Coal Deposits and the Flood

Can anyone help or shed more insight on coal formation and the global flood? From the below exchange, my explanation of natural processes hasn't worked.--------------------------------------------
Outblaze: the bones of many of them were eventually buried in the sediments and some of these were fossilized. No catastrophe was involved. It was the yearly accumulation of sediments in lakes, rivers, floodplains, and as dunes in these river valleys that buried and preserved these fossils.ART: Try an experiment for me. Find a dead raccoon on the road and put it in your front yard (or if that’s a bad location try a creek). Put up a sign Scientific experiment in progress. Now watch that raccoon. What happens? Does it stay there for years until it become buried or does it rot? Does it stay intact or do scavengers pick it apart? Now try fish (and if you try a clam, does it die shell open or closed?). When a fish dies, does it float or sink? Does it stay intact or is it ripped apart by scavengers and currents? Then try a footprint in mud. Does it stay a clear foot print for multiple years as it is slowly covered or does it vanish by the next rainfall?------------------------------------------------------------------
(snip)Outblaze: Yes, which is evidence against a young earth. Coal is formed by the decomposition of petrified land plant remains that have accumulated in swampy areas. It wasn’t until about 300 million years ago that these plants developed sufficiently to begin to form the forests which produced the major coal deposits of the Northern Hemisphere over millions of years.ART: none of this even comes close to explaining the vast deposits found in Australia. Swamps do not account for the coal being formed from pine trees that do not grow in swamps. And it does not account for these trees being found not in ground layers, but clay (hint, trees don’t grow in clay). The only theory that comes close is a global flood. Missing Link | Answers in Genesis BlessArtS

After doing some searching at evc, I found some info from Joe Meert that helps with the AIG link and it's author.tks

Hi outblaze:Here are a couple of good essays that cover the issues you were arguing with your creationist:Patrick Spears on countering the specific fossil claim your counterpart made here and on AiG's claim inre coal (which is what your creationist friend is quoting) here.Good luck.

quote:

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Originally posted by Quetzal:
Hi outblaze:

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Here are a couple of good essays that cover the issues you were arguing with your creationist:

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Patrick Spears on countering the specific fossil claim your counterpart made here and on AiG's claim inre coal (which is what your creationist friend is quoting) here.

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Good luck.

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Just what I was looking for... tks Quetzal

I will repeat my explanation of Message 143 here, to prevent that thread from drifting off topic.The following diagram illustrates the formation of the plateau strata. The preflood topography is marked in green. After the flood, waters trapped in between the mountains would have continued to be a fertile lake for fish. After the lake dried up, we would have obtained the post-flood flat strata.Fig 19 of A Summary of Coal Distribution and Geology in the Kaiparowits plateau, Utah by Robert D. Hettinger, has a diagram of the depth of coal below this plateau. At the center of the plateau, the depth of coal is more than 6000 feet, which implies that this region might have been named as the Kaiparowits valley if the forests were never buried.Due to recent erosion, surface coal is sometimes visible.

Glenn Morton, a former YEC and (non-degreed) practicing oil geologist, has some great information at his site, especially Canadian Coal Not Formed Catastrophically, Wilcox Coals and the Floating Forest/VeggieMat Young-earth Theories, and To Many Fossils for a Global Flood. You might also want to look at AIG: "Too Much Coal for a Young Earth?" (especially Roy Thearle's calculations in message 9), Coal Created in the Flood?, and Total biomass on earth vs total Required for Fossil Fuels (in which Thearle shows up again with a slightly simpler calculation).Basically, there isn't enough space in the world for all the vegetation required to create the known coal reserves at one time.

Isn't this one of the explanations you retracted in the other thread? Perhaps this was for the entire Plateau... so now you are saying that atop the Colorado Plateau, there was this fully (?) enclosed valley?Maybe you should go back to that report and look at the shaded relief map (Figure 4)- there are no mountains surrounding the Kaiparowits Plateau.Actually, I'll post it: edited to add image and correct misspellingsThis message has been edited by roxrkool, 05-25-2005 01:42 PM

This is a reply to Message 172The above photo of the Coal Canyon proves that the thickness of sand above the coal layer can vary from point to point.This message has been edited by peaceharris, 05-25-2005 09:09 PM

Well apparently you are replying to my post (#172) in the other thread, but I don't have a clue what your point is. Could you please elaborate?

