Global Warming & the Flood

But we're talking about raindrops, aren't we? How much do you expect raindrops to deform the earth?Remember also that the raindrops have already given up most of their energy to atmospheric friction before they reach the earth.

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Wasn't the deformation just that of the water already on the ground?

We're probably both going to wind up confused if we pursue this any further; I think it's best to remember that, even if only one percent of the total velocity of the masses we're talking about is converted to heat, that's still an astronomic amount of heat.I simply don't think you have a handle yet on how much mass you're moving, and how fast you're moving it.

This is exactly the issue. We are talking about around 100 inches (I think it was more like 96) of rain every day everywhere on the planet for 40 days....just to cover the planet in 100 meters of water. Stil not nearly enough to cover the mountains - the barest fraction of what the Flood story requires.theliterallist seems to believe that we are simply talking about a really bad rainstorm, when the phrase "it's raining buckets" would for once be literally accurate in this instance. This is also correct. Even using the flawed laws of physics theliterallist is using, my calculations showed that the energy release would be several orders of magnitude larger than that required to, for example, boil the worlds oceans. If even .001% of the energy I spoke of was released, all life would die, and not from a flood.But the truth remains that, with impacts like this, every joule of energy is converted to heat. It's a simple application of the law of thermodynamics, and would require one hell of a lot of evidence to refute.

PaulK,Okay, you've just about got me convinced. I am trying to get my mind around this.I've read a little bit more about deformations -- but not enough, apparently.Most web pages I look at are stopping at something like:Energy_impact = Energy_rebound + Energy_deformation + Energy_heatUsually, the energy that causes the deformation is a very large percentage (if the material is quite pliable, I gather).Is my problem that they are stopping the problem there? Because the water drop would deform and rebound and break apart into smaller droplets, which would each impact the ground, which would deform and rebound and break apart, etc. Is it that this process continues until all the kinetic energy is converted to heat? Is there nothing else involved?I was kinda hoping there was something more to consider, of course.But thanks for your input.--Jason

Actually, raindrops do deform the earth. Each one...not too much...all together and it's called erosion. Raindrop impacts dislodge and scatter little bits of soil particles...this dislodging and scattering plays a big role in soil erosion.After the water covers the ground, then, of course, it is the standing water that is deformed.--Jason

Well, I thought I did, but perhaps you're right.

But I AM proposing that only a portion of the Flood waters fell as rain, and that some -- actually, most -- came by the fountain directly.I had earlier suggested to Charles Knight that perhaps (as a complete guess) 30% of the earth's current oceans and ice caps came in the form of rain...the rest by the fountains of the deep directly.

Some sites use deformation in cases where the shape is restored by elasticity - in that case the energy comes back as kinetic energy as the shape of the ball rebounds, pushing it away from the surface.This one, for instance does not count deformation as "energy lost"
A very nice previous answer describes some of the effects of squash ball deformation and elasticity:It does mention "internal friction" (ends up as heat), heating, sound (ends up as heat) and vibration of the ball (most or all of which is likely to end up as heat).In other sites they talk about energy breaking molecular bonds - in the case of water this would be the weak hydrogen bonds between molecules. I'm not certain how that works out, but in a "Flood" situation new bonds will be formed anyway - so I expect that the net effect will be zero.

Bingo.All of the energy is converted to heat in exactly the way you just described.That's why the only thing that matters is the total mass and velocity of the impactor (in this case, the rain). From those two numbers you can easily calculate the total kinetic energy content. If the mass is assumed to come to a complete stop (as in an impact with the Earth), the entire amount of energy calculated will be converted to heat.

