Summations Only

You've got this backwards. The possibility of a worldwide flood was never discarded. It's just that geologists have found no evidence of a worldwide flood at the P-T boundary. Just look at the possible causes of the P-T extinction event listed over at Wikipedia. Asteroid impacts, volcanism, and sea level fluctuations, to mention just a few. This list includes everything for which there is at least a little evidence. A global flood is absent from the list because of absence of evidence, not because it was discarded a priori. Find us evidence of a global flood and it will be added to the list - I'll add it myself.By the way, note that one of the possibilities in the list is pronounced sea level regression. Not global transgression - regression globablly at continental boundaries from dropping sea levels. This has been addressed before, but I guess you're just going to continue repeating it. There is too little moisture in the air for it to affect sea levels significantly if it all fell as rain at once.And the Siberian Traps that you think would have heated the world and melted the ice caps and glaciers might actually have spewed so much dust into the air that it cooled the world into an extremely lengthy winter, in the way the Krakatoa eruption cooled the world a couple hundred years ago, but much worse. The oceans might have frozen all the way to the equator.Or perhaps the CO₂ spewed into the atmosphere caused global warming, making conditions too hot for much plant life, and of course that would have melted ice caps and glaciers, but obviously not enough to cause a global flood, because for that there is no evidence.But one thing we do know: things that happen leave behind evidence. If a global flood happened, an event much, much more severe and easily detectable than increased fluvial deposits in floodplains, there would be evidence. A lot of evidence.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typos.

Hi Mindspawn,Here's something else to consider. If all the ice in all the world were to melt, if all the moisture in the atmosphere were to fall as rain, it would raise sea levels by about 70 meters or 230 feet. That's not enough for a global flood. You need at least 100 times more water than exists now, and even then Mount Everest wouldn't be covered.--Percy

Hi Mindspring,Another thing to consider is that if sea levels did rise only 230 feet, then if Noah did live in the Ararat region water could never have reached his boat. If he lived further south where elevations are much lower then the flood could have floated his boat, but it could not have floated it to anywhere near Mount Ararat where even the foothills are at an elevation of several thousand feet.--Percy

It is interesting that you think this is common knowledge, but I can find no evidence that this is true. But even if it were true, there is not enough moisture in the atmosphere to raise sea levels by measurable amounts. Whatever additional water you're proposing might have been in the atmosphere during the Carboniferous would have had to come from the oceans. Returning that water to the oceans would not have flooded the Earth. If you're proposing that the water came from within the Earth through volcanic eruptions then it would still be here flooding the Earth, but it's not here, so that never happened, either.Note that if the entire atmosphere of the Earth were at 100% humidity it would still contain far less than a cubic kilometer of water. The Earth's oceans contain 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water. You cannot cram enough gaseous water into the atmosphere to measurably affect sea levels. I don't think I ever said otherwise. You were arguing that the Siberian Traps would have caused global warming, and I was pointing out that short term they would have caused cooling. The Krakatoa eruption is a prime example of this, a major volcanic eruption one year causing global cooling for the next few years. And your flood is a one year event, remember?Not only is there insufficient ice on the Earth to flood the world as it is today, you couldn't flood a flat world in just a year. The amount of heat required to melt that much ice in just a year would have sterilized the Earth. It wouldn't have been *an* extinction event but *THE* extinction event, and we wouldn't be here discussing this.And in the warm, arid conditions you say followed the flood, how would the water have reformed into glaciers and icecaps?Plus the Earth wasn't flat. The Appalachian Mountains began to form almost 500 million years ago, 250 million years before the P-T boundary. The Gamburtsev Mountains in Antartica are also thought to be around 500 million years old. The Great Dividing Range in Australia is around 300 million years old.And if the world were flat, then in that case there could have been no uplands denuded of vegetation to provide the sediments for the floodplains as described in the cited material you've been misinterpreting.You're making the appeal that if we can't prove the flood didn't happen that therefore it could have, but that's not the way science works. I direct your attention again to the Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot. The fact that no one can prove there isn't a teapot in orbit about the sun doesn't mean it is a proposal that should be taken seriously. And the fact that no one can prove there was no global flood at the P-T boundary also doesn't mean it is a proposal to be taken seriously.But more important is what we can prove. We can prove there were high mountain ranges at the P-T boundary. We can prove that the P-T boundary was 250 million years ago. We can prove that the heat required to melt enough ice to flood the world would wipe out all life. We can prove there isn't enough water on the Earth to flood the entire surface. And we can prove that the atmosphere cannot hold enough water to measurably affect ocean levels.You're left with a flood with no evidence that it ever happened, and with no conceivable mechanism that could cause it to happen.--Percy

Uh, Mindspawn, any floodplain will have evidence of "flood related sedimentation". That's because it's part of the definition of a floodplain.Floodplains exist in all geologic eras. What's notable about those at the P-T boundary is an increased amount of sedimentation thought due to increased erosion from upland regions denuded of vegetation. By the way, these are the same upland regions that wouldn't be there were the world flat at the time.I think you must be confused by the word "flood" that is part of the word "floodplain". Here's the definition of floodplain from Answers.com: While poking around the Internet for a clear explanation of a floodplain I found this one at Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council: If there had really been a global flood then not only would there be increased sedimentation in floodplains, there would have to be increased sedimentation in all low lying regions. That they've only found increased sedimentation in low-lying regions already cut by rivers (i.e., floodplains) means these were the typical seasonal floods experienced by floodplains and were not global.--Percy

There has been no correction in the age of the Appalachians. MindSpawn got this misimpression from a lay-press science article he cited in Message 294, Geologists Find New Origins Of Appalachian Mountains.A much more clear explanation can be found in Isotopic studies of the Acatlan complex, southern Mexico: Implications for Paleozoic North American tectonics. The Appalachians in north eastern America have not been redated. They are still thought to be 480 million years old, but the article describes subsequent stages of mountain building that added to the range, one of which occurred in what is now southern Mexico about 180 million years later (not 120).There was no 120 million year error in the dating of what are commonly known as the Appalachian Mountains, but a previously unknown and younger extension of the once mighty range has been discovered in southern Mexico. MindSpawn's claimed 120 million year error is actually just a figure his cited article used while describing events. The article's title should have been, "Geologists Find Origins Of Newly Discovered Subrange of the Appalachian Mountains."I didn't have any free time when MindSpawn first made his claim of a 120 million year dating error, but when it got mentioned again I decided to check it out. I liked your description of the self-correcting nature of science.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Wordsmithing.

The Appalachian Mountains of the eastern US are 480 million years old. That age has not been revised. A younger range around 300 million years old in southern Mexico has recently been discovered to be an extension of the Appalachians. Yes, and this is one of the quotes from Nance: Notice he said Mexico, not the US. The dating of the US portion of the Appalachian Mountains has not changed.The title of the relevant paper is Vestige of the Rheic Ocean in North America: The Acatln Complex of southern Mxico, it begins on page 437, but most of the article is not available for free online.AbE: Meant to address this and forgot: Yes, it's from 1991, and I cited it because of how clear it was that even way back in 1991 they knew the age of the Atcatlan complex. The article you cited has pretty much the same age, though your article has less detail and doesn't mention the several stages of mountain building down there.One of the biggest complaints we have is how bad science articles in the popular press can be. In the case of your cited article it gave you the misimpression that the Appalachian Mountains had been redated. They hadn't. All that happened was that a mountain range in southern Mexico was discovered to be a younger extension of the Appalachians.--PercyEdited by Percy, : AbE.

I think if you go back to the linked articles that you'll find that the Acatlan Complex hasn't been redated either. It's been reinterpreted as a late-forming extension of the Appalachians. The 1991 article I cited gave the same age as the 2006 article you cited, about 300 million years. There's been no redating.An actual redating of anything by amounts that large would merit headlines. It would be an enormous surprise, and it wouldn't be buried in a technical article titled, Vestige of the Rheic Ocean in North America: The Acatln Complex of southern Mxico.--Percy

Again, the Acatlan Complex was not redated. Paragraph 2 of the abstract for the paper I cited earlier (Isotopic studies of the Acatlan complex, southern Mexico: Implications for Paleozoic North American tectonics) begins like this: They mention three metamorphic events. Note that the date from the Late Pennsylvanian event is 287 million years ago, pretty much the same age we think it is today.Here's the abstract from a paper by the very scientists you think redated the Acatlan Complex (Acatln Complex, southern Mexico: Record spanning the assembly and breakup of Pangea): Notice it makes no claims about redating the Acatlan Complex, and certainly not by any error as astoundingly large as 120 million years. The article that gave you the impression that there had been a redating was just trying to place events in a time sequence.--Percy

Aren't layers of rock on the scale of miles roughly just as plastic as clay on the scale of inches? In other words, aren't your clay layers more representative of lithified rock layers? Wouldn't you need to construct your layers out of something like very fine sand in order to have an accurate model of unlithified layers?--Percy

Yes, exactly, that was my point, too. Independent of Moose and Pressie's point about how poorly unlithified layers might mix, modelling clay is a much better analog for lithified layers.--Percy

No, Mindspawn, the portions of the Acatlan complex that had already been dated were not redated. What happened was that they found a previously unknown extension of the Acatlan complex in Mexico that formed much more recently than the older portion in the US.You keep citing the same article (http://www.sciencedaily.com/...ases/2006/11/061117123212.htm) in support of your strange belief, and all I can do is keep telling you you're misinterpreting it. Which do you think more likely:

• Radiometric dating can be off by over a hundred million years, a fact that would shake to their respective cores both paleontology and physics, but no one has noticed or cares.
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• You're misinterpreting the article.

--Percy

Well, not exactly. He's claiming that the article describes a case where radiometric dating was off by over a hundred million years. And I'm pointing out that this would shake paleontology and physics to their respective cores, and am asking him to consider how likely this is given that no one has noticed or even cares, and am further suggesting he consider the more likely possibility that he has misunderstood the article.--Percy

Yes, of course.MindSpawn is suggesting that that article is evidence that the shakeup has already occurred. And I'm suggesting that he may have misinterpreted the article, given that no one but him has noticed this supposed epic failure of radiometric dating and violation of the laws of physics.We're going back and forth on what feels like an obvious point to me. There must be an interpretation of what I'm saying that I haven't grasped yet. Let me know if you figure out where the problem lies.--Percy

Yeah, maybe you're right. I don't know what it might take to help him understand that the Acatlan complex has not been redated.I read your next message responding to MindSpawn's claim that he wasn't making a point about the reliability of radiometric dating. Like you I can't see what his point was if it wasn't about that.--Percy