Noah's Flood and the Geologic Layers (was Noah's shallow sea)

Amazing - Things seem to have returned to the original topic area.
-----I'm by no means a limestone expert, but as I understand it, most limestone is of direct or indirect biogenic origin. More life yields more limestone.Now, limestone and carbonate is not unheard of in the preCambrian. But my understanding is that the abundant production of limestone started after the preCambrian.The geology cliche is "Limestone means that nothing was happening". This "nothing" refers to area tectonic activity, and the detrital sediments that result from the tectonic activity. In other words, you get limestones because your are in an area that was not receiving any sand, silt, or clay input. Limestone by default.Moose

Here is some quotes I took from Handbook of the Rockies by Ben Gadd
I am not offering any theories about limestone myself, I think creation sites have lots of great stuff on that, but offer this as an example of a kind of layman's english version of their thoughts on limestone. here goes--
"Making limestone
" ...geologists didn't really know how it was formed until recently. The connection between limestone and life was well established-limestone is often richly follsiliferous-so it seemed likely that somehow sea life produced limestone...but the fosssil content is a minor part of most limestone. Most of it was simply tiny, crystalline bits of calcite. Where did the crystals come from? Not from land, for calcium enters the sea dissolved in water, seldom as particles. So limestone has to be made in place, in the sea.
...In the science of geology the present is often the key to the past and so it was here:studies of lime deposition in the shallows of the Caribbean have shown that the vast proportion of lime mud begins as microscopically small, needle-like crystals of aragonite (a variety of calcite) produced inside the tissues of floating and suspended algae. The individual aragonite crystals are only a few micrometres long. When the algae die and decompose, the aragonite needles drift to the bottom, building up deposits on the seabed.
Why these organisms produce aragonite crystals is still unknown. Even how they do so is uncertain. ...crystalize more easily in warm water than in cold water--the opposite of most minerals. ...To a much lesser extent, innorganic processes such as evaporation can also produce carbonate rocks. ...most of the world,s limestone is old enough for the aragonite to have converted itself to calcite; only modern rock contains much aragonite. ...So it seems plaussible that algae have been the prime producers of limestone for as long as there has been limestone; ..." end quotes
So then, we have mainstream ideas here admitting how much they do NOT know! And clearly illustrating how weak and absurd opinions can be when burdened by assumptions of old age! Science? Yes, study how things deposit at present, -good!--try to add in your godless hypothesis fine. (but seperate what we call science please from that religious rot)

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So then, we have mainstream ideas here admitting how much they do NOT know!

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Yes. You'd never hear that from Walt Brown, would you?

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And clearly illustrating how weak and absurd opinions can be when burdened by assumptions of old age!

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Umm, in case you didn't notice it, your reference clearly stated that the primary source of limestone IS biogenic. NOt 'maybe biogenic'. Not 'theoretically biogenic'. Not even 'we aren't sure...'

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Science? Yes, study how things deposit at present, -good!--try to add in your godless hypothesis fine. (but seperate what we call science please from that religious rot)

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Exactly what we've been doing all along. Thank you.{Fixed first quote box - AM}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 02-08-2004]

Okay ..... the present atmosphere weighs 5100 x 10^18 grams, a tenth of what Hunt claims our limestone weighs. Limestone, whether organically or inorganically produced, falls out of water due to yhe reaction
Ca(HCO3)2 --> CaCO3 + H2O + CO2
where CaCO3 is calcium carbonate = limestone. The amount of CO2, carbon dioxide, liberated in this process is 44% of the weight of limestone produced, by high-school chemical calculations. So that's 4.4 times as much CO2 as the entire weight of the atmosphere. And Dr Brown needs this to all form in a single year, with a boat full of critters and folks surviving through it. My calculations have this influx of CO2 reducing the air's oxygen content from 21% down to 3.9%, while raising the pressure to 79 psi (now 14.7).That would be a little tough to breathe, Simple. And as has been pointed out, "uniformism" accomodates this CO2 slug very nicely - plants convert it back to oxygen, if you give them enough time to grow and do so. They can't manage it in a single year, as witnessed by their inability to recycle fossil CO2 as fast as we put it into the atmosphere - and that's only on the order of 10^16 grams per year, not 10^22 - a millionth of what Walt needs to dispose of.[This message has been edited by Coragyps, 02-08-2004]

NOW, yes, because it also says it took 'billions of years' It's this part where they lose it. Also, for those who don't even like to admit they are talking about a theory it's good o hear little things in the article like "geologists didn't really know how it was formed until recently.
Why these organisms produce aragonite crystals is still unknown
Even how they do so is uncertain
only modern rock contains much aragonite. ...So it seems plaussible...." It also sounds plausable that limestone was produced a different way as creation scince says. So I guess we just pick our favorite plausible.

