Fred Hoyle, in one of his books, Ice I think, made a connection with scree formation and lightning, and thought it unlikely that frost action alone could have created all those broken rocks commonly found on the summit and in big heaps spilling down the sides of mountains in upland areas of Britain, such as the Lake District and the Peak District. It seems this point of view has now been vindicated in a new study that took place in the Drakonsberg Mountains of southern Africa – where frost action is not so obvious. In consensus theory scree is formed by frost fracturing rocks, and scree formations are therefore seen as a residue of Ice Age conditions and when the climate was much colder in some periods of the Holocene. The new study claims lightning regularly reshapes mountain tops – and in Africa there is far more lightning than we get in Britain.
Robert Farrer sent in the link to www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131015094026.htm and thought we might consider what role electrical discharges of the Electric Universe kind, may have had. Is it necessary to blame it on the Ice Age climate?
Once the idea of electrical discharges is aired it can be seen as an alternative add-on, and running in parallel with conventional views on the formation of mountains and valleys, rather than superseding geology as a whole in an attempt to foster the idea of a young Earth.
In the Drakonsberg the rocks contain magnetic minerals which carry a magnetic signal. The energy of the lightning hitting mountain tops can partially melt the rock. When it cools it takes on the magnetic signature of the new magnetic field – not the one from millions of years ago (or that is how it is explained). Uniformitarian theory is quite happy to have magnetic changes at intervals of millions of year – but theory should not overrule facts of observation. Also, it is said that because the continents are moving around the globe this explains why the magnetic signature is not constant – but changes all the time. Sounds sensible.