Abstract Near the South Pole, a large subglacial lake exists beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet less than 10 km from where the bed temperature is inferred to be −9°C. A thermodynamic model was used to investigate the apparent contradiction of basal water existing in the vicinity of a cold bed. Model results indicate that South Pole Lake is freezing and that neither present-day geothermal flux nor ice flow is capable of producing the necessary heat to sustain basal water at this location. We hypothesize that the lake comprises relict water formed during a different configuration of ice dynamics when significant frictional heating from ice sliding was available. Additional modelling of assumed basal sliding shows frictional heating was capable of producing the necessary heat to fill South Pole Lake. Independent evidence of englacial structures measured by airborne radar revel ice-sheet flow was more dynamic in the past. Ice sliding is estimated to have ceased between 16.8 and 10.7 ka based on an ice chronology from a nearby borehole. These findings reveal major post-Last Glacial Maximum ice-dynamic change within the interior of East Antarctica, demonstrating that the present interior ice flow is different than that under full glacial conditions.

Abstract The favourable reception of the great antiquity of Earth by nineteenth-century Presbyterian theologians in Scotland and the USA has been well documented. Less clear is how their conservative Dutch Calvinist counterparts responded to discoveries about Earth history. Here I initiate an examination of attitudes toward geology among Dutch Reformed theologians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a case study of Herman Bavinck (1854–1921). Bavinck was arguably the premier Dutch Calvinist theologian of his generation. In his four-volume Gereformeerde Dogmatiek , he discussed geology in relation to biblical teaching about the creation of the Earth. He expressed great appreciation for geology. On several points of textual interpretation, he adopted positions consistent with acceptance of an old Earth. However, working with out-of-date information, and not understanding fundamental geological principles, Bavinck concluded that the concept of an ancient Earth was unacceptable. Bavinck's ideas about geology negatively influenced subsequent Dutch Reformed theologians. Dutch Calvinists, both in the Netherlands and the USA, may have been less open to the discoveries of geology than Scottish and US Calvinists because of the nature of Dutch geology, lack of contact between Dutch theologians and geologists, and Dutch Reformed persuasion that worldviews powerfully shape the content of science.