages have been roughly simultaneous in both hemispheres. Obliquity (aside from the six-month lag) would be the same for both hemispheres, but the other factors that the Milankovitch theory relies upon - the orbital eccentricity, the precession, and the advancement of perihelion - all suggest that there would be long-term differences between the two hemispheres. How, then, can the status of the two hemispheres remain virtually the same? It is as if an ice age were not a merely hemispheric or a polar phenomenon, but rather a result of factors operative on a global scale. "Broecker, "The Cause of Glacial to Interglacial Climatic Change", in Evolution des Atmospheres Planetairies et Climatologie de la Terre (1979), page 175, calls this 'a fly in the insolation ointment". Mercer, referring to Broecker, speaks of 'a Fly in the Ointment of the Milankovitch theory'; see Mercer, Simultaneously Climatic change in both Hemispheres and similar Bipolar Interglacial Warming: Evidence and Implications"in Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, (1984), pages 307-308." (84) This is a very powerful negation of the Milankovitch theory. After all when the northern hemisphere's axial pole points most greatly toward the sun, the pole of the southern hemisphere points least toward the sun. When the orbit of the Earth places the northern hemisphere closest to the sun in summer or winter the opposite occurs with the southern hemisphere. Thus, Ice Ages should not occur at the same times in both hemispheres based on the facts of Milankovitch. When the northern hemisphere exhibits an Ice Age the southern hemisphere should exhibit an interglacial period. This anti-correlation of Ice Ages in the two hemispheres is required by Milankovitch but is decidedly not found in the evidence. Both hemispheres have either glacials or interglacials at the same time. Robert Kunzig writing in Discover also outlined this contradiction. "Then there is the question of whether the waxing and waning of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere could as the Milankovitch theory assumes drive all the other climate changes that have accompanied ice ages - the cooling and glaciation of the Southern Hemisphere, for example Glaciers in the Andes and Antarctica have advanced at roughly the same times as those in the north, that is, at times when the [Milankovitch] orbital calculations should have been getting a lot of summer sunlight. There is no generally accepted explanation of why the ice ages should be globally synchronized if they are driven by [Milankovitch] orbital fluctuations." (Emphasis added), (85) Search as one may through Mewhinney's two earlier criticisms of Rose in Catastrophism And Ancient History, or "Minds in Ablation" (the five papers sent to AEON) one will find only silence regarding this question. Isn't it simply delightful how transparent Mewhinney's actions are? VELIKOVSKY ON MILANKOVITCH AND MILANKOVITCH ON MILANKOVITCH Something I believe that has been left out of the entire discussion on whether or not Milankovitch cycles bring about Ice Ages is what Velikovsky actually stated on this matter. "More recently, M. Milankovitch introduced a third variation, the obliquity of the ecliptic to correct some of the defects of Croll's theory. In the opinion o f his critics, however, his curve of climatic changes widely upset geological dates [as pointed in Clairbourn's Climate Man and History above pp. 123-124] nor do his variables offer sufficiently effective reasons for the vigorous changes in climate. [see Clairbourn pages 122-123]. AND WHY WERE THERE NO ICE AGES DURING LONG PERIODS IN THE PAST, IF THE PROCESS RECURS AT CALCULABLE INTERVALS." (Capitalization added), (86) If Mewhinney was honestly interested in debunking this aspect of Velikovsky's work shouldn't he have answered this instead of offering nothing on what Velikovsky said on this matter? Even Milankovitch himself clearly understood that the various orbital cycles retrocalculated into the deep past of geological time like those of eclipses, and should show hundreds of or even thousands of Ice Ages prior to the Pleistocene. In 1941 Milankovitch addressed this very question in "Canon of Insolation and the Ice Age Problem," Royal Serbian Academy Special Publication, Vol 32, (1941), Section of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, vol 33, B. Benny, I. Meroz Transls., (1969), p. 481. Milankovitch presented this problem honestly hoping new research would vindicate his efforts. Plate tectonics is a partial escape for perhaps the times prior to the Cenozoic. However, by about the late Eocene 45 million years ago, the continents would