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Author | Topic: Salt in Oceans | |||||||||||||||||||||||
petrophysics1 Inactive Member |
Percy writes: Summarizing this topic so far, it would seem that accurately assessing the rates of all the various inputs and outputs of oceanic salt is not a simple task. True and an understatement since we do not have detailed geologic maps for most of the land surface.We would need to document ALL of the oceanic sources and sinks. Now I can see this happening if someone can come up with an economic reason for doing so. I can't think of one offhand. More to the point in this thread is WHY anyone would suggest that measuring the ocean's salinity would be a good way to determine the earth's age. It was a stupid idea 110 years ago and still is. You have no idea if the ocean is in equilibrium today, has been in the past or not, so salinity could have been going up or down or staying the same at various times. Any date you derive doing this is probably BS. Thanks ICR for proving my point since the date you got is BS.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.4 |
It was a stupid idea 110 years ago and still is. You have no idea if the ocean is in equilibrium today, has been in the past or not, so salinity could have been going up or down or staying the same at various times. Actually, we do know this. It can be determined from the various geological salt deposits around the world left when water from Oceans has, for one reason or another, been cut off and then evaporated out. And the result from these tells us that the salinity (and proportion of other disolved ions) has varied over geological time but not by vast amounts.
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mark24 Member (Idle past 5221 days) Posts: 3857 From: UK Joined: |
Salinity varies around the world as we speak.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.4 |
Good point.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 310 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
That may seem technical to you. So here is a non-technical way you can judge for yourself whether Morton is right or not: find out whether he has published his albite sink theory in a peer-reviewed secular geochemistry journal. The foremost one has the Latin title Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Such journals would be overjoyed to publish his theory if it were correct, because it would solve the 75-year-old problem Steve and I pointed out, the great imbalance between ingoing and outgoing sodium. The secular science establishment would probably award Morton the Nobel Prize for it! Moreover, Morton would be very proud to have his theory published in such a journal and would be sure to mention it prominently on his website. Let me know if you find such a citation there. If you don’t, then you know Morton is blowing smoke at you. [...] Finally, on that last bit about Nobel-prize, publishing in journals etc. Although it is pretty much irrelevant to the subject, you have to say that if Morton really has found the solution to Joly's hundred year old problem, it would have been published. Two solutions: either Morton never wanted to get it published for some unknown personal reason. Or it did not/would not pass peer-review. The obvious answer to this is that albitization of sodium is not Glenn Morton's theory, and has been published in peer-reviewed journals by the people who actually found out about it. Indeed, in Morton's article he explicitly states that his facts and figures are taken from K. L. Von Damm, "Controls on the Chemistry and Temporal Variability of Seafloor Hydrothermal Fluids," in Humphris et al editors, Seafloor Hydrothermal Systems: Physical, Chemical, Biological and Geological Interactions, Geophysical Monograph 91, (Washington: American Geophysical Union, 1995), pp222-247. Obviously Morton cannot have a paper published which merely reports other people's findings, nor, if he could, would he get a Nobel Prize for doing so, since there is no Nobel Prize in Pointing Out Well-Established Facts In Geology To Creationists. When creationists stoop to arguments as risible as these, it seems to me that it is not Glenn Morton who is "blowing smoke".
Now, I am no expert on this, but there seems to be a difference between what Humphreys said, and what Morton replies. Humphreys says that ''what happens is this: indeed albite forms in mid-ocean vents and takes sodium out of the high-temperature sea water. But then when the albite gets into cooler water, it decomposes into the mineral chlorite and releases the same amount of sodium back into the sea water'' Morton counterarguments this by saying: ''Historically, dissolution rates have been measured indirectly using powdered materials. Rates from albite powders (pH 9, 80C, Burch et al., 1993) correspond to a surface normal retreat velocity of 33.2 10-7 nm/sec.'' Maybe I'm the only one seeing this, but humphreys does say that albite accumulates in high-temperature sea (i think you can consider 80C as high temperature) It accumulates there specifically because it does not dissolve in those temperatures, as the research referenced by Morton points out. But Humphreys says that the sodium in albite is released in the lower temperatures of the ocean, where Morton's reference is irrelevant because it deals with high temperatures. Maybe I'm wrong, and that 80 degrees celsius is considered low-temperature. I'm not an expert on this. 80C is indeed a low temperature compared to the 350C+ temperatures at which the albite forms. Recall that Morton is discussing processes which happen within the Earth's crust: now temperature increases at about 2.5C per 100 meters. This leaves a large volume of crust where albite, if it dissolves at all, will do so extremely slowly. Recall further that the ultimate fate of all oceanic crust is subduction. This, then, would appear on the face of it to be a sodium sink. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 310 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Woah, they don't invent the seven outputs in their paper. They take it from ref. no26 (Holland). The ouput table in their paper even seems to have been scanned from that book lol. Not according to Morton. In his open letter to Austin and Humphreys, he points out:
You state that the alteration of basalt by hydrothermal activity only removes .4 x 10^10 kg/yr of sodium. You must have missed the table in Holland (1978,p. 199). He says that the removal of sodium by the Mid-Oceanic ridge basalts is 14 x 10^10 kg/yr. According to Holland, this is 23% of the sodium input. This is significantly higher than what you claim. Since your paper refers to this book and fails to discuss that value, it would seem that you might have ignored Holland's data. In any case, I cannot speak for the ouput you are refering to (deposition by flooding). But you have to answer some questions before saying it contradicts their data: Has a statistical study of this ouput being done? If it has, is it important enough to significantly alter the conclusions of their paper ? If it is, than why didn't Morton simply mention it in his rebutal to their paper ? This, again, Morton mentions in his open letter to Austin and Humphreys:
Austin and Humphreys also ignore the existence of bedded salt deposits in the middle of the sedimentary column and its implications for the evaporative removal of salt from the sea. [...] Where in your discussion here do you include the Mediterranean salts, the Zechstein salt of Germany, the Louann Salt of the Gulf of Mexico, the Osprey Salt of Offshore Canada, or the Salina salt of New York? All of these are bedded in the middle of the geologic column and represent huge episodic removals of salt from the oceans by evaporation.
