tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37287254415753096382024-03-05T14:26:43.147-08:00Questioning Answers In GenesisExploring the wonders of geology in response to young-Earth claims...Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-15209973326429666052014-08-26T11:56:00.005-07:002014-08-26T11:56:54.467-07:00Age of Rocks: the official move<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Well, I've finally finished the process of migrating all of my posts to a new domain, which I hope you'll find easier to navigate and read. All content from now on will be posted to the new site:<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://ageofrocks.org/">http://ageofrocks.org</a></span></i></div>
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A special thanks to all of you who have followed the blog to this point, and I hope you'll continue to do so at the new address. Below is a screenshot from the new page. There are some formatting issues with certain articles in adapting to the new template, so please be patient as I work to re-edit every post and especially to redirect the links, which are currently pointing back to this Blogspot page. In time, however, I hope it to be a worthy investment. I will likely leave this page up for a while as an archive database, until I figure out something better. Thanks again!</div>
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-2049855722975381852014-08-23T15:35:00.003-07:002014-08-23T16:14:56.640-07:00Chemostratigraphy: silent objector to 'Flood Geology'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It all began with breakfast in the park.<br />
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Years ago, when I was in the middle of writing my master's thesis, I took my then future wife on a trip to meet my family and visit the place where I grew up. We were invited to a picnic with some very close friends, whom I had not seen in far too long. The meal was pleasant, but I found myself having to avoid a potentially awkward confrontation upon being asked to explain my research.<br />
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"Well...", I formulated by sentence carefully, "I am basically analyzing the chemistry of limestone rocks to interpret how the atmosphere and ocean changed while the rock layers were being laid down."<br />
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I wasn't lying, but I <i>did</i> want to avoid stating explicitly that the rock formation was ~490 million years old or that these changes occurred over the course of 3 million years. You see, this is the family that first introduced me to young-Earth creationism and Flood geology—especially the works of Henry Morris, John Whitcomb, Duane Gish, and others. What they didn't realize was that I no longer held this view, so I was hoping not to interrupt the festivities with critical examination of my new 'heresy'. Still, the question came:<br />
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"Have you considered what this has to do with the Flood?"<br />
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I gave my quiet response "No, not really" with hesitation, because this time, it was something of a lie. Before graduate school, I had never heard the term <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemostratigraphy" target="_blank">chemostratigraphy</a></i>, but by this point I knew well that this obscure subdiscipline in geology completely undermined every young-Earth interpretation of the geologic column. Regardless, the field has gone largely unmentioned by Flood geologists, who continue to provide fanciful explanations for how miles of sediment were laid down by Noah's flood and sorted into neatly organized fossil zones. Since that day in the park, I've learned much about chemostratigraphy, particularly the use of stable-isotope geochemistry to correlate sedimentary rocks and study the ancient ocean and atmosphere. It truly is the <span style="color: #666666;">silent</span> objector to Flood geology, and that's what I hope to change.<br />
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<i>A crash course in chemostratigraphy</i><br />
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Let's begin with the second half of this term. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratigraphy" target="_blank">Stratigraphy</a> is a field in geology devoted to correlating sedimentary rock layers from one point to the next, even across the globe. For a simple example, imagine two mountains separated by a large valley. Each mountain contains four sedimentary layers with unique characteristics. The fact that the same layers appear in the same order allows us to <i>correlate</i> the layers across the valley, despite that the physical connection has been eroded away. This is the basic method by which geologists may construct a geologic column for any given region, and a quick Google image search for "stratigraphic cross section" will yield countless examples.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsMo9_JGAC-ACyLh2ObPM3ex9n6EQS8SszV7dFgdttd_EuC3AcFJugDyI3EvfAYaqQU_B7GVM-L3vafXwGp4qmcLCCOjhtqy8LlMI4zmnbSy4Yl-m25G7n1huJF6FLq_JymctCb8VVxtsm/s1600/crosssection.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsMo9_JGAC-ACyLh2ObPM3ex9n6EQS8SszV7dFgdttd_EuC3AcFJugDyI3EvfAYaqQU_B7GVM-L3vafXwGp4qmcLCCOjhtqy8LlMI4zmnbSy4Yl-m25G7n1huJF6FLq_JymctCb8VVxtsm/s1600/crosssection.jpg" height="156" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Simple cross section with correlation lines, from Wikipedia commons.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.knoxstp.org/images/cambro.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.knoxstp.org/images/cambro.gif" height="220" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the absence of mountainous outcrops, geologists can use boreholes to access the subsurface. Various instruments take measurements down each well to describe the sedimentary layers, and the resulting "well logs" are used to correlate rocks across the subsurface, as in <a href="http://www.knoxstp.org/mi-strat.htm" target="_blank">this example</a> from Michigan. </td></tr>
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In addition to matching layers, we might also be interested in their relative and absolute ages. The principle of superposition (i.e. younger layers overly older layers, in their original position) has been utilized since the time when geologists began to divide Earth history into various eras, periods, and epochs. Stratigraphers are the ones who argue, <a href="http://www.stratigraphy.org/" target="_blank">for example</a>, about where to place the boundary between the Jurassic and the Cretaceous periods, into how many stages each period should be divided, and the precise age of each boundary. To accomplish this, stratigraphy borrows from geochronology, which may be used to date markers such as volcanic rocks within the sedimentary sequence.<br />
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Determining the relative age of sedimentary strata over a wide region is no simple task, hence oil companies still pay top salaries to professional stratigraphers. The sedimentary characteristics of a given layer (such as its composition) will change, for example, as you trace it over a wide geographic area, or the layer could disappear altogether. Therefore, geologists use additional age markers to define geological periods and sedimentary sequences. Perhaps the best known markers are fossils, and so <i>bio</i>stratigraphers are those who use fossil assemblages to identify <i>coeval</i> layers across a great distance.<br />
<br />
Geologists typically study the chemical makeup of rocks to obtain details about their origin, but certain chemical ratios are ideal markers to aid in stratigraphic correlation. If the chemical composition of a rock is related to the chemistry of the ocean, for example, perturbations to the ocean system will be recorded in rock layers over time. Sedimentary strata thus work like tape recorders listening to a thunderstorm, during which each lightning strike causes a unique imprint to be made on the tape. Likewise, perturbations to ocean chemistry show up as <i>excursions</i> in the chemical record, so they can used to identify events in geological history and determine which rock layers were laid down simultaneously. This relationship provides the fundamental principle behind chemostratigraphy, which has long been used to correlate ancient strata, particularly those devoid of characteristic fossils.<br />
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<i>Carbonate chemostratigraphy: for the love of limestone</i><br />
