The evidence for the YDIH is quite strong. But as usual science only makes progress one obituary at a time.
Science is not an exercise in accepting a scientist's say-so, dammit. It's an exercise in producing and testing hypothesis. For sciences that study the past it's harder to test because you can't build a test, but you can still check that a hypothesis is consistent with all the data available so far and any future new finds about the past.
In particular I find very compelling the theory that the YDIH hit the laurentide ice sheet over Michigan, sending huge ice boulders out that created the Carolina bays and essentially did great damage, but with water ice, thus leaving very little direct physical evidence -- no craters (apart from the Carolina bays), no rocks out of place, no layer of material from the impactor (because it was a comet rather than an asteroid).
Before sonar evidence showed that the continents must move, geologists would say that the tectonics theory was debunked (using whatever the appropriate term was then). Well here we are now saying the exact opposite.
The only thing we can say with certainty right now is that we don't have consensus as to the cause of the Younger Dryas at this time. To say that the YDIH is debunked is not true and not helpful.
Science is not an exercise in accepting a scientist's say-so, dammit. It's an exercise in producing and testing hypothesis. For sciences that study the past it's harder to test because you can't build a test, but you can still check that a hypothesis is consistent with all the data available so far and any future new finds about the past.
In particular I find very compelling the theory that the YDIH hit the laurentide ice sheet over Michigan, sending huge ice boulders out that created the Carolina bays and essentially did great damage, but with water ice, thus leaving very little direct physical evidence -- no craters (apart from the Carolina bays), no rocks out of place, no layer of material from the impactor (because it was a comet rather than an asteroid).
Before sonar evidence showed that the continents must move, geologists would say that the tectonics theory was debunked (using whatever the appropriate term was then). Well here we are now saying the exact opposite.
The only thing we can say with certainty right now is that we don't have consensus as to the cause of the Younger Dryas at this time. To say that the YDIH is debunked is not true and not helpful.