Re: Is the Hills' flood possible?

To DAvid CAmpbel and Phil Metzger

DAvid wrote:

>>>A fair amount of weight could be saved by capturing rainwater rather than
stashing all of the water from the beginning, but some water weight allowance would
be needed to provide for non-rainy days as things are drying out, and the food,
etc. still needs accounted for. I'm not sure how drinkable the flood water is
supposed to be in the model; perhaps some water could be scooped up from below as
well.

I think there are endemic species of freshwater animal in the Tigris-Euphrates
region, which would need either to have some place adequately sheltered from the
consequences of the Flood to survive or else to have evolved very rapidly after the
Flood. <<<

Yeah, they could have done this but they didn't. They have the ark sealed for 263
days and that means water must be contained in the boat. I am merely following the
logic from their assumptions.

>>>>On Wed Jun 7 0:08 , philtill@aol.com sent:

> 
>Hi Glenn,
> 
>sorry for the delay.  I know you were expecting to hear from me and I don't want
to disappoint.  But I'm in Sudbury at a mining conference this week and don't have
a computer here.
> 
>I know the issue for you is the lack of widespread flood deposits and I don't
think anyone can ever change your opinion on a mesopotamian flood unless someone
(1) finds them or (2) proves you wrong by quantitatively showing that the
deposits are exactly the way we expect them to be. <<<<

The issue is more than just the lack of widespread deposits. There is no rational
way to move the boat north. They have an idealized straight wind. Are they not
aware of the coriollis force? The wind will curve and it will not be in a straight
direction for 500 miles? So one needs this storm to move along with the boat--
miracle? could be but the Hills don't claim one. Claiming miracles makes for very
short articles. "And God performed a miracle" just about says it all.

There is also the fact that the highest gust recorded in Baghdad is 54 mph. That is
a long way from the sustained velocities they require.

And they ignore the fact that the only places we see these winds are in hurricanes,
which don't occur in the Persian Gulf and even Hurricanes only have hurricane force
winds for just a few tens of miles distant from the eye. The very biggest storms
may have 75 mph winds out 100 miles from the eye, but they are the true monsters.
and they can't form in the Persian Gulf.

I also love the fact that Carol mentions SW wind, easterly wind,
NOrtherly/northwesterly winds, but then they say this supports a SE wind of
Biblical proportions. Just crazy.

The need for the strongest winds are up in the north where the land gradient is
greatest, yet in any hurricane, that far inland (say Northern Louisiana, the
highest winds have always fallen to around 40 mph, in sufficient to do the work.

>>> The only way to do (2) satisfactorily is to do a full finite element model of
the actual basin topography with sediment transport implemented in the code and see
what the result is.  I have no time or funding to work on such a massive project,
but really somebody ought to do it because this is the critical issue for a
mesopotamian flood.  I highly recommend that someone (or some group of us) find
funding to do this, because it is an important question and there is no sense in
arguing over it ad infinitum when we haven't even done the right research to simply
settle this issue.  Whatever we discover, it will advance the cause of truth.
> 
>The only minor thing I can point out in your critique is that the ark would have
less torque (not more) as it rolled over because the surface area projected normal
to the direction of the wind would decrease (not increase) according to the cosine
of the roll angle.<<<<

I don't know that I agree with this. The ark is a box.

--------
|....../|
|..../..|
|../....|
|/......|
---------

And the force is proportional to the exposed cross section, As the ark rotates, the
diagonal is more and more perpendicular to the wind and water current direction,
making a larger cross section for the wind and current to impart their force. Thus,
the way I see it as the ark rotates, the torque increases. What do you think I am
missing here?

>>>>  Therefore, when it rolls it will feel less torque and can return to upright
or find an equilibrium angle.  Furthermore, wind speed in the boundary layer of our
planet increases according to the logarithm of height above the surface, and so
higher velocity winds are at higher altitudes and v.v.  <<<<

Well, then the tippy top of the diagonal will be higher and experience more force.

>>>>Thus, as the ark rolls over, its top will no longer be subjected to the highest
velocity winds.  That, too, causes the torque to be reduced, and
quite significantly!  Finally, a good boat design will have a restoration torque
from the water so that it will naturally rock back.  Your critique of the center of
mass might be correct, but I don't have the details to look at it here in
Canada.<<<<

I don't agree here.

> 
>>>>Last, I will point out that Alan Hill's model was overly conservative in at
least one respect.  He did not inlude the effect of wave action.  Sustained winds
over long reaches of water -- as he (and I) have hypothesized to get the ark back
out of the persian gulf -- will necessarily produce HUGE waves in the northward
direction.  Because the hypothesized flood is relatively shallow in most of the
basin, these waves would be asymmetric in their upper and lower branches, and thus
they would produce net water transport UPHILL in the surface layer.  This can be
observed in shallow bays when the wind blows water uphill.  Because water is
viscous and has a no-slip condition on the bottom (where it meets the sand), this
will result in a water profile in which the water flows downhill in the deeper
layers but uphill in the shallowest layers where the ark's draft is found.  Or, it
might just reduce the downhill flow to some degree.  In the first case the water
itself will push the ark uphill -- not downhill -- and the wind will only help.  In
the second case there would be less downhill flow for the wind to fight against in
pushing the ark uphill.  Because Alan used hydrology models that do not include the
effects of waves (or strong winds over long open reaches), his models predict a
wind that is much stronger than it would really need to be ot push the ark
uphill.<<<<

>>>> 
>However, I mention again, none of this will convince a geologist unless the
correct flood deposits are discovered and quantitively proven to be correct, so it
is not worth arguing over any of these things.<<<<

I am not convinced by the physics of this. What about the unit issues in the back
of the book. He adds a V^2 with a V^3 and acts as if they are all forces.

>>>>> 
>Also, as I said before I would be OK even if the flood were much more limited than
Alan models.
> 
>Ooo, I also meant to point out that Alan's model of the ark is irrelevant to the
dispute.  you also have a model of the ark that you believe is correct -- right
number of animals, etc. -- so let's just assume you are right and put your version
of the ark into a mesopotamian flood.  Most people would be content with that.  <<<<

Well, since you haven't read my model, you will have a hard time critiquing it. I
don't take 5000 animals. That is the death of any ark story.

As to my model, I don't know if it is true. I know that it fits the descrption, and
I know that it is physically possible, and I know that there was an infilling of
the Mediterranean. But to say it is true is something that I can't do becuase I
don't have evidence that it actually happened.

But I do know that other flood theories all violate physics (as does the Hill's
theory) and I know that it too doesn't have evidence for it in the form of
widespresd flood sediment up river where the current river can't cut them out.
Carol Talks about this:

        “It is very important to this discussion to understand the magnitude of
sediment build-up that can occur in a major flooding event. As previouslyi
mentioned, the Mississippi River flood of 1973 was out of its banks for two to
three months in some locations, and the average sediment thickness left by this
flood was 21 inches along the natural levee and 12 feet in the back-swamp areas.
Considering that Noah’s Flood lasted about four times as long (1 year), one can
roughly estimate that a maximum of ~50 feet of sediment might have accumulated in
an ideal backwater location during this flood.” Carol A. Hill, “Qualitative
Hydrology of Noah’s Flood,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 58
(2006):2:127

So where are they?

Her explanation is that floods erode sediment as well as deposit them and that the
flood eroded its own sediment. This is utterly ludicrous. (p. 126)
Received on Wed Jun 7 07:41:37 2006