Summations Only

For me the most interesting thing Faith has said, the thing I'm most curious about, is why the slow accumulation of sedimentary deposits on a landscape should create a problem for life.Taking an example, let's say there's a large expanse of low lying area adjacent to a mountain range, mostly flat plain but with small hills and valleys and plains and forests. Because it's adjacent to a mountain range this low lying area experiences net deposition. This means that sedimentary deposits accumulate even faster than they're being carried away to even lower regions such as sea coast and the seas themselves.But the sedimentary deposits are accumulating at the very slow rate of let's say ¼ inch per year on average. Such a slow rate of sedimentary deposition isn't going to be a problem for any life, neither plant nor animal. Though after ten thousand years the sedimentary deposits will accumulate to a couple hundred feet, no life, no matter how long lived, would be affected. They wouldn't even notice or have any way of noticing. Here's a diagram of the topography of the area before and after ten thousand years have passed: The mountain has three topmost layers labeled A, B and C that become eroded away after 10,000 years and are deposited on the low lying area where I've also labeled the layers A, B and C, though now they're in the opposite order and are probably much mixed together due to the irregular forces of erosion and the slow haphazard journey of the sediments from the mountain top to the plain.We need to understand what Faith thinks is the problem for life over this 10,000 year period of very slow deposition.Anyone having trouble reading the diagram because of it's small size should hit Ctrl-+ (or Cmd-+ on a Mac) to grow the size until it is readable. Hit Ctrl-0 or Cmd-0 to return to the original size.Please, no replies to this message. I realized I've introduced discussion material, but I'm trying to stay outside the discussion.

Hi Faith,Your post was specific enough on several points that it is best that I reply directly. Terrestrial. The description in the second paragraph says, "mostly flat plain but with small hills and valleys and plains and forests"), and erosion of marine mountain ranges isn't the significant factor that it is on land. The mountain in the diagram represents a mountain range ("there's a large expanse of low lying area adjacent to a mountain range"). You're describing the point in time when layer C at the top of the mountain range has eroded away and now layer B is exposed and being eroded. As I describe, they "are probably much mixed together due to the irregular forces of erosion and the slow haphazard journey of the sediments from the mountain top to the plain." The landscape won't "come to an end," not even close, though the composition of the sediment may change somewhat. Water and weather is what affects a landscapes livability, not the composition of the sediments. Good. Yes, ignoring migration and evolution, the same types of creatures are still there after several thousand years. They're living on a landscape maybe some 50 feet higher than several thousand years ago. This landscape is very similar to the one where their long ago ancestors roamed. About the "crawly creatures" you mention, I don't know if you mean worms or snakes or spiders or what, but they would still be there. About where you say, "it's all going to end up as a rock," I'll just note that while it might eventually become rock, it might instead become an area of net erosion after the mountain range has eroded away and can no longer provide a net influx of sediment.The key point is that plants will always "just keep growing on the new level of sediment." It doesn't matter how deep the sediments become, plants grow on top. With average sediment accumulation of ¼ inch/year, after ten years the plants will be growing in soil whose surface is 2.5 inches higher. In twenty years they'll be growing in soil whose surface is 5 inches higher. In fifty years they'll be growing in soil whose surface is 12.5 inches higher. In a hundred years they'll be growing in soil whose surface is 25 inches higher. In a thousand years they'll be growing in soil whose surface is 250 inches higher - more than 10 feet higher than a thousand years before.And animals also live on top or within a few feet of the top.The accumulation of sedimentary deposits is on average a slow and gradual process that maintains the livability of a landscape. As sediments become more and more deeply buried the pressure upon them becomes greater and greater. When the pressure becomes great enough they will eventually turn them to rock, but that requires deep burial, certainly more than just a few tens of feet. Sediments buried within five or ten feet of the surface will not turn to rock, and a landscape's surface will almost always be livable, even if it becomes desert. Few land surfaces in the world are completely without life - I doubt there are any. "The environment that's becoming rock"??? Any sediments so deeply buried that they're turning to rock cannot be an environment for most life. The types of species that lived there thousands of years before are still there (again, ignoring evolution and migration). Whether sediments of type A, B or C dominate (more likely a mix, as I described earlier) will little affect the livability of the environment. The landscape's environmental livability will be much more affected by weather and the availability of water, not by what's in the sediments. In a mere thousands of years one wouldn't expect "new kinds of life". With sedimentation rates in the neighborhood of ¼ inches/year, there is nothing happening that any plant or animal would need to escape. The processes that turn sediments into rock happen at depths where nothing is living.

