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

"Why should covering the thing just a bit more make a significant
difference?"

The bottom of the iceberg is always melting, because the water is warmer
than the ice (if it wasn't, then the water would then be ice and not
liquid). Maybe the iceberg wouldn't even melt that much if the ocean is
a little cooler than ice, because see water freezes at a lower
temperature than fresh water, but I would think that most icebergs are
in the ocean at a temperature above 32'F. An icebrg, on top of the
water, could grow, from falling precipitation and freezing air
temperature. However, if it was all under water, there is no capacity
to grow, and it must all shrink. That could be a tremendous effectual
difference.

________________________________

From: Don Winterstein [mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 11:28 PM
To: Dehler, Bernie
Cc: asa
Subject: Re: [asa] yec clain (flood and oil)

"Things melt really quickly when covered with water, compared to just
the bottom floating in water, correct?"

The details will depend partly on relative air/water temperatures, solar
irradiation, etc. Given air and water temperatures equal on a cloudy
day with little wind, water would be far more effective in melting ice
than air. The issue is impedance mismatch. Compared to water, air is
like a vacuum. It conducts heat poorly.

Nevertheless, because of the relatively high density of ice, most of an
iceberg's surface is in contact with water anyway; it's not "just the
bottom." Why should covering the thing just a bit more make a
significant difference?

Don

        ----- Original Message -----

        From: Dehler, Bernie <mailto:bernie.dehler@intel.com>

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

        Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 4:27 PM

        Subject: 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 Fri Dec 7 15:50:17 2007