Off Topic Posts aka Rabbit Trail Thread - Mostly YEC Geology

You buy into the creationist/YEC model, you are bound to defend it.You can't compartmentalize things: science works as a whole, and facts that contradict parts of science have to be accommodated. Science must change when it is contradicted by reliable facts.You should emulate this. You are trying to argue one very narrow point, and are being shown to be wrong on that point. Your problem is that your whole model can be shown to be in error.You might desire to compartmentalize your discussion, but that does not require me to ignore all the many other places where the creationist/YEC model is clearly in error.And it would be nice if you could address some of my points. Otherwise, they might be taken by lurkers and those who are undecided as being accurate.Or perhaps you could just admit that you have no evidence to support those points, and that you are relying on belief alone. That would, of course, require that you stop trying to twist and misrepresent scientific evidence, as you have been doing on this thread, but we could live with that...

I SERIOUSLY want to know how the age of rocks could possibly be a clue to the location of oil or ore or anything else. I have NOT been shown to be "wrong" about this, I have not yet seen one thing said that shows how it is supposedly really used in the finding of these things. I don't believe it really is, but I did expect to get more substantive answers than I have so far AND SUPPOSEDLY MY QUESTION IS WHAT IS BEING ADDRESSED. Nobody has said anything that gives a clue to how they think they use it. Unless possible Roxrkool has but I still have to decipher her quote.You want to change the subject. No, not now.

When and where something lived will determine where it died.Do you understand that much? If so we will go to the next step.

I think you may have a point that nobody has spelled it out line by line to you. Lets start with Dr Adequate's comment about unconformities caused by ocean regressions. You object that the age of the unconformity is unnecessary to finding the oil. Well, let me ask you a question that Dr Adequate alluded to. How do you know where to find the unconformities? You can't just spend millions of dollars randomly drilling in the vain hope that you will one day find an unconformity. These unconformities have the same types of sedimentary layers on top of them for thousands of miles. If you can see an unconformity exposed in a canyon or road cut or natural cliff, you can also see the sedimentary layers that are exposed above it. Each of these sedimentary layers often have a characteristic fossil assemblage associated with them especially the forminifera that coragyps alluded to. In order to track these unconformities over very large distances you have to follow the principle of lateral continuity explained here: Using the principle of lateral continuity, you can take samples of near surface rocks to determine what sedimentary strata they belong to based on their fossil assemblage. Now, you may be asking where does the age of the rocks come in? Here it is: Perhaps your sample does not contain any diagnostic fossils? How do you know which sedimentary layer it belongs to? You are not left without tools. Is there an igneous intrusion that cuts through the sedimentary layer? If yes, then you are in luck. These intrusions can be dated using methods like potassium argon dating. Let's say you date it using potassium argon and come up with a permian age of 270 million years. If you have dated other sedimentary layers that have a specific fossil assemblage at 270 million years, you can have confidence that your layer you are sampling would normally also carry the same fossil assemblage.To sum it up: If you could not date the sedimentary layer at 270 million years, you would have no basis whatsoever to declare your sedimentary layer to be the one you are looking for in order to find your unconformity. If you are a YEC and only know the sedimentary layer is somewhere between 6000 and 2000 years ago and the same for every single layer you come across, you are absolutely walking like a blindfolded man in a dark alley when you are trying to trace your unconformity across long distances. If you cannot do this, you have no hope whatsoever in economically being able to drill for oil and have any hope of finding it.

Let me try to explain what is wrong with this in terms of something you might conceivably understand, i.e. something that is not geology. A: A metal detector is useful for finding buried treasure, because it can detect metal underground. B: Well, clearly the metal detector is not useful at all. To find buried treasure, all you have to do is look for buried treasure. A: But you can't just wander around looking for buried treasure, because by definition buried treasure is buried. It is covered with an overlying layer of earth. This is why, instead of digging at random, treasure-hunters use metal detectors. B: So now you've got an overlying layer of earth as your clue to the location of the treasure. You still haven't explained how a metal detector helps you in your search. A: That is the single stupidest thing that anyone has ever said.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

The relevance of location in the Bol mex zone is that, in that area, the really good gas reservoirs occur in a vertical location where that particular foram is found. That one species is isolated to one window in time in an otherwise poorly time-stamped stack of riverborne sediments. If you, Faith, or your designated YEC geologist can find me a way to change species of floating-in-the-sea critters each week or day of a year-long flood, then I might listen. Remember, they can't wash from very far - they break easy.When you get that solution, let's go back to eurypterids and crabs, and why they never are found in the same rock. Or we can talk about how to grow a reef, now full of oil, that's 1000 feet thick and 6000 feet below ground. And a hundred miles long. Can you do that during a year-long flood?

