Summations Only

Does Berthault actually demonstrate anything more than deposition on a slope (which you vehemently denied), Walther’s law and hydrodynamic sorting ? All of which your opponents already accept ?I would also ask - since you are so keen on pointing out the extent of some of the larger formations - what makes you think Berthaults small-scale experiments would scale up to the extent required ?

Just to be clear about how you're defining knife-edge tight, can I assume that you're no longer claiming that it means a lack of gaps? I still don't know what it does mean, but it doesn't mean that, right?I'm still not sure what you mean by "knife-edge tight," but "lack of erosional channeling" seems an unlikely definition. since many strata boundaries that you don't consider "knife-edge tight" also lack erosional channeling. For convenience, here's the link to the Baumgardner article again: Noah’s Flood: The Key to Correct Interpretation of Earth History. Could you please clarify what you mean by "knife-edge tight"?It appears that when Baumgardner described the lack of erosional channeling that he was implying that the entire Coconino/Hermit boundary lacks erosional channeling. This is not true. There is a great deal of erosional channeling in this boundary, and he tacitly concedes there must be at least some erosional channeling when in the text he asks, "Why is there so little erosional channeling at formation boundaries?" Even more, here's evidence of tectonic pressure where Coconino sand has poured into a crack in the Hermit Shale: Here's another view of the same crack that is labeled pretty well: Note that the crack does not extend up into the Coconino. This means that first the Hermit Shale was deposited, then it was deeply buried and lithified, then it was uplifted and the overlying layers were eroded away exposing the Hermit Shale itself to erosion which is when any erosional channeling might have occurred, then the region subsided and became one of net sedimentation and the Coconino was deposited atop the Hermit Shale representing a discontinuity, and finally the crack formed in the Hermit Shale and loose Coconino sand poured in. This is the first time I've seen you concede that erosion occurs at strata boundaries. When did you change your mind, and why? How do you see erosion, a land-based phenomenon, occurring beneath a flood and before the sediments had lithified? Again, there is nothing special about a 20 foot stretch of strata boundary with an absence of erosional channeling. It would be just as weird to call a 20 foot stretch of road special because it had no potholes. I think if you take a peak at that webpage (Critique of Guy Berthault's "Stratigraphy") you'll see you might be treating Steno a bit too harshly. We understand things now at a much better level of detail than Steno, but at a general level his principles hold up pretty well. How so? Here are those images again: How these layers not just as flat and straight as the strata boundary in this following image, which is only about a twenty foot stretch at most: This still doesn't define what you mean by "knife-edge tight." What is it about the image that says "knife-edge tight" to you where other boundaries between strata are not.As I said, it's at the end of an easily accessible trail (the Bright Angel Trail, one of the most popular at the Grand Canyon, I walked about 3 miles down it with the kids some years back), so it gets photographed a lot. There doesn't seem to be anything unique about it. The boundary between most strata at the Grand Canyon are just as knife-edge tight. Maybe what makes this particular boundary look unique to you is how clearly it stands out because, by chance, erosion has exposed a flat wall that allows the boundary to stand out in stark relief. What is unique is how flat this wall of exposed rock is, not the Coconino/Hermit boundary. The Cocnino/Hermit boundary is a discontinuity representing millions of years of erosion of the Hermit Shale and whatever now-lost layers were above it. The extent of exposure of buried sedimentary layers is what is unique about the Grand Canyon. The layers themselves are not particularly remarkable, neither in composition nor configuration. Here's another image of straight and flat layers, this one of the cliffs at Bridport on the southern coast of England: See Web-based Interactive Landform Simulation Model -- Grand Canyon (WILSIM-GC) Parameters. What Garner actually says is that at this location there's a very narrow layer (maybe an inch?) atop the Hermit Shale and beneath the Coconino called the Schnebly Formation. That's actually pretty interesting. I'd never heard of the Schnebly Formation before, so I looked it up. It's much, much thicker at other locations, such as Sedona about a hundred miles south of the Grand Canyon, where it's nearly a thousand feet thick. Here's a diagram of the layers exposed in Sedona at the Mogollon Rim: --Percy

