Summations Only

After seeing the complaint Faith registered yesterday at Message 503 I read this thread forward from Message 547 to the end. I think the sense people have is correct, that despite many varied explanations Faith still doesn't understand geology's view of how a living landscape becomes part of the geological column. Dr Adequate's list of Faith excerpts in Message 601 makes clear how poorly it is understood how a landscape (such as the one I'm looking at now from my porch of trees and underbrush and dead leaves and birds and squirrels and chipmunks) becomes a minute part of a possibly miles thick layer of rock.There's another point I've seen alluded to several times over the past 150 messages that I also think is important, that the fate of most terrestrial landscapes is obliteration through slow erosion, explaining why most layers in the geological column are marine. The soil in much of my state is just passing through on its way from the mountains to the sea. As long as the mountains exist then the net of incoming and outgoing soil is in balance and our landscape changes little across the centuries. But when the mountains are gone millions of years from now this chunky hilly landscape will disappear, worn down to a plain and possibly even disappearing beneath the waves.i'm still in a busy period, so my moderation efforts will be slight. I see Adminnemooseus has been looking in and keeping discussion on-topic.Please, no replies to this message.

In Message 620 I think Faith may have provided some significant clues to where the problem lies: This indicates three areas of misunderstanding:

1. Faith appears to believe that the topmost layer of the geological column, the layer we see all around us, can only be deposited after the previous layer has already turned to rock ("A HUGE FLAT SLAB OF ROCK...would have been the uppermost surface in the column" while "forming a landscape"). I know a couple people have already responded to this strange idea, but it should help to understand how Faith acquired it.
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2. For whatever reason, Faith has ignored that the understanding of modern geology is that sedimentary deposits only turn to rock under great pressure after being deeply buried ("the more difficult problem is how that new landscape eventually becomes a new rock in the strata"). A couple people have already responded to this, too, but coupled with the first point it represents some fundamental mutual disconnect between the two sides.
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3. The part about "an assumed landscape 'in between'" rock layers is another misunderstanding, though I can't guess its origin.

Faith invariably pronounces my interpretations wrong, but even if they are I still think reaching a mutual understanding on these points would help advance the discussion.To Faith I would say that at this point people are not looking for a concession that they are right and you are wrong. It's just that no one, least of all modern geology, has suggested any of the ideas you are objecting to. If you think the actual ideas of geology are wrong then discussing the evidence and reasoning that led you to that conclusion should be very helpful.Please, no replies to this message.

In Message 646 Faith takes a sincere stab at trying to understand what is being described. Edge and PaulK make attempts to answer, but their answers are very short and assume that Faith will be keeping their earlier explanations in mind and integrating them into her understanding, which I don't think is fair. The explanations must be repeated whole.Faith appears to think that modern geology believes or at least requires these things:

1. Sedimentary deposits that form life-bearing landscapes can only be deposited upon bare rock, not upon already life-bearing landscapes.
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2. Sedimentary deposits forming a landscape are deposited upon bare rock suddenly all at one time, not gradually inch by inch over the eons. (not sure about this one, but if true it explains some of her thinking)
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3. Landscapes turn to rock immediately upon being buried.
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4. New strata can form beneath existing strata. As Jar noted, this violates Steno's first law of superposition. There are exceptions, of course, such as magmatic intrusions, but they are also easily recognizably distinct from sedimentary layers.

This paragraph from Faith's Message 646 is enlightening. Though phrased as questions, she provides a good summary of what geology actually believes happens as sediments accumulate upon a landscape: But the rest of the paragraph is very difficult to make sense of: Figuring out the thinking behind these questions is probably important.AbE: Please, no replies to this message (Jar replied before I added this - it contains some good explanations).Edited by Admin, : Fix point 4.Edited by Admin, : AbE.

I've been raising issues that I've hoped would become the focus of discussion. I strongly encourage everyone to concentrate on these points. Please don't respond to me because I'm not a participant in the discussion, just a moderator. Screen brightness is adjustable. It can be diminished to view the images, then turned up again. Or you could try sunglasses.Please, no replies to this message.

The replies to Faith still seem far too brief to be comprehensible by themselves.Just mentioning one point this time, Faith still believes that sedimentary deposits that form life-bearing landscapes can only be deposited upon bare rock, not upon already life-bearing landscapes. (Message 694: "If you look at the strata, understanding that geology represents a time period with a landscape based on the contents of the rock for that time period, then you realize that the landscape has to sit ON the rock just as the rock for that landscape does.")I think Faith believes that geology thinks it happens like this:

1. First there is a landscape of bare rock.
2. Sedimentary deposits gradually accumulate upon the rock.
3. Plant and animal life gradually inhabit the new landscape that has formed on the rock.
4. When the sediments on the landscape become deep enough, the more deeply buried portions turn to rock.
5. The landscape is eroded away down to the newly formed rock. Now we're back to step 1 and the process repeats.

