Summations Only

You quote nothing, so I have no idea what you're talking about. The message you're replying to mentions no video. The video I posted recently in a different message is this one: Watching this video will take very little time. It is pre-positioned at the exact right point, and just watching for 30 seconds will illustrate clearly that flowing sheets of water don't split into streams. So how did they form? Are you saying the elevated regions weren't elevated when the Colorado River originally formed? Which is exactly what conventional geology says? If you're not saying this, then what are you saying? The fact of the matter is that issues are being raised about your scenario that you can't answer, a problem you face constantly. You employ various techniques when faced with this situation, all designed to distract from the topic.Just answer the question. The main Grand Canyon area is uplifted. Water can't flow uphill. How, exactly, did this happen in your scenario?--Percy

In response to feedback Faith either adjusts her scenario or becomes very unspecific or even evasive and distracting, and her proposal becomes increasingly vague. Where she does become specific everything does have that Goldilocks quality of being just right, e.g.:

• The rocks above the Kaibab were hard enough for tectonic activity to fracture into blocks that were swept away by the receding waters, but not so hard that they couldn't be easily eroded by flowing water.
• The water was flowing fast enough to cut channels into the soft rock, but not so fast that it couldn't form meanders.
• The canyon rock was soft enough that the water could easily cause boulders of it to fall into the canyon, but somehow these boulders later became the kind of hard rock that only diagenesis can create.

The violations of natural physical laws and known geologic principles just goes on and on. Why she can't see that what she's really invoking is magic, not science, is beyond me.--Percy

You're just making a bald declaration that is self-evidently wrong. Since the top of the geologic column is the Quarternary, and since we're currently in the Quarternary, and since the Quarternary extends on into the future, the sedimentary layers being deposited from this point in time forward are part of the Quarternary period. They're being deposited atop stratigraphic columns that fit into the framework of the geologic column. Nothing else is possible. You are dead wrong. Let us know if you see other possibilities. This is another bald declaration that is also self-evidently wrong. All sedimentation occurs during a time period, whether you believe it was hours or eons. This is just another bald declaration that is again self-evidently wrong. There is no evidence of sliding between the Supergroup and the Tapeats at exposures in the Grand Canyon region, not even a tiny amount of sliding, let alone a massive amount. It wouldn't help you with the cubic miles of disappearing rock anyway, since turning rock into pebbles does not decrease volume. Even turning rock into dust doesn't decrease volume. In fact, given that dust and pebbles don't pack as tightly as solid rock, it would represent greater volume.The Shinumo hills boulder on a Tapeats beach is a typical example of what we see happen on beaches around the world that are lined with hills or mountains. The reality is that you still have no evidence driving your doubts about geology. You just have a bunch of Biblically driven ideas you made up that are magical rather than scientific. Why you don't just invoke God is beyond me. After all, you're already subordinating facts to whatever you think the Bible says. Well, as I keep telling you, if you're going to keep inserting yourself into the conversation then so will I. Congratulations on maintaining your ignorance for so long.--Percy

I saw the video a number of years ago and thought the animation of incision and recession was a particularly helpful visualization, it's happening at Niagara Falls right now, but it struck me as an exceedingly unlikely origin for the Grand Canyon, so when it resurfaced in this thread I thought I'd do a little checking into how well this possibility has fared in the geological community. Don't bother reading this if it doesn't interest you. It's just something I've felt like doing for a while, and this was a good opportunity.The geologist the video featured who advocated the incision and recession origin was John Douglass of Paradise Valley Community College. The idea was originally presented at a 2000 Symposium and was published with co-author Norman Meek as Lake-Overflow: An alternative hypothesis to explain Grand Canyon incision and development of the Colorado River. He hasn't published on the topic since, nor at all since 2010. The idea apparently originated with Eliot Blackwelder in his 1934 paper Origin of the Colorado River.Checking Google Scholar for references, the Douglass/Meek paper has been cited by 56 related articles. A number of papers were published on the topic, primarily based out of the University of Arizona and the Arizona Geological Survey. The idea seemed to evolve, coming to stress incision downstream from the canyon and not in the canyon itself. The most recent paper listed was published in 2010, and I guess after that enthusiasm waned. A 2012 article at Live Science (Grand Canyon Carved by Flood? Geologist Says No) seems to confirm this possibility:

quote:

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Dickinson hopes at least to lay to rest one hypothesis: That an ancient lake carved the canyon through a cascading series of waterfalls. A favored concept for two decades, "I don't think it's a valid story, and my main purpose is to dismantle it," Dickinson said of his new study, published Dec. 13 in the journal Geosphere.
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Plus, there's the problem of the Kaibab uplift, a pinch in the Colorado Plateau where the rocks swell up due to underground folding. Sitting near the head of the Grand Canyon, the Kaibab uplift is a 650-foot (250-meter) barrier that any prehistoric lake or river must have carved through before dropping down into the future gorge. The preserved lake beds show water levels were never high enough to cross the uplift, Dickinson said.

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Dickinson's paper was published in 2013: Rejection of the lake spillover model for initial incision of the Grand Canyon, and discussion of alternatives. The reasons it cites for rejecting the idea were that the lake never achieved appreciable depth, the elevation isn't compatible with lake spillover, multiple river canyons are present, the timing of drainage reversal wasn't right, and a couple others.Not that a non-geologist's ideas on detailed research matter, but the reasons I never liked the incision idea were based simply on the geology of the canyon. The Colorado River passes through an uplifted region, something that could only happen if uplift and downcutting occurred gradually and simultaneously. Rapid incision requires that the river already be present.The Dickinson paper also mentions elevation concerns. The elevation problem seems like it should have been obvious in the Douglass/Meek paper, since Figure 2 positions the hypothesized lake adjacent to the Kaibab upwarp, and the lake water wouldn't have been able to flow uphill. The Kaibab uplift occurred around 6 MYA, and Dickinson says that even before the uplift that Hopi Lake (the lake of the Douglass/Meek paper) had insufficient elevation to feed water into the region.According to Wikipedia (Colorado River: Origin and Development) the region around the western Grand Canyon used to drain north, though they don't know to where. They do say that that the ancestral river system was land locked. Something had to have happened to connect this ancestral upper Colorado to the lower Colorado, and they do mention possible involvement of a breakout of a lake or river, but not rapid incision. Whenever and however the upper and lower Colorado joined, the formation of the part of the Grand Canyon that is now deepest and most spectacular in the Kaibab uplift was already well underway.Also, the Douglass/Meek paper postulates a lake in order to provide a prodigious water flow, but as the Colorado makes clear annually, no lake is required for a prodigious flow, though of course modern controls and draws upon the water have rendered the river much more tame than in the past.Also, the Grand Canyon is 18 miles wide at its widest point. This could only be due to a braided river spread across a plain that downcut into the plateau in at least two places and probably more, as is evident from the multiple plateaus situated in mid-canyon. Simultaneous incision by rapid flow in multiple braids seems most unlikely. I think the Dickinson paper is alluding to this issue when it mentions multiple river canyons.--Percy

You're thinking of this situation: And you're wondering how grains, pebbles and rocks eroded from that canyon face way off in the far distance ever find their way to the Colorado River there in the foreground.First know that rain and wind and collisions with other debris and freeze/thaw cycles break these erosive products into smaller and smaller pieces. And realize that gravity always causes them to seek the lowest point.Water also seeks the lowest point, flowing continuously downward until it reaches a lake or sea. Flowing water carries sediments. Even relatively low energy water can carry small grains of sediment, and the higher the energy of the water the larger the sediments it can carry. When the Colorado rages in the spring it can carry 10 ton boulders.Now look in the lower left 20% of the image. See that stream flowing into the Colorado? It carries sediments. From exactly where we can't tell, but the canyon is full of streams and creeks, many that probably only flow seasonally, but that's how most sediment eventually reaches the Colorado.--Percy

And yet that's exactly what the video shows, a thin sheet of water running across a flat plain.You didn't watch the video, did you. You only have to watch about 30 seconds of it to clearly see that it shows a thin sheet of water running across a flat plain. Here's the video again, still positioned at the exact right spot: Watch the video for 30 seconds. Click the "full screen" icon so you can see it clearly. Judging by the buildings and low structures it encounters, it's maybe 5 feet high. So in other words, you're changing your story again. Maybe there was a thin sheet of water (and who knows how thick "thin" is), maybe there wasn't, it doesn't matter.What you need is for the flood waters to recede and become a slow flowing low energy stream capable of meanders that can still somehow erode a canyon a mile deep and 18 miles wide in only a few months, even though the water is far too low in energy to do any meaningful erosion or to carry away that huge volume of sediment. Good luck with that. You don't need science, you need magic. This isn't very clear or consistent. Why is water "running" across the plain now that the channel that will eventually become the canyon is present, and why would water running in a channel like the "opening canyon" be exiting over the sides? This all sounds like very energetic water. In your previous paragraph you were imagining water lazy enough to form meanders. The deepest and widest part of the Grand Canyon is located in the southernmost part of the Kaibab Plateau. Marble Canyon, which is a pretty long stretch of the Colorado River just like the Grand Canyon, is not located in the Kaibab Plateau, but I believe it's pretty flat in that area, too. Again, water of low enough energy to form meanders cannot perform downcutting, not even in soil let alone rock.
It couldn't even downcut into your impossible soft rock that miraculously turns to rock upon drying.By the way, since you believe the sedimentary rocks were wet and malleable after the flood and only became hard by drying, why is it that the rock beneath the Colorado is just as hard as the rock everywhere else in the canyon? You said a flat sheet of water, which is precisely what that video shows. The difference is that the Japan Tsunami of 2011 was real while everything you say is made up, such as flat sheets of water running across landscapes and turning into streams. You essentially conceded it was made up just a couple paragraphs ago when you said it didn't matter one way or the other. Now it's a crack? When are you going to get your story straight? What caused the crack? How could there be a lot of water flowing when it is slow enough to create meanders? What does "cut it out" mean? Do you mean eroded? If so, what happened to the crack? Now you're back to the thin sheet of water again? Is it necessary to your scenario or not? Make up your mind. In other words everything you say is made up, and when even you can't deny it anymore you'll change your story. Kaibab limestone is the top layer throughout most of the Coconino Plateau. Sure, but was it a lot of water over a short or long period of time? Whatever your answer, how do you know? Again, no. Kaibab Limestone is the top layer to the south, too. It not only isn't strictly on the Kaibab Plateau, it isn't on the Kaibab Plateau at all. Not you, certainly. Caring about facts has never been your strong point. There also has to be slow low energy water, but which unfortunately for your scenario is incapable of significant erosion.You've once again made it through an entire post without saying almost anything true.--Percy

This is kind of brief, so I'm going to see if I can fill in the blanks. For erosion to create mountains the region would need to be elevated by at least a couple thousand feet above sea level, then uneven erosion of the landscape would leave behind mountains.But it doesn't seem like uneven erosion of a region could create what we normally think of as mountains. It would create what we normally think of as erosive structures, like the buttes in the American southwest, not mountains.So I guess I don't get it. I think of mountains as strata thrust up and tilted and bent by tectonic forces such as colliding plates.--Percy

If you've already seen many similar videos, why did I have to present a video for you to understand what I meant? What you originally said back in Message 111 when I first posted the video was this: Later you begin employing the term "thin sheet", but you continued saying a lot of water was flowing. No one would think you meant water a few inches deep.You skipped a lot in my post. The key issues:

• You keep changing your mind about whether a thin sheet of water flowing across the plateau is necessary or not. What's the final verdict?
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• How does a low energy stream capable of meanders carve through rock to create something like Marble Canyon, which is as much as a half mile deep in places?
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• If this is low energy water, how did it "exit over the sides of the opening canyon"?
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• You said, "A long crack is becoming a canyon." Why do you suddenly introduce this crack? Why aren't there other cracks on the plateau?

--Percy

Kaibab uplift, upwarp, plateau, they're all referring to the same thing. Which one would be preferred depends upon context. When writing about the geological processes that created the region you would probably prefer uplift or upwarp. When writing about the region's geography you would probably call it a plateau. So the story's going to change again. What a surprise.--Percy

What we actually have here is major dishonesty. In the very message you're replying to I listed the issues you skipped, significantly that you trying to get meanders while still describing water with a great deal of energy. Here are the issues again:

• You keep changing your mind about whether a thin sheet of water flowing across the plateau is necessary or not. What's the final verdict?
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• How does a low energy stream capable of meanders carve through rock to create something like Marble Canyon, which is as much as a half mile deep in places?
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• If this is low energy water, how did it "exit over the sides of the opening canyon"?
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• You said, "A long crack is becoming a canyon." Why do you suddenly introduce this crack? Why aren't there other cracks on the plateau?

--Percy

Two images have been presented giving a very good idea of where the Kaibab uplift is. You presented one, RAZD presented another, here they are: Your image shows the Kaibab Plateau. RAZD's image shows the region of greatest elevation due to the Kaibab Uplift, which includes the Kaibab Plateau of your image but also extends a bit south into the Coconino Plateau. It's the darker green area that's almost dead center.Here's an elevation map of Arizona. You probably won't be able to see it, but in case you can the Kaibab Uplift is the dark brown area near the top of the map. You can even make out the Grand Canyon at the southern end of the uplift: You've never explained how tectonic forces could push around some strata without affecting adjacent strata. Would it be unreasonable if we just want to see the evidence spelled out because your usual presentation makes bald assertions about things you couldn't possibly know about (if this sentence looks familiar its because it's basically the same sentence you wrote at the beginning of your second paragraph in Message 1). Yeah, sounds like a really catastrophic receding of the waters capable of etching deep canyons. Five months of draining of, let's say, five miles of water is a lowering of water level of about an inch and a half per minute. Does that really sound like enough to etch canyons to you? Sure, maybe, maybe not. You have no idea and no evidence. Your scenario has the sea still covering the land to a height of over a mile above sea level (elevation around the Grand Canyon is in the neighborhood of 7500 feet), and water levels are lowering. How could the sea be deepening? Lowering of the water level at a rate of 1.5 inches/minute couldn't carry away loose sand, let alone your compacted-but-not-too-compacted strata. Why do you think lowering water levels of 1.5 inches/minute would create much water flow?Imagine an above ground swimming pool with yourself standing in the middle. Someone drains the pool at the rate of 1.5 inches/minute. How much force of water flow do you think you're going to feel?What you need to happen is more like this compilation of catastrophic pool collapses: But of course this is a lowering of water level of maybe 4 feet in 10 seconds, which is about 24 feet/minute, or 200 times faster than your scenario.--Percy

You continue to misunderstand this. The processes of Walther's Law that we usually discuss involving slow transgressions of seas onto land do not often preserve terrestrial landscapes. Rather they grind them up and separate the resulting sediments into sand, silt, mud and clay. The sequence of Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale and Muav Limestone formed this way. We will never know what was on the land that the sea transgressed across. That landscape is gone, transformed into seascapes that did get preserved in the stratigraphic record.But terrestrial landscapes *can* be preserved. It just doesn't happen anywhere near as often as for marine strata. They tend to be associated with coastal, swamp, lagoon, lacustrine, river and stream environments. The Claron was a bunch of plains, lakes and streams, as was the Morrison Formation where dinosaur fossils are common.Walther's Law does apply to these terrestrial environments. Rather than the transgressing and regressing seas we usually discuss, on land it is changing river and stream courses and changing lake, swamp and lagoon boundaries that represent migrating depositional environments. And of course it is depositional environments where life can become buried and preserved, such as dinosaurs living in the surrounding landscape. Some dinosaurs undoubtedly spent time in the water.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarified first and last paragraph. Edge had already replied in Message 258 when I did this, and he quoted the original form of the first paragraph, which included the error where I misspoke and implied that Walther's Law doesn't occur on terrestrial landscapes.

What are you saying happened to those boulders? That every one eroded away? Every one was washed into the sea? What?In any case I have a sort of related question: If rocks form by drying, why are the rocks beneath the riverbed of the Grand Canyon just as hard as rocks elsewhere in the canyon? If a large chuck of broken off strata is not a boulder, what is it? Again raising the question of what large chucks of broken off strata are. Now you're changing your story and saying there were no large chucks of broken off strata, just loose sediments. What happened to your story of tectonic forces creating the Kaibab Uplift that in turn created strains that broke up the strata into chunks that the receding flood waters carried away.And if these chunks "would have gone over the sides lower in the canyon" then aren't they still there, just as Edge said earlier? And so don't you have to address the question of why these chucks, however big they are, are just as hard as all the other rock in the canyon? You state that "chemical lithification" doesn't take as long as we think, implying that these chucks that resulted from the breakup of strata above the Kaibab from the strains of the uplift were already hard, so why have you in the past described that they only broke so easily into chucks because they were still "wet and malleable".When you change a thread title you should include in the edit comment what you changed it from. There is now no record of the original title.--Percy

You have a stream flowing through a terrain so level that the stream flowed so slowly that it could form meanders. How did it also have enough energy to erode through a half mile of anything, whether it was loose sediments or your crazy "wet and malleable rock" or normal rock? By gradient Edge means the terrain was pretty level, i.e., there wasn't much gradient. That would create the time to create meanders. But you also need water with sufficient energy to quickly erode. Since you weren't around at the time of the Flood, and since there is no evidence for the Flood, you have no basis for this claim. As Edge points out, you are describing something we never see in the real world. The reason for that isn't that it's a rare one-time event but that it's not what happens when water rolls catastrophically across a landscape. The Missoula Floods are an example of that. Try finding a meander created by these massive floods. If you have to ask what the evidence is, obviously you have none. Edge is asking for the evidence that you demand magazine articles should include. Things like flows of thin sheets of water don't magically come into existence on your say so. Acceptance of the idea of such a flow would be driven by evidence, of which you have none. Edge keeps saying that your scenario lacks evidence because nothing we see today lends any credence to the events you claim happened. Rapidly flowing water capable of significant erosion cannot create meanders. There are meanders in the main canyon: And there are more meanders downstream from the canyon: So there are meanders in Marble Canyon, in the Grand Canyon, and downstream from the canyon, and they're all eroded significantly into the landscape, some a mile deep. A landscape cannot have two different gradients at the same time, one steep enough to create rapidly flowing water capable of deep deep erosion, and another gradient low enough to create slow flowing water capable of meanders. Many impossible things seem possible to you. Why do you think this possible? So thin sheet flows are out again. For now.--Percy

It would probably also be useful to explicitly point out to Faith that by "landscape" you mean seascapes being created according to the principles of Walther's Law. These seascapes that become preserved in the stratigraphic record are not the landscapes that the sea transgressed across. Those landscapes are gone, ground away by active coastal waters into sand, silt, mud and clay. The constituent elements of the landscape are preserved as particles of sediment. For example, if the landscape was rich in some element like iron, then the marine sedimentary layers will include that element.Also, terrestrial life living near the coast can be washed into the sea, buried and preserved. Rivers can carry carcasses downstream and out to sea. So sandstone layers, which form at the coast, should also include terrestrial fossils. The Tapeats contains no terrestrial fossils because at approximately 550 million years in age it predates land life. But what about other sandstone layers (not the Coconino, which is a terrestrial stratum). The upper Supai group is mostly sandstone, the rest formed in low, swampy environments, and at 300 millions years in age life has just begun to appear on land, so the Supai should include amphibian and primitive reptilian fossils. Does it? A quick Google reveals that "fossils include amphibian footprints, reptiles, and plentiful plant material in the eastern part and increasing numbers of marine fossils in the western part." Just as expected.--Percy