In Message 63, This question is based on the wrong assumption that all the other layers have the same thickness under the tracks. At some locations of the Grand Canyon, the Coconino sandstone is a few hundred feet thick. But the Coconino sandstone is thin at other regions.I believe that the preflood topography was not a plateau. This topography can be determined from the thickness of overburden to coal.McKee believes that the animal tracks were moving uphill.After they reached the top, there was nothing else they could do. The flood would have washed them away, which explains why the footprints are found frequently without bones.This message has been edited by peaceharris, 05-26-2005 01:40 AM

Your response in no way answers Randy's question. Formation thickness doesn't matter at all - it's a non-issue.If all the formations in the Grand Canyon had a total thickness of 100 feet, the animals leaving tracks in the Coconino are still UNDERWATER because the first sediments to be deposits are the Tapeats, Bright Angel, etc. on up the stratigraphic section until you reach the Coconino.By the way, how deep did is the water when it's depositing all these formations? Well that's all fine and dandy except there is no coal in the Grand Canyon. First, I think you need a reference for the McKee stateement.Second, why aren't the animals getting washed away sooner, arent' they underwater anyway?

I plan to reply to this as soon as I have some time but why not keep this discussion on the other thread. Since there is no coal in the Grand Canyon it is irrelevant here.Randy

Hi Peace,I'm writing this after having already suspended you for 24 hours for your posts in Flood not the Cause of the Grand Canyon -- Not a Biased Opinion. Part of the reason for the suspension was for your nonsensical arguments about coal. I told you in the other thread to drop the "coal at the Grand Canyon" argument until you had evidence, and you said okay, but now you've come to another thread and continued the same argument, again without evidence.Are you the type of person who thinks whatever isn't expressly forbidden is okay? Moderators don't have the time to follow you around from thread to thread spelling things out for you in infinite detail. It is your responsibility to figure out how to participate here, not moderator's to figure out how to accommodate you.If the need to support your views with evidence and/or empirical arguments is not making sense to you then maybe you need to find another board.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

If Peace wasn't so stuck on proving tracks are associated with tracks, he'd/she'd probably realize that there was coal at one time in the Grand Canyon area.There are two erosional remnants sitting atop the Kaibab Fm., only one of which I can remember at the moment called Cedar Mountain. It is comprised of Triassic aged Moenkopi and Chinle Formations. This, along with the Grand Staircase region, suggests that much erosion has taken place in the Grand Canyon area.Originally, it's quite likely that all the rocks that occur in the Grand Staircase region of the Colorado Plateau - rocks aged all the way up to Quaternary - were at one time found at the Grand Canyon. These include the Cretaceous rocks, which contain most of the coal deposits. With uplift and deformation, these rocks were eroded away in the Grand Canyon area.So while coal does not occur in the Grand Canyon today, it likely did in the past.This message has been edited by roxrkool, 05-27-2005 12:12 PM

The arguments from AIG contain many false statements and inaccurate selective facts of geology.Some of the worst in the openning post are that pine trees do not grow in clays or swamps. I have mapped soils for many years and the soil textures from clay to sand can support trees of different species depending on the environment. Trees do grow in clay. Different species of pine trees and other conifers are adapted to different environments from very arid uplands to swamps.I worked for twenty years in the Appalachian coalfields as a soil scientist/geologist. There are some interesting facts about these sedimentary deposits that falsify any consideration that they could have been deposited in a world flood. The Appalachina basin is vaste and thousands of feet thick. It is primarily composed of cyclic sedimentary deposits called cyclotherms and consists of regularly repeating sequences of sandstone, siltstone, shale and coal with a few limestones. In these sedimentary deposits are vaste meandering river systems that can be traced over hundreds of miles, river deltas, sand dune deposits, lakes, and at times upland irregular erosion surfaces. All these features occur within the repeating sequence of the cyclic deposition environments. These features could never have been formed in a global flood environment.In these layers there are also repeating layers showing worm trials, small critter tracks, and remains of small plants preserved where they grew. Virtualy aLL the fossils found are in the environment they formed in and do not reflect catastrophic transport.