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Consider now the specific example of carbonates, which make up some 22% of all sedimentary rocks and whose primary mineral constituent is either calcite (CaCO<sub>3</sub>) or dolomite ((Mg,Ca)CO<sub>3</sub>). Most carbonates, such as limestone, were deposited in shallow oceans with limited river input—a process that occurs today in places like the Bahamas and the Florida Bay. Limestone is comprised of calcite either in the form of shells from marine critters or minerals precipitated directly from the water column. In either case, the calcium, carbon, and oxygen that combined to make limestone originated from dissolved salts in the ocean. The chemistry of limestone is thus linked organically to the chemistry of the ocean, making it the perfect tool for the chemostratigrapher. But what kind of distinct chemical changes might show up in layers of limestone?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ0owaO7ji4KxBMx-yjG-6hCd2ASiddfKqvjxawl3S75L6gtImqiaVDUhySSStbkD2xfNQ2kBGfNhzUD7vJC9FCTeqpqZXrJzCat6eXH1rfURnVYuVlACxjHSQkxYu_TndTjA5Wphb9Wq5/s1600/carbonisotopes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ0owaO7ji4KxBMx-yjG-6hCd2ASiddfKqvjxawl3S75L6gtImqiaVDUhySSStbkD2xfNQ2kBGfNhzUD7vJC9FCTeqpqZXrJzCat6eXH1rfURnVYuVlACxjHSQkxYu_TndTjA5Wphb9Wq5/s1600/carbonisotopes.jpg" height="223" style="border: thin solid black; padding: 1px;" width="400" /></a></div>
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All three elements found in calcite are themselves comprised of multiple stable <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope" target="_blank">isotopes</a></i>. For any given element, various isotopes contain the same number of protons and electrons, but a unique number of neutrons. This causes each isotope to have a different mass, which affects its chemical behavior ever so slightly (the impact is greater for lighter elements like carbon). While geochronologists are interested particularly in radioactive isotopes, because they decay to daughter elements at a known rate, chemostratigraphers mainly study stable isotopes, which never change. Using a mass spectrometer, we can analyze specifically the <i>ratio</i> between stable isotopes in rock samples, such as the relative abundance of "heavy" carbon (<sup>13</sup>C) versus "light" carbon (<sup>12</sup>C). In the modern ocean, the average ratio is about 1:99, making heavy carbon by far the rarer form. This ratio is quantified and described by the term δ<sup>13</sup>C (deviation from a standard value in parts per thousand), which is higher when a sample contains more heavy carbon than the standard and lower when it contains less.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<u>Stable isotopes and ocean chemistry</u></div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.morethanafoodblog.com/images/DSCN0818.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img src="http://www.morethanafoodblog.com/images/DSCN0818.jpg" height="240" style="border: thin solid black; padding: 1px;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
Try this experiment at home: take a large bowl of two-toned</div>
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candy and ask everyone at the table to remove a handful, </div>
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preferring one color to another. After each round, measure </div>
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the ratio between colors to determine how sensitive isotopes</div>
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in a large reservoir (the bowl) are to the removal of small</div>
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samples.</div>
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Perhaps the best way to illustrate isotopes of carbon in the ocean is with a bowl of red and green M&M's, where each color corresponds to a different stable isotope of carbon. For the sake of discussion, this bowl contains precisely 50% green M&M's (light carbon) and 50% red M&M's (heavy carbon), for a ratio of 1:1. Now, imagine you leave the room and return later to find that the ratio has shifted to 0.9:1.1, meaning the bowl has been <i>enriched</i> in red M&M's. There are two possibilities that could explain the shift: either someone added a sample containing more than 50% red M&M's, or someone removed a sample containing less than 50% red M&M's. Perhaps you have a child, therefore, who prefers one color to the other, so every handful he takes is biased to that color. This process will leave the bowl preferentially enriched in the other color. If every handful contained precisely half green and half red M&M's, then the ratio of green to red in the bowl would never change. Likewise, any process that removes carbon from the ocean will change the δ<sup>13</sup>C value of oceanic carbon, so long as the isotopic ratio of the sample differs from that in the bulk ocean.<br />
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There are many processes that add carbon to or remove it from the ocean, but the most relevant to this discussion are the burial of organic carbon in marine sediments and the formation of limestone. <i>Organic</i> carbon is any form derived from living tissues, whether algae, bacteria, or whale remains. By far, photosynthetic organisms in the surface layer of the ocean contribute the vast majority of dissolved organic carbon to the oceans. This fact is important, because the process of photosynthesis <i>prefers</i> light carbon to heavy carbon, so organic carbon is heavily <i>depleted</i> in "heavy carbon" relative to the ocean. Whenever organisms like algae remove CO<sub>2</sub> from the ocean and convert it to organic matter, they remove CO<sub>2</sub> containing the light isotope of carbon at a slightly greater rate. The preference can be explained by the greater mass of <sup>13</sup>C, since the CO<sub>2</sub> must be absorbed through a cellular wall/fluid—a process made easier for the lighter molecule.<br />
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Since organic carbon contains relatively less of the heavy isotope, removing it in large quantities causes the rest of the ocean to become <i>enriched</i> in heavy carbon (just like your child's preference for green M&M's, leaving the bowl a little more red). Normally, this process is offset by the formation of limestone, for which the isotopic preference is the opposite, or the weathering of organic carbon back into the ocean. Perturbations to the normal ocean cycle, however, may cause the carbon-isotope ratio of the ocean as a whole to shift in one direction or another over a long period of time. For example, if photosynthetic productivity in the surface layer was increased for a sustained period (due to enhanced nutrient supply, shifts in ocean currents, etc.) or the rate of sedimentary deposition was increased for a sustained period (due to enhanced delivery of sediments from rivers, climate change, etc.), then the δ<sup>13</sup>C of the ocean should become more positive (i.e. enriched in the heavy isotope of carbon). This phenomenon is well illustrated by records of the past million years or so, since the δ<sup>13</sup>C value of the ocean fluctuates predictably (albeit somewhat chaotically) <a href="http://www.sciencecodex.com/climate_change_the_role_of_oceanic_carbon_reservoir_over_glacial_cycles-131701" target="_blank">alongside glacial-interglacial cycles</a>.<br />
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<i>Chemostratigraphy: ardent objector to Flood geology</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Now that you have a grasp on the principles behind chemostratigraphy, consider the implications for the Flood geologist. Since at least the 1930's, modern 'creation scientists' have been working to reinterpret the geologic column in terms of a catastrophic, worldwide flood. These explanations typically involve giant waves of water depositing sediments over wide regions, only to rinse and repeat. Somehow, sediment types were neatly divided to form distinct layers of gravel, sand, silt, clay, and lime, replete with fine sedimentary structures, including mud cracks, eolian dunes, and <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/03/cross-bedding-in-beach-sedimentsthen.html" target="_blank">beachside cross-bedding</a>. Most impossibly, this chaotic process is said to have produced a precise <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-produces-order-in-fossil-record.html" target="_blank">ordering of fossils</a>, which various young-Earth creationists have <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/fossils/fossil-record/order-in-the-fossil-record/" target="_blank">tried to rationalize</a> through tales of hydrodynamic sorting, ecological niching, stepwise inundation of the continents, and intelligence gaps. Yes, even thousands of species of flowering plants universally managed to outsmart their gymnosperm counterparts and escape the initial waves of the flood (that is, until the end of the Jurassic, around day 160 of the flood).<br />