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petrophysics1 Inactive Member |
Mr Jack writes: It was a stupid idea 110 years ago and still is. You have no idea if the ocean is in equilibrium today, has been in the past or not, so salinity could have been going up or down or staying the same at various times.
Actually, we do know this. It can be determined from the various geological salt deposits around the world left when water from Oceans has, for one reason or another, been cut off and then evaporated out. And the result from these tells us that the salinity (and proportion of other disolved ions) has varied over geological time but not by vast amounts. I take a cup of salt and add it to 1 qt. of water.I take a cup of salt and add it to 50 gals. of water. Now I evaporate both. How exactly do I now determine the origional salinity of the 1 qt and 50 gals of water from the evaporite deposit I just created?
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pandion Member (Idle past 3026 days) Posts: 166 From: Houston Joined: |
petrophysics1 writes:
Possibly from the expanse covered by the evaporate and a measurement of the volume of the basin (or depression) that it covers. I take a cup of salt and add it to 1 qt. of water.I take a cup of salt and add it to 50 gals. of water. Now I evaporate both. How exactly do I now determine the origional salinity of the 1 qt and 50 gals of water from the evaporite deposit I just created? But this is, of course, counter to your major point that the salinity of the ocean is not an accurate means by which the age of the earth can be determined, as you stated in post #61. However, your example, I think, is a bit simplistic. Understand that I completely agree with your major point. I just don't think that your example is especially good.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2132 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
For those who do not know the subject a lot, a quick resume is that there is an input of 450 millions tons/year of salt going in the oceans, while only 27% goes out (as calculated by Humphreys and Austin)
Creationists often criticize scientists for the assumptions they use in the various dating techniques. But here we see a "dating technique" that is not only full of assumptions--faulty ones at that--and omissions, but which also fails to agree with any of the reliable dating techniques. Yet because it appears to support a young earth, creationists are falling all over themselves to accept it. So much for "creation" science, eh? Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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slevesque Member (Idle past 4666 days) Posts: 1456 Joined: |
Haven't had a lot of time for this post, but I'll be sure to check it tomorrow night.
But just on the previous post by coyote, I do not know where you get the idea that creationist are ''falling all over themselves to accept it''. I can't speak for others on this, but I certainly don't attach myself to death with any argument I express, and I certainly don't come out on here saying ''look at that irrefitable argument I got people''. If you have people such as that on these boards, I suggest the admins ban them, seriously. I have never felt this behavior from creationists at all, CMI even has a page about their old arguments that are no longer valid to use, and so I sincerely do not know where you get this idea.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 310 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I have never felt this behavior from creationists at all, CMI even has a page about their old arguments that are no longer valid to use ... Just one page? Not a wiki or something? Ah well, at least that's some progress. Do you have a link to it, please?
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Granny Magda Member Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 3.8 |
quote: It's worse than that even. The paper makes distinctly uniformitarian assumptions. It seems to assume that we can extrapolate backwards based simply upon the modern rate of salt exchange. This is not only absurdly wrong, but it flies in the face of the criticisms of uniformitarianism which we so often see from creationists. Apparently, uniformitarianism is fine by creationists just so long as it's creationist uniformitarianism. Mutate and Survive "The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 310 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Possibly from the expanse covered by the evaporate and a measurement of the volume of the basin (or depression) that it covers. This doesn't work. The depth of the salt deposits shows that they can't have been produced simply by a one-off event of evaporation of salt water from an enclosed basin. There's too much salt to have been dissolved in the water in the first place. A salt layer 2 km thick, as found under the Mediterranean, surely can't have been deposited as a result of a one-off evaporation of the Mediterranean, which today has an average depth of 1500 meters. Even allowing that it would, at the time of the hypothetical evaporation, have had its bottom at the depth where the bottom of the evaporite layer is now (~ 4km below sea level) that's still way too much salt to be dissolved in it at any one time. You can't have a sea which is 50% salt.
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Adminnemooseus Administrator Posts: 3974 Joined: |
A salt layer 2 km thick, as found under the Mediterranean... Not necessarily just the above, but did you pull this info of off some web page (or hard print source)? If so, a link/reference would be good and proper. Not only are you giving credit, but also providing a source for possible further reading. I'm just using this message as an example. There are numerous other informations put out in messages, that should have references. Adminnemooseus
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 310 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Not necessarily just the above, but did you pull this info of off some web page (or hard print source)? If so, a link/reference would be good and proper. Not only are you giving credit, but also providing a source for possible further reading. Try Biju-Duval and Montadert, Structural history of the Mediterranean basins.
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