A few suggestions, mostly issues that could use resolution:

• Let's avoid the snarky comments and just try to figure out what Faith means so we can respond to that. Obviously it has become common for Faith to say she didn't mean what we thought she meant, and she has admitted that she has difficultly putting her thoughts and ideas on this topic into words.
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  Unfortunately I don't have any answers. Faith tells me my interpretations of her comments are wrong fairly consistently. But we have to make a greater effort to build an understanding of what she is saying, because rebuttal of things she isn't saying isn't useful. Correspondingly, when we misinterpret what Faith is saying she should attempt another explanation that makes what she is saying clear.
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• I think it important to figure out what problems Faith thinks exist in her Message 853. For example, what does this mean:
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  Faith in Message 853 writes:

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  The problem is getting from your soil and landscapes to the strata that is the starting point of all this pondering. If the soil above the rock is not represented in the strata then it's going to have to get eroded away before the next rock is established above the one you mention that is deep in the earth.
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  Scenarios where there's deposition and then erosion and then deposition and so forth are proving confusing. We should concentrate on either a depositional environment or an erosional environment. In Faith's quoted text I think she's introducing erosion into a scenario that was net deposition, and it would helpful to understand why, since she was responding to Coyote's message where he was attempting to make clear how deposition occurs slowly and gradually - he didn't say anything about erosion or about strata that are not represented.
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  So we need Faith to explain why she is talking about landscapes or layers that are being eroded away for a scenario of net deposition.
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• More from Faith's Message 853:
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  Faith in Message 853 writes:

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  You can start from the landscapes and get any old sequence of strata you like, but the problem here is to see how the strata we've actually got was formed by the events supposed for them: particular depositional environments for particular rocks have to be considered, and then their burial and lithification, but all in the right order so that you end up with the given strata that is the basis for the problem here.
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  Faith seems to believe that when strata are in the "right order" that it represents a problem. Why does she think there's a "right order?" Why doesn't she accept that what we find in the Earth's layers is just a record of what happened, not strata in the "right order?"
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• More from Faith's Message 853
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  Faith in Message 853 writes:

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  So, this soil is not destined to become part of the strata unless it's also a landscape or depositional environment, and since you contrast it with landscapes above it, apparently it isn't. Therefore it will have to be eroded away before the landscapes (plural) you say are above it take their place as rocks in the strata.
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  It would be helpful if Faith could make her reasoning clear. Where Faith says Coyote is contrasting a buried landscape with ones above it I believe she's replying to statement's like this in Coyote's Message 851:
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  Coyote in Message 851 writes:

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  If the same process repeats for a million years, you have the gradual accumulation of soils, and beneath those soils you may have a gradual lithification process.
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  And all the while the process of tiny amounts of soil are added, both moving the "landscape" upwards and increasing heat and pressure on lower layers until they become rock.
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  We need Faith to explain why she thinks the deposition Coyote described won't be preserved. We all understand it mightn't be preserved if the net depositional circumstances later becomes net erosional, but the scenario Coyote was focused on was depositional. What did Coyote say that Faith interpreted as meaning the new deposits upon the landscape wouldn't be preserved but would have to be eroded away before any new sediments could be deposited?
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• More from Faith's Message 853:
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  Faith in Message 853 writes:

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  So you've got these landscapes, plural, above this soil -- which of course must represent rocks in the particular stack of strata that is the launching point of this problem. But more than one at once?
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  I *think* the "more than one at once" part means that Faith believes we're describing multiple landscapes full of life stacked one upon the other. If so then I think more stress needs to be placed on the fact that life lives on and within the topmost few feet of a landscape. If a landscape accumulates an addition inch, foot or mile of sediment, life continues to live on and within the topmost few feet of landscape. There is little or no life in former landscapes that are now buried. There is no significant life below a depth of a few feet, except maybe bacteria and such. No one is saying that there are stacks of landscapes, each one full of life.
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• More from Faith's Message 853:
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  Faith in Message 853 writes:

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  You also have to take into account that the critters are fossilized in particular rocks in this particular strata. They can't just roam around from one level to another, they have to stay in their own time period.
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  Faith evidently thinks that following modern geological principles would require fossils to roam around within buried strata in order to get the evidence we see. We need to explore how she comes to this conclusion.