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Despite the persistent arm-waving of Flood geologists on this point, they have not grown tired in the face of numerous counter examples, where fossil zones are simply too precise to be explained by global flood waters. There is no hydrodynamic or ecological factor that could sort foraminifera, pollen, and trilobites into neat zones that occur in the same order from one side of the continent to another. But even if we do grant the impossible scenario, chemostratigraphy provides a final test and falsification.<br />
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In the conventional geological interpretation, we can use index fossils and radiometric dating alongside stratigraphy to determine that, for example, a rock layer in Nevada is the same age as a rock layer in southern China (perhaps they both contain a unique assemblage of Cambrian-aged trilobites). According to the flood geologist, these layers were deposited in a single year, less than 5,000 years ago, but were not necessarily deposited <i>simultaneously</i>. If they both contain the same types of fossils in the same order, it can only be due to the living arrangement of organisms prior to the Flood. Regardless of how the order arose, one thing is certain: if these marine organisms were all buried in a global flood, then all of them made their shells from the <i>same</i> ocean and the <i>same</i> reservoir of carbon with approximately the <i>same</i> isotopic ratio. So when fossilized shells of trilobites, brachiopods, molluscs, etc. are analyzed across the Phanerozoic (542 Ma – Present) for carbon isotopes, are they isotopically homogenous (as predicted by Flood geology) or do patterns emerge?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqWNxTmhxAzHO9kX0kHYGyXA90I4JAfK7iZkZN4Rlxf6hv99OzXiLE5RJJflnfmVKpXDUbTUXmQi4eJpIakoorfiq8ORo-yVVolv2d3RZZ3isr3ODhyphenhyphen-m0Js9r81JachjTEyrlkY-N_ZzZ/s1600/Veizer1999.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqWNxTmhxAzHO9kX0kHYGyXA90I4JAfK7iZkZN4Rlxf6hv99OzXiLE5RJJflnfmVKpXDUbTUXmQi4eJpIakoorfiq8ORo-yVVolv2d3RZZ3isr3ODhyphenhyphen-m0Js9r81JachjTEyrlkY-N_ZzZ/s1600/Veizer1999.jpg" height="307" style="border: thin solid black; padding: 1px;" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Phanerozoic evolution of δ<sup>13</sup>C in seawater, from <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009254199000819" target="_blank">Veizer et al., 1999</a>.</td></tr>
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As we can see from the figure above, the carbon-isotope ratio in carbonate fossils—and therefore the ocean itself—varied substantially over the past 500 million years. Though excluded from this plot, Precambrian variations are even greater in magnitude, though less frequent. Now, if this range in δ<sup>13</sup>C values on the order of 6–10 parts per thousand does not seem impressive, consider that to increase the oceanic δ<sup>13</sup>C value by only 5‰ requires a sustained <b>doubling</b> in the rate of organic carbon burial for about 1 <i>million </i>years. Because the carbon reservoir in the ocean is so large (today, about 39,000 billion tons of carbon), the color of <i>this</i> bowl of M&M's does not change appreciably on a whim—certainly not in the space of a 370 days. Therefore, Flood geologists are left with the impossible task of explaining two features of this plot:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1) Variations in the carbon-isotope ratios of fossils are far too great to be explained by shifting ocean chemistry within a single year, meaning these organisms could <i>not</i> have lived in the same ocean at the same time.<br />
2) The pattern of carbon-isotope variations from Cambrian to Quaternary is the same <i>across the entire globe</i>. Whether you're sampling rocks from Texas or Tanzania, layers of limestone determined to be the same age according to their fossil content <i>also</i> exhibit the same pattern of δ<sup>13</sup>C values over time. These values are invariably high for Permian-aged carbonates and invariably low for Ordovician-aged carbonates.</blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQyzD2JyA7UhLEzn0x1lP9rgP3f8HmctfcmpXnliIhaWuWrPYeZyYusddfZZSH2Mm0GPSaoaeXd9jb6nIz7IqWTUfgWwBB3e95IqzVczjWyLDlLot1RvA-2xSdKrqavSltNE25WXvOxslE/s1600/Saltzman2005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQyzD2JyA7UhLEzn0x1lP9rgP3f8HmctfcmpXnliIhaWuWrPYeZyYusddfZZSH2Mm0GPSaoaeXd9jb6nIz7IqWTUfgWwBB3e95IqzVczjWyLDlLot1RvA-2xSdKrqavSltNE25WXvOxslE/s1600/Saltzman2005.jpg" height="400" style="border: thin solid black; padding: 1px;" width="268" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: justify;">Figure 2 from Saltzman et al. (2005). Composite of<br />
carbon-isotope records from carbonate rocks of the<br />
Great Basin, USA.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When we examine carbon-isotope records on a finer scale, the advantage of chemostratigraphy in correlating rock layers becomes more apparent. In this figure from <a href="http://www.geology.ohio-state.edu/~saltzman/saltzman_2005.pdf" target="_blank">Saltzman et al. (2005)</a>, numerous isotopic excursions can be distinguished at various stages in the Paleozoic. These are periods when a perturbation to the ocean system caused the average δ<sup>13</sup>C value of oceanic carbon to shift for a sustained period of time (perhaps 1–3 million years) before returning to an equilibrium value. Whatever the mechanism, these paleoceanographic events show up in the chemical record like thunderous lightning on an audio recording. Any tape players that happen to be running in the vicinity of the storm will record the same events in the same order. As we examine sedimentary records across the globe, therefore, we can synchronize the various tape players with great precision and even determine which players stopped recording for a brief interval (i.e. a depositional hiatus or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconformity" target="_blank">unconformity</a>). Therefore, we can be confident that biostratigraphic zones indeed represent unique, coeval periods of Earth history, when particular assemblages of organisms were living together in ancient oceans. Otherwise, we would not find a common signal of ocean chemistry, but a jumbled mess of relatively homogenous isotopic values throughout the geologic column. The concept of Flood geology, therefore, is entirely inconsistent with this peculiar subdiscipline called chemostratigraphy.<br />
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In the next post, I will briefly explore the means by which a single isotopic excursion—the Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion, or SPICE event—has been traced around the globe, being predicted by the handful of trilobite species that defined the Steptoean stage of the Late Cambrian. In establishing that the oceanic carbon reservoir shifted by 5‰ during a single stage of the Cambrian period, we can be all the more confident that thick formations of limestone were deposited over millions of years—not dozens of days.<br />
<br /></div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-79088584929580430682014-08-08T18:08:00.000-07:002014-08-12T00:36:55.895-07:00"Give us, this day, our day in your garden": the eschatological genesis of the Lord's Prayer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>"I've never read the Bible in its entirety before... Where do I begin?"</i><br />
<br />
Once upon a time, the didactic use of the Christian Bible in basic literacy and the near ubiquity of religious education in western culture meant that few were unfamiliar with the stories of the Old and New Testaments. But today, whether motived by faith or criticism, millions of adults resolve annually to read <i>every</i> book of the Holy Bible for the very first time. I've heard the question posed countless times: "How do you read the Bible? Do you begin on page one and read straight through, or mix it up somehow?" Everyone seems to have their own opinion, and <a href="http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/reading-plans/" target="_blank">numerous reading guides</a> are available to implement these views. Whenever a pastor is present, in my experience, the answer seems unanimously to be "Read the Gospels first—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—or you're bound to become lost or confused."<br />
