> Bill, this is the great YETI search. We don't have an
> answer YET but tomorrow we will have an answer. We have
> been waiting for 167 years since Lyell for a workable
> model. It is over 200 since Hutton. Are we that slow?
> Or are we barking up the wrong tree?
I continue to be amazed at the power of our various paradigms to, in a
sense, create what we see. I'm as guilty as anyone of being influenced
by my own bias, which is the real value of a group like this - to sift
what we each tend to accept (eg, Ron Wyatt - thanks for the
enlightment).
> Do me a favor. Since you indicate you are a coal expert,
Thanks, but I'd better leave the term "expert" to others. I have way too
much to learn to accept that label. My lack of knowledge may initially
give me something of an advantage though, if it allows me to see and
consider things which I otherwise would have rejected a priori.
> please explain today three things about coal.
>
> 1.How a single flood could deposit the huge quantities of
> coal we see.
By floating even more huge quantities of organics (Steve Austin's
"Floating Mat" Model) over sedimentary basins.
> 2. Why do the huge piles of plant matter required for
> coal formation, not affect the thickness of the sediments
> above them.
Perhaps the sediments which are the lateral equivalent of coal are
initially loaded with water whch squeezes out of the sediments as the
coal compresses, allowing the sediments and coal (side-by-side in cross
section) to compress more or less at the same rate. I have seen
sediment-filled fossil tree trunks laying horizontal which were
elliptical, indicating that the sediment did indeed compress, ASSUMING
that the tree trunk was circular when first filled with sediment. I have
also seen one vertical tree trunk in the underclay beneath a coal seam
(just south of Birmingham, AL) which was elliptical because of
_horizontal_ compression from the southeast - the Appalachian Orogeny.
> 3. What chemical process is capable of efficiently
> extracting almost all the elements from plant matter
> except carbon? And is capable of doing it in less
> than a week's time.
I don't know, but why do you limit the time to one week?
> 1. According to John Hunt, there are 15 x 10^18 g of coal
> in the world's coal deposits. In the entire biosphere,
> there are only 3 x 10^17 g of carbon. This means that
> the sediments, which you believed killed Remember that
> the global flood requirese that only a single preflood
> biosphere was destroyed. Yet we find enough coal for 45
> biospheres! (see J.M. Hunt, AAPG, Nov. 1972 pp 2273-2277)
As you will see, I am wary of these types of calculations which prove
something is impossible. They always contain one or more assumptions
which may be incorrect or which may overlook a major factor. However, I
do understand that we must start somewhere and do the best we can with
what we have at the present time. Rather than accept the conclusion,
though, I tend to look for the flaw. Again, I am starting with a fairly
literal interpretation of Genesis and attempting to build a logical
construct from there.
In response to your 45 biospheres, I believe Steve Austin told me the
number was something like 3 to 10 biospheres to give us the coal we now
have. I'm sorry I don't have a reference for Austin's number; if anyone
does, please post it.
> 2. We start with the weight percent of living things: It
> is
>
> O 65% 4.06 moles/100 g of matter
> C 18% 1.5 moles/100 g of matter
> H 10% 10 moles/100 g of matter
> N 3% .21 moles/100 g of matter
> CA 2%
> P 1%
> others 1%
> ~Alvin Nason and Philip Goldstein, Biology, (Menlo Park:
> Addison Wesley Publ. Co., 1969), p. 234.
>
> I calculated the moles of each element in a 100 gram
> sample of living matter. Coal is approximately 90%
> carbon. In order for the organic remains of plants to
> turn into coal most of the other elements must be
> removed. (I do not claim that this is the way plant
> matter is processed, I am merely trying to make the
> assumptions favorable for Bill)
>
> Taking the oxygen out of the above via water, leaves
>
> C. 1.5 mole
> H 1.88 mole
> N .21 moles
>
> Removing the Nitrogen via NH3 leaves
>
> C 1.5 mole
> H. 1.25 mole
>
> Removing the remaining hydrogen via CH4 leaves 1.18 mole
> of Carbon. or 14% of the original material is left. This
> is the most favorable calculation of the carbon left from
> the compaction of plant material. This value will become
> important below.
>
> I used to work Lee, Bastrop and Fayette Co. Texas. The
> Wilcox strata there has lots and lots of coal scattered
> throughout its 1200 feet. Approximately 10% of the
> vertical thickness was coal ( 120 feet), but that was an
> average. Some wells we drilled didn't see any coal and
> other saw thicker. The biggest coal bed I saw in a well
> was a 200 foot monster along the Lee/Bastrop county line.