There's more, but I'll stop here.Edited by Admin, : Grammar.

Suggestions based upon responses posted to this thread since I posted yesterday:

• Again, let's end the snarkiness. Faith is describing her sincere impressions of what geology is saying, and if they are wide of the mark then she is not alone in this. We've all gotten things wrong about geology I agree that she sees problems that don't exist, but in my own experience difficulties I had understanding something were because I was inventing non-existent problems. Probably we all do this.
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  It looks like after a period of asking sincere questions that Faith felt forced into a more inflexible position around Message 874. This is apparently how Faith sees it from Message 878:
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  Faith in Message 878 writes:

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  Since you are making flat declarations you make it necessary for me to do the same. You said something about having dealt with my "puzzle" but I don't recall seeing what you said about that. If you'd like to stop exchanging declarations and consider my argument please repeat whatever you said about it since I didn't see it.
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  If you can't deal with Faith's posts without become snarky then stop posting. If anyone would like a vacation from discussion for a few days, keep it up.
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• And again, please reexplain as necessary. No "I've already explained that."
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• A few different paragraphs from Edge appear to be saying a landscape both can and can't become part of the geological record. Here in Edge's Message 861 he appears to be saying that landscapes can become part of the geological record (and we know they do - paleosols are soil landscapes preserved in the geological record):
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  Edge in Message 861 writes:

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  It [the landscape] is not a part of the older rocks but a temporary location for life to exist and also setting the table for new sediments (later to become rocks) to be deposited, thereby preserving the landscape as a primary sedimentary feature.
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  And here in his Message 862 he appears to be saying that landscapes cannot become part of the geological record because they are never sedimentary environments:
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  Edge in Message 862 writes:

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  The landscape is actually a gap in deposition. It does not represent a sedimentary environment, other than if there might be rivers or lakes or other subaerial deposits.
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  Edge qualifies this when he mentions rivers, etc., but in any case, I think this needs some clarification because my sense is that a landscape can be either "a gap in deposition" and a region of net deposition. Later in Message 869 Edge states that landscapes can be preserved:
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  Edge in Message 869 writes:

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  I have always said that landscape is preserved in the rock. Like a fossil or a crack.
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  Then yet later he calls landscapes erosional:
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  Edge in Message 869 writes:

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  Faith writes:

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  Besides which, what does it mean to have ONE landscape in that stack of rocks since each rock represents a depositional environment?

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  In general, it doesn't represent a depositional environment. It represents an environment. An erosional one.
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  I'm finding this confusing, and I think Faith must feel the same way.
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• Edge's statements about landscapes cutting into rock would be helped by some further clarification. This is from Edge's Message 869:
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  Edge in Message 869 writes:

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  The rock pre-exists the landscape. The landscape is cut into the rock.
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  For the erosive forces of wind and water and gravity and varying temperature to work, the rock must be exposed and the region must be one of net erosion. For what we would normally describe as a livable landscape to emerge the area must become one of net deposition. After a period of net deposition there will no longer be any exposed rock to erode - the cutting into the rock of older sedimentary layers has ended.
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  When the region becomes one of net deposition then the new sedimentary deposits will gradually acquire more and more life that gradually works the sedimentary deposits into what we would recognize as soil. As the sedimentary deposits slowly accumulate in the region the landscape gradually rises in elevation. The existing top of the landscape becomes buried beneath a new top of the landscape, and life always exists within the top few feet of the landscape.
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  I think Faith has a point when she complains about nit-pickery. The details of how the bottommost part of landscape began upon a surface of rock might be a helpful correction to something said, but it feels more important to concentrate at this time on how life manages to continue largely unchanged and flourishing on a landscape that is accumulating sediment.
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• In Message 869 Edge states that the soils of former landscapes are not common in the geological record:
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  Edge in Message 869 writes:

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  Sometimes true soil is preserved, as under a volcanic rock, but these are not large parts of the geological record.
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  It would be helpful if the explanation could be repeated about why this is.
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• Please keep presenting information as many times as necessary. This is from DWise1's Message 880:
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  dwise1 in Message 880 writes:

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  If I am not mistaken, those photographs have been presented to you, several of them repeatedly over the span of several years. Have you been sound asleep all those years? Or have you merely been keeping your hands clasped firmly over your eyes in order to block out reality?
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  My suggestion is to (without snarkiness) present the images again.
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• In her Message 883 Faith states her belief that she's shown that stratigraphic columns and the geo timescale make no sense:
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  Faith in Message 883 writes:

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  Definitely not. Because they think the stratigraphic column and the depositional/erosional environments and the geo timescale make sense. What I'm doing is showing that they don't.
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  The reality is that people have been able to make very little sense of Faith's objections. More effort is needed on both sides at finding clarifications of what Faith is trying to say.

Hi Edge,Thanks for the clarifications. I'm going to attempt to clarify a bit more.In response to Faith's concern that life could not live in a region of accumulating sediments, part of the discussion is about the accumulation of soil to greater depths upon a landscape. It is understood that across the fullness of time terrestrial landscapes, being above sea level, average out to net erosion and that most of them won't be preserved in the geological record.What I think is confusing is statements that appear to saying that soil landscapes can only be regions of net erosion. Not everyone is going to understand that this only means on average across the fullness of time. Soil regions must have been regions of net accumulation of sediments, otherwise they couldn't have formed in the first place. However much sediment was flowing out, more must have been flowing in.I'm living on soil that is about a hundred feet deep before you hit rock (we know that from when our well was dug), and all that soil was built from sediments from mountains upstate, with life living upon the sediments continuously turning it to soil. When the mountains are worn away millions of years from now then where I live will no longer have a net accumulation of sediments and it will likely eventually disappear. Whether we're in a state of net deposition or net erosion right now I have no idea, but obviously this was a terrestrial region of net deposition for quite some time.Part of the discussion has been attempting to explain how life survives on a landscape of increasing depth with the surface gradually rising in elevation. It should also be explained how the slow erosion of a landscape also does not present a problem for life. It's important to address this, because Faith believes that these slow and gradual geological processes of erosion and deposition must destroy the environments where life lives. She reasons that since life is preserved in these layers the environments must not have been destroyed, and therefore geology is wrong about erosion and deposition. Some other process must be responsible for what we find in the geological record.Edited by Admin, : Grammar.Edited by Admin, : Grammar.

I think Faith is saying one thing while people are answering another. Faith believes changing landscapes cause them to become uninhabitable. Since uninhabitable landscapes preserve no life if they become buried, and since there obviously *are* creatures buried in those layers, geology must have it wrong.A number of attempts have been made to explain that changing landscapes don't become uninhabitable, but it remains an open point. Common ground must be found on this point.

You quoted only part of what I said. What I actually said in Message 912 was: This seems to precisely capture the situation. You believe changing landscapes cause a region to become uninhabitable, other people do not, and so it's still an open point. I don't understand the objection.To everyone else: Many of the replies have tried capture the full range of what might happen to cause the geological record, and I think this is causing confusion. Faith wants to understand how geology thinks landscapes like those we see around us today can become layers like those we see in the Earth's strata.I continue to suggest that tracing how a landscape of net deposition (actually the five or ten or however many feet of material beneath its surface topography) becomes a stratigraphic layer. It has been pointed out that the preservation of soil strata isn't that common in the geological record, but it *does* happen, and it is the scenario that has the strongest connection to today's landscapes - the one's we claim can become stratigraphic layers. The present is the key to the past, so prove it.Please, no replies to this message. I still have another 30 messages to read. If by the end of the thread I feel I need more information or clarification then I'll post another message.

I still have many messages to read before I reach the end of the thread, but I did want to respond to this now rather than possibly forget later.I think it might be helpful if you described what you think is happening to cause a landscape to become uninhabitable. The scenario I've been urging is a landscape of slow net deposition. As the landscape slowly accumulates material and gradually rises in elevation, what do you think happens to cause it to become uninhabitable?

In the hope that it might help the sides understand each other I'll point out that this describes the interpretation of modern geology, and Faith already understands that modern geology thinks this. She believes that modern geology is wrong, that it is ignoring things that would have to happen as current surfaces become buried under accumulating material eroded from higher regions. I think we have to develop a more clear understanding of what Faith thinks those things are.Please, no replies to this message.