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For most Christians, the New Testament in general and the Gospels in particular are the appropriate light through which the Hebrew Bible ought to be understood, much like a bright lamp in a dusky cellar. Unfortunately, this attitude toward the Old Testament, however true, can tend to minimize its importance for most readers, who typically understand the first 39 books (give or take) only through distance memories of their childhood Sunday School. It is the cherished foundation on which their house is built, but the best truths are hidden among the cluttered antiquities, and the party's already moved upstairs. Now, I <i>do</i> believe that this somewhat intuitive view is rooted in a sacred truth common to the New Testament authors—namely, that the story of Jesus is the long-awaited climax of Israel's story. As with any movie or play, for example, we understand the first act <i>retrospectively</i> once the climax emerges and the story is resolved. But this approach naïvely assumes that we already know the content of that foundational first act, unlike most of modern society, and so we may be likened to those stumbling into the theater only after the intermission.<br />
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If you have determined to read the Bible in its entirety, many will advise you to begin with the Gospel of Matthew. I agree, so let us begin where Matthew himself begins, and that's in Genesis. Once you grasp the reasoning behind this, I hope you'll understand better why the New Testament authors never referred to the Old Testament as such, but called that collection of writings by its more appropriate name: "Holy Scripture" (e.g. 2 Tim. 3:15).<br />
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<i>One discovery that changed forever the way I read the Gospel of Matthew</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Many years ago, I attended a Bible study with a small group of friends, which may sound familiar to some of you. We took a book—in this case, the Gospel of Matthew—and spent several hours, once a week, attacking each detail the best way we knew how. We drew from commentaries, modern and ancient, and did our best to let "scripture interpret scripture" by cross referencing terms and ideas with other gospels and various references to the Old Testament. After six months, we had covered a whopping ten chapters (in studies like this, we are far prouder for taking longer to cover less). Though I wouldn't see the end of the study, having to move away for graduate school, I felt more confident than ever in my ability to read and teach the Gospel of Matthew. But confidence is a glass house on a pebbly beach, and I was a curious kid on a long walk. What was the stone that changed it all?<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>– The Gospel of Matthew is a retelling of the Tanakh –</i></b></div>
<b><br /></b>
Shorthand for "Torah, Prophets, and Writings", <i><a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/jpstoc.html" target="_blank">Tanakh</a></i> is the name traditionally given to the collection of writings that constitute the Hebrew Bible, or the Christian Old Testament. While the content is the same, however, the arrangement and grouping of certain books is not. The Tanakh relies on the Masoretic ordering of the text, which conveys a distinct narratival and theological message: <i>torah</i> identifies the role and obligations of mankind, especially Israel, in God's cosmos and tells the story of the law's reception; the <i>prophets</i> tell of the application of law and covenant to the nations of the land, including by God who judges them; the <i>writings</i> balance the apparent rigidity of the law and covenant in shaping history with patient wisdom, not least to explain the lamentable lot in which Israel found herself after repeated exile and foreign rule. Thus Tanakh is a story without a climax; hope is buried in lamentation, and the covenant God is strangely more distant in the end than in the beginning.<br />
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When we read the Hebrew Bible, therefore, as those in the audience of the gospel writers, we begin with the opening words of the Greek <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint" target="_blank">Septuagint</a>: βιβλος γενεσεως, or "The Book of Genesis", and its famous opening line:<br />
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<i>In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...</i></blockquote>
We do not end, however, in Malachi 4 with the promised return of Elijah and the awesome day of the L<span style="font-size: x-small;">ORD</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span>(a rather obvious transition to John the Baptist). Instead, the Tanakh closes with the words of Cyrus of Persia in 2 Chronicles 36:23:<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>All the kingdoms of the earth hath the L<span style="font-size: x-small;">ORD</span> God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The L<span style="font-size: x-small;">ORD</span> his God be with him, and let him go up.</i></div>
</blockquote>
And so, Matthew begins and ends his gospel—the story of Jesus of Nazareth—in the same manner. The opening line (Matt. 1:1), so frequently glossed over as though its sole purpose were to title a genealogy, reads thusly:<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Βιβλοσ γενεσεως Ιησου Χριστου, </i><i>υιου Δαβιδ υιου Αβρααμ</i><i>...</i></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>The Book of Genesis of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham...</i></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
The genealogy that follows proceeds systematically from Abraham to David to Exile to Jesus in precisely 42 generations, or, we might say, <i>six</i> sets of <i>seven</i> generations. Thus Matthew recounts for us the six days of Israel's creation, culminating in one man, born by the breath of God (Matt. 1:20), who would bear the image of God, inaugurate the heavenly kingdom, and promise a new sabbath rest (Matt. 11:28). Chapter 28 opens with a familiar timeline:<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb...</i></div>
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On the sixth day, the new Adam succumbed to death, and on the seventh day, he rested in the tomb. The old word has died, but now, a new week has begun; it is a new creation. In the final scene, a new hope emerges with the Great Commission to build a holy temple, rooted <i>not</i> in the sympathies of a foreign king, but in the authority granted to the incarnate son of God (Matt. 28:18-20):<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.</i></div>
</blockquote>
And so Matthew links his gospel conspicuously to the narrative of the Tanakh in its opening and closing lines, so that we might understand his message as a retelling of the story of Israel, in which the character of Jesus has taken up familiar roles. Like Solomon, son of David, he would build God's temple; like Isaac, son of Abraham, he would be led up a hill to the slaughter. He would flee from Egypt, face temptation in the wilderness, and be baptized in the Jordan like Israel. Echoing the story of Adam, he was made alive by the Spirit of God and met his final evening in a garden scene, but the Edenic dilemma had been radically transformed: <i>obedience</i> to God now meant <i>death</i> and <i>exile</i> for one, in hope of life and glory for the many. Like Moses, he met death, but was vindicated through the faithfulness of God; like Joshua, therefore, he would lead his people back into Eden and inaugurate the kingdom of heaven. Jesus' death and resurrection thus constitute the climax of Israel's story, according to the Gospel of Matthew. Retold in this manner, the stories of the Hebrew Bible are thoroughly eschatological, pointing forward to their fulfillment in one like a son of man (Dan. 7:13)—the new Adam.<br />
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<i>The eschatological Genesis of the Lord's Prayer</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Having established that the book of Genesis was fresh on the gospel writer's mind in shaping his metanarrative, we are made fully aware of the subtle echoes that link Jesus' story with that of Israel. Matthew does not scour the Hebrew Bible for prooftexts to support his messianic claims, however, as though all were written to predict the advent of Christ. Instead, he subverts the stories of land, law, and covenant so that all is fulfilled in this person Jesus of Nazareth (Matt. 2:13–15 is a great example; the gospel usage of Hosea 11:1 is radically different from the original). In the fifth chapter of Matthew's gospel begins the well known Sermon on the Mount. Note the echo of the Exodus narrative in Matthew's phrasing:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Seeing the crowds, [Jesus] went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.</i></blockquote>
