Re: Declining water and oil

Glenn wrote:

"Today we have huge areas of the sea floor which are limestone, but the ocean
waters can only hold tiny amounts. that is the limitation on the growth of
calcium based organisms."

Technical point: If organisms take CaCO3 out of solution, then more CaCO3 will go into solution, where water contacts limestone (LS), and thereby allow additional organisms to take additional CaCO3 out of solution. This process can go on in principle until the oceans are saturated with such organisms (whatever that means). But as soon as they die, their skeletons will be available to contribute to the CaCO3 in solution.

As long as there's LS available to be dissolved, it looks like there's always going to be enough CaCO3 available to allow the oceans to saturate themselves with these organisms.

--Not that this makes deposition of all LS by a global flood any more likely or anything of the sort.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Glenn Morton
  To: bpayne15@juno.com
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 4:20 AM
  Subject: RE: Declining water and oil

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bpayne15@juno.com [mailto:bpayne15@juno.com]
> Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 9:34 PM

> Minor point, but I thought CaCO3 is a precipitate. Do the coccolith
> critters extract Ca, CO2 and O2 from solution or take up the undissolved
> precipitate particles? Or can CaCO3 go into solution without being
> dissociated?

  coccoliths deposit CaCO3 in their skeletons. It is from solution.

  " It is a unicellular alga that produces organic carbon through
  photosynthesis and inorganic carbon through coccolithogenesis. The
  coccoliths of E. huxleyi are oval platelets which are formed intracellularly
  by precipitation of CaCO3 in a coccolith vesicle (Westbroek et al. 1989).
  After completion they are transported out of the cell and retained on the
  cell surface." http://www.ub.rug.nl/eldoc/dis/science/e.t.buitenhuis/c4.pdf

  The effect is to remove Ca and CO3 from the sea water.
  http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/13225/EAE03-J-13225.pdf
>
> > Thus, if there isn't enough CaCO3 in the oceans to account for
> > all the limestone, it clearly can't be the result of a one year flood.
>
> Ummm, you're extrapolating current conditions backward. Carbonatites are
> basically igneous carbonates; we could have had a volcanic source of
> carbonates and iron, which would provide the materials for planktonic
> blooms to produce widespread chalks, also explain the massive,
> non-fossiliferous limestones we see in north Alabama.

  The problem is not carbonates exposed to the ocean, it is the fact that the
  ocean waters will hold only a tiny amount of calcium carbonate in solution.
  Today we have huge areas of the sea floor which are limestone, but the ocean
  waters can only hold tiny amounts. that is the limitation on the growth of
  calcium based organisms.

>
> On 11/15/03 you said on this thread: "The Clinton is an iron-rich oolite,
> clearly marine. The iron may have been a local source off of the old
> Taconian Mtns." When I was in school (late 60's) I seem to remember that
> there was no explanation for the origin of the iron ore in the Clinton,
> or what we in AL call the Red Mountain formation. As you know, the
> Clinton goes from AL to NY, and contains "billions" of tons of ore. My
> old text (Longwell, Flint and Sanders, Phyiscal Geology, 1969, p 586)
> says: "It is believed that the iron was dissolved from iron-bearing
> minerals in mafic igneous rocks, carried by streams to the shallow sea
> (perhaps as a bicarbonate), and there precipitated as oxides." Is there
> a modern analog for this type of iron deposit, or is this another case
> where things in the past were different?

  I don't know. But it is a canard that geologists don't believe that the
  ancient earth was different than today. No geologist beleives that only
  those things occurring on earth today are things allowable as geologic
  explanation. And, just because something different happened in the past
  doesn't mean that it was automatically a global flood any more than it
  automatically means that the earth is 2 days old.

>
> > Yes we can. You just don't like the explanation. To almost everyone
> else,
> > the explanation fits coherently and cogently.
>
> Glenn, my friend. "He who girdith his sword up should not boast like he
> who girdith it down." :-) I take it that you're ready to go one on one.

  Explain the roots in the Canadian coal at
  http://home.entouch.net/dmd/cancoal.htm

  The problem is that you keep wanting to say that all coal is allochthonous
  but it clearly isn't. I will agree that some coal is, but so what? That
  doesn't make a global flood. That is the bottom line. You have to show why
  allochthonous coal means a global flood and I haven't seen any chain of
  logic to that effect from you. There is allochthonous peat in Okeefenokee
  which floats on the waters. Big deal. There isn't a global flood now.
>
> > And that is what Austin says caused the coalseams to
> > form--vegetation falling from beneath the floating mat and forming.
>
> ...and forming peat which later became coalified? Yes, that is what
> Autin says, and based upon the data I must agree with him.

  Then explain the roots in the beds under that Canadian coal. Not all coal
  peat was floating.

>
> I think that paragraph is a bit oversimplified. Austin of course didn't
> originate the idea that coal formed from transported rather than in situ
> peat, he merely applied the idea to the data he collected from the
> Kentucky No. 12 coal. A more descriptive term than "coarsely textured"
> would be banded - the bands come mainly from horizontal sheets of bark
> interbedded with other material to produce a banded appearance in cross
> section. Coal does contain some root material, but not to the same
> extent as peat. Coal usually has a sharp contact with the substrate,
> which may be clay, shale, or occasionally sandstone or even limestone.

  It doesn't in Canada. It doesn't in the coals of the Wilcox of Fayette
  county Texas. The coals grade from the sands into shales and then into
  coal. You don't seem to have studies all the coals in the world so you
  can't generalize from your Carboniferous coals to all coals. That is a
  logical fallacy.

  I worked the Wilcox looking for oil for several years. The coals did not
  have sharp contacts but all were gradational at both the base and the top of
  the coal seam. Unfortunately, we didn't take cores of the coals because we
  were interested in oil and gas in the sands which were always several tens
  of feet away from the coal and usually separated by a shale. Thus I can't
  tell if there were roots in those 5000 ft deep coals. The well logs clearly
  showed gradational tops.

> First of all, deep-ocean water, per our previous conversation, usually
> contains currents which would disperse a rain of peat over a wide area.
> Secondly, you're not dealing with the data at hand; you're resorting to
> something you believe should happen way out in the ocean rather than
> attempting to explain, for instance, the banded structure characteristic
> of eastern US coals, which should have been destroyed by bioturbation
> from the roots if the banded coals were swamp deposits.

  As I have repeatedly said, Bill, so what if the Pennsylvanian coals are
  allochthonous from floating mats. That doesn't mean all coals are, that
  doesn't mean it was a global flood. fill in the logical steps here before
  you over generalize.
>
> > And if you want to see roots underneath a coal bed see
> >
> http://home.entouch.net/dmd/ROOTSquintettemineTumblerRidgeCanadaCret2tw.j
> pg
> >
> > These coals didn't float in the ocean.
>
> Ah, now we're getting somewhere. That's an interesting photo, although
> not typical of the coals with which I'm most familiar. I would like to
> go into detail on that photo; I'll respond on another post.

  You can see that the transition between the sand and coal is gradational,
  not sharp. The top of the sand gets gradually darker (and finer grained)
  and then it gets darker and gradually it goes into the coal.

  What you say above is exactly what I have been saying. By focussing only on
  the coals in your neighborhood you ignore data from elsewhere in the world.
  In order to convince me, you have to do one of two things:

  1. prove why there has to be a global flood if SOME coal is from
  vegetational mats.
  2. prove that no coal came from rooted beds
  3. prove that the existence of vegetation mats requires a global flood.
Received on Wed Nov 26 05:31:46 2003