You do seem to make what to me is a small point into a huge problem and it just seems endless and impossible to find a way to explain something clearly to you. The contact as shown in that picture with the arrow is just one single line with no gaps, no erosion, just a single fine line. As I've said, there only seems to be that one short stretch where it is that tight. That's all I know.In the video Garner says there isn't even a smidgen of erosion or anything else in that contact. No he doesn't say that, Percy, please listen again. What he says is that in other parts of Arizona a very THICK layer called the Schnebly formation is found between the Coconino and the Hermit, which leads geologists to figure that there's about ten million years missing between the Coconino and the Hermit in the Grand Canyon although there is no evidence whatever of any deposition at all in the photo in question. Yes, the Schnebly is NOT in the Grand Canyon, it is found elsewhere in Arizona. That's what Garner says. Please listen again.ABE: You persist in claiming that your fields and plains and deserts are as straight and level as that contact? I don't get it. If the surface of the Hermit was exposed at that contact so you could walk on it, it would be like walking on a concrete sidewalk. If you walked on the surface in any of your photos you'd strain your ankles because of the clods in the field and the similar unevenness of the other surfaces. I really don't get at all how you can make any comparison between these things.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Here are the "nits" from my last couple messages that you're ignoring:

• Can you tell us a little of the evidence and rationale that led you to the conclusion that everything from the Great Unconformity to the Kaibab Uplift to the splitting of the continents was due to a single tectonic event?
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• What did you mean when you said in your Message 1127
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  Faith in Message 1127 writes:

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  The one gigantic tectonic event that occurred after the supposed hundreds of millions of years of the quiet laying down of the strata is evidence enough that the canyon area is not so far from tectonic boundaries to be immune.
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  Science views the deposition of the Paleozoic layers as having taken a few hundred million years, so it seems as if you're referring to the scientific view, but you also refer to "one gigantic tectonic event," which is your personal concoction, so I don't know how to interpret this.
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• Since tectonic activity varies widely across geography and time, and since the schematic diagram of the Grand Canyon region was never intended to represent all tectonic activity, why do you consider whatever amount of tectonic activity did occur in the Grand Staircase area to be indicative of anything?
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• By "disruption in the basement rocks" did you mean the Vishnu Schist? If so then why, besides the Supergroup, is there an absence of evidence of any disruption in the Vishnu Schist?
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• If what you say is true that the tectonic event that shaped the geology of the Grand Staircase region was "the very first one," then why are there faults older than the ones like the Hurricane Fault, such as the Lyons River Fault in the Paleoproterozoic Capricorn Orogeny in western Australia?
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• What does "continents hit a snag" mean?
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• Why do you think the Great Unconformity is worldwide extent, especially given the presence in many parts of the world of strata from time periods represented by the Great Unconformity?
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• What evidence is there of a tectonic event creating a drain on the ocean floor for flood waters? What evidence is there for fountains of the deep?
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• Did you never wonder why no fishermen were able to save themselves?
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• Why do you think the same tectonic forces responsible for the tilting of the Grand Canyon Supergroup were also responsible for the Kaibab Uplift?
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• How do you explain buried layers tilting without affecting the layers above them?
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• How do you explain the distribution of fossils in geological strata according to increasing difference from modern forms?
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• How do you explain the increasing radiometric age of strata with increasing depth?
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• How does a flood carry sediments thousands of miles across a continent and then separate them by type (not by size or density) and deposit them with distinct boundaries?
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• How are unconformities created in strata deposited by a flood?
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• So what is your chain of inference that led you to the conclusion that there is detachment along the Great Unconformity?
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• How does your paradigm interpret "the intrusion of the Zoroaster Granite and the Cardenas basalt at different times and long before regional uplift started?"
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• If you now concede that erosion is present between many strata, why did you argue in your Message 1024 that "the absence of any hint of erosion is rather glaring"? What changed your mind?
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• Why did you say that, "Radiometric dating is just not going to fly with me, it's all a bunch of conjectural stuff, not real evidence." What examination of the evidence led you to this conclusion, especially since even the RATE group found no problems with radiometric dating?
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• What evidence are you looking at that leads you to conclude that "the tectonism all occurred at the same time everywhere"?
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• Why do you think that the Grand Canyon region could not reasonably be expected to be relatively tectonically quiet for a sustained period? What other regions of the world are you drawing comparisons with?