Like Moses in ancient days, Jesus led his people to a mountain, where he sat down (in true rabbinical style) to deliver a message on law and covenant to the twelve representatives of a new Israel. In the old covenant, the people of Israel were portrayed as a sort of new mankind, fashioned from the dirt in Egypt, where God had separated the waters from the waters (cf. Gen. 1:6). Having the privilege to name God their Father, they are a new Adam, if you will, facing a fresh choice in a new Eden. The old generation had failed the test in the wilderness, and so the next would inherit the land of Canaan <span style="text-align: center;">(Deut. 1:35; 38–39)</span>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers... Joshua the son of Nun, who stands before you, he shall enter. Encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it. And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there. And to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.</i></blockquote>
Note the language reminiscent of Eden: <i>no knowledge of good or evil</i>. As you may recall, it was Joshua, who shares his name with the New Testament Messiah, who would lead Israel back into the garden of God. The imagery that links these concepts is most evident in Josh. 5:13-15, when Joshua readies his armies to cross into Canaan:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him <b>with his drawn sword in his hand</b>. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the L<span style="font-size: x-small;">ORD</span>. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the L<span style="font-size: x-small;">ORD</span>'s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. (emphasis mine)</i></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicnhG9U9c3WXAHuz7gsWf3qA6EN7Mdrsu0SrAfeIwtQgfNg4Uo2nxq_yBTSmHEHnu60my75WZtlUOrrmEnFev-uHV0yNQ-buJLlBm22OIWWQ89KLdg79UQgIIIsz-kQDdVUMAvuVn7AmtN/s1600/eden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicnhG9U9c3WXAHuz7gsWf3qA6EN7Mdrsu0SrAfeIwtQgfNg4Uo2nxq_yBTSmHEHnu60my75WZtlUOrrmEnFev-uHV0yNQ-buJLlBm22OIWWQ89KLdg79UQgIIIsz-kQDdVUMAvuVn7AmtN/s1600/eden.jpg" height="207" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Garden of Eden, by Wenzel Peter</td></tr>
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The unnamed commander of the army of the Lord was last seen during the flight from Eden, where an angel was stationed with a flaming sword to guard its entrance (Gen. 3:24). Thus from beginning to end, Torah roots the flight from Egypt and inheritance of Canaan firmly in the Eden narrative. The law given to Israel, and the covenant terms emphasized in Deuteronomy, strongly echoed that given to Adam, who was cast out of the garden for having breached the terms. So long as Israel held fast to the covenant, they would flourish and see the day when God's kingdom would come on Earth as in heaven (especially under David, God's royal image). But when their transgression became too egregious, like Adam they would see only exile and frustration.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then, like this...</i></blockquote>
Matthew 6:9 begins the oft-recited Lord's Prayer, which is placed in the middle of the Mosaic sermon. How is it that God knows what we need before we ask him? We might answer that in his omniscience, of course God knows all our needs, but the language of Jesus is not a philosophical truism. It gains meaning in the precedent of God working in similar fashion with his covenant people from the very beginning. Let us consider the echoes of Genesis in these famous lines.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Our Father in heaven... (Matt. 6:9)<br />Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. (Gen. 1:26)<br />[Adam] fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image... (Gen. 5:3)</i></blockquote>
On what grounds do we call God our Father? The answer comes in the very first chapters of scripture, where mankind is commissioned to be the image of God on Earth. In praying to 'our Father in heaven', therefore, we assent to the role and obligations of his covenant people.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Let your name be holy... (Matt. 6:9)</i></div>
<i></i><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i><i>So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Gen. 2:3)</i></i></div>
<i>
</i></blockquote>
Like the day of rest, which signifies that God has taken reign over his good creation, we pray that the very name of God who made us be set apart from all others. This is, foremost, the binding prerequisite of the covenant to which we are called. Should we forsake it, we attempt to thwart the very will of God in making heaven and Earth anew.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Let your kingdom come... (Matt. 6:10)<br />And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)</i></blockquote>
The command to be fruitful and multiply is not simply one to reproduce and increase our numbers. Rather, it is a commission to cultivate God's glory throughout his creation and, by being the image of God, establishing his divine rule and expanding his kingdom on Earth. Mankind's dominion over the orders of creation is<i> not</i> an autonomous one, because it is God who rules over all. The kingdom is his, and so are its laws. In ancient cultures, in which both Genesis and Matthew were written, the royal image—whether a statue or an engraven coin (e.g. Matt. 22:20–21)—signified who specifically had authority over the land. To say that we are God's image on Earth, therefore, is to signify that God reigns here now, and to pray "Let your kingdom come" is also a calling to ourselves to be that image as described in Genesis 1.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Let your will be done, on Earth as in heaven... (Matt. 6:10)<br />And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Gen. 1:3)</i></blockquote>
In praying that God's will be done on Earth as in heaven, we do not simply affirm his providence and omnipotence, but we petition that he make heaven and Earth as it was described in the creation hymn—very good.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Give us this day our daily bread... (Matt. 6:11)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. (Gen. 1:29)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden... (Gen. 2:16)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Cursed is the ground because of you... By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground. (Gen. 3:17, 19)</i></div>
</blockquote>
When we petition that God fulfill our most basic needs—our daily bread—we long for the place in which thorns and thistles are no longer the fruits of our labor. We hope never to thirst or hunger again, but to be fed with manna from heaven, multiplied loaves, or even the garden trees. This symbolism reflects a greater reality that characterizes the cosmos when God reigns visibly: the naked are clothed, the hungry are fed, the alien is housed, and the widow and the orphan are cared for. If we take the covenant seriously, the Earth will reap a great reward and the nations of the land will be blessed on our account.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors... (Matt. 6:12)</div>
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And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them... (Gen. 3:21)</div>
</blockquote>
It is our transgression against God that keeps us out of his garden and taints the image we were called to be, so we seek the full reconciliation only shadowed during the exit from Eden, when God covered the shame and nakedness of his mankind.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (Matt. 6:13)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the L<span style="font-size: x-small;">ORD</span> God had made... “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Gen. 3:1, 13)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. (Gen. 4:7)</i></div>
</blockquote>
The final petition of the Lord's Prayer provides the strongest echo of the garden scene, where mankind was tempted and led into evil by something innate to the creation. It was mankind who transgressed, but it was God who placed the serpent. Similarly, the Exodus generation wandered the Sinai desert without visible fulfillment of the promise, and Jesus himself was led out to the desert <i>to be tempted</i>. In praying that God not lead us into temptation, we do not propose that he tempts us intentionally for our own demise, but rather we acknowledge that in temptation, we will fall. We ask, therefore, that our Eden be rid of its snakes altogether, that we may cultivate his garden until the glory of God cover the whole land and his kingdom be everywhere visible.<br />