Let’s discuss a bit of sequence stratigraphy -- as simplistically as possible. If I've made a mistake, please feel free to correct.Essentially, the better we understand how and why and where certain sediments are laid down, the better our stratigraphic predictions of the resultant rocks will be. And if we can predict where the more porous and permeable rocks will be, because those are the rock types that make the best hosts/reservoirs for mineral deposits and oil/gas fields, the more successful we will be at finding natural resources.Whereas stratigraphy is the science of the characteristics and geometries of layered rocks, which can include volcanic, sedimentary, and even igneous rocks, sequence stratigraphy is the science of placing rocks within a chronological and stratigraphic framework of erosional and depositional surfaces. These surfaces are formed as a result of either: 1) erosion due to surface exposure or change in current (wind or water) direction/energy/speed; 2) non deposition; or 3) deposition in the form of bedding planes or as a result of changing sediment type (sand vs. mud). Basically, these surfaces are boundaries that confine specific sediment packages laid down in a wide variety of depositional settings under a variety of depositional processes, having both a vertical and a horizontal component to them (applying the principles of superposition, original horizontality, and lateral continuity). As a result, the sediment (and later sedimentary rock) that lie between these bounding surfaces will have recognizable and predictable dimensions and very specific characteristics with respect to lithology, grain size, chemistry, and ultimately, pore space, porosity, permeability, which are all variably critical properties that directly control the localization of mineral and energy resources.Probably the most important sedimentary process that affects the geometry of the sedimentary packages is change in the relative sea level. It is the change in relative sea level that forms the boundaries of our sedimentary packages and which determines which sediment will be deposited (e.g., sand, carbonate, shale, silica ooze, etc.). For example, if you are standing on a beach when the relative sea level rises, a certain package of rocks will form both vertically and horizontally with respect to your position. Where once there was beach sand under your feet, a higher sea level will result in pushing the beach back towards the continent and perhaps carbonate being deposited on top of you. With higher seal levels, the beach will be pushed even further back and with the water at your location getting deeper, your feet will be in sand, your waist in carbonate, and your shoulders in recently deposited mud (i.e., shale). When the sea level lowers again, the pattern reverses. Then to complicate things, tectonics, basin fill levels/compaction, and continental erosion rates, will change the pattern and geometry.The stratigraphic record on earth indicates the presence of thousands upon thousands of these relative sea level changes. We see them clearly in road cuts, on mountain sides, and in our drill holes. We can trace them from continent to continent. We can match certain fossils with certain oil-/gas-friendly horizons because certain organisms lived in and required very specific environmental conditions in order to survive -- just as they do today. We know beach sands by their physical characteristics, the near-beach environment by their sand dune structures and local plant and animal fossils, the adjacent swamps by their plant and animal fossils and carbonaceous rocks, the fluvial and deltaic environments by their internal depositional sand and gravel structures, and so on and so forth. We can identify where the marine environment becomes a beach, dunes, a swamp, a delta, a river, an alluvial fan, a mountain, then back to a deep sea setting with the most fragile of laminations.Changes in sea level produce very specific, identifiable, and most importantly, predictable changes in the rock record. These are not characteristics or properties that would exist had it all been laid down by one single catastrophic event over a one year or even 100 year period. These lithologic relationships are far too complex and took far too many years to be laid down by one flood. A giant flood cannot deposit limestone or coral reefs or allow the formation of fine mud laminations that occur all throughout the entire stratigraphic column. A giant flood would not deposit sand dunes or evaporites (salt, etc.) or fresh water limestone or leave fragile lizard tracks on a beach. Not to mention account for the thousands of bentonite horizons found in marine sequences that were originally laid down as ash fall tuffs, later devitrified to clay.In addition, there are certain geologic periods where oil and gas formation was prolific, and likely due to various fortuitous geological circumstances (e.g., depth, heat, pressure, sediment, organic concentration or type, etc.). These are not things that can be or have every been explained via a flood model.It is the recognition that the rocks and enclosed fossils we see on the surface and subsurface represent a multitude of environments that include mountain building events, oceanic transgressions and regressions, deserts, swamps, forests, volcanic and hydrothermal activity, and magmatic intrusions (that took millions of years to cool and solidify), that great age can reasonably be inferred.When you come up with a better method and theory to explain all the little details you and other YECs can't be bothered to explain, then the world will start listening. Edited by roxrkool, : No reason given.

The problem, Faith, is not that you don't do geology, it's that you don't do biology, genetics, physics, history or economics either but you still feel you can have an opinion on them that differs remarkably from those that do do these things.And the only reason you feel you can have these erronious opinions is because of your personal interpretation of a single book of myths that most people who actually study the book believe you to be also wrong about.It seems that the more people that give you evidence on every subject that you are wrong, the more convinced you are that you are right. It's a wonderful thing.

Faith, you missed a very important point about all these different species of shells.They occur in distinctly different strata. They are not mixed together, which is why they can be used to identify specific strata. These different strata cover very wide geographical regions.If these subtly different species existed together, why are they not buried together? Oh, you might be able to conjure up some excuse for them being separate in one locale, but over very wide geographical regions? Not just one single instance, but rather all of them?The obvious explanation is that they existed in completely different eras of time. You insist that they absolutely must have coexisted at the same time.How can you explain all that?

Dwise, I know the different fossils exist in different layers, so what? The question here is how AGE has anything to do with finding oil. I don't see that you have addressed that question. You all keep wanting to make me explain things from a YEC point of view. That's not the topic here. YECs know the fossils are sorted into different layers just as you know it. Our different explanations aren't relevant in this discussion.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What I get from this is that the presence of certain fossils is a good indicator of the location of gas in that particular area -- apparently not necessarily anywhere else. If you find that fossil you are on the right track. I don't see how age enters into the question. A YEC could go looking for that same fossil just as you can.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So why are they in different layers? If they all existed together at the same time, what magical principle would have segregated them into separate layers? No known physical process would have done that, not over such wide geographical regions, not for each and every layer. Only magic could have possibly done that.Instead of arguing for magic, shouldn't you instead try to learn something about geology?I remember hearing the then-Governor of Mississippi explaining his campaign for education reform: "We know that ignorance doesn't work, because we've tried it already." Obviously, you are still far behind the State of Mississippi.

If one has to, one can learn the OE explanation of things. Again, that is not the topic at the moment. YECs know that fossils are found in different layers, how we explain that fact is not relevant here that I can see. If all you have is that you EXPLAIN them in terms of an old earth that's not evidence that the age of things makes a difference in the practical work of finding oil or whatever you are looking for. The location of the fossils is what leads you, not their age. But I do now have the strong impression that all anybody means IS that you explain them in terms of age, but that the age itself really is NOT relevant to locating oil etc.

OK, and again I get the strong impression that the theory of the age of fossils isn't really relevant, but their presence is, their location is. That's what leads you to what you are looking for. A YEC can know where to look for certain fossils just as you can because they ARE sorted in ways everybody knows about. We do live in the same world, how we explain it is something else. As for potassium argon dating, I could even see using that IF IT REALLY DOES TELL YOU WHAT YOU CLAIM IT DOES, that is, if it really does identify the rock you want to identify that doesn't happen to have fossils in it to identify it. Does it really? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But what places all those different species in entirely different strata?Your model says that they all existed at the same time. What would place all those different species existing at the same time into entirely different strata. Your only explanation: magic.Old-earth explanation: those different species existed at different times. The species that existed at the times that the strata were laid down are the ones that we find there.Again, your only explanation: magic.