REAL Flood Geology

Everyone knows YECs mine the Genesis flood account to rationalize every geophysical phenomenon. They say strata were laid by the flood, fossils formed by the flood, continents moved around by the flood, mountains raised by it, canyons etched by it. Water is magic: it does anything a YEC needs it to do. Saying 'flood' is like saying 'abracadabra.' It makes the magic happen.Scientists usually respond to this on an item-by-item basis. They explain why this or that geophysical feature could not have been formed in such a way. They show how other well-documented processes account for what we see. Such responses are informative and our scientists are to be thanked for taking the time to provide them.I suspect, though, that we might benefit from a scientific discussion of this from another angle:How would the earth look today if there had been a global catastrophic flood circa 4,500-5,000 years ago?Real water isn't magic. It behaves in real ways.What would we find today--in rocks, in the atmosphere, in flora and fauna?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Changed approximate flood date to correspond more closely with YEC views.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Thanks, Jar. I've corrected the OP to reflect this._

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

If one postulates a YEC time frame for the total age of the earth, wouldn't mountain ranges display a similar appearance? Seems this would have to hold true regardless of whether the mountains were formed before the flood or during it. All mountains the world over would be nearly the same age. The only major force for erosion would be an inense but short-term exposure to water or ice.We would see new ranges like the Himalayas, Alps, and Rockies displaying lots of evidence of runoff. We wouldn't have rounded, ancient ranges like the Appalachians looking as they do. These ranges have been broken down by forces that take centuries: wind erosion, lichens digesting the rock, and other gradual processes.YECs would argue, 'abracadabra' fashion, that the flood waters caused this erosion we see in ranges like the Appalachians. (Never mind for the moment whether the erosion they display really could be caused by that.) That still leaves them to explain why the same flood waters would do so much less thorough job on these other ranges.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

The OP asks for a realistic geological appraisal of what we would see today had a global flood taken place.In geology there are some things you just can't have. One of those, if we postulate a flood, is runaway subduction.Remember it is not necessary to have 'runaway subduction' to make the flood happen. YECs do not use tectonic activity to explain the flood. They use the flood to explain tectonic activity. Different thing.Plate tectonic theory falsifies a young-earth scenario. YECs need an magic potion to make that challenge disappear. So they reach for their magic flood weater. Those waters can do anything. Need continents to move around at F-16 speeds? Okay. Abracadabra.But geology is science, not superstition. In real life, runaway subduction would generate so much heat and quake activity that water would be the last of anyone's worries. No one would be tlaking about a global catastrophic Flood. They would be talking about a global catastophic Crustal Crackup or a global catastrophic Lava Flow. Steam might be a bit of a nuisance here and there. Water, no.If we want to examine realistically what we would find around us given a global catastrophic flood four millenia ago, runaway tectonic activity is something we can't have and still keep our flood premise.F-16-speed subduction is not needed to supply a cause for the flood. The co-existence of the two events would be impossible. All water on earth would boil off in the runaway heat. No water, no flood. The worldwide evidence for the flood we saw would actually be evidence against any global catastrophic crustal movement around the same time.Today--check me on this, geologists--we would see no significant tectonic structures at all. If the earth were 6,000 years old, tectonic activity would just be getting started. No plates, no subduction zones. In my part of the world, no islands of Taiwan or Japan, both of which owe their existence to subduction zones.___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

It's magic water, RAZD. It does everything.
All you have to do is swirl it around and say 'abracadabra.'La Brea seems to require the existence of magic tar as well.
Maybe we'll see some YECs plop a fist into that.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Okay, gotcha.That is a gap in my OP. I didn't set a conditional age of the earth, just the condition of a global flood.That was by design, as it were. I thought it would be interesting to discuss geological results of a global flood in both young and old earth scenarios. We have an obligation to tackle the young-earth results, of course, because that will be of the most benefit to YECs in reassessing the scientific validity of their models.It would be good to make clear in our responses how old we understand the earth to be at the time of the flood we postulate._