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When you pray the Lord's Prayer, be mindful of the echoes of Eden in your petitions to God. <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-reading-genesis-as-literature.html" target="_blank">Previously</a>, I wrote on the dialogic of Genesis 1–3 and how the literary tension between two creation accounts—an intentional juxtaposition by the editor—leads us to a more profound truth. In Matthew's mind, perhaps, it is almost as though Jesus were telling his disciples: "Ask that God remake heaven and Earth as described by the creation hymn (Gen. 1:1–2:4), but that your narrative will not end like Adam's." I believe we can summarize the Lord's prayer to incorporate the eschatology of Genesis in the following fashion:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Our God in heaven, who formed us from the dust in his own image and likeness, that we may call him Father;<br />Let your name be holy among us, as the day you set apart to signify your completed work and give us rest;<br />Let your kingdom come, as we strive to be your image, reflect your heavenly reign, and cultivate your glory over all creation;<br />Let your will be done, on Earth as in heaven, as in the day when you made all things new;<br />Give us this day, our day in your garden, where thorns and thistles are no longer the fruits of our labor, but the Earth is finally blessed by our work;<br />Forgive us our debts, which have kept us from your garden and tainted your image, because in newness of life, we have at last forgiven our debtors;<br />And lead us not into temptation, as in Eden where the serpent deceived us;<br />But deliver us from the evil one, who is more crafty than the other beasts of the field and is crouching at the door.</i></blockquote>
Amen.<br />
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~~~~~~~<br />
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For more reading from this blog on reading Genesis, please see the following posts:<br />
<a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/10/appearance-of-age-or-true-age-better.html" target="_blank">Appearance of age or true age? Better yet—what's the difference?</a><br />
<a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/10/on-reading-genesis-as-literature.html" target="_blank">On reading Genesis as literature: breaking the hermeneutical bonds of a modern controversy</a><br />
<a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-reading-genesis-as-literature.html" target="_blank">On reading Genesis as literature: the dialogic of Genesis 1–3</a><br />
<a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/05/finding-noah-then-and-now-part-1where.html" target="_blank">Finding Noah, then and now: Part 1—"Where is Noah today?"</a><br />
<a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/06/finding-noah-then-and-now-part-2when.html" target="_blank">Finding Noah, then and now: Part 2—"When and where did Noah sail his ark?"</a><br />
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-31182034378092431752014-08-03T16:17:00.003-07:002014-08-12T00:48:45.156-07:00Geological death traps and the impossibility of a post-Flood migration from Ararat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Over the past week, Dr. Julie Meachen—a paleontologist with Des Moines University—has been <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/us-usa-fossils-wyoming-idUSKBN0FU07T20140725" target="_blank">making headlines</a> after obtaining a permit to excavate mammalian fossils from a sinkhole cave in Wyoming. The 85-foot-deep sinkhole likely collapsed more than 100,000 years ago, and has since been collecting the remains of rather unfortunate Pleistocene- and Holocene-aged individuals, who managed to fall through the conspicuous opening at the surface. The researchers intend primarily to recover samples of ancient DNA from the site, which has kept cool since its formation (i.e. a stable, preservative climate) and could provide one of the first <i>North American </i>repositories of ancient DNA from ice-age <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megafauna" target="_blank">megafauna</a>. It will be fascinating to learn what may be resolved about these widely debated extinctions, which themselves have made headlines for decades. I wish Dr. Meachen and her team the best as they move forward with this project; repelling 85-feet vertically down a pitch-black chamber of death is by no means an easy task! Hopefully this <i>Indiana Jones</i>-like tale gives you a better appreciation for your neighborhood paleontologist.<br />
<br />
While this story is very intriguing by itself, I hope to utilize it as an introduction to a more comprehensive challenge to one young-Earth claim, currently touted by Ken Ham, the Creation Museum, and the upcoming Ark Encounter. According to the young-Earth paradigm, a <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/determining-the-ark-kinds/" target="_blank">relatively small population</a> aboard the ark had to repopulate the entire Earth within only several hundred years following the Flood.<br />
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Why so quickly?<br />
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Well, we know from paleontological evidence that all sorts of mammals, including megafauna like mammoth, mastodon, sloths, giant deer, dire wolves, lions, cheetahs, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Megafauna_of_North_America" target="_blank">many many more</a>, are currently buried within Pleistocene (2.6–0.012 million years ago) and Holocene (11,600 years to present) sediments around the world, including the Americas. Since so-called "Flood geologists" almost universally consider these most recent geological periods to be <i>post</i>-Flood, we must assume that each species migrated from Ararat across the globe in time to have been buried and preserved as fossils. But here's the catch: many of these fossils and sediments are also associated with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period" target="_blank">most recent ice age</a>. While the last glacial period lasted about 100,000 years and ended 11,600 years ago by conventional geological wisdom, young-Earth geologists speculate that the ice age occurred almost immediately after the flood, lasting <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/environmental-science/ice-age/where-does-the-ice-age-fit/" target="_blank">as long as ~700 years</a>.<br />
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For the sake of discussion, let's grant this already implausible timeline from the young-Earth paradigm. Now, we are left with only ~700 years in which a handful of mammal 'kinds' <a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2014/02/18/testing-the-creationists-hyper-evolution-orchard-canines-felines-and-elephants/" target="_blank">must have diversified</a> (i.e. evolved) into thousands of species, migrated as far as 16,000 miles (~25,000 km), meanwhile reproducing at rate sufficient to account for millions of individual fossils, which represents but a fraction of the global population during the ice age (I consider only the most previous ice age, but there were actually several dozen!). Does this sound reasonable?<br />
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<i>A senseless census: ice-age mammal populations of the 'post-Flood' period</i><br />
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Fortunately for us, we can turn this thought experiment into a testable hypothesis: <i>if</i> modern mammal populations originated from a few kinds aboard Noah's ark, <i>then </i>we should expect regional populations to have been sparse in the first millennium after the flood, due to limitations on reproduction rate. For example, mammoths and mastodons reproduce at around 20–30 years of age, only after a relatively long gestational period. Even under the best-case (but still impossible) scenario of doubling the population every 20 years, it would take <i>400 years</i> to produce 1 million individuals from a single pair of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proboscidea" target="_blank">proboscideans</a>. Of course, not all of these would be mammoth, but would include elephants, mastodons, and other species within this 'kind'.<br />
<br />