And since aragonite is thermodynamically unstable with respect to calcite, we expect it to do what over time? Class?{Abusing my admin power, I'll put the answer right here - Aragonite and Calcite are what's called polymorphs of CaCO₃. Same chemical composition, but different crystal structure. Aragonite recrystalizes to Calcite. - Adminnemooseus, posting for minnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 02-08-2004]

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And since aragonite is thermodynamically unstable with respect to calcite, we expect it to do what over time? Class?

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JM: For the geologists among the crowd. We just had a seminar given by Terry Quinn of USF (South Florida). One of the more interesting things in his lecture (on coral record of El nino) is that they found aragonite to be much more stable in the corals they were investigating than the 'traditional' ideas. Now, he was talking Holocene, not Precambrian.CheersJoe Meert

That's fine. The time is the point here I think. At present rates, it would take so long to account for it. The point is not that that limestone is NOT formed today like that today, (todays little amounts are not the question, but the large ammounts of the flood time) but that the limestone in the flood had a different method. See what I mean?
here's another bit from Ben's book on some Rockies stuff, again where the present explanations pale to a flood interpetation!
"Exerpts from Handbook of the Canadian Rockies Ben Gadd (pages 101-104) (About Burgess fossil area)[remarks in these]
...Geologist J.A. Allan was the first to describe it ...trying to figure...out:how could 885m of limestone change so abruptly to shale?...marked the approxamite location of this limestone-shale boundary on a map..and the "Stephen-Dennis Fault" was invented. ... ...facies change...if the particular kind of rock you are following becomes another kind of rock, then it has changed facies. ...But the facies change between Mt. Steven and Mt. Dennis is a special type: it marks an underwater cliff, long buried under...sediment. This is the Cathedral Encarpment, the edge of a reef-like platform of limestone ...215 m above the seabed....a true reef...Middle Cambrian...reef builders were mainly lime producing colnial algae... the reef was buried under an influx of muddy water; ...amateur paleontologist Franco Rasetti...noticed huge limestone boulders of limestone that were embedded in shale. ..suggested they rolled down slope...but he hadn't realized that the slope was so close by,... ..it was a steep sided reef.
...1966 Jim Aitken and Bill Fritz...rediscovered it....found they were cyclic. ...A shale formation was followed by a limestone/dolomite formation. ...and so on....all laid down in shallow water...[ didn't Joe say it was because of fossilized creatures they're called this -(shallow)?] ...turned out to be ..segment...limestone reef complex about 1900 km long. [my, another big underwater thingie !] ...cyclic character of the sediments. What accounted for that? Sudden rises in sea level would explain this nicely... Then... ...rapid increase in water depth...-would disrupt things...battering...rapid erosion..[I'm not making this up people!] ...Return currents moving along the bottom, especially strong during storms [sound familiar?], would carry eroded material (mostly fine mud)...Limestone deposition would stop, and a layer of shale-the fine material-would be laid down. Later sea level stopped rising...A final question remains: what caused the jumps in sea level? Answer: this is still unknown. " !! UNKNOWN? Some "answer! ha. If I had made all this up you would not believe me, as it is pretty wild. This is your boy here people! The amateur paleontologist mentioned Franco, also happened to have made other contributions to mankind-he held the co-patent on the atomic bomb!

It's funny what you pick and choose from a book. For example, why did you not mention the following:

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pg 82 2000 edition: On the platform, the water was only a few meters deep in many places, although the shore was hundreds of kilometers away. Such regions are very sensitiveto changes in water depth, tidal effects and currents. These conditions exist in and around modern day reefs producing fascinating rock. And that is how the limestone-shale-limestone cycles in the Cambrian-Ordovician strata of the Canadian ROckies developed. When the water depth was stable, abundant sea life would produce a layer of limestone. It would thicken quickly, reaching nearly to the surface and spreading over vast areas of the continental shelf. The water was so shallow that the larger waves would be damped and thus kept from reaching the coast.

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JM: Hardly sounds like a global flood to me, but then let's continue in full context (also page 83 of the 2000 edition)

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Then a slight but rapid increase in water depth--meaning an increase that deposition could not keep up with---would disrupt things. Given deeper water, larger waves would roll eastward over the edge of the platform and on across the limy flats beyond. They would reach the coast, battering the shoreline and causing rapid erosion along it. The rise in sea level would have sent the shoreline advanicing inland, further aiding erosion.
Return currents moving along the bottom, especially strong during storms, would carry eroded material (mostly fine mud) over the limestone flats and the reef, smothering the organisms living there. Limestone deposition would slow considerably and a layer of shale--the fine material--would be laid down.
Later, when sea level stopped rising, erosion along the shore would taper off, clear water conditions would return, and the lime producing organisms would establish themselves again completing the cycle.