When Faith calls destruction of a landscape that renders it uninhabitable "part of the puzzle" I don't think she's referring to marine transgression/regression. She understands that a sea moving across the land destroys terrestrial habitats, and that a sea retreating from land destroys marine habitats.The "puzzle" part is how a landscape can remain habitable while at the same time becoming buried. I continue to push my example of a landscape of net deposition that gradually rises in elevation (maybe a foot or two per century) while continuously providing a habitat where life flourishes for millennia and preserving a record of all that time. Again, I realize such landscapes aren't often preserved, but this scenario seems to me to have the greatest potential for ferreting out Faith's precise objection.

Again, this seems to say that a landscape can only be an area of net erosion. How can a landscape form if it's always an area of net erosion? I've got a hundred feet of soil beneath my house. How did it get there if at all stages up to the present it was an area of net erosion?A statement that I *would* understand is that a landscape's surface is represented by the boundary between strata or substrata and not by the rocks above or below, though I suspect that might not be the point you were trying to communicate.I wanted to clarify this part: When you say that the environment "resides on top of the rock as a land surface" you mean that a landscape of soil (or sand or whatever) of some depth exists on top of the rock. The top surface of the environment or landscape is not rock, at least not in most places.Edited by Admin, : Fix typo.

I'm responding as I read, so people may already have responded to this, but I wanted to call attention to it anyway. From Faith's Message 938: This is a key point. Faith does not accept that the present is the key to the past, that the geological record documents the same kinds of processes and events that we see occurring today. While still discussing the topic I suggest making clear what it is we see in ancient strata that is a record of the same processes we see today.Edited by Admin, : Fix message number.

Faith's most recent description from her Message 951 was: Some have made attempts to explain why they think this is wrong, but it is clear from Faith's replies that none have worked so far. I'm encouraging further attempts at understanding what Faith thinks is happening as landscapes are gradually covered with new material (very slowly over centuries and millennia) that would cause the surface to become uninhabitable.I wonder if it would help to ask Faith this question: If a homeowner spreads a ¼ inch layer of topsoil across his lawn every year, and if he does this every year for 10,000 years (a 200 foot depth of additional topsoil), what happens at some point to keep his grass from growing, turning his lawn into a barren landscape?

I am up to date on this thread.In the scenario Stile describes in Message 957, I think it would be very helpful if Faith could describe when and how the landscape becomes uninhabitable in a way not accounted for by modern geology.

Faith replied twice to Stile's Message 957. Here are issues stemming from Faith's responses in Message 964.