Geological death traps, like the sinkhole cave in Wyoming, tend to work like a semi-biased population census. Only the most desperate or distracted individuals fell into the trap, but <i>all</i> of them had to be living or migrating in the vicinity of the cave. In other words, the pile of fossils at the bottom of this single cave—reportedly <a href="http://www.okcfox.com/story/26099058/wyoming-cave-with-fossil-secrets-to-be-excavated" target="_blank">as high as 30-feet!</a>—constitutes but a small fraction of the ice-age population living in the region that would become our great state of Wyoming. If thousands of individuals now rest in the bone graveyard, the regional mammalian population could not have been less than hundreds of thousands, if not millions.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYLohzdBPfXaUCIRPfyMBl-Yt-74sE7_Z8AgzljZVJOvPgsIFcvtDYv81hepn45juLDKGTgCb1TGmBzhHbgDkfdXh3QEZIln4b7BPFCqOtyiEkvfisPjGGLcYcOa3aXbI9pLku-zFa9mt/s1600/bones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkYLohzdBPfXaUCIRPfyMBl-Yt-74sE7_Z8AgzljZVJOvPgsIFcvtDYv81hepn45juLDKGTgCb1TGmBzhHbgDkfdXh3QEZIln4b7BPFCqOtyiEkvfisPjGGLcYcOa3aXbI9pLku-zFa9mt/s1600/bones.jpg" height="248" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Example of bones amassed in the Berelekh mammoth graveyard, northern Siberia.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Other mass graveyards exist around the globe, such as the Berelekh mammoth graveyard in Siberia. <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gea.21483/abstract" target="_blank">Pitulko et al. (2014</a>; <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gea.20342/abstract" target="_blank">2011</a>) report that most radiocarbon dates from mammoth bones and associated biological material fall between ~14,000–11,500 years ago—the latest interval of the last ice age, during which most mammoth went extinct around the globe. It is likely that humans played some role in the rapid accumulation of mammoths, given their common association with archaeological sites (e.g. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104061820700314X" target="_blank">Ugan and Byers, 2008</a>, or see <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379104002677" target="_blank">McNeil et al., 2005</a> for a North American study). In any case, these mass graves are found throughout Eurasia—e.g., Achchagyi–Allaikha in northeast Asia, Lugovskoe in western Siberia, Sevsk in western Russia, and Gary in the Ural mountains, among others, according to <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gea.20342/abstract" target="_blank">Pitulko et al., (2011)</a>—and have been used to estimate ice-age mammoth populations of <i>up to 5 million in Eurasia alone</i>. Conservative estimates might be lower, but we know the actual number is very high, and estimates grow each decade with new fossil discoveries.<br />
<br />
Young-Earth geologists would obviously <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2010/11/radiocarbon-evidence-for-antiquity-of.html" target="_blank">challenge the accuracy of these radiocarbon dates</a> and consider them 'apparently old', so let's consider how our <i>conventional</i> geological timeline might translate into theirs. Radiocarbon ages of ~12,000–18,000 years are everywhere associated with the last stage of the ice age and the extinction of most megafauna. These dates are far too old (or too inflated) to be less than ~3,000 years, because we have abundant corroboratory evidence from archeology and human history to confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dates during this interval, even to the satisfaction of young-Earth geologists. According to most 'Flood geologists', however, the post-Flood ice age ended no less than ~3,700 years ago. Therefore, we have a small window (~3–4,000 years ago) into which these mass accumulations of mammoth and other ice-age mammals must fall, from the perspective of a 'Creation scientist'. Already, we see that the populations of ice-age mammals, especially mammoth, were far too large to be accounted for within a young-Earth paradigm.<br />
<br />
<i>Around the globe: North American death trap, numero uno!</i><br />
<br />
If you follow the <i><a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/" target="_blank">Naturalis Historia</a></i> blog, you might remember reading about <a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2014/06/26/pit-of-bones-spain-human-origins-creationism/" target="_blank">Sima de los Huesos</a>, a Spanish cave full of hominid remains, or the <a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2014/07/16/nh-quotes-diluvialist-response-to-the-kirkdale-hyena-cave-buckland-geology-creationism/" target="_blank">Kirkdale Cave Hyena Den</a>. These two repositories are relatively small in terms of the unfortunate population sampled, but they present similarly unrealistic constraints on the young-Earth timeline and have long puzzled creationists. The widespread occurrence of such traps documents the diversity and size of animal populations that must have appeared shortly after the Flood and made the move from Ararat, exacerbating the historical absurdity of biblical literalism. To strengthen this case, I want to consider perhaps the most popular site in North America, which now traps only tourists. In 1828, a peculiar ranch was granted by the governor outside a budding Mexican town called <i>El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula</i>. Unbeknownst to the ranchers of the day, those smelly and unsightly, bubbling pools of natural asphalt that tainted the landscape had been the world's greatest sarcophaguses for thousands of years—mass mausoleums of a former age. Today, we can experience that history through the <a href="http://www.tarpits.org/" target="_blank">Page Museum</a>, which houses the collections of the La Brea Tar Pits in downtown West Los Angeles.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOydI4Es2P3lEwEir2juvupNtkRfqu6atpZH75J2ddjg-W2LNW09vMk5YU8nhq27fNIoUkVhBXLhZWR9IlyKzJNsedXW7eZ2h93o7PnbCqYlQZDoZ2j7jNlEM3296J7V9vg4U6xHHCibka/s1600/la-brea-tar-pits-los-angeles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOydI4Es2P3lEwEir2juvupNtkRfqu6atpZH75J2ddjg-W2LNW09vMk5YU8nhq27fNIoUkVhBXLhZWR9IlyKzJNsedXW7eZ2h93o7PnbCqYlQZDoZ2j7jNlEM3296J7V9vg4U6xHHCibka/s1600/la-brea-tar-pits-los-angeles.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outdoor exhibit at the La Brea Tar Pits. <a href="http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7679/20140620/see-fossils-up-close-and-personal-la-brea-tar-pits-reopen.htm" target="_blank">Photo credit</a>.</td></tr>
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The La Brea 'Tar Pits', which are formed by asphalt seeps (<i>tar</i> is manmade) from the petroleum-rich Monterey Formation, have been swallowing alive everything from pollen to giant predators for at least 50,000 years. To date, more than 1 million bones from over 230 vertebrate species have been recovered—a testament to the rich faunal diversity and abundance of southern California during the late Pleistocene. Of the vertebrate specimens, gentle giants like mastodon and ground sloth are indeed present, but the collection overwhelmingly consists of ice-age predators like the dire wolf and saber-toothed cats. For every grazing beast that could not escape the gooey grave, about <i>nine</i> predators and scavengers died trying to recover the free meal. Next time you order a hamburger at the drive-thru, just think, "The effort could be worse. At least I'm burning fuel and not breathing it..!"<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNd7_CxgoDlxkkCGMz4ndp2I3FzE6kV5cXwcFRjz9L9iVEwm1sOiktTVG16uEUyiz4S_tdfQytGQGYNhiokY9Qag4VWF8_IY-t3NeDJeJ6JvNtbjgP4H1IVbA1cJ7s_yH7j03WrvSqFWPf/s1600/dire_wolves.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNd7_CxgoDlxkkCGMz4ndp2I3FzE6kV5cXwcFRjz9L9iVEwm1sOiktTVG16uEUyiz4S_tdfQytGQGYNhiokY9Qag4VWF8_IY-t3NeDJeJ6JvNtbjgP4H1IVbA1cJ7s_yH7j03WrvSqFWPf/s1600/dire_wolves.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dire wolf skulls on display at the Page Museum.</td></tr>
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Paleontologists have now recovered the remains of more than 4,000 dire wolves and 2,000 saber-toothed cats from the pits, which provides an impressive census of local populations. Radiocarbon dates suggest at least two episodes of relatively abundant accumulation, around 40–50,000 years ago and ~26,000 years ago. So let's consider the implication of these tar pits for the 'Flood geologist'. If more than 4,000 wolves, to our knowledge, died trying to feast at a small set of tar pits in southern California, how many wolves <i>total</i> must have living in western North America during the last ice age? It is difficult enough to explain how a population of even <i>4,000</i> dire wolves could have appeared within 700 years after the Flood, more than 10,000 miles from Ararat, but young-Earth creationists must account for <i>millions</i> of individuals across the entire continent (along with every other species of the 'dog kind' so calmly referenced by Ken Ham). For example, dire wolf fossils <a href="http://news.unlv.edu/release/unlv-researchers-find-first-evidence-ice-age-wolves-nevada" target="_blank">have even been recovered near Las Vegas</a> in Tule Springs National Monument, another large repository of Columbian mammoth. If this scenario makes little sense for long-distance runners that breed quickly, how can we possibly explain the distribution and size of giant sloth populations in the Americas? It takes little analysis to see why the La Brea Tar Pits are a clear testament against the upcoming 'Ark Park' in Kentucky.<br />
<br />
<i>Be fruitful and multiply</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
