Pearce et al: Much ado about nothing much

The map published by Scourse et al, 2021. The labels used for the glaciers are no more "correct" than the labels that might be used by others on their own maps.  The ice edge positions shown are also matters of opinion, as are the directions of ice flow........ and I happen to disagree with several of the key features on this map.

With regard to that petty and mean-spirited ad hominem attack the other day from Pearce, Ixer, Bevins and Scourse, one of the things that most intrigued me was the obsession with silly little details.  

One comment (with the use of "sic") related to my use of the term "Irish Sea Glacier" somewhere in the text, whereas I should apparently have used the term "Irish Sea Ice Stream" as defined by Scourse and many other colleagues in 2021.  Big deal.  Well yes, that is the term used for many years now to describe the ice mass flowing in the Celtic Sea arena and into the Bristol Channel.  For many years I have used the term "ice stream" myself, in this blog and in publications.  But the term "Irish Sea Glacier" is and has been used widely across the literature for many years, and is widely understood as the ice mass that extended all the way out to the Celtic Sea shelf edge.  An ice stream is simply a big glacier, flowing fast and flanked by ice that is stagnant or flowing much more slowly.  A glacier might be described as an ice stream channelled in a trough or bounded by topographic highlands.  Pearce et al apparently want the rest of us to restrict the term "Irish Sea Glacier" to the ice that flowed into the Cheshire Basin, flanked by the uplands of North Wales and the southern Pennines.  But it was no more constrained by topography than the "Irish Sea Ice Stream"  that flowed through St Georges Channel -- and I think that the term "ice lobe" better describes the characteristics of the ice that flowed into Cheshire and the north Midlands.  

It may also be argued that the use of the term "Irish Sea Ice Stream" for the ice occupying the Celtic Sea is inadequate, since the feature (possibly during several glaciations) had many of the characteristics of a piedmont glacier, as I pointed out in one of my earliest glaciology articles, in 1968:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2011/02/glaciological-dilemma.html

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2016/07/ice-in-celtic-sea-piedmont-glacier-or.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319922666_Short_Notes_Directions_of_Ice_Movement_in_the_Southern_Irish_Sea_Basin_During_the_Last_Major_Glaciation_An_Hypothesis

Thus there is no "correct" terminology in any of this.  It is disingenuous of Pearce et al to pretend that there is, and that others are "in error" if they use terms that do not conform to somebody else's labelling system.

Reference:

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2021/05/new-dating-for-lgm-irish-sea-ice-stream.html

Maximum extent and readvance dynamics of the Irish Sea Ice Stream and Irish Sea Glacier since the Last Glacial Maximum
J. D. Scourse, R. C. Chiverrell, R. K. Smedley, D. Small, M. J. Burke, M. Saher, K. J. J. Van Landeghem, G. A. T. Duller, C. Ó Cofaigh, M. D. Bateman, S. Benetti, S. Bradley, L. Callard, D. J. A. Evans, D. Fabel, G. T. H. Jenkins, S. McCarron, A. Medialdea, S. Moreton, X. Ou, D. Praeg, D. H. Roberts, H. M. Roberts, C. D. Clark
Jnl of Quaternary Science, 7 May 2021 (special issue article)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.3313?af=R

https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3313

This all reminds me of a spat I had with James Scourse five years ago, following the publication of my QN article on the glaciation of the Isles of Scilly.  Scourse attacked me, using very intemperate language, partly because I had the temerity to disagree with a part of his sedimentary stratigraphic labelling system.  In his eyes, I dare say, his labels were 100% reliable, and not open to negotiation by anyone.  Anyway, after some insulting bluster and questioning of my competence, he had to grudgingly agree that the Devensian ice limit as drawn by me did actually have some merit..........

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2019/03/scourse-versus-john-rather-scilly-spat.html

Then there is the matter of the Anglian Glaciation, about which I have written at length on this blog.  In their QN piece, Pearce et al have a silly dig at my "contention" that the ice advance responsible for bluestone transport was during the Anglian Glaciation, and claim that there is no geochronological or other evidence to support this.  It's true that when I wrote my article I did mention the Anglian episode (MIS 12), but in doing that I was representing an almost unanimous view across the research community that this was the most extensive pre-Devensian glaciation across much of the British Isles.  

LEE, J R, ROSE, J, HAMBLIN, R J, MOORLOCK, B S, RIDING, J B, PHILLIPS, E, BARENDREGT, R W, AND CANDY, I. 2011. The Glacial History of the British Isles during the Early and Middle Pleistocene: Implications for the long-term development of the British Ice Sheet. 59-74 in Quaternary Glaciations–Extent and Chronology, A Closer look. Developments in Quaternary Science. EHLERS, J, GIBBARD, P L, AND HUGHES, P D (editors). 15. (Amsterdam: Elsevier.)

I am quite unconcerned about whether the Anglian was or was not the largest British glaciation, and if Pearce et al had bothered to look at my published output they would have seen that I have discussed at length the possibility of a very large Wolstonian glaciation -- and that I am rather convinced by the latest suggestions of Phil Gibbard and others that it was more important than the Anglian for landscape transformation (and sediment transport) in the Celtic Sea arena. 

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2024/08/towards-late-wolstonian-mis-6-ice-limit.html  

More to follow.......