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TB: I do not claim to be able to personally explain every formation. What I am saying is that there is evidence for rapidity in much of the column.
There is evidence of rapidity in local areas in some cases. There are also many layers in many places that could not have been formed rapidly or by a flood falsifying your claim that a significant fraction (which you will never precisely identify) of the geologic column was formed during a year of worldwide flood. You have been given many examples. I brought up the Redwall Limestone. The Whitmore Wash portion of the Redwall limestone is 98% pure calcium carbonate and was most probably deposited in a quiet sea and not by a swirling, whirling, surging chaotic flood. I have never seen any creationist explanation for the formation of the Grand Wash Dolomites.
You are again relying on hasty generalization. Your claim seems to be Some layers some where in the geologic column show evidence that they were deposited by moving water so much of the geologic column (of course you never specify exactly what) could have been deposited by a global flood. You completely ignore that many layers interspersed throughout your supposed flood deposits could not have been deposited by flood and of course ignore all the other evidence that falsifies the global flood.
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You have problems with sands being transported over 200-300 miles. You obviously have never, even for a second, pondered the possibility that this was a huge calamity. Of course a marine innundation surging across a continent would transport sand for hundreds of miles!
You are missing the point. To form Sand Waves the water had to be moving no more than four miles an hour. That is a brisk walking pace not a raging torrent. And yet you say it scooped up sand and moved it 200 miles before depositing any of it and then spread it neatly over 200,000 miles in waves that look just like sand dunes. You further claim that it did this repeatedly while animals came down from high ground and made tracks that got preserved between surges. Does this make sense? I say no way.
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We just have no problem with lots of layers forming quickly - I have seen these form in seconds on video I have in my hands documenting the experiments of a French hydro-geologist.
I have seen them as well. I have also read that the Green River laminae do not exhibit the characteristics of materials deposited this way. Are they sorted by grain size? Are there any ripple marks indicating rapid deposition? Did Berthault’s experiments produce layers that alternate in appearance? I don’t think so. Henke specifically addresses the Berthault experiments and explain why they are not relevant to the link I gave.
Account SuspendedHere is a quote.
Henke:So, if this "sorting mechanism" was responsible for the laminae in the Green River Formation, how could this mechanism instantly produce numerous fine-grained laminae over ten's of kilometers (Fischer and Roberts, 1991, p. 1148)? It's one thing to rapidly produce some laminae in a laboratory separatory funnel (see Figure 1 in Sedimentation Experiment: Nature Finally Catches Up!, it's another thing to rapidly deposit thin layers of very fine-grained clay and silt over ten's of kilometers. That is, unlike relatively coarse sand particles, very small particles (silts and clays) take TIME to settle out of solution. So, how could Berthault's "self-sorting mechanism" speed up the deposition of silts and clays? Even the YECs at Varves: Problems for Standard Chronology admit that silts take days to settle out of turbulent water and clays even longer.
To me 10,000,000 seems a bit beyond lots!
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Any cycle of the planet can be fitted to any cycle one sees in varves! Just calibrate to the cycle you want - one simply leaves the time per varve as a free parameter and you can get anything to work as long as it's in the ballpark. As scientists we all do this all the time. It doesn't prove that that cycle was the cycle you thought it was.
Not really. I suggest you read the page by Henke that I pointed out. The parameter that is studied is variations in varve thickness and that correlates with astronomical cycles.
Henke: Why would laminae segregate by cycles to conform to the Earth's eccentricity if the Earth is too young to have completed even one of these cycles? How did Noah's "Flood" or "post-Flood" conditions counterfeit the effects of ENSO and the sunspot cycles in these varves? No rivers, turbidity currents, or any questionable speculations based on Berthault's laboratory results can explain them either. YEC claims (they're too inadequate to be called models) for the origin of the Green River Formation are too fast and chaotic to be affected by subtle astronomical and climate cycles. Quiet and stagnant water is needed to record these astronomical processes and slow climatic changes. All YECs can do is invoke groundless miracles or ignore 70 years of research and just refuse to acknowledge the existence of the cycles.