1. From Stile's Message 957:
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   Stile in Message 957 writes:

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   But... all the creatures that lived in year 1 are all dead by year 100. Most are decomposed and eaten away. One died and wasn't touched, and is now surrounded by an inch of sediment.
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   Faith had a few problems with this. Here she wonders how a slow sedimentation rate of an inch per hundred years could bury anything before it is eaten or decomposed:
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   First of all if it takes 100 years to bury something an inch deep, by that time any creature would have been decomposed completely, utterly disintegrated, never having a chance to get fossilized at all.
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2. Here Faith seems unsure whether Stile described a succession of environments or a single environment continuously growing upward because of net deposition. In the end she latches onto the former interpretation, the one not described by Stile, and seems to conclude that because only one of the succession of environments can be preserved as a layer that the idea of a succession of environments must not be possible:
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   You seem to have lots of landscapes or a landscape that keeps growing even beyond the depth of the thickest rock in any strata column. Somehow you have to get things down to a level that would actually appear in a stratigraphic column and my impression is that you have way too much going on for that. One environment has to end up in a flattish featureless rock.
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3. Faith also wondered about the taller aspects of life, like trees, and believes that since they're not present in strata that they must have disintegrated, which is largely true. It might be helpful to describe what happens to most trees after they die that prevent most of them from being preserved in the geologic record, and also to describe trees that have been preserved and the events causing the preservation.
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4. Here Faith says she understood Stile to be saying that only one fossil was preserved. It should be emphasized that the one fossil was from year one, and that the subsequent thousands of years would have buried thousands more fossils.
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   You've got ocean and land environments but only as sediments, not landscapes with a variety of plants and other living things, and you only have one fossil buried under all that. In reality there are millions of fossils found in stratified rocks. Bazillions. You don't seem to have accounted for that. So you've got the original landscape which is finally rock at 1600 feet deep and two million years, with only one fossil in it,...
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5. The meaning of the portion immediately following isn't apparent, so I ask Faith to offer some clarification. The puzzling parts are about not ever having been a landscape/environment (which is the opposite of Stile's scenario, where the landscape/environment was continuous), and not having the characteristics necessary to become rock:
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   ...with all that sediment on top of it that doesn't have the characteristics of rock in the stratigraphic column since it's never been a landscape/environment. By identifying it as the stratigraphic column you clearly intend it to become rock, but they lack the characteristics of the rocks in a column. Different sediments? You haven't mentioned that. Fossils, none. Normal characteristics of a landscape with plants are not mentioned.
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6. Here Faith expresses skepticism that the height of the gradual accumulation of deposits upon a landscape could ever become strata resembling what is seen in the geologic record.
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   Remember, a stratigraphic column is one extensive flat rock on top of another. At the same geographic location. All these landscapes are forming at that same location, one on top of another. Creatures are roaming around on the increasing levels of the landscape at that same geographic location. Your main problem is getting all of it down to the proportions and characteristics of those slabs of rock.
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   Stile's scenario has 800 feet of land sediment on top of 720 feet of ocean sediment on top of 80 feet of land sediment, which are thicknesses in the same range as formations at the Grand Canyon, so Faith will have to further explain what the problem is here.
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7. Here Faith's still appears to have a problem with habitats that gradually accumulate deposits:
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   Faith in Message 964 writes:

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   And when that happens THAT's when there is no more habitat. But I have to admit this is one place I get confused. You keep recreating habitat as sediment accumulates, which in a way seems reasonable,...
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   Expressing this in a way for Faith to comment on where she sees the problems, the habitat is not recreated. The habitat exists continuously unchanged except for very gradual deposition at the rate of a quarter millimeter per year. Returning to my earlier example of a lawn, if a homeowner added a quarter millimeter of top soil to his lawn every year, in what way is that destroying habitat. After a hundred years the lawn is now growing on a surface an inch higher, but at no point in that hundred years was the habitat recreated. Each year during that century grass grew, worms thrived, birds caught worms, some insects lived on the grass, other insects like ants and grubs lived beneath the surface. There was true for every year during that century, and for every century that followed. The intention was to communicate the idea of a continuous but very gradually changing habitat. We need to understand where Faith sees the habitat being recreated.
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8. That paragraph concludes with more concern about how it becomes rock:
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   ...but at some point it all has to become rock.
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   Attempting an explanation, as very gradual deposition continues over the centuries the older portions of former landscape become more and more deeply buried. Eventually the pressure becomes enough that combined with the passage of time they begin turning to rock. Here's a character-style representation:
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   Year 1
   
   Year 1: Surface where life lives                       
   Year 1: Soil in which life lives                       
   Basement Rock
   
   Year 2
   
   Year 2: New Surface where life lives                   
   Year 2: New soil .25 mm thick in which life lives      
   Year 1: Former surface now buried .25 mm               
   Year 1: Soil in which life lives                       
   Basement Rock
   
   Year 3
   
   Year 3: New Surface where life lives                   
   Year 3: New soil .25 mm thick in which life lives      
   Year 2: Former surface now buried .25 mm               
   Year 2: Old soil .25 mm thick in which life lives      
   Year 1: Former surface now buried .50 mm               
   Year 1: Soil in which life lives                       
   Basement Rock

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   Now jumping ahead to the millennial mark:
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   Year 1000
   
   Year 1000: New surface where life lives                                      
   Year 1000: New soil .25 mm thick in which life lives                         
   Years 2-999: Former surfaces and deposition ~1 foot thick in which life lives
   Year 1: Soil in which life lives                                          
   Basement Rock

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   It's also important to understand that the .25 mm of annual deposition represents an average. No region of significant extent experiences the same things, including amount of deposition or erosion. Faith is correct that preserved life that eventually become fossils are not gradually buried at the rate of .25 mm per year. Life does need sudden burial to protect it from predators and decay, such as a stream bank collapse or a tree or rock falling on it.

There was more in Faith's message, but I will stop here.