--Percy

It would be approximately zero times that anyone here has said something like "floods don't make strata." What has been stated is that a single global flood could not lay down the sequence of strata found in the geological record. Often people have provided many detailed reasons why this is not possible. Since 3/4 of the globe is currently covered by water, how is a truly global flood that covers the remaining quarter much different? This is almost true. A local flood can deposit a layer, a stratum. It cannot deposit a sequence of strata. Certainly heavier sediments will settle out before finer ones, but that's gradation, not a sequence of strata. Your excerpt does not describe a flood depositing separate strata. It describes a flood depositing sediments that settled out heaviest first (at the bottom) and lightest last (at the top). The different types of deposits it describes were not one atop another like strata but in different locations. Did you know there's a YouTube dBCode? Read all about it: YouTube dBCodeYou should bring some of the evidence and argument from the film into the thread, or at least provide the time where each issue is addressed. I'd be especially interested in how Walther's Law is confirmed and how the fossil order is wrong.Bertault has been discussed here before. Floods do not behave like flumes. If you'd like to discuss Bertault then you should propose a thread. If you don't want to discuss Bertault then it makes no sense to mention him again.--Percy

The thought of trying to explain any of that to you gives me a stomach ache because if you don't get it by now I know I'm in for post after post of not being able to get you to see any of it no matter what I say.I think the Kaibab uplift is the linch pin as it were of all the tectonic disturbance in the entire area as shown on that cross section. I think there was a big tectonic event that pushed up the Supergroup which pushed up the Paleozoic strata which caused cracks in the uppermost layers of the mile or two stack of layers above the Permian/Kaibab which then broke up and widened the cracks, which became the Grand Canyon. The same tectonic event raised the southern end of the Grand Staircase up toward the top of the Kaibab uplift where the canyon was formed, and that lifting disturbed the strata in that area which broke off and formed the cliffs of the staircase. That same tectonic event triggered the volcano which sent the magma dike up from the basement through the strata to the top of the Grand Staircase at the very end and no doubt contributed to the general shaking that broke up the strata that made the cliffs of the staircase. The Hurricane Fault occurred at the same time. A lot of shaking going on in that whole area all at once. I also figure the granite was formed at the same time, and the Vishnu schist. This much I had in mind for years now. I spent a lot of time trying to decide where all this was occurring in relation to the Flood, figuring it had to be receding about that time and being the major force that washed away the strata in the staircase area leaving the cliffs, and in the canyon area washing down all those upper strata which carved out that huge space. Recently I started thinking that this tectonic event must have been the big one that split the continents and started the continental drift, which in the Flood scenario would have started out a lot faster than the usual idea of its speed, and gradually slowed over the last 4500 years to its present speed of I think less than an inch a year? Then it seemed that had to be when the Flood waters began to recede after sitting quietly at their height for two months. Something happened on the sea floor and under the contents that broke them apart and caused the water to drain, began the Atlantic ridge, began volcanism which gets triggered with the movement of the continents and so on. Obviously I don't accept much of the conventional thinking about all these things.I've many times tried to answer many of the questions you list. I'm not up to repeating myself about all that.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I indicated where many of these things were presented in the film in Message 1140

Is it really necessary to point out the inadvisability of uncritically accepting a point of view while rejecting the commentary of peer review? I think we all have to wonder in amazement at your proclivity for introducing topics you find "intensely frustrating and boring," and that you continue subjecting yourself to "this annoying experience I want to end."If you find this all so disagreeable, why are you here?--Percy

Why am I here?It gives me an opportunity to figure out what I think that I don't find elsewhere.

Berthault's experiments were in flumes in which the distance between the walls was small enough to have a significant effect. There is good reason to question their applicability to open water.

You posted two replies to my Message 1192, I'll respond to both of them here.Replying to your Message 1193: "Dead space"? Does that term have some special meaning for you, or are you just referring to the canyon? If you're referring to the canyon then the proper term for the space between the canyon walls is the canyon, not "dead space."The erosion of canyon walls is both a gradual and episodic affair driven by rain, wind, freeze/thaw cycles, shelf collapse, impact of rock falling from above, animal activities, vegetation, and probably other things I don't even know about. The Grand Canyon walls look pretty much exactly like what we would expect them to look like.The larger products of erosion are very visible all along the Grand Canyon in the form of talus or scree. Here's an image of scree from somewhere in the canyon: Replying to your Message 1195: If the canyon had been cut suddenly then the canyon walls would be vertical instead of sloped. The river is not "just what is left of that massive flow." I think what you meant to say is that the river follows the course created by the flood. This would be incorrect. See the description above of the contributions to erosion. The slope of the sides of a canyon are a direct function of how long it took the canyon to form. Canyons formed suddenly in geologic terms, say in less than a thousand years, will have vertical sides. Canyons formed over millions of years will have sloping sides. Yes, since they formed over very long periods of time, of course the walls of the meanders slope. They wouldn't have sloped back. It requires gradual downcutting into a landscape over long time periods to create sloping sides. In 4500 years the vertical sides of your flood-created canyon would be eroded back by around 14.4 feet. Since the canyon walls were already at their current height 4500 years ago, and since those walls were vertical, and since all the canyon walls from top to bottom would have been exposed to the forces of erosion and weathering during all of that 4500 years, the walls would still be vertical.The canyon walls would have eroded unevenly since some layers are much softer than others. For example, a limestone layer would erode much faster than a quartzite sandstone layer, and if the limestone layer was just beneath the sandstone layer then as the limestone layer eroded and removed support for the overlying sandstone layer, chunks of the sandstone layer would begin to break off and fall into the canyon.--Percy