You are yet to tell us where the high ground in those thousands of square miles of plain that you just referred to was located. I assume you are referring to the Hermit Shale since this is where the fern fossils are found and it is right below the Coconinos. There is also good evidence that the Hermit Shale is not better interpreted as being deposited by catastrophic land flooding as you claim. Evidence of flooding is seen in the formation but you are again committing the fallacy of hasty generalization when you claim that the entire formation and in fact most of the Grand Canyon sediments were deposited in a flood year.
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Concerning the conditions under which the topmost red stratum of the Grand Canyon (the Hermit Shale) was formed, and the means of its formation, we have today a rather definite and interesting picture. A wealth of fossil plants and a number of tracks of animals have been found beautifully preserved in its muddy layers, and by means of these and other indications the following conclusions have been drown.
The Hermit Shale represents accumulations of mud and fine sandy material deposited probably by streams flowing from the northeast. Here and there are found evidences of pools and arroyos with wavy ripple marks on their borders and a thin film of shiny slime covering the surface. The trails of worms, the footprints of small salamander-like animals, and the fronds of ferns, mostly mascerated or wilted, are found delicately preserved in this slime. Raindrop impressions, the molds of salt crystals and numerous sun-cracks also add to the picture. This region has been described by Dr. David White as "the scene of showers, burning sun, hailstorms, occasional torrents and periods of drought and drying up of pools" during Hermit times.
I suppose you interpret the periods of drought as occurring between flood surges. Have you ever thought of trying lay out a time line for all these surges with drought and animals forming tracks and building nests and so on between flood surges? Of course to do that you would have to identify exactly which layers in the geologic column were flood deposits, which you can’t or won’t do. In the Grand Canyon area Austin starts with the Tapeats sandsones. From there we have the Bright Angel Shale, Muav Limestone, Grand Wash Dolomites, Temple Butte Limestone, Redwall Limestone, Surprise Canyon Formation, Supai Group(Watahomigi, Manakacha, Wescogame, and Esplanade), Hermit Shale, Coconino Sandstones, Toroweap And Kaibab limestones and the Moenkopi formation. Many of these layers have sub layers. That’s a lot layers to form by surges in a flood year.
Just consider the Redwall limestones. I have pointed to this site before.
No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/grandb.htmHere is a quote.
The Redwall is divided into four members: the Whitmore Wash, Thunder Springs, Mooney Falls, and Horseshoe Mesa members. The Whitmore Wash is nearly pure calcium carbonate (98% pure). The Thunder Springs member consists of alternating layers of chert and carbonate. The Mooney Falls member is once again almost totally pure calcium carbonate (99.5%). The Horseshoe Mesa member consists of thinly-bedded carbonate with occasional chert lenses.
BTW there are also paleosols in the upper parts of the Redwall formation. I suppose you think they formed between surges.
You also need multiple surges to form the Coconino Sandstones in your "model" since the animal tracks are distributed throughout the lower portion of the Coconinos and you need the animals coming in from high ground to make the tracks. The sand also need to dry sufficiently for insects to make tracks and raindrop impressions to form and the surges when they occur need to spread sand over 200,000 square miles.
Glenn Morton identifies twenty-eight layers in the geologic column found in North Dakota and at least 26 places around the world.
No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/geo.htm
How many of these were deposited by flood surges? How did the surges deposit correlative layers all over the world? I have a lot of trouble figuring out how that worked. All of these main division have many layers and many have features that could not have formed underwater. How much of the flood year was taken up by the surging phase? Genesis 7:19 says the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered and 7:24 says the water prevailed for 150 days. So how much of the flood year was devoted to these extra Biblical surges before all the high hills were covered and all life died?
For those who may be interesed Jonathon Woolf also has a nice page discusing the formation of the Colorado Plateau and refuting Austin's claims about the Grand Canyon with some good pictures of the Canyon.
No webpage found at provided URL: http://my.erinet.com/~jwoolf/gc_rocks.html
We still awaiting your reply to coragyps regarding chalks and I am still waiting for you to explain to us how flood surges sorted amonites of approximately the same size and shape by the complexity of their shell sutures.
Randy
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