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

Gen 7:

 24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

  Imagine the polar ice caps completely covered over with water for over
100 days. The waters covered the tallest mountain, which means these
ice shelves would have been covered by hundreds or thousands of feet of
water. Imagine the water pressure at those depths. I wonder how long
the ice shelves would last under those conditions. There are over 450
mountains taller than 23,000 feet (source:
www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-worlds-tallest-mountains.htm ). Any ice
shelves that are now at sea level or near it would have been completely
submerged by over 20,000 feet of ocean.

  Below, you talk about icebergs. Those aren't covered by water.
Things melt really quickly when covered with water, compared to just the
bottom floating in water, correct?

...Bernie

________________________________

From: Don Winterstein [mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 12:04 AM
To: Dehler, Bernie
Cc: asa
Subject: 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 <mailto:bernie.dehler@intel.com>

        Cc: asa <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>

        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?).

        
________________________________

        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 Thu Dec 6 19:37:24 2007