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JM: Hardly the makings of a global flood. Gadd then goes on to say "What caused the jumps in sea level? This is still unknown". Actually, we have a darn good idea as to what caused the changes in sea level (http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/hogfinal.pdf).Now, let's compare the above description to Walts' description of the flood:

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page 84. Rupture phase: Water exploded with great violence out of the ten-mile slit....Along this globe circling crack, a fountain of water jetted supersonically into and above the atmosphere.

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page 85 Eroded particles were swept up in the waters that gushed from the rupture, giving the water a thick, muddy consistency. These sediments settled out over the earth's surface in days, trapping and burying many plants and animals....The temperature of the escaping subterranean waters increased by about 100 F as they were forced from the high pressure chamber (JM: Hmm). The hot water, being less dense, rose to the surface of the flood waters.
page 86...The flooding uprooted most of the earths abundant vegetation

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..then we have plates moving around at incredible speeds all the while, the Rocky Mtns continue to grow reefs and then deposit thin layers of shale, grow a new reef etc. The stories don't mesh!CheersJoe Meert

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So then, we have mainstream ideas here admitting how much they do NOT know! And clearly illustrating how weak and absurd opinions can be when burdened by assumptions of old age! Science? Yes, study how things deposit at present, -good!--try to add in your godless hypothesis fine. (but seperate what we call science please from that religious rot)

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Do you realise just how insulting you are being to every geologist here? How utterly hypocritical you sound? I can't believe that so many intelligent people have wasted their time trying to educate you in the basics of common sense, let alone science.As a geologist I feel I should volunteer my opinion; I live in Ireland. As I have said many times before, the geology of Ireland is phenomenally complex for such a small country. This could NOT have been produced by a global flood - in fact, no such event is recorded anywhere in Ireland, despite the fact that over 3 billion years of Earth history is represented there. I say 3 billion years, not because I assume an old age, but because it is physically impossible for the geology of Ireland to have formed in only 6000 YEARS!!!Oh, and about separating science from religious rot... here's a little piece from Walt Brown's site...

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Many of the Earth’s Previously Unexplainable Features Can Be Explained by a Cataclysmic Flood.

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The origin of each of the following is a subject of controversy within the earth sciences. Each has many aspects inconsistent with standard explanations. Yet all appear to be consequences of a sudden and unrepeatable eventa cataclysmic flood whose waters erupted from worldwide, subterranean, and interconnected chambers with an energy release exceeding the explosion of ten billion hydrogen bombs. Consequences of this event included the rapid formation of the features listed below. The mechanisms involved are well-understood.

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Wouldn't it just be great if Walt would follow your advice?I don't think this will make any kind of difference, but I'll say it anyway - support the meaningless crap you seem determined to inflict on us, or just admit you don't know what you're talking about and try to learn something.The Rock Hound

Anyone calculated the energy release of 'ten billion' hydrogen bombs? LOL, I think I missed that quote. Oooh I just did this. A conservative estimate is 8.4 x 10^14 tJ (tera-joules). FYI tera=10^12 joules and 1 joule is equivalent 1 Watt of power generated for 1 second. 1 calorie=4.18 Joules. So, the equivalent is 2 x 10^27 calories. Noah has a problem.CheersJoe Meert[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 02-09-2004][This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 02-09-2004]

Please, tell us WHERE the flood deposits are in the geologic record. Heck, I'd even settle for showing us where they are in North America alone![This message has been edited by roxrkool, 02-09-2004]

As if we didn't know already... the flood couldn't have happened because the explosion of water would have destroyed the Earth. Obviously the Earth is still here, so...

If we assume 1 megaton H-Bombs, each bomb would release 4.18x10^15 J so 10 billion would release 4.18x10^25 J. The heat capacity of the entire atmosphere is about 5x10^21 J/C so this is enough energy to heat the atmosphere to about 8,000 C. Just a little hard on Noah and his crew one would think. Maybe I'll open another thread on the heat problem with hydroplates. It is not as severe as with runaway subduction but still a fatal (pun intended) flaw in the "model".RandyRandy

Yet another example of Walt NOT stopping to think about what he's saying. He just says whatever sounds good.Good scientific method, that.[This message has been edited by roxrkool, 02-09-2004]