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

The OP doesn't ask anyone to assume the water was 'magic' in the YEC sense--that it does anything you want, like a genie. I wanted us to think about the element as any geologist thinks about it. Water behaves in certain ways. What would it really do? What would we see? (Many thanks to Matt P for some impressive demonstrations.)It just happens that this parameter rules out any zany planet-wide tectonics. As I understand it, the heat generated by that sort of colossal crustal upheaval would burn away, not augment, the world's water inventory.You pose an interesting question in asking where the water would come from. I've never seen YECs even attempt to explain this since they punted on their vapor canopy theory.Where, realistically, can you get enough water in that short a time to bury the world's highest mountains? And where would the water go? Geologically its hard to imagine a realistic water source for the job. Not one that does the trick in that brief a time. Realistic sources of water on that scale all require volcanism so rampant to release it that no flooding could be sustained.Likely there isn't a credible geological source. For this exercise it seems we're forced to take the flood's arrival as a given.Can anyone think of a geologically sound way to get that much water covering everything in a matter of days?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Fascinating!Speaking of things we should see more of: someone on another thread (Quetzal?) mentioned pillow lava. It refers to the characteristic way lava flows behave when they occur under water.Had a global flood occurred earth would display a lot more pillow lava than it does. Wouldn't that be the typical form in which to find almost any igneous rock?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

What do YECs say about the height of antediluvian mountains? Were the Himalayas covered? Or were the Himalayas raised as part of the upheaval?The first choice requires an impressive amount of water indeed. You'd think that today we'd at least have to deal with the runaway mildew.The second choice requires the raising of the Himalayas in a matter of centuries (presumably by having the Indian plate smack into the Asian plate at supersonic speed) without disturbing any of those people in the Indus Valley who were growing their crops, sailing the rivers, and learning to write.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Added mildew.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Well, that clears that up.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : face.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

That appears to be what we are left with. As Obvous Child notes, the YEC hypothesis can't be made to function even hypothetically. It is truly absurd. An exercise like this lets one experience firsthand just how absurd it is.If the earth was 6,000 years old we would observe no plate tectonics and no multiple layers of strata. One of the earliest posts put it well: we would see three layers all over the world. We would see a pre-flood base layer, a flood sediment layer, and a layer comprised of the limited amount of accumulation since. That's all.We would see no Taiwan or Japan, no Himalayas, no Appalachians, no Grand Canyon. Pre-flood or post-flood conjectures make no difference. Features like these couldn't happen. They would not be here. Add a zero. Sea level has to rise to nearly 30,000 feet.The height of Sagarmatha, or Mount Everest, is 29,028 feet (8,848 meters) according to Wiki. Flood waters are said to have covered the mountains to a depth of around 22.5 feet, as RAZD has noted. Allowing for some erosion over the centuries and variability in the length of an ancient Babylonian cubit, we can say sea level at the height of the flood would need to be (conservative estimate) about 29,060 feet above the level today.I'm okay for the moment with allowing all that water to come from nowhere. It would still be useful to get around eventually to the subject of where that much water could possibly be stowed away on a planet this size. (I suspect that will be a short discussion, too.)Other than that it would be good if all other physical effects of the global flood scenario to be realistic. So temperature effects of condensation and the like are fair game. We still need a global deluge of liquid water, though, however we manage it. It's the aftermath of that event that we're discussing. If the physics of the matter force us to adjust variables--postulating a longer period of precipitation, for example, or lower flood depth--we should discuss it.We just need the water. It isn't our job to ensure Noah's survival or anyone else's. The effects of such a flood on flora and fauna is part of the question.The idea is to get a sense of what observers (likely not us) would see today. What features of the planet would lead them to conclude that its entire surface had been inundated under flood waters 4,500 years earlier?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Precision.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Precision.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

On the subject of high seas: Understood. Okay, I'm easy.So, for the sake of argument, what are we back to? 3,000 as Moose suggests?__

(The silence we observe in response to this post is due to YECs trying to register the idea that there could be more.)__Edited by Archer Opterix, : erosion of excess verbiage.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

That's what happens when two lovers never touch each other, but the earth moves under their feet anyway.__

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

As the initial hot lava of this thread cools into porous volcanic rock, now seems a good time to thank all our scientists for lending your expertise to the discussion.I learned a lot from you, as always; I know other readers have as well. Maybe some of the material you've deposited here can be profitably mined in the future by Great Debate participants and make their work a bit easier.None of this is to preclude the possibility of a new eruption here. I'll be watching for tremors.Many thanks.___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.