In that case, theliterallist, we have further issues.You base assumptions are of necessity incorrect - the polar ice caps do not contain nearly enough water to be the receeded Flood waters. There simply is not enough water on the planet to create the Flood.The question, then, is "where did it go, if it existed?"Even if we ignore that, we still have the issue of sending water from the ocean floor to the upper atmosphere at minimum, and orbit at maximum. This would require an astronomical amount of energy, even for a small amount of water to actually reach such altitudes. The ejected water needs to have enough energy to flow through several miles of ocean, and still be moving at roughly 18,000 mph (more to reach orbit - drag force and air resistance would steal momentum and require a higher velocity to reach orbit). Even just ejecting enough water to make a normal-strength downpour when it falls back to Earth over 40 days would release enough energy to flash-boil the entirety of the oceans.Then, we still have problems with the rain. My calculations previously resulted in 7.47e14 megatons of energy per square mile every day impacting the Earth. Just a one megaton explosion has the strength of the nuke used on Hiroshima. Let's say just 1% of the water needed to flood the Earth with only 100 meters of water fell as rain. Just one one-hundredth. That would still result in 7.47e12 megatons per square kilometer every day. And 100 meters deep isn't nearly enough to flood the planet and cover all landmass, as described in the Flood. Mt Ararat is roughly five thousand meters above sea level.What the hell. Let's just give you the biggest benefit of the doubt imaginable. Let's just say that we only need to flood the Earth with 100 meters of water. Then let's say that only 0.00000000000001% of that water fell as rain. That would STILL result in 7.47 megatons of energy per square kilometer of the planet every day. 7 Hiroshima bombs every day, every square kilometer on Earth, for 40 days straight. That's STILL enough energy to vaporize the oceans and turn the Earth's crust into molten slag. And even more energy would have been required to get the water up there in the fisrt place. -sigh-You're going to make me do the math again, arent you. Okay, let's see how much energy we are talking about with 30% of the world's ocean mass falling as rain. We'll ignore the icecaps, becuase I don't feel like doing THAT much math, and it only makes it worse for you if I do.According to a previous post, the Earth's oceans contain 1,370,000,000 cubic kilometers of water. That's 1.37e18 cubic meters, so 1.37e18 metric tons. 1/3 of that would be 4.57e17 tons. 4.57e20 kilograms. We already know that rain falls at about 7 m/s. Kinetic energy = (mv^2)/2. That's 2.24e22 Joules of energy, which translates to 5,358,851.67 megatons of energy. That's about 10 kilotons of energy per square kilometer of the planet. A single kiloton explosion will cause 3rd degree burns at a distance of 1.8 km, and create a fireball at minimum 70 meters in radius. Each day, it would be the equivalent of 10 metric tons of TNT exploding over every square kilometer on the planet. Not nearly as impressive or devastating as the previous calculations, but still more than enough to cause changes in the Earth we would still detect a few thousand years later. Not to mention that a wooden boat wouldn't be much protection.AND we still need explosions several orders of magnitude stronger just to get the water up there, from the "fountains of the deep." 18,000 mph is about 29,000 kph. That's 1.04e11 m/s. The kinetic energy required to make 1/3 of the Earth's oceans reach escape velocity is 2.47e42 Joules, which converts to 5.91e26 megatons, and this one isn't spread over 40 days. It also doesnt take into account the drag force of pushing through several cubic kilometers of ocean, about 62 kilometers of air (if I recall correctly), and STILL retaining a speed of nearly 29,000 kph. These calculations assume that air resistance is not a problem, and that the water is ejected from the surface of the earth, not the ocean's depths, so it's a pretty good lower limit, I think.It would only take 5.26e8 megatons to melt the entire surface of the Earth into magma to a depth of one meter. This calculation assumes that the entire planet is made up of silicate material (ie, rock), with no oceans. The enrgy required to put 1/3 of the Earths ocean into the upper atmosphere would be enough to melt the surface of the earth to a depth of 1.13e18 meters.In other words, the Fountains of the Deep are the freaking Death Star from within. The Earth would have been shattered. Literally.Now, mathematically destroying the Earth is fun and all, but I think this pretty much shows that this sceneario couldn't possibly have happened.

Okay - I've got two things this time. I've been discussing this scenario with some people on another board (plenty of people to double-check my math), and one mistake was noticed in my calculations, as well as a point about the heat of the falling water.The mistake noted was my calculation of the speed of the water exiting the Fountains of the Deep. I converted wrong - hit multiply instead of divide. Sorry about that, most embarrassing. 1.04e11 is actually several times faster than the speed of light, so that's obviously not a real number. When the numbers are rerun, the actual energy required is about 2.8e28 Joules, or 7 trillion megatons. That's still more than enough to melt the surface of the planet (which requires between 1e24 and 1e26 Joules, for a depth of 1 meter).So, that point still stands just fine, I just goofed a bit in the exact numbers. Sorry for that.Now, as for the other issue - I have been reminded that the heat of the falling rain would go first towards heating the water droplets themselves. Normal rain, regardless of how much, will simply heat the water by a few degrees as it falls (we still have other issues, but they are not really heat related).However, we arent talking about rain falling from a "normal" height. We are talking about water that has been ejected to the edge of space to radiate some heat away from the Earth. Regardless of HOW that water comes back down to Earth, it has to fall all the way back, meaning there are still potential/kinetic energy calculations we can make to see how bad it would be. So, again assuming 1/3 of the water in the ocean (again ignoring the icecaps), let's bust out the calculator again.Potential Energy = Height x Mass x Accelleration force of Gravity.100,000 m (the edge of space, not even low earth orbit yet) x 1.37e21 kg of water x 9.8m/s^2 (1 G) = 1.34e27 Joules of PE. All of which is converted to heat in the ensuing fall/impact.1 Calorie is the amount of energy required to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. There are 4.18 Joules in one Calorie. So:(1.34e27 Joules / 4.18 Joules/Calorie) / 1.37e24 grams of water = 234 degrees Celsius.In other words, the water will be heated to 234 degrees Celsius ABOVE it's starting temperature. It doesn;t really matter what that starting temperature is - 234 C is more than twice the boiling point of water. Under this scenario, using the actual amount of heat that would be produced by this amount of water falling, the global temperature would at the minimum be elevated to lethal levels. Far from beginning the Ice Age as proposed, this scenario would make the planet nearly hot enough to boil off the world's oceans.So, we are left with a scenario that begins with expelling enough energy to melt the surfacce of the planet, followed by rain that literally boils the world. These events should have left some evidence for us to find (a period of EXTREME global temperatures, the entire surface composed of igneous rock rather than the sediment commonly expected from the Flood by Creationists, etc.) only a few thousand years later. None of this evidence exists. Therefore, we can only conclude that nothing of the sort happened.

