glaciers and the flood

This is a very interesting topic to me and of course I am new to this forum. I have a question concerning the constant reocurrance of mass glacier movement across North America. The most notable formations left by the glacier movement are the Great Lakes. An average glacier leading edge termination latitude of N41 Degrees would leave ample room for the creation of all the Great Lakes seems reasonable to deduce from the scope of the ice sheet movement. Since their creation would be a culmination of the efforts of several of the 10 to 12 major ice sheet movements that have occured over the last 50 million years, wouldn't the area that the ice sheets consistantly moved over show more dramatic damage.For instance, if you pour water across clay ground and let it settle, groves will form where the water's path was. If you pour more water in the same area, it will follow the preceding water's path while enlarging it. Do this a dozen times and you have very pronounced travel routes in the surface. I've witnessed this on the summit of Mt. Rainer, especially on the south east side where the Nisqually Glacier resides. The glacier cuts the same path as it expands and contracts as it moves down the mountain. If 12 major glacier movements have traversed North America over the last 50 million years or more, wouldn't the effects be more pronounced or do ice sheets tend to buck physics and take the path of most resistance as they advance. From what I have read from the URL's posted, the large snow accumulations build in the north and as they compress over time it's weight pushes the leading edge of the glacier forward.Another item I've seen in Southern Canada and the Plains States is an abundance of fertile top soil that's exploited by farmers. I might not be incorporating all of the dynamics of glacier flows, but from what I've read in these posts and their associated URL's, 10 to 12 glacier episodes along with countless minor flux's should have transported the top soil into the oceans or at least left most everything North of 41 degrees unsuable for agriculture and created "super deposits" of top soil threads in the central and southern latitudes of the United states. The most fertile top soil area in the United States other than the San Juaquin Valley is the area south of the Great Lakes running from as far east as Buffalo NY to central Iowa. Even then, the depth of the top soil is not indicative of mass deposits altough the location of the most fertile area does coincide with the average leading edge termination point of the glacier sheets.Finally, it was quoted earlier in this thread that the temperatures at the glacier advance would be extremely cold, so I wonder why migratory birds still adhere to their regiment of utilizing these northern latitudes as habitat for feeding and breeding in the summer months. After several of these long ice ages, and the insueing interuption in the avalibility of northern habitat, shouldn't evolution, natural selection and the conservation of energy as exhibited by most wild animals (most of their efforts are spent on the aquiring of food for survival) that the tendency to migrate would be bred out. All birds found in the world should be stationary breeds that would be highly tuned and selected to capitalize on an equaterian enviroment and the need for abilities such as prolonged flight and superb navagation skills would be bred out of the genome as waste information, especially after multiple prolonged interuptions over 50 generations or more for each ice age episode. If you say that Macro Evolution can account for this by rapid adaptation, and the genome can mutate positivly over several generations to capitalize on the newly available habitat, then why do we see extinctions of species instead of rapid species mutation to capitalize on the changing enviroment we witness today?I'm not discounting any of the claims for long ice ages or the percieved number of major glacial movements, the information seems competent but these few quesions I hope will be addressed without the usual "call him an idiot" first response that seems standard protocol for any in this forum that investigate Creationism with an open mind.

I was wondering if the ice sheets would form up like the Rosby Waves effect in winter as large high pressure systems build in Canada and push down across the plains states. In this same manner wouldn't the ice sheets form a similiar shape with the center of the leading edge protruding and moving faster across the surface earth. If this is posible (and I obviously don't know if it is), wouldn't it tend to cut a grove in the surface as the leading point of the leading edge moved, causing some orderly direction to the otherwise random caious of the southernly moving mass?I was supposing that there might be several of these leading edge "fingers" of ice moving similiar to what I've seen on Mt. Rainer and just like if you push your hand through sand several times in the same direction you get the formation of trenches, we should see this effect on the plains states topography instead of what's actually there now.I was also wondering why we don't see a deposit ridge or some type of smooth ridged mountain range running laterally across the United States corosponding to the termination point of the ice sheets similiar to the heap that a Dozer leaves if it pushes material along and then does a sudden retreat backwards.I also think the Nisqually Glacier behaves closer to a continental glacier than what you have compared. Even though the glacier is only about 200 ft thick vs. 5000 ft thick at the leading edge of the continental glacier as you stated, the pressure at the leading edge of the Nisqually glacier also has the gravitational addition of 8000 feet of ice behind it pushing due to the slant angle of the mountain verses the flat angle of a continental glacier travel path. With this additional force, the 18 major glaciers and dozens of minor ones on Rainer all exhibit the tendency to keep carving through the rock in redundant travel paths. I know that the magitude of 2 cubic miles of ice is far less than the millions of cubic miles involved in a continental glacier of ice age proportions, but wouldn't the force concentration on the earth's surface be very similiar on Mt. Rainer verses the leading edges of the ice age glaciers?[This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 10-20-2003]