have been close to their present locations and should have experienced numerous Ice Ages if Milankovitch cycles really was their cause and pacemaker. Therefore, if Mewhinney's view is correct that Milankovitch cycles create Ice Ages as observed in the marine sediment cores he points to, that is exactly what should be found. But this simple requirement fails to give the theory of Ice Ages driven by orbital fluctuation any support at all. J. E. Joyce, et al., examined this very question of marine core corroboration for Milankovitch with respect to the Pliocene 4-3.2 million years and into the present. Their work, in fact, covered from 5.35 million years ago up to the present and just as they suspected the oceans cooled and warmed in correlation with Milankovitch cycles.(87) But were there Ice Ages associated with these very same cycles as demanded by the theory? No, not in any way! According to D.E. Krantz' writing in 1991, the entire Pliocene was a period of extraordinary warm climate; so warm, that the ocean level was as much as 30 meters [100 feet] above that of the present because there were fewer glaciers.(88) The oceans had risen so high that large areas of the Atlantic coastal plain from around Boston to Florida were inundated. The fact that Milankovitch cycles do not explain the lack of Ice Ages prior to the Pleistocene, especially the Pliocene which preceded it, makes it rather clear that they do not produce significant effects on climatic change of Ice Age proportions. Furthermore, Winograd and Landwehr raised this very same contradiction as late as 1993.(89) Again, scientists of the 1990's raise the very same questions and contradictions to Milankovitch which Velikovsky raised in 1955. But of this, Mewhinney is oblivious. THE EQUITORIAL REGION AND MILANKOVITCH Now all authorities as Mewhinney has told us (and as I also pointed out) that the greatest changes in temperature occur at greater and greater distance from the torrid zone of the Earth. Cooling of the Earth even by Milankovitch standards has small effects in the tropics but large effects as one approaches the poles. Thus, if there is any lingering doubt about the efficacy of Milankovitch cycles to induce major climatic changes I will present two citations on this question. In this respect Sir Fred Hoyle wrote in 1981: "...slight changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis of spin give only negligible solar variations at equitorial latitudes; yet the last ice age produced the great glaciers on Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and Mount Elgon in Uganda. Obviously something drastic happened in the tropics for which the Milankovitch theory cannot account." (Emphasis added)(90) Here we have a foe of Milankovitch saying "something drastic happened," implying a catastrophe contrary to uniformitarian Milankovitch cycles. What then does a long time pro Milankovitch theorist such as Broecker have to say on this question. In 1997 he wrote: "An important piece of information in this regard is the state of Earth's system during the extreme cold millenniums of glacial times. At these times all of Canada and a major part of the northeastern and mid-western United States were covered by ice sheets. The snow line descended about 1Km [3280 feet] on mountains everywhere on Earth. Geomorphologists have traversed the globe comparing the elevation of the present-day mountain snowlines with those for the last glaciation... Everywhere from 40S to 40N [latitude] snowlines descended... Thus, the southern Andes and New Zealand's south Island which now have very small glaciers had quite large ones. "What this tells us is that somehow Earth was in a much colder condition during the glacial periods. To my way of thinking no one [including Milankovitch] has adequately explained how this could happen. We now have new evidence from glacial-age corals and from glacial-age ground waters ... that the tropics may have been as much as 5 C [9F] colder during glacial times. How could the climate of the Earth have changed so much in the absence of any strong external forcing."(91) Broecker makes it emphatic that he knows of no uniformitarian processes that will bring the climate in the tropics down about 5C, [9F], even during an Ice Age and that "no one", Milankovitch included, explains this except by something external (or outside the present uniformitarian system of processes). Velikovsky posits, the Earth's orbit was somewhat more distant from the sun at times and its axis of rotation more oblique during the Ice Ages which is, of course, outside the uniformitarian process system. A catastrophe of the order of magnitude Velikovsky offers will create just the conditions for why Broecker cannot find uniformitarian Milankovitch answers. But I believe Milankovitch cannot be buried by its uniformitarian advocates. To do so may open the door to catastrophic concepts as a viable alternative, and this is simply unthinkable. Nevertheless, Broecker ends his piece with this deeply moving statement regarding his uniformitarian research and understanding of major climate change. "My lifetime study of the Earth's climate system has humbled me"(92) He goes on to suggest that it is not uniformitarian doctrine that is at the heart of his dilemma, but the uniformitarian complexities of the Milankovitch theory as they impinge on the Earth's climate process. It is the complexity of the system that defies science's understanding of how Ice Ages occur and end. In this he is also supported by Mewhinney who also grasps at the straw of complexity. Uniformity with all its baggage still reigns and I believe will continue to do so for a long time. The clarion call now is to find out how this complex system works to save the appearances to save Milankovitch's theory. As I titled this part of my work "Milankovitch Cycles or Epicycles" I believe we are treading a well understood path. In ancient Greece astronomers tried to explain the motions in the heavens by certain imaginary mechanisms, crystalline spheres, epicycles and others. Epicycles were added to the system of crystalline spheres when it was found that the planets failed to behave as they should when moving along imbedded in these great crystal spheres. Over time, the system became more and more complex as epicycle upon epicycle deferent upon deferent and eccentric upon eccentric was called upon to save that ancient theory to save the appearances. But the problems still did not go away. In spite of this fact, the geocentric theory ruled for over two thousand years. At the heart of Milankovitch is the same form of geocentric thinking. The Earth is held to be fairly stable in its orbit and axial tilt for all time in the same ways the ancients held to this same dogma but based on a different set of processes. Milankovitch and his advocates along with Mewhinney will seek and find complexity where there may be none but that is their choice. Yet, I wish to point out what Hoyle also states about this escape mechanism: "One way to attempt to breath new life into an unsuccessful theory is to make it more complicated. While such a procedure is rarely successful, ultimately it may attract some notice, especially if the details are made sufficiently awkward to understand. This was the procedure followed with respect to Croll's theory by Milutin Milankovitch."(93) Now that the complexity added to Croll's theory by Milankovitch has failed to explain Ice Ages, we are being asked to seek even greater complexity to make the theory perform as it should. In the end, I believe we will end up in such a state of great complexity that like the geocentric theory even the educated layman will not believe it. Alphonso X of Castile known as "the Wise", a religious man and great supporter of astronomical research who upon becoming fully acquainted with the geocentric theory of Ptolemy with its crystalline spheres, epicycles, eccentrics and deferents, was driven to remark: "If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I should have recommended something simpler." (94) My own view of Milankovitch which Mewhinney does not share is expressed by Arthur Koester thus, in his own view of geocentricism: "It...[is] a monumental and depressing tapestry, the product of tired philosophy and decadent science."(95) PART III POLE SHIFTS AND THE ARCTIC OCEAN ICE COVER In my book The Extinction of the Mammoths I made my position clear regarding the reasons that the mammoths could live in northern Siberia during the hipsithermal based on the concept that the pole of rotation was at about eight to nine degrees from perpendicular to the plane of the Earth's orbit.(96) I also touched on this topic in my "ICE" paper. If the pole was much more perpendicular to the plane of the Earth's orbit, for the most part, the Arctic Ocean would have been entirely or mostly ice-free in summer and have a very small ice cap, compared to the present one, in winter. Mewhinney in the part of his paper entitled "Stability of the Arctic Ice Pack" in "Minds" argues that during the hipsithermal the Arctic Ocean's ice cap was similar to that of today. Nevertheless, in "ICE", page 74 I directly pointed to the period of the 1890's to about the 1940's when there was a 1 degree Fahrenheit or 0.6 degree Celsius warming of the Earth. I cited C.E.P. Brooks who wrote that during this brief warming "The edge of the main area of Arctic ice receded toward the pole by some hundred miles"(97) I also cited Clyde Orr, Jr. in "ICE", page 73 regarding the same period, who claimed "Spitsbergen's Harbour used to be icebound from October through June [nine months and ice free for three months]; now it is open seven months a year."