Re: Floating mats and coal - vegetation types

I dont think Bill would want to use variable mobility of plants to expalin
this unless they are varieties of trifffids.

However does it matter if coals are from floating mats or grown in situ, or
a mixture. If any are grown in situ then a YEC Flood toy/model is
demonstrated to be false yet again. It does not matter if all are mats for
OE geology as it doesnt have much effect as coal is fairly rair in the
column anyway.

It is a pity that Bill and all YECs dont realise that YEC is false - period,
so why argue about it. Tell me one YEC argument which actually holds water -
except the ARK

Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Sharman" <ksharman@pris.bc.ca>
To: <bpayne15@juno.com>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 12:55 PM
Subject: Floating mats and coal - vegetation types

> Hi Bill,
> It has long been recognized that coals found in differing positions in the
> geologic column have different species of vegetation. As a
generalization,
> Carboniferous coals are dominated by lycopods, tree ferns, and horsetails.
> Coals higher up in the stratigraphic column, such as the Cretaceous coal
of
> the Gates Formation that we have been talking about, are dominated by
> gymnosperms, cycads, and ginkgos. Tertiary coals contain gymnosperms and
> angiosperms.
>
> How can the floating mat explanation be used to explain this data?
Saying,
> as you have, that the vegetation was segregated into the various types
while
> it was growing, then it was ripped up and remained segregated, needs a
> mechanism. A "massive wave which overtopped the continents" (your words)
> sounds like a pretty efficient mixing method to me. To get the thickness
of
> veg material you need to make the seams, you need to have a thick pile of
> plants. You have said that the mats weren't this thick to begin with:
>
> "rather large land areas produce vast areas of peat which are later
> concentrated into much smaller areas as they settle out of water" (Jan 25)
>
> "I guess the mats would have to be bound together with roots until they
> started to settle out of suspension. Then getting thin mats to become
> "hundreds of feet thick" (my words) is problematic" (Jan 26)
>
> so you need to mix plants together to get the thickness.
>
> Having mats of a given composition remain over one area to make a certain
> type of coal without even a single log, leaf or spore from another type of
> vegetation being mixed in is going to be a challenge for you to explain.
> For example, no large lycopods occur in post-Permian coals, do they?
>
>
> Many areas have one type of coal forming vegetation in the lowest strata,
> and vertically above this, different vegetation types forming higher
seams.
> An example of this is the central Alberta region, where lower Cretaceous
> coals have one floral assemblage, upper Cretaceous coals another, and
> Paleocene coals yet another. You have pointed out that Alabama has
> Pennsylvanian coals and younger lignites, with completely different
> vegetational makeup. How does this form with floating mats? Did one kind
> of mat hover over the area, making multiple seams, then later a different
> kind hovered, etc.?
>
>
> Even within coals of similar age, different pollen and spore forms appear
> and disappear as you pass upsection. How do you explain this with
floating
> mats? Since you are saying that all the plants were alive at the same
time
> in the pre-Flood world, why is it that no angiosperm pollen is found in
> coals older than Cretaceous? Pollen is light enough to be carried around
in
> the stratosphere.
>
>
> Bill, I hope you are realizing that the whole floating mat thing just
doesn'
> t make sense. You need way too many ad hoc explanations to fix all the
> problems with it.
>
> Kevin
>
>
>
>
Received on Wed Feb 18 13:18:54 2004