See Web-based Interactive Landform Simulation Model -- Grand Canyon (WILSIM-GC) Parameters, also referenced in my Message 1171. It references an estimate of the average slope retreat based upon studies of animal droppings.There are other estimates, but they tend to be complicated because they pose variable rates of slope retreat as a function of time period and position along the canyon, e.g., Rates of river incision and scarp retreat in eastern and central Grand Canyon over the past half million years: Evidence for passage of a transient knickzone.--Percy

A couple of points... I really don't think it was that long and probably very little was lost.Sometimes people get the wrong idea about ages. For example here is what Durango Bill says about the Coconino and Hermit formations: Note that Bill says the formations average 260 and 265 million years old. Words mean something, and here the word 'average' is a very careful usage. No one should take these ages to mean that there is a 5 million year gap at this contact.Further, it is thought that the cracks in the Hermit are actually mud cracks that were open when the Coconino sand began blowing across the drying mudflats. In many cases the cracks can be seen zig-zagging downward into the Hermit suggesting that there is compaction of the muds as it was loaded by the overlying sand mass or even later as the sediments piled up.My interpretation is that the mudflat was uplfted ever so slightly as the sands slowly and gently loaded the mud.As to the Schnebly Formation. What Garner is actually saying (though he doesn't know it) is that the Schnebly is chronologically equivalent to the Hermit and probably part of the Coconino as well. This, again, is an outgrowth of Walther's Law.Finally, I have been trying to find out if anyone thinks that the Coconino/Hermit contact is an unconformity and I don't really see it discussed as such. If you have such information, I'd be interested in seeing it. I might call it a diastem, but I don't think it is a full-blown unconformity.Edited by edge, : No reason given.

All Berthault has done is to demonstrate things that geologists have known about for a hundred years. The problem is that he has put it in the context of some refutation of mainstream science. And it isn't. That is why I call Berthault a charlatan.

No one else accepts your explanations either. Geologists look at the Coconino/Hermit boundary and say its a disconformity. That means the top of the Hermit is eroded. The short 20-foot stretch contains no erosion channels, but other sections of the boundary do. You're right, he doesn't say that. There are apparently no Schnebly Formation represented in the Grand Canyon, not even the inch I thought I saw in this image: See that skinny layer at the top of the Hermit and bottom of the Coconino? It doesn't look like it belongs to either layer. I wonder what it is. Right. I didn't listen that far the first time, I listened for a full minute this time. I don't like videos because I read far faster than people talk. Sure, of course - it's rock. You're inventing things again. People have little trouble walking across flat landscapes. But any minor unevenness is irrelevant because I wasn't comparing those landscapes to the Hermit Shale. You claimed that erosion makes landscapes uneven, and those images show that erosion flattens and evens a landscape.You ignored most of the issues I raised, namely:

• About "knife-edge tight", you're no longer claiming that it means a lack of gaps, right?
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• Do you understand that Baumgardner concedes that erosional channeling at formation boundaries exists?
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• Did you see the evidence of tectonic cracks in the Hermit Shale that filled with Coconino sand, as well as the explanation for how it happened?
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• Have you really changed your views on unconformities and now believe that "some erosion in a contact is the usual thing"?
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• Do you understand that you can't extrapolate a 20-foot stretch of strata boundary to the entire strata boundary?
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• Do you understand that the reason the boundary in that 20-foot stretch stands out so clearly is not because it is much different from that boundary in the rest of the canyon, but because that particular stretch of canyon wall just happens to be vertically flat, so the boundary stands out very clearly. It looks like the Hermit Shale (softer) eroded back underneath the Coconino (harder), causing the Coconino to shear off in flat vertical slabs. Since there is no debris at the base of this piece of canyon wall it must have been removed by canyon staff to make the wall easier to approach and view close up. As I mentioned, this is accessible down one of the most popular trails at the Grand Canyon, the Bright Angel Trail.

--Percy