That's a good chuckle. I'm afraid when numbers are given in scientific notation, they are meaningless to me unless I sit down and think about them for a little bit. So, it wasn't obvious to me that this was several times the speed of light. Thanks for correcting yourself, though. Okay. That's good. I'm not too terribly good at thinking things through (in case this hasn't become obvious by now). However, strange as it may seem, I am very interested in having my idea critically analyzed as stringently as possible. So, I appreciate you being interested in this "scenario" enough to discuss it with others.I feel I must point out that my faith in the Bible doesn't hinge on my "model" being valid or not. This is more of an area of curiousity and interest...thoughts that cross my mind. I enjoy the level of scrutiny (sometimes) that I myself cannot give my own ideas -- and not all are my own ideas. The idea of the exiting waters removing geothermal heat is my own (so far as I know). However, the basic concept of the fountains of the deep causing water/debris to exit even the atmosphere, I must attribute to a gentleman named Walt Brown. I would like to discuss the energy of the fountain...but not just yet...I still have a few questions about the rain. Okay. The idea that all the potential energy of the falling water must eventually become heat is understood.NOW, I see the water (ice, really) falling, vaporizing, condensing, falling, vaporizing, condensing, falling, vaporizing, etc....all the way down to the trophosphere (where rain clouds form, and where rain can fall and reach the earth).Wouldn't this mean that much of the potential energy is converted to heat above the trophosphere (the trophosphere contains 90% of the atmosphere's mass, but extends only 18km high (while the atmosphere goes to some 800km high -- from Wikipedia's "Earth's Atmosphere").Heat doesn't sink...not usually...so I would tend to think that the majority of the heat is no concern as it is above the troposphere (but I could be wrong about that, I guess).If I am right, then the potential energy (that would effect the earth's surface) should be figured from the upper limits of the troposphere, right?That is, unless, like before, I am overlooking the obvious.Finally, I believe the potential energy (as figured from the troposhpere) must be fairly distributed throughout total volume of the troposphere and flood waters...and, then, that should be divided by 40 to find out the daily dose of joules per cubic kilometer.If I'm wrong about the heat above the troposphere being no concern, then shouldn't the heat be distributed throughout the entire volume of the atmosphere and flood waters per day? (btw, for all practical purposes, flood waters = oceans; the ice caps are negligible as they account for only 1.6% of the earth's hydrosphere...I think)AbE: Thanks for your level of interest in this topic and your patience to do the calculations...and sharing the idea with others (for further scrutiny).This message has been edited by TheLiteralist, 08-06-2005 02:59 AMThis message has been edited by TheLiteralist, 08-06-2005 03:04 AMThis message has been edited by TheLiteralist, 08-06-2005 03:07 AM

Yup, you are wrong. The old "heat rises" bit refers to convection in relatively small volumes¹ of gases and liquids in a gravitational field. When you consider the Earth and its atmosphere as a whole the only way that heat leaves that system is by radiation … and radiation is slow and inefficient. Essentially all heat generated within a hundred miles or so of the Earth's surface goes into heating up the Earth.-------------¹When you start talking about the whole atmosphere a big chunk of it rising in one place must be balanced by some other big chunk of it falling in some other place.

The accumulation of heat would reasonably be distributed throughout the entire volume of the atmosphere and flood waters per day, but as Bill Murray says, "It just doesn't matter!!". At the end of the 40 days you get all that heat built up. Heat can be thought of as a quantity of stuff; it's not like temperature, which is a measurement of a quantity of stuff. You are adding a whole bunch of heat by your scenario, and subtracting a very little heat by radiation to space, and whether you add it over an hour or a day or 40 days or a year doesn't matter much. What people have been calculating is the total heat added, not the rate at which heat is added, and the total heat added doesn't depend on the time period over which it's added. Now, if you start calculating the radiation to space, you would typically calculate that as a rate of heat loss per day or whatever; a little more is going to be lost over 40 days than is lost over an hour. But people have done these calculations before … the result ain't good for your scenario.