Re: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

The solid-solid bond of ice to rock is very strong at low temperatures. This is probably something that can't be calculated from first principles, but it could be measured. The only way (apart from mechanical) to loosen that bond would be to raise the temperature above freezing at the interface. The only way to do that with water would be to somehow inject it at the interface in a way that wouldn't freeze the injected water. Ordinary flooding would affect only the outer edges and surfaces of the ice mass and thus leave most of the ice cap intact. Buoyancy forces would take effect only after water could seep in under the ice. Hence it would take a long time to melt the ice cap and break it free of the underlying rock. How long would depend on the temperature and total mass of the ice. Without conducting experiments I can only guess; but my gut says a lot longer than one year. We're not talking car windshields here.

An excerpt from the Web version of Encyclopedia Britannica on icebergs states:

"...Arctic ice islands and giant Antarctic bergs last as long as 10 years at high latitude. Most icebergs from western Greenland melt within two years of calving from the parent glacier.
"Once an Arctic Ocean iceberg has been calved and moves out to the open sea, it usually transits Baffin Bay in from three months to two years, during which time it undergoes some disintegration through melting and calving of smaller chunks of ice from its perimeter. This results in a decrease in mass of about 90 percent by the time it reaches the coast of Newfoundland and the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic. When the iceberg enters the region of the Grand Banks, where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream meet the colder waters of the Labrador Current, it has only a few days of life remaining."

So if icebergs can last several years floating in cool seawater, it would likely take many times several years for a worldwide flood to melt the entire icecap. That, of course, is assuming God is not up there (or down there) with a blowtorch to free up more water for his flood.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Dehler, Bernie
  Cc: asa
  Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 10:37 AM
  Subject: RE: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

  Don said:
  "But ice density is about 0.92, so it's not very buoyant. Ice also tightly grips the rock beneath it (think of cleaning it off windshields in subzero weather, or car surfaces in case of silver thaw; or, more appropriately, think of boulders plucked out of their matrix by alpine glaciers). "

  Ice under water, for way over 100 days, is a lot different than ice on a windshield. For a global flood, the water rose over all the highest mountains, including all the ice on the mountains. Put warmer water (over 32 degrees F) over the windshield and things happen. in just a few minutes, even. A worldwide flood would have brought liquid water over all the polar ice-caps. Seems to me if there was a worldwide flood, the ice caps we have now probably formed after that. meaning they are under 6,000 years or so old (taking it all literally, like Ken Ham would?).

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  From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Don Winterstein
  Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 2:17 AM
  To: D. F. Siemens, Jr.
  Cc: asa
  Subject: Re: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

  "What would necessarily happen is the raising of all glacial deposits off their bases, for ice floats."

  But ice density is about 0.92, so it's not very buoyant. Ice also tightly grips the rock beneath it (think of cleaning it off windshields in subzero weather, or car surfaces in case of silver thaw; or, more appropriately, think of boulders plucked out of their matrix by alpine glaciers). And then the floodwater only stays a short time. If the ice started out much thicker than now, floodwater wouldn't even cover it until late in the game. Arguing as a YEC I'd guess it would stay put, except that God would be melting the stuff on top to increase water levels.

  "A second requirement would have to be the brief disappearance of creatures from all land areas...."

  I agree they would disappear, but we probably couldn't tell today that they were gone at that time. Absence of fossils means little. Animals could have been there but just didn't get fossilized. Happens all the time.

  "...Waters...tore everything up and redeposited [strata] in what looks like the evolutionary order."

  Yeah, right. This would take many astonishing miracles. First of all, since Earth is young, it wouldn't have much in the way of strata--unless God created them in situ to be much younger than they looked. So the rocks the floodwaters would be working on more than likely would be crystalline igneous--like granite, etc. So the next set of astonishing miracles is generating all the observed limestone, salt, anhydrite, etc. by means of the flood.

  BUT on second thought, I'm no longer so sure it would be easy--see below--to detect flood-generated terrestrial sediments. The flood happened only a few years ago, so continental surface topography would be largely the same as now. This would mean floodwaters would mostly flow along river channels that exist today, and the flood-deposited sediments would be buried by subsequent mini-floods. They would still be detectable, but to establish the existence of a worldwide flood on this basis would require more time and money than anyone is likely to invest--especially since the risk of failure is, like, 100%. But it would be interesting, because the risk of local false positives would also be 100%.

  Don

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Received on Wed Dec 5 03:04:34 2007