Green River varves

Ole J Anfindsen (Ole.Anfindsen@kjeller.fou.telenor.no)
Fri, 2 Jan 1998 15:09:07 +0100

Dear members of the asa@calvin.edu mailing list, I hope you
can help me with some clarifications regarding varves in the
Green River of the USA. I am currently preparing an article about
young-earth-creationism (YEC) for a Norwegian newspaper, and would
like to use the Green River (GR) as an example of trustworthy indications
of the earth's old age.

My source of information is Dr. Hayward's book Creation and Evolution
(1995) where on page 88 he discusses the GR. He claims that there are
systematic variations in the thickness of the varves in GR with periods
11.5, 2000 and 12000 years (I believe) respectively. He says that the 11.5
year period corresponds to the sunspot cycle, and that the 12000 year
period corresponds to the precession of the earth (both of which influence
the amount of rain, which will influence the amount of organic material
washed into GR, which will influece varve thickness).

Question 1: My Norwegian astrophysics textbook says the period of the
earth's precession is around 23000 years. Is the point then that 12000 is
about 50% of 23000, or is something very wrong here?

Question 2: Hayward says nothing about the 2000 year period of varve
thickness variation. Does anyone know the explanation?

Question 3: Have any of you evaluated any of the YEC explanations for
the GR varves? Or the YEC explanations for coral reefs? If so, how good
are they?

FYI: I am a member of ASA, but do not subscribe to asa@calvin.edu
(actually, I browsed the ASA web pages to figure out how to do that,
but could not find any pertinent information ....). Therefore, please reply
directly to me at ole.anfindsen@fou.telenor.no, and not to the list.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!
Best regards from
------------------------------------------------------------
Ole J. Anfindsen, PhD
Telenor R&D
Postboks 83, Instituttveien 23, 2007 Kjeller, Norway

tel: (+47) 6384 8888
fax: (+47) 6381 0076

http://www.nta.no/fou/ttolge/
g=ole;s=anfindsen;o=fou;p=telenor;a=telemax;c=no;
ole.anfindsen@fou.telenor.no