More Creationist Comedy
F. C. Kuechmann

I've gotta give Carl Wieland some credit. He's slippery as nasal mucous. Every time I think I've caught him mendacitating, he weasels a few words and squirms out of the snare. The current AiG web site version of the good doctor's Lost Squadron illustrates his eel-like slipperiness. In my Creationist Comedy article I cited this passage from Carl -

None of the discoverers had thought that the planes could possibly be buried under more than a light cover of snow and ice. And why would they? After all, the impression the general public has is that the build up of glacial ice takes very long time periods - thousands of years for just a few metres.

I suggested that those who rely on "the impression the general public has" can hardly be considered scientists. In the article posted at the AiG web site the following text has been added immediately following the passage cited above -

[Ed. note: We were not claiming that the salvagers' perceptions were correct. Published figures of average ice accumulation rates are quite a bit lower than 1½ m/year that clearly must be true here, but not nearly as low as the salvagers thought. But it shows how much the 'millions-of-years' ideas have permeated into the general public, and the point of this article was to undermine this common preconception, as the subtitle should make clear.]

Carl here is clearly unaware that rates of snow fall and hence ice buildup are much higher near the coast [where the planes were located] than further inland [where the GRIP and GISP 2 cores were taken]. The published ice accumulation rate for the coastal glacier where the planes were located is consistent with a 5-6 ft/yr burial. The "Glacier Girl" museum supplied me with a figure of 57 inches for annual ice build-up.

And, if Carl really wants to undermine the 110,000 year age for the Greenland ice sheet established by the GISP-2 ice cores, he can't do it by appealing to "the impression the general public has". He could start by proposing a scientifically valid explanation of the layering of the 42 tested parameters that fits the data better than the "tree ring" annual layer model. Then he could submit that proposal for publication in a mainstream peer-reviewed journal. His current approach undermines only his own credibility.

A bit later in the revised text, Carl clarifies his earlier ambiguous reference to 3000 metres of ices cores brought up in 1990 by changing it to specifically cite the 1990-92 GRIP study, but he still erroneously claims that "evolutionist standards" would use the ice accumulation rate at the Lost Squadron landing site and assign a 2000 year age to the Greenland ice sheet. That claim is malarky. "Evolutionists" know that a multi-parameter "tree ring" approach to ice core dating is scientifically valid And that comparing ice thickness in locations with vastly different accumulation rates isn't.

Like many cretins, Carl is basically an entertainer, a magician who deceives his audience with sleight-of-ignorance.

I suppose I should be flattered that Carl reads my material and repeatedly unsheaths his manure shovel in response.

But I'm not.