(98) Thus, with a 1F, 0.6C rise in temperature over about 40 years the edge of the Arctic Ocean's ice cover retreated toward the pole some hundreds of miles and the winter period of ice cover which had lasted nine months was reduced to five months but open for seven months. Mewhinney wishes us to believe that when the Earth warmed up during the hipsithermal by about 4 to 5 F, the effect of this more than quadrupling of the temperature rise had very little effect on the Arctic Ocean ice cap. What happened between the 1890's to the 1940's is never considered by him at all in dealing with this evidence. In his discussion "How Warm Was the Hipsithermal," (99) he cites my work on Newson, and Warshaw and Rapp: "Newson and Warshaw and Rapp have answered our ...question: if the pack ice could be made to disappear, how warm would the atmosphere over the Arctic become? Their answer was, quite a lot. I have no quarrel with these studies, although as Budyko points out... most of this increase comes in the winter. Ablation takes place in the summer."(100) With this in mind, let us observe the legerdemain Mewhinney employs to play with numbers. Remember, any rise in the temperature of the Earth will be expressed more greatly toward the polar regions. Here Mewhinney states: "As an illustration of hipsithermal warming Ginenthal takes this passage from Borisov: 'The vegetative zones advanced toward the pole. On the Eurasian continent this latitudinal shift amounted to 4-5 degrees in the west and to 1-2 degrees in the east... On another page he [Ginenthal] quotes Orr to the effect that 'A one-degree [Fahrenheit] shift in mean annual temperature is equivalent to roughly a hundred miles of latitude'... Let us put these two statements together and see what we get. A hundred miles is about 1.45 degrees of latitude so an average 4.5 degree latitudinal shift in the west is equivalent to 3.1 degrees F or 1.7 degrees C. And an average 1.5 degree shift in the east is equivalent to 1 degree F, or 0.6 degrees C, accepting Orr's equation as valid."(101) Mewhinney's discussion of Orr's work unfortunately left out the rest of the statement he made on the pages he cites: "A 5 [degree Fahrenheit] rise if maintained a few thousand years, [close to what occurred during the hipsithermal] would surely melt some of the six million square miles of ice and snow now collected at the poles... Such an increase would very likely bring tropical conditions to most of the earth."(102) So what Orr really suggested is something quite different than Mewhinney wishes us to believe. Based on Mewhinney's analysis, however, the ice cover over the Arctic Ocean would hardly shift at all. But Mewhinney's analysis is a contradiction to what he himself accepted when he said he had no quarrel with Newson, Warshaw and Rapp's conclusion that the greatest increase in temperature expresses itself in the polar regions. What Mewhinney has done is align the number of degrees of latitude that various trees migrated northward with the number of degrees of temperature. He suggests that since the trees migrated only a few degrees of latitude north then the temperature only rose about 3.1F to 1F at these higher latitudes during the hipsithermal. In order to do this Mewhinney simply evaded the fact that small increments of higher temperature produce larger ones toward the poles. Let us remember that Brooks pointed out that during Climate Optimum - the hipsithermal - the temperature of the Earth over all was "up to 5F [about 3C] higher than the present".(103)On the basis of this and Newson, Warshaw and Rapp's work the temperatures toward the poles would have to be much greater than 5F, not less. But Mewhinney has the temperature during the hipsithermal in the northern regions rising only 3.1F to 1F. In essence, instead of the temperature rising more greatly, as one moves northward as Mewhinney claims it should, he has the temperature actually rising less so as one moves north. Instead of rising above 5F he has it fall in one region to 3.1F, a drop of 1.9F, while in another region instead of rising above 5F he has it fall to 1F, a drop of 4F. This is marvelous stuff isn't it. Mewhinney has just proven that when the temperature of the Earth rises instead of rising more greatly in the higher latitudes, it actually falls. How long did it take him to figure this all out? Had he given this simple matter even a modicum of thought, he would have realized he had inverted the very process by which temperature rise is expressed on the Earth. No, Sean, temperatures rise in the higher latitudes more greatly when the climate of Earth warms up it does not fall in these higher latitudes. You have simply shown the world how you manipulate data to produce contradictions and thoroughly inane results. To make this even clearer, let us see what really happens as we get to higher latitudes with a 1F, O.6C rise in temperature. According to William K. Steven reporting in The New York Times about a temperature rise of this amount: "The regions permafrost... is thawing in Alaska's interior. Over thousands of miles big patches of forests are drowning and turning gray as the ground sinks under them and swamp water floods them... "About the magnitude of the warming there is little doubt. While the average surface temperature of the globe has risen over the last century by 1 degree Fahrenheit or a little more, it has increased over the last 30 years by up to about 5 degrees in Alaska, Siberia and northwestern Canada, say scientists at the University of Alaska and elsewhere..." (Emphasis added)(104) So one can clearly see that with about a 1F, 0.6C global rise in temperature, we get about a five times greater rise in temperature in Alaska, Canada and Siberia. But based on the analysis Mewhinney has offered, the temperatures should have not risen as much in Alaska, Canada and Siberia compared to the general rise in temperature. Isn't his analysis amazing? Instead of putting Borisov's statement together with that of Orr, let us complete Borisov's statement. Let us instead put Borisov's statement together with that of Borisov regarding the hipsithermal. "The vegetative zones advanced towards the pole. On the Eurasian continent this latitudinal shift amounted to 4-5 degrees in the west and 1-2 degrees in the east. Some species [of plants] advanced their northern boundaries as much as 1,000 km [620 miles]" [P. Borisov, Can Man Change the Climate? (Moscow 1973), p.36] The northward tree advance in this case of these temperatures of 4 to 5F was not a few degrees of latitude but 620 miles or almost 9 degrees of latitude for certain plants which based on Orr's work is a temperature rise of almost 9F not 3.1 or 1F. Had Mewhinney read what Borisov actually said or paid the slightest attention to the geophysical thermal facts, he would not stand before us so wanting in understanding of the evidence. The obvious question is: Why didn't Mewhinney put Borisov's statement with Borisov or Orr's statement with Orr? Had he done so, he would have had to drop his criticism. But this more rational approach to evidence seems to have eluded him and he has made a fool of himself. Based on a 1F, 0.6C rise creating a five times greater temperature in the arctic region, how much would a 4 to 5F about 3C rise in that region given a five times greater temperature melt the ocean ice cover northward? According to Newson, the rise is of 18F, 10C in southern Greenland, 36F, 20C in northern Greenland and 54F, 30C over Hudson Bay. Warshaw and Rapp found similar temperatures. These are not small increments by any stretch of the imagination and the winter ice cover would have retreated at a minimum by several hundred miles leaving much of the Arctic Ocean's broad continental shelf ice-free all year. Had Mewhinney done his homework and actually read Borisov he would have learned that Borisov did deal with the question of how much smaller the sea ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean was. What Borisov did was produce a chart of the "Dynamics of sea ice of the Valdai glaciation [equivalent to the Wisconsin Ice Age in North America] and the mean annual air temperature in the past 20,000 years [and by comparing] 1- the dynamics of sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere; [with] 2- Valdai glaciation in the Russian Plain (N.S. Chebotaryova, et al, 1965); [with] 3-variations of mean annual temperatures in Central Europe (P. Wold Stedt, 1958) [stated] "Our preliminary analysis of the glaciation of the Arctic Basin over a period of the last 20,000 years (fig. 12) has shown that it exceeded the present day glaciation amounting to 4 points over a total of 9,300 years. Twice during the Holocene [the hipsithermal being one of these times], for a total of 5,000 years the Arctic Basin was completely free of ice. And the ice sheet was unstable several times for a total of 4,000 years, that is, it melted in summer and froze up again in w