The geological death traps discussed here are but a small sample of those found throughout the globe, which provide gruesome tales of an ancient age. If young-Earth creationists, particularly via the <i>Ark Encounter</i>, continue to make the preposterous claim that a small collection of animal 'kinds' evolved rapidly and distributed themselves across the continents, then we cannot be expected to take their worldview seriously. So long as Ken Ham and others conflate their efforts with evangelism, moreover, they will drag down the Christian church with their sea-unworthy ship. History is rife with warnings against braiding the gospel with bad science and poor politics, which Ham has ignored while taking the helm of a vessel that he deems unsinkable. Still, we are exhorted to pray <i>on Earth as in Heaven, let Your will be done</i> and commissioned with the task of bearing good fruit in a world of nuts. So this is my effort for the day. If you find this raspberry to be sweet, please don't hesitate to share, and pray that so many will no longer disregard God's rich satisfaction of our scientific curiosity.<br />
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-49529279588278481672014-07-23T14:47:00.001-07:002014-08-12T00:53:42.543-07:00Fragments of the Fossil Record: "Thigh Bone Disconnected from the Hip Bone..."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I still remember as though it was yesterday...<br />
<br />
Like a camp of rogue militants being tracked, the secluded site was interrupted suddenly by an unidentified chopper closing in. Everyone scrambled as the downwind thrust of the propeller kicked up more dust than could be warded off by canvases on hand, and indignation grew for the uninvited guest. The engine faded while the researchers regained their sight, only to be met by an elderly man with an ornamented cane. What could he possibly want, worth jeopardizing the operation at hand? He merely wished to broker a business deal like none before; he sought to resurrect dry bones from the dust and bring imagination to life.<br />
<br />
Such was the world's baptism into the cult of popular paleontology. Never again would we be unmoved by the sight of a dinosaur skeleton encased in solid rock, or fail to appreciate the paleontologist who reconnected our species with ancient forms of life. On that day in 1993, when <i>Jurassic Park</i> hit the big screen, we all learned something about digging for fossils. But this movie did for geology what <i>Indiana Jones</i> had done for archaeology: exaggerated the discipline to make it exciting and accessible to all of us. Therefore, I hope it's not too late to <i>un</i>learn something about digging for fossils—namely, that skeletons regularly appear intact.<br />
<br />
<i>The Fragmented Nature of the Fossil Record</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
No doubt, <a href="http://www.montana.edu/wwwes/facstaff/horner.htm" target="_blank">Dr. John "Jack" Horner</a> of Montana State University, on whom the character of Dr. Alan Grant is loosely based, has personally seen a few <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/15/t-rex-smithsonian_n_5152333.html" target="_blank"><i>nearly</i> complete skeletons</a> emerge from from dig sites around the world. But any paleontologist would be quick to point out that intact skeletal remains are by far the exception to the rule. We have been spoiled as spectators by the perfectly preserved <a href="http://www.fossilmuseum.net/fossilpictures-wpd/Archaeopteryx/Archaeopteryx.htm" target="_blank">Archeopoteryx</a> and the exceptional specimens of the <a href="http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Sites/GreenRiverSite.htm" target="_blank">Green River Formation</a>. But for every set of bones found in 'life' position, there are thousands found disconnected, broken, weathered, and scattered throughout the sediments.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRtEF-PMYYiLTLB_sZZvxBzl7mkHV2Ijd-UfK3G9syjRocObjzoItvvATsbCS9gRcsMHRBlpNFtAKDiHXoCSgxjXkX-ARyj-DyIArAFQiMqth0UmP_1CScDh41EmgEA-sKjFaYzrebuaL/s1600/juvenile_dino.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRtEF-PMYYiLTLB_sZZvxBzl7mkHV2Ijd-UfK3G9syjRocObjzoItvvATsbCS9gRcsMHRBlpNFtAKDiHXoCSgxjXkX-ARyj-DyIArAFQiMqth0UmP_1CScDh41EmgEA-sKjFaYzrebuaL/s1600/juvenile_dino.jpg" height="400" width="385" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Example of a nearly complete juvenile dinosaur (Bolong yixianensis, a species of Iguandontia), found in northeastern China. Image is Figure 2 from <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912963.2013.809347" target="_blank">Zheng et al. (2014)</a>.</td></tr>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCsQhLwpPKXsDIFa9nkkEsAEcmdalmFbOF_8fR3SpEjozDRCR7exP1hJe3OkAS9BFemEPN6qSEVgnnF2qYVCmt4qTdYpB68GCJk5N03ol7DAwU7bDE1UsXZuIdQJBA2gsjg09vOP9P2wSb/s1600/croc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCsQhLwpPKXsDIFa9nkkEsAEcmdalmFbOF_8fR3SpEjozDRCR7exP1hJe3OkAS9BFemEPN6qSEVgnnF2qYVCmt4qTdYpB68GCJk5N03ol7DAwU7bDE1UsXZuIdQJBA2gsjg09vOP9P2wSb/s1600/croc.jpg" height="154" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Single tooth from a large crocodile.<br />
Note penny for scale.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Several years ago, I had the privilege of assisting with vertebrate fossil collections from the Cretaceous rocks of Bryce Canyon National Park. In less than two months, we had recovered more than 11,000 individual fossils, of which precisely <i>zero</i> were 'intact'. Single specimens of teeth (fish, crocodile, shark, dinosaur), vertebrae, bony scales (especially gar fish), and turtle shell comprised the vast majority. Dinosaur bones were not uncommon, but in all but one case, the bone was so badly weathered down that we could not determine from which limb the fragment actually came (in this one case, the joint was preserved, so that the bone was recognizably a partial tibia). Perhaps the closest exception to this pattern was dense cluster of turtle shell. Of the dozens of individual fragments, we were able to piece together almost half of one turtle's carapace:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp-kfhueG2XsQHcdPMzwG9E_0EM2IDSZhoLSRG0BeTEa_xVG968R8IRfOgmlIWAy85xcj0U2QU_ZL-5xukyFaeGbovlnJHdIY1FIWrphbmsfuTAf9BnFEYj2B2nnakCvjMs12tpwlsy6Xj/s1600/turtle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp-kfhueG2XsQHcdPMzwG9E_0EM2IDSZhoLSRG0BeTEa_xVG968R8IRfOgmlIWAy85xcj0U2QU_ZL-5xukyFaeGbovlnJHdIY1FIWrphbmsfuTAf9BnFEYj2B2nnakCvjMs12tpwlsy6Xj/s1600/turtle.jpg" height="297" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lower carapace of a Late Cretaceous turtle, recovered from southern Utah.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The rarity of well preserved skeletons is explained by a subdiscipline of paleontology called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taphonomy" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">taphonomy</a>, which focuses on the conditions surrounding death and burial of a fossilized organism. Taphonomists analyze the morphological and chemical details of fossils, asking questions like "Was the organism exposed long at the surface or was the burial instant?" or "Was the water alkaline/acidic, oxic/anoxic, still or flowing?" These clues help to reconstruct the paleoevironments in which ancient life lived and ultimately died, aiding our understanding, for example, of how certain animals even behaved.<br />
<br />
The vast majority of fossilized bone exhibits at least some evidence of weathering at the surface. Though fossilization commonly involves "rapid" burial, skeletons can and often did spend many days or weeks exposed to the elements before nature locked them away. Exceptional preservation sells well, both at the gift shop and in education, but it remains exceptional. Certain environments, like stratified, alkaline lakes provide the ideal conditions for complete, intact skeletons. But most organism underwent a more brutal decay process after death, which explains the imbalanced levels of preservation, particularly in terrestrial fossil site.<br />
<br />
<i>A taphonomic perspective on Young-Earth Creationism</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Once we gain a proper perspective on the nature of the fossil record, it becomes clear why paleontologists continue to reject the proposals of so-called 'Flood Geology'. If the majority of fossil specimens were buried suddenly and catastrophically only ~5,000 years ago, then intact skeletons (even partial ones) should be widespread and common. While raging waters <i>do</i> have the potential to dismember fragile lifeforms, it is not to the extent that we actually find in sediments today: nearly every tooth pulled from the jaw, nearly every vertebrae unhinged from the next—basically <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dem_Bones" target="_blank">Dem Bones</a></i> sung in reverse. Connective tissues like cartