Paleocurrents: the 'diverse' features of the GC were laid via rapid, correlated flow

[QUOTE] Of course I understand transgression and its role in the preservation of coal seams. I just don't make a priori assumptions about the rate at which it occurred as you do.[/B][/QUOTE]JM: OF COURSE YOU DO!! You attribute it all to the time of the flood.
The rate is then trivial to calculate.CheersJoe Meert

I'll allow for both your possibility and mine. It's your side that a priori assumes that our explanation is pseudoscience.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
I'll allow for both your possibility and mine. It's your side that a priori assumes that our explanation is pseudoscience.

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JM: That is patently false. Geology had the very same assumption you did 200 years ago. The data led to the alternative. You need to get back to the books!CheersJoe Meert

Believe what you want but if you can force a uniformitarian interpretation you will as cyclothems demonstrate. That is not scientific.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
I've explained before that your in situ trees in some cases are clearly not in situ! Other cases may be debatable. Of course you simply assume they are in situ.

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So ALL of them are not in situ? You do understand that that is what you are saying, don't you?

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Of course I understand transgression and its role in the preservation of coal seams. I just don't make a priori assumptions about the rate at which it occurred as you do.

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Prove it. Explain it to us.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Believe what you want but if you can force a uniformitarian interpretation you will as cyclothems demonstrate. That is not scientific.

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LOL! Your theory has yet to explain how trees grew and swamps formed in between global flood surges that all occurred within one year! Just to where did all that water ebb and then stay away for a miracle tree to grow to maturity? For a soil to develop? Pretty whimsical if you ask me. But, as you say, it IS more scientific.

EdgeHow could 'Other cases may be debatable' be equated with 'So ALL of them are not in situ?'? It is clear that I am leaving both options open. You are too antagonistic Edge. Why can't we talk as if we were friends?Your transgressions occur for reasons varying from glacial melting to sea-floor spreading (same as ours actually) and gradually creep up over land covering peat bogs which turn into coal over eons. I understand your POV and in isolation it makes a lot of sense. But the cyclothems in totality have such varying mainstream explanations it is clear that it is not well understood and that it is being shoehorned by unifromitarianism.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-02-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
How could 'Other cases may be debatable' be equated with 'So ALL of them are not in situ?'? It is clear that I am leaving both options open.

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Okay, a little lesson in logic. If only one case exists of a tree growing to maturity between your surges, you have been proven wrong. Simple as that. It means that between at least two surges there were several decades of time... all in the middle of a flood. You need to have zero trees give evidence of growing in between surges. Otherwise your hypothesis fails.

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You are too antagonistic Edge. Why can't we talk as if we were friends?

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For several reasons. You have misrepresented what prinicpal scientists in my field have accomplished in their research. You have ignored most of what Joe and I have told you. You have implied that geologists cannot correctly interpret basic data that a first year student can readily recognize. And you have acted as though you are capable of all these things and more. You 'understand' how geologists think, what our biases are, what we are afraid of, etc., etc., etc. I could say a lot more, but I hold keep my counsel.

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Your transgressions occur for reasons varying from glacial melting to sea-floor spreading (same as ours actually) and gradually creep up over land covering peat bogs which turn into coal over eons.

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And what is wrong with this?

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I understand your POV and in isolation it makes a lot of sense. But the cyclothems in totality have such varying mainstream explanations it is clear that it is not well understood and that it is being shoehorned by unifromitarianism.

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Nonsense. It is you who disregards the evidence of forests growing in between the transgressions. It is you who ignores the presence of paleosoils between the cycles. It is you who cannot explain the evaporite deposits in between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic coal formations. It is you who does not know that cyclothems are not found in western North America. It is you who cannot tell us whether the paleocurrents were measured in marine or non-marine rocks. It is you who cannot fathom a stream system reworking a coastal plain. It is you who thinks sloping surfaces cannot have depressions in which water might collect. (I think I'll stop here for the sake of other readers)And yet... your model is so much better! Talk about shoehorning!

EdgeI'll fully agree that one case of an in situ tree is damning to our theory. You may think you have proof of that we may not.I do not set out to misrepresent you guys and I do not ignore what you say. Your rebuttals of my points are not always the final story Edge.You know our opinion of the Yellowstone forests. You know how we explain coal. You know how we explain paleosoils. We do not expect cyclothems everywhere.Water collecting in local depressions does not explain the fresh water shales continuity half way across NA.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
How can you say that our theory doesn't explain cyclothems? For a start I haven't put forward a detailed one and the qualitative one (surges of marine vs fresh water flooding) makes a lot of sense becasue it doesn't need to appeal to bizaree repetitions of uplift/flooding/peat bog/subsidence/innundation and it connects the coal formation with the innundations more causally.

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Why am I almost the only one that gives jargon free summaries of texts around here? Why don't you summarize the mainstream cyclothem theories. You may have seen cyclothem deposists but isn't it possible you've simply accepted the non-catastrophic rationalizations? Why can't you even say that our explanation could be right?

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If the word flood is a naughty word then what word do you use to descibe local floods? Diluvial? Isn't that equally naughty? I think most of the non-marine beds could be reinterpreted as diluvial.

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Doesn't the sub-continental scope of many of these beds trouble you at all? Honestly.

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Pictures are so helpful sometimes... The sandstone filling a dendritic channel, shown in cross-section above, viewed as an isopach below... A bigger map with paleogeography reconstructed from this data. Note the meandering channel flowing out into the birdsfoots delta... All those varying depositional settings plus lots of time and sea-level changes result in a complicated cross section... Read about Pennsylvanian cyclothems here: http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/minres/districts/cmdp/Chap08-1.html"Waxing and waning of continental glaciers resulted in episodic sea level changes, similar in amplitude to those during the Quaternary (~100 m; Heckle, 1995). Klein and Willard (1989) evaluated the relative impacts from these two mechanisms on the Pennsylvanian Period coal basins of the United States. They attribute the control of cyclothems in the Western Interior Basin to repeated transgressions and regressions of a mid-continent sea. These changes in sea level were caused by glaciation. Klein and Willard conclude, based on the more clastic nature of Appalachian sediments and the deeper basin warping, that the Appalachian Basin was affected most by tectonic controls. They also invoke a combination of transgressive-regressive cycles and tectonism as controls on cyclicity in the Illinois basin."Not a global Flood. [i]"Two more factors have been proposed to explain the distribution of coals and intervening sediments. These are the "deltaic" model of Ferm (1970, 1974) and Donaldson (1969, 1974, and 1979) and the "climatic" model of Cecil et al. (1985) and Donaldson et al. (1985). The deltaic model accounts for rapid facies changes that occur over very short horizontal distances. These rapid changes are due to repetitive channel switching, as in the [b]modern Mississippi delta.[/i][/b]"!!!!!!"The climatic model explains the marked vertical stratigraphic, sedimentological, and mineralogic variations from the beginning to end of Pennsylvanian sedimentation, throughout the Appalachian Basin, and explains chemical and physical changes in coals through time. For example the red beds found in the Conemaugh Group are attributed to dry conditions. The widespread freshwater lake deposits of the upper Allegheny and Monongahela Groups are also indicative of dry conditions (Cecil et al., 1985). "Dry conditions = not a global FloodNow go ahead and find a Flood "geologist" who is willing to explain the Flood in terms of actual outcrops, rocks, thin-sections, and data...

wehappy,we all know those pictures were drawn with a uniformitarian bias. In reality, the contacts are sharp and laterally continuous across the entire continent. It shows how badly real geologists misrepresent the flood!CheersJoe Meert

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Originally posted by wehappyfew:
Pictures are so helpful sometimes...

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Thanks for the data, wehappyfew. Perhaps this will help TB understand the actual deposition of the various types of sediments in the record. Somehow, I doubt it, though. Actual evidence seems to get lost in the next TB post and we all go back to the 'gut reaction' and 'hunch' type of reasoning based on the bible. I mean, it's obvious that a flood 'fits the data better.'

Wehappy et alI base my coments on an entire chapter in Verhoogen, not a figure sumarizing only one or two cylocthem cycles out of 30 to 50. In addition there is nothing in our model to expect all layers to be vast in extent. But our model can account for the ones that are vast. For example Verhoogen states:

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"With the exception of the sandstones, the beds show remarkable continuity, particularly in the Ilinois and Midcontinent Basins."

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"The environment of accumulation of the thin, persistent, late-Paleozoic coal beds remains something of a mystery. The cyclothems in general lack barrier-island sands of the sort found in the Cretaceous of the Rocky Mountains. Whatever their origin, if the coal-forming environment had been a relatively narrow swampy belt between a sea on one side and an alluvial plain on the other, it is hard to understand what kept the sea from inundating the swamp. On the other hand, if coal-swamp conditions had succeeded fluviatile conditions over the entire region at the same time, and were replaced in turn at an instant in time by marine conditions, the flatness requited for such widespread changes would not provide the slope for the late-Paleozoic rivers."

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Verhoogen et al (1970)

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Note in bold that there is difficulty reconcikling the flatness dictated by the shallow sea with the slope required by the sandstone paleocurrents. In our scenario there is simply no problem. Note also that very similar cyclothems form in other parts of the world at the same time. In our scenario cyclothems are due to rapid surges and require no fine-tuned tectonics cyclically raising and lowering of slopes.Our scenario is a model like any other but it links the origin of the vegetation with the rapid flow and does not need to account for cyclically alternating flatness and always same orientaiton slope over an enormous region.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Wehappy et al

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I base my coments on an entire chapter in Verhoogen, not a figure sumarizing only one or two cylocthem cycles out of 30 to 50. In addition there is nothing in our model to expect all layers to be vast in extent. But our model can account for the ones that are vast. For example Verhoogen states:

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Note in bold that there is difficulty reconcikling the flatness dictated by the shallow sea with the slope required by the sandstone paleocurrents. In our scenario there is simply no problem. Note also that very similar cyclothems form in other parts of the world at the same time. In our scenario cyclothems are due to rapid surges and require no fine-tuned tectonics cyclically raising and lowering of slopes.

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Our scenario is a model like any other but it links the origin of the vegetation with the rapid flow and does not need to account for cyclically alternating flatness and always same orientaiton slope over an enormous region.

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JM: No comment on wehappy's diagrams that quite clearly show that these are formed in a river environment? Lucy, you've got some splainin to do.CheersJoe Meert

Joe, Wehappy et alAnouncement
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Here, as in the non-marine thread, I concede that since I don't have the data on the other 30-50 cycles I'll retract my point that it wasn't streams.Instead I will simply point out two things that are almost as significant:1. A non-catastrophic senario must explain the alternating slope and flatenss. Without rapid flooding the explanations require the same SW slope to appear 30-50 times over the same vast region.2. Parallel stream beds over half a continent are consistent with flooding. Floods end as streams of course. In our scenario the rapid currents are causally related to the uprooting of the vegetaiton that became the coal seams. The association of a repeating slope and coal seams are utterly coincidental in your scheme.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-03-2002]