> It is embedded in a shale that lies on top and below
> sandstones of which are uniform in thickness. The coal
> extends about 1000 feet and is replaced by shale in all
> directions. It looks like this:
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> sandstone
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> shale _______________________________ shale
> \ coal /
> \ ____________________________/
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> sandstone
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> Now, if this 200 foot coal was deposited during a global
> flood, there are several serious problems which must be
> explained.
>
> 1. As a geologist you know that sedimentation fills the
> topographic lows preferentially.
Unless the lows are actually shallow channels for turbidity flows, in
which case they would be scoured of sediment, while the realtively
quiescent topographic highs would receive sediment. I never thought of
this until now, but that may be the explanation for a statement in
Austin's Thesis Abstract: "The thickest coal accumulated on the highest
elevations."
> Less sediment gets to
> the topographic highs. If the coal was plant matter,
> then when the upper sandstone was deposited, the
> uniformity of its thickness shows that there was no
> topographic high or low where the coal is. Yet, if the
> 14% calculated above was applicable to the above, then
> the plant matter required to form the coal must have been
> 1428 feet of plant material. This would have made a HUGE
> topographic high on top of the ocean floor during the
> flood. It would have looked like
>
> sedimentation rates:
> fast very slow fast
> ________________________________
> | |
> | |
> | PLANT MATTER |
> | |
> --------- ---------------
> \ /
> \ ____________________________/
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> sandstone
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> This geometry would require that there be very little
> sediments on top of the pile of plants. Then when the
> plants were compacted, the thin sediments should form a
> different pattern. It would look like:
>
> ----\ --------
> sand \ / sand
> ----- \ / -------
> \\ a hole waiting to be filled //
> shale \\_______________________________// shale
> \ coal /
> \ ____________________________/
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> sandstone
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> Very little sand would lie on top of the coal.
>
> Now, one cannot claim that this coal is post flood. Here
> is why. In Bastrop/Lee counties, the Wilcox strata
> containing the coal is about 3000 feet below the surface.
> 40 miles to the south, these same strata are 8000 feet
> deep. One can follow the Wilcox strata southeast towards
> Houston. Just NW of Houston, the Wilcox is 25,000 feet
> deep and the deepest last downdip well encounters the
> Wilcox on the NW edge of Wharton Co. If one wants to say
> that these coals are post flood, then they must explain
> how the 25,000 feet of sediment above it in Wharton
> county were deposited in the past few thousand years.
I would say that the coals are flood, not post flood, deposits.
> One other item. In Lee and Fayette County there is
> something like 20,000 feet of sedimentary strata. If all
> this was deposited during a one year flood, that means
> that 54 feet per day or 2 feet per hour of sediment must
> be deposited on average. The part of the Wilcox strata I
> spoke of above is approximately 400 feet thick and would
> have taken 7 days to be deposited. This means that in 7
> days time the huge volume of plant matter must have been
> converted almost instantaneously to carbon. All of the
> water, CO2, CH4 NH3 etc had to escape from the plant
> matter and the plant matter be compressed before the
> upper sandstone is deposited on top of it. If there was
> still a bump (i.e. the plants were not compressed) then
> the sandstone above would not be of uniform thickness.
>
> I would appreciate an explanation of these facts from a
> coal expert. I don't want to wait another 160 years for
> an answer. I will be too old.
>
> Tell me how the earth could fit the 45 biospheres of
> plant matter into one preflood earth.
>
> Tell me why we don't see tremendous thinning of the
> sediments above the coal beds.
I think I've briefly given tenative responses to these two "Tell me's"
above.
> Tell me how plant matter can be processed and the
> volatile gases escape in such a short time?
I believe I have seen an article describing a project at Argonne Nat'l
Lab where coal was formed from organics in less than a year. I seem to
recall that clay was a catalyst that accelerated the conversion. I'll
try to find the reference. Beyond that, I'll have to cry YETI.
But the real question we should be asking is not the objections you've
listed above, but: Is there a way we can in fact determine if coal is a
flood or a swamp deposit? If the answer is yes, then your objections
will be cast in an entirely different light.
I believe there is a way, and the answer as I see it is found in the
structure of the coal, the coal/underclay contact, and the structure of
the underclay. Swamps and sediments should have distinguishing
characteristics which will allow us to differentiate one from the other.
It's late and I need to go spend a little time with my wife. Sorry, but
you good folks will just have to wait in suspense until I can continue.
God bless,
Bill