At 11:18 PM 10/24/97 -0600, bpayne@voyageronline.net wrote:
>Glenn wrote:
>> 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.
>
Lack of knowledge also can allow one to accept things which have been
disproven by others. This is exactly what happened to me and how I became a
young-earth creationists. When I left college, I didn't know geology at all
and felt the same as you. Unfortunately, I was simply trusting others to
get the data correct, and they weren't.
>> 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.
>
You miss the point entirely. How do you account for 45 biospheres of coal
on the preflood earth. This does not even address the issue of the 600
biospheres worth of carbon in petroleum and the 150,000 biospheres of carbon
in the biologically deposited carbonate rocks. How could all these beings
fit onto one preflood earth? (see J.M. Hunt, AAPG Nov. 1972, p. 2274)
>
>> 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.
I see no logical construct here at all. Your suspicions of the numbers mean
nothing other than an indication of your feelings. If you can not identify a
"major factor" then what gives you the right to say that there was something
overlooked?
>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.
Won't work. Even the most optimistic compaction factor for shale (that
shale has 80% initial porosity and compacts to 15% porosity) This would
still leave a 500 foot hill across the plant matter which is destined to be
coal.- see Well Log Interpretation Techniques, Dresser Atlas,1982, p. 160
and Dickas and Payne, AAPG June 1967, p. 879)
You simply must start calculating things for yourself rather than depending
on Austin and others at ICR.
>
>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.
So you believe a number for which there is no documentation? My you are
trusting. How do you know Austin is correct? Do you believe everything
someone tells you without checking it out? Turn you well developed
skepticism on your own views. As Chadwick noted a day or so ago, when we
want to believe something, our skepticism goes to zero. We must guard
against that.
But even if Austin is correct about the 3-10 biospheres, that is more
material than could fit into a single preflood biosphere! If you try to make
the world more lush, there is a limit. Remember, there is 150,000 times more
organic carbonate in biologically deposited limestone than is in the present
biosphere! The 800 billion animals just in the Karoo formation of Southern
Africa would cover the earth to 21/acre if they were all alive at the same
time and spread over the entire earth. And this doesn't account for the
thousands of other fossiliferous deposits with fossil animals. So we have a
preflood world with (austin's value) of 3-10 biospheres of plants, 150,000
biospheres of carbonate (in the form of fossil shells) and 21 animals per
acre from just one deposit. That is hardly credible.
Start thinking and arguing like a scientist. Mathematics is the language of
science so put numbers to your suggestion. Scientists don't just say things,
they calculate things. They are skeptical of all things.
The carbonate in the rocks must have removed CO2 from the atmosphere for its
formation. This is true regardless of whether the carbonate is biogenic or
abiogenic. Given the vast quantities of carbonate, he preflood world must
have had an atmosphere of nearly pure CO2. A small calculation will
illustrate my point.
The carbon in carbonate rocks is 5.1 x 10^22 g. There are 1.8 x 10^21 g of
carbon in the shells of dead animals in the fossil record. The mass of the
atmosphere is 5.2 x 10^21 grams of which .00033 is in the form CO2. (see CRC
47th addition p f117 and f123) This gives 1.76 x 10^18 grams of carbon
dioxide. Thirty-seven and a half percent of this mass is carbon. This
gives 6.6 x 10^17 g of carbon in the atmosphere. Thus the carbonate rocks
represents 77,000 atmospheres worth of CO2! In the fossil carbonate shells
of living organisms there is 2700 atmospheres worth of carbon. You simply
cannot have a pure CO2 atmosphere prior to the flood!!!!! What would Adam
and Noah breathe?
>I think I've briefly given tenative responses to these two "Tell me's"
>above.
But even if they are tentative, they don't work. You still have a 500 foot
hill across that Bastrop/Lee county line coal bed and sedimentologic
evidence that there was not such a hill at the time of deposition of the
next layer (which given the global flood would have occurred one week later.
Secondly, as to the quantity of coal, you didn't solve, it, you just said
that Austin had a lower number which is still too big!!! By Austin's
admission there is more carbon in coal in the rocks than exists in the
present biosphere. I would conclude that Austin and the Global flood have a
problem here.
>
>> 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.
>
At least you are honest in what you are doing, but how long must we wait?
You are trying to say that the Bible is true because the 'scientific'
evidence you present shows it to be true. But when your evidence is false,
does that not mean that the Bible is therefore false? Don't tie the Bible
to a false science. If I say that the Bible is true because the earth is at
the center of the universe and all planets revolve around it as the bible
says. Am I correct? One guy last century, a father Cullen, said that the
earth was stationary at the centre of the universe. He further said that
science had proved this. The sun, according to Fr. Cullen, was a six foot
ball of fire and it revolved around the earth. Of course he was wrong, but
because he wanted a geocentric earth, he was willing to believe anything
toward that end. Don't do the same thing that Fr. Cullen did, which was tie
the truth of the Bible to a false science. Doing that makes the Bible false
also.
>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.
But who cares? If coal is formed from floating vegetation mats as Austin
claims so what? I can think of a bay protected by barrier islands (like the
Laguna Madre of Texas) with a floating mass of vegetation on it to account
for coal in that fashion. If coal is not a swamp deposit it doesn't hurt
uniformitarianism at all.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm