The predictions of Walt Brown

Yeah, he's pretty much totally off the beam, he's dead wrong. He's got some fascinating blind spots. He knows his thermodynamics and heat transfer equations, he just manages somehow to ignore them when evaluating his own ideas.Water under pressure isn't wildly different from water not under pressure. Walt's "water under the Earth" (which we are pretty sure does not exist and never existed and couldn't do what he claims it did even if it did exist ... rocks don't float) would be at the same temperature as the surrounding rocks. As heat was generated by continents dancing and swooping like ice skaters (and raising tsunamis that make the recent one look like a slight ripple in a glass of water), the water would conduct the heat away to a certain extent ... but to where? The temperature of the Earth would rise (the only way to get heat off the Earth is radiation to space, which is slow) until everything that wasn't already killed by tsunamis and earthquakes and volcanism and superheated steam (from the pressurized and heated water escaping) would be just plain fried on the griddle.

Not really. It's about the same as saying "pretty sure that the sun will appear tomorrow". It could have an effect. It could slow the transfer of heat, making the Earth even hotter than it would be withour the canopy.With or without a canopy, with or without anything you can think of, the only way to transfer heat from the Earth is by radiation (or the removal of much of the mass of the Earth, which wouldn't decrease the temperature at all). Nope. Your super blast of wind moves the heat around some, but the overall efect is the same. There's no wind outside the atmosphere, so the Earth cannot be cooled by such a mechanism. Only radiation cools the Earth. It might (although an extra mile of water is teeny-weeny compared to the mantle, and pretty small compared to the amount of water needed for a global flood). However, there's no evidence of such water and no known mechanism by which that could possibly appear or disappear. On the contrary, there's lots of reeasons to beleive thtat such a thing could never happen. That is, it's a fairy tale at best. That's the crux of the matter. We can't absoluteluy rule such things out (although none of the things that you proposed are conceivable, they're just pipe dreams); science doesn't rule anything out, ever. It's always at least theoretically possible that any scientific conclusion is wrong and may have to be revised when new evidence turns up. That's one of the strengths of science.But we don't throw up our hands and give up. We go with the best explanation we have that fits all the available evidence. and it works pretty well.As far as a global flood is concerned, the best explanation we have that fits all the available evidence is that there was never a global flood and the Biblical account is an exaggerated legend borrowed from a pervious culture. It's an important and worthwile morality story, but it's not history.If and when contradictory evidence surfaces, we'll reconsider. But there's a big pile of evidence so far that is totally incompatible with a global flood. Creationist geologists realized this in the late 1700's and early 1899's, before Darwin ever sstarted on his theory. Don't bet on a global flood fitting all the available evidence, now or ever.

If and when somebody comes up with contradictory interpretations of the evidence, we'll listen. Note that contradictory interpretations of selected evidence don't count; we need contradictory interpretations of all the relevant evidence. All the "contradictory interpretations" that creationists have come up with to date involve ignoring large parts of the relevant evidence. Absolutely. I believe that too.God wrote the rocks, Man wrote the Bible.The best evidence, that God wrote in the rocks, is that there was no world-wide flood. Yes. Solar wind is much much hotter than the Earth, and is far to diffuse to have any heat transfer effect. Yup. The energy released (there's a huge difference in potential energy between a planetary ring in space and the parts of a planetary ring on Earth, and that energy would have to be released as heat) would sterilize the planet and probably melt the crust. It would probably cause some winds, too, but nothing living would be left to feel them.IOW, it would leave some detectable traces . I haven't heard of a two-moons theory. I think you are mis-remembering.There's no need for a "plausible sounding way to explain how our moon just doesn't fit into their older theories", because there is no "our moon just doesn't fit into their older theories". The current theories are all plausible and fit the evidence just fine; AFAIK the impact theory is leading the others by a pretty wide margin at the moment but the others are still alive. See Theories of Formation for the Moon.If you want to disappear a canopy or some rings, it's meaningless without consideration of the energy and heat involved.

It's not impossible, but there's absolutely no reason to believe that such a thing ever existed.What we know did not happen is that there was a ring and the material of that ring wound up on Earth. A ring and a band are two very different things.A ring is not going to have much effect on Earth's weather or temperature.A band is just plain not going to exist. The orbit of any body lies in a plane, and the center of mass of the body around which it orbits also lies in that plane. No set of bodies, large or small or intermediate, can orbit any planet and form a band. The only way you could get a band is to make it solid, and make it from some material stronger than any we can make (and such materials do not form in nature) ... and it's position around the Earth would then be unstable and it would quickly crash into the Earth¹.See The Demise and Fall of the Water Vapor Canopy: A Fallen Creationist Idea, Evangelicals and Crackpot Science (the "Ice Canopy" heading)Your stream-of-consciousness spewing of obviously crackpot ideas is getting somewhat annoying. You should learn to critique your ideas yourself. Irrelevant. Yes. Yes. The analysis is not complex. It only takes the most simplistic of analyses, based on high-school physics, to realize that landing ring or band material on the Earth would destroy all life and probably destroy the surface of the Earth itself. And he (and, presumably, you) also envision life surviving this? Can I get some of whatever you're smoking? Indeed? We've never found any quick-frozen mammoths. Claim CC361.2. Yup. Energy is conserved. Anything in orbit around the Earth has a lot more potential and kinetic energy than the same thing on the surface of the Earth. That energy doesn't just disappear; it turns into heat. If we're talking about ice, a little of teh energy would be used up melting and vaporizing the ice, but there's be plenty left over.---------------¹Any solid ring around a planet or sun is unstable. Larry Niven wrote a sci-fi novel called Ringworld without realizing this, and was embarassed when MIT students chanted "The Ringworld is unstable!" at the 1970 World Science Fiction Convention. He devoted a lot of pages in the sequels to fixing this boo-boo. For an explanation, see Physics in Science Fiction.

Yes, but it's almost certain the Tunguska object was some object in solar orbit so its kinetic energy was different, probably very different, from something in Earth orbit. I'm not sure that its effects are directly comparable to the effects of ice lumps entering from Earth orbit. But I bet the two are about the same order of magnitude.

Not in any reasonable period of time. Radiation is slow and inefficient. It would take thousands (if not millions) of years to dump the amount of heat involved in the various wacky scenarios proposed in this thread into space by radiation.

You thought wrong. This is not news. You think wrong a lot.There's no question of "preventing". Heat always transfers. The transfer may be slow or fast.The atmosphere has a very small insulating effect. It acts as a conductor, speeding heat transfer, but the top is somewhat colder than the surface of the Earth, slowing heat transfer (because of the delta T between the top of the atmosphere and space). Overall it slows heat transfer to space slightly. The major controlling effect is temperature difference between the Earth and outer space; heating the Earth speeds heat transfer ... but again not a heck of a lot.If the atmosphere were totally removed, heat lost to outer space would be slightly increased. Not enough to change the order of magnitude of the time involved.BTW, if you're serious about removing Earth's atmosphere and life surviving that, congratulations; you've really scored some righteous drugs. OK, I'll bite; what gives the atmosphere escape velocity but not the water? This should be precious ...And what brought the atmosphere back?Are you a Velikovskian?

Yes. Academic credentials are some indicator of education and ability (especially when they're fake credentials from diploma mills, like Hovind's PhD), but in the end it comes down to the evidence and what you actually achieve with that evidence. On those scales Hovind and Brown don't even register, and Darwin is one of the few greats.

Ah, you're right. Missed that.Of course, Hovind would still be a loony con-man if he had an earned doctorate in quantum cosmology from Cal Tech. Where the rubber meets the road, it's what you do that counts more that what pieces of paper you have on the wall.This message has been edited by JonF, 01-20-2005 19:39 AM

You should have read the reference I supplied: The Demise and Fall of the Water Vapor Canopy: A Fallen Creationist Idea.Any added material in the atmosphere increases the temperature and pressure at the surface, and any significant amount of added material increases the temperature and pressure to the pont where ... you guessed it ... all life is killed off (except perhaps for a few heat-resistant bacteria). For example, the Institute for Creation Research found that if everything were optimized so as to maximize the amount of water added to the atmosphere (in any form), you just might possibly be able to add enough water to cover the surface of the Earth one meter (39.4 inches) thick without raising the temperature too terribly much. See SENSITIVITY STUDIES ON VAPOR CANOPY TEMPERATURE PROFILES.Any significant amount of stuff outside the atmosphere kills everything by being brought to the Earth's surface. Any significant amount of stuff added to the atmosphere kills everything by the temperature and pressure required to hold it in the atmosphere. Not much as long as you keep coming up with ideas that are contradicted by simple and fundamental physics.{Fixed URL}This message has been edited by JonF, 01-21-2005 08:08 AM

As I pointed out and you ignored, that's a meaningless question. The question is what have the two men accomplished?. Basing your evaluation solely on degrees obtained is an Appeal to Misleading Authority fallacy.You have also ignored that fact the the British educational system was structured differently in Darwin's day. There essentialy was no such thing as a degree in sciences!Of course, we can draw some conclusions about Hovind's abilities and morals from the fact that he chose an unaccredited diploma mill for his PhD and trumpets it as if he actually earned it.

First, you need to support your assertion that the turtles use only magnetics.However, assuming that they do, the answer is easy; east and west are perpendicular to north and south, east being perpendicular cclockwise from north and similarly for west. How do you know which direction is east from a compass whose needle only points north?Finally, knowing that the Earth's magnetic field has reversed does not depend on knowing how turtles navigate. The two issues are barely realated but do not depend on each other.

And we're still talking radiation ... slow, slow radiation.

No significant amount of any stuff can be added to the atmosphere in any form at any height without killing everything on Earth other than a few heat-resistant bacteria. The pressure at the Earth's surface would have to be increased by the weight of the stuff divided by the surface area of the Earth, and the temperature would have to be increased by whatever amount is needed to put the stuff in a vapor form. This is basic, high-school science (although the actual calculations probably require some college-levfel thermodynamics training). See the references I gave in Message 145.

Not really ... the reason that most limestone is such a great place to find marine fossils is that most limestone is marine fossils.