One more point: Although it's been mentioned at least several times, I don't think it's been emphasized enough that the ancient landscapes Faith has in mind, the ones from her Message 333 and the ones being discussed, are unlikely to be long term depositional environments. The fate of most land, whether rock or sand or soil, is eventual obliteration through erosion. Here's a series of slides on The Sedimentary Context of Dinosaur Fossils that makes this point in passing. An excerpt:

quote:

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Most places on Earth at any given time are NOT sites of sediment deposition, rather, they are sites of erosion. No fossils preserved!

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Most sediment ends up being carried by rivers and deposited offshore on the continental shelf. Few dinosaurs preserved!

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So when Faith mentions that her thinking derives from looking at the layers preserved in the walls of the Grand Canyon and trying to imagine how they formed, for most of those layers she should not be thinking of terrestrial landscapes but marine.Please, no replies to this message.

A few suggestions:

1. Faith's objections to geology's view of how landscapes (both terrestrial and marine) become strata turned out to be terminology issues, so it would be helpful if her remaining objections could be clarified. The ones I'm aware of are that the strata are too flat and the boundaries between them too razor sharp to be the lithified remains of landscapes like those we see today.
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2. Edge's closing comment from Message 733 requires elaboration:
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   Edge writes:

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   As PaulK(?) said, terrestrial landscapes such as those in the illustrations are subject to erosion unless 'frozen' by burial.
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   What must happen for such a burial to occur? Are there any examples in the geological record?
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   Otherwise, they would eventually look like old, eroded terrain such as the Canadian Shield.
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   Some geological history of the Canadian Shield might be helpful.
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   Marine deposits, on the other hand, are entirely depositional and form different types of continuous strata.
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   But the Canadian Shield might not be the best example. I think Faith is wondering how terrestrial landscapes become embedded in a sequence of layers with flat razor-sharp boundaries, especially given that the landscapes we see today (like those here in New Hampshire and many other places around the world) are anything but flat.
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3. A clear statement of how terrestrial landscapes become strata is needed. Here's my own as a starting point:
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   1. Terrestrial landscapes do not often become strata because they are not the lowest level, and sediments are eventually carried to the lowest level, which is lake or sea floor. Almost everyone living above sea level today resides upon a terrestrial landscape that will eventually disappear through erosive forces and not be preserved in the geological record.
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   2. An upland (meaning a couple hundred feet above sea level or more) terrestrial landscape can become preserved somewhat intact if it experiences a relatively sudden (tens of thousands of years or less) descent in elevation relative to sea level. This could occur through a rise in sea level that inundates the land, or through subsidence where land sinks to a lower level and eventually beneath the waves due to internal forces within the Earth.
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      Another way an upland terrestrial environment could be preserved in the geological record is if the upland region is in a local depositional environment (a large basin, perhaps) that accumulates deep sediments, then the region subsides. Erosive forces could remove some of the upper layers as the region subsides, but if the region subsides fast enough and far enough at least some of it will sink beneath the waves and be preserved.
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   3. Coastal regions are the most likely terrestrial regions to be preserved in the geological record. At the Grand Canyon the Coconino was a lowland desert terrestrial region, while the Hermit and the Supai were coastal swampy areas and lagoons. The rest of the Grand Canyon layers, including those of the Supergroup, were primarily lake or marine environments.
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4. More generally, many of the explanations tha have been offered contain large informational blanks. These are readily filled in by any reader who understands *and* accepts the views of modern geology. The blanks are even readily filled in by information from prior posts. But it isn't reasonable to expect someone who rejects the views of modern geology to fill in the blanks or keep past rejected explanations from prior posts in mind. Explanations must be repeated, or at least cut-n-pasted. Just a link to an old message is often insufficient - even in short messages the appropriate portion often isn't obvious.

Some brief suggestions about where to focus discussion:

1. Faith doesn't accept that landscapes experiencing net erosion can provide long term livable environments. She seems to believe that environments erode so fast that the inhabitants are left with no viable place to live. I think some time should be spent on this. That it's being argued that the slowness of net erosion in most places often produces visible change only over periods longer than thousands of years might not be apparent.
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2. While it's been stated a number of times that deposition and erosion can be happening simultaneously in the same place, I don't think it's clear to Faith how this could be.
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3. Faith's question about how the uneven landscapes we see around us today become flat strata is still a good one. She called attention to uneven sea floors and wonders where in the strata these can be found.
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4. In Message 755 Edge stated a distinction between strata and surfaces within strata when discussing the Green River Formation. This might invite confusion and could probably use some elaboration:
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   Edge in Message 755 writes:

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   However, to correct the narrative, the Green River Formation does consist of strata.

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   The topography (landscape) beneath the Green River Formation, and the modern topography cutting into it are not and will not become strata. They are surfaces within the strata and they cut whatever strata are older than the surface. They can be preserved in the strata just as a fossil is preserved in strata.
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   I think Edge is making clear a distinction between a surface (a topography) and a stratum, and he's pointing out that a stratum can contain many surfaces, and that a surface can cut into a stratum through erosion. But this might be a little too abstract. What connects a landscape we see today to something we see in ancient strata.
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5. In Message 759 Edge responds about non-flat sea floor topography. Images of strata showing such topography would be helpful.
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6. Also in Message 759 Edge mentions that formations have variable thickness and so couldn't possibly be "flat and straight." This is a good point that Faith should respond to. For example, the Redwall Limestone at the Grand Canyon ranges in thickness from 500 to 800 feet - it's upper and lower contacts could not possibly be "flat and straight".

Also, please let's leave the snarky stuff out of the discussion. The goal shouldn't be to convince Faith that geology is correct but to inform her what geology actually says.Information presented while the recipient is of a skeptical mind is often simply lost. When enough of or the right kind of information has been communicated and accepted then previously presented but rejected information must be repeated. That is the nature of discussions on controversial topics.AbE: Please, no replies to this message.Edited by Admin, : AbE

Despite Faith's comments in Message 778, I think Edge and Jar are pushing closer to making clear how a landscape like those we see today becomes part of the strata buried within the Earth.In Edge's Message 776 I made his middle diagram of the Florissant more readable by providing it a white background. The non-horizontal sedimentary layers with curving interfaces in the former lake are worth noting.

Some help interpreting this chart would be useful: Is there a higher quality version of this chart? The text is very difficult to read.Here are my interpretations, please correct as necessary.Is it correct that the left side of the chart is just the geological periods, provided as a reference?And to the right of the geological periods are the stratigraphic details from different locations in western Illinois, namely around Colchester, around Warsaw/St. Louis (which are 140 miles apart), and around St. Clair/Moccasin Springs? (The layers at the very top of the diagram mention no location.)At each of these locations mentioned the geographic periods that have no layers are simply not represented at that location. Either layers deposited during those periods were later eroded away, or no layers were deposited for those periods, or some combination of deposition then erosion then deposition then erosion, etc., leaving behind what we see today.So at Colchester (the layers about a third of the way down the diagram) some Pennsylvanian layers are present, but nothing from before that. What is beneath those layers? Igneous base rock? In any case, this means that the interpretation of modern geology is that in the geologic periods before the Pennsylvanian that either nothing was deposited at this location, or whatever was deposited was later eroded away down to bedrock. Then during the Pennsylvanian the layers we currently see were deposited. There were once sedimentary layers above what we see now at Colchester, but those have been eroded away. What we know about them can only be implied from locations where those layers were not eroded away, or possibly by their sedimentary remains at some other location.And 30 miles west in Warsaw and over a hundred miles south in St. Louis there are no Pennsylvanian layers, but there are older Mississippian layers and beneath them even older Devonian layers. Possibly the layers seen at Colchester were deposited here too but were later eroded way. Alternatively there might have been no deposition in this location during the Pennsylvanian. There's not enough information in the diagram to tell.And around Moccasin Springs (200 miles south of Warsaw and 50 miles south of St. Louis) there are no Pennsylvanian, Mississippian or Devonian layers, but there are older Silurian layers and beneath those even older Ordovician layers. If there were ever Quarternary, Pennsylvanian, Mississippian or Devonian layers at this location, there is not enough information in the diagram to tell. Maybe layers were deposited during some or all of those time periods and later eroded away, maybe not.This diagram is even more difficult to read and needs a better version: Edited by Admin, : Clarification.

I think this would be a very helpful clarifiation. This is from Jar's Message 785: This was my original interpretation, but then I became uncertain and wondered if the top of each of the four stratigraphic columns represents a modern topography at four different locations in western Illinois. They all slope downward toward the west, so perhaps that's because they're bounded on the west by the Mississippi River?

Here's the diagram again: The boundaries between adjacent stratigraphic layers that are not unconformity boundaries appear to be very flat and straight in the diagram, but I'm guessing that Jar was actually asking about the uncomformable boundaries between the stratigraphic groups. For example, the bottom of the next to last stratigraphic section includes the Wapsipinicon and Hsing ss formations (apologies for misspellings, the text is fuzzy), and they appear to be above a sloping and irregular unconformity. Is there a typo here, because this appears to say that they are and are not continental sediments.

Here's the diagram again: So, for example, the Wapsipinicon, Hsing ss and Cedar Valley formations at the bottom of one stratigraphic section actually lie directly on top of the bottommost stratigraphic section at an unconformity boundary. I don't understand the part about there being a basin to the east, since the slope of the unconformities is downward to the west.

Please continue as you have. Let's get the information out there, and people like me can ask questions as necessary.

Elaborating on this in a post might be helpful. Although Faith will deny it as soon as attention is called to it, she doesn't accept that the particles that make up sediments are eroded from higher regions and carried by wind, water and gravity to lower regions (see Message 789: "Why so consistently flat and straight as if there were some rule that erosion would have to totally obliterate a mountain range before anything could be deposited in its place.").So I think it might be helpful to describe how the light blue regions are orogens, high regions undergoing erosion that produces sediments that are eventually deposited in lower regions like the darker blue basin regions and orange shield regions.

I suggest focusing on these areas:

• Faith has expressed a concern that people aren't discussing anything relevant, that they aren't "focused on the problem posed by this thread." While a good part of this stems from Faith's desire to end the discussion, there is some truth in it. People are responding to Faith's issues by offering explanations of their understanding of geology and how natural forces shape our planet. What is required is a more precise understanding of how Faith misunderstands geology and the natural forces shaping our world. Responding to Faith's issues with accurate information isn't helping because it provides no path to take her understanding from where it is to where it needs to be. She doesn't have to follow that path and accept modern geology, but people could hopefully improve her understanding to the point where she can at least see the path despite not taking it.
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  I guess this boils down to a suggestion that people try to think their way into how Faith is thinking before responding.
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• Faith has also expressed a concern that people are not investigating issues she raises to find the problems she can't find herself but knows are there. Concerns like this can be raised about anything, whether they're true or not. That problems with the water in Flint were being covered up sounded like typical conspiracy theory claptrap until actual information was uncovered. That there are foundational problems in modern geology also sounds like typical conspiracy theory claptrap, and it will remain that way until someone describes some actual problems.
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  Bottom line: Everything that is true, including that the world is round, is challenged by somebody somewhere. Those who insist there are problems must make their case, not ask everyone else to make their case for them, or even worse, to merely claim that a case could be made if people would just think about it. It is Faith's responsibility to identify geology's problems, not everyone else's.
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• Faith still does not understand how terrestrial landscapes become embedded within a strata. Breaking the sequence of events down in detail is needed. Start with an image of a terrestrial landscape embedded in strata and describe how it got there going all the back to when there was life living upon and within it.
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• I have to suggest to Faith that she must stop dismissing information she hasn't seen, usually images that are too bright. We can help Faith figure out how to use her monitor. If she provides a model name/number we can provide the rest. Or Faith could buy some sunglasses or a buy a screen filter or several.
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• Faith has a significant misunderstanding of how deposition and erosion affect an actual landscape. From Message 809:
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  Faith in Message 809 writes:

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  Try imagining the depositional and erosional processes that would have to occur for each transformation from landscape to rock keeping in mind a particular stack of rocks as they exist today. If you're really doing this, you will run into insurmountable problems. To keep the creatures alive You start multiplying landscapes that aren't part of the final stack of strata;...
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  I'm mainly focused on the last part about keeping the creatures alive and multiplying landscapes. It would be helpful if it could be figured out what Faith thinks geology is saying, because this sounds impossible even in Alice in Wonderland.
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• There's a misunderstanding about how layers lithify in Message 809 that could be explored:
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  Faith in Message 809 writes:

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  ...you get sediments piling up that have nothing to do with the final stack of strata, being there only because they are needed to bury one sediment so it will lithify.
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  Faith's own favorite diagram of the Grand Staircase shows layers at the Grand Canyon that we know could only only have lithified after being buried, even though those layers are not present at the Grand Canyon. But if you look north on the diagram (to the left) many layers missing at the Grand Canyon are still there:
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  At the Grand Canyon the Kaibab is the top layer, but at Bryce Canyon there are around 14 layers of strata above it. I think Faith still believes that rocks form by drying rather than by the great pressure of burial that results in compaction and cementation. If it were just a matter of drying than in the time since the flood most of the surface of the world should have turned to rock.

That's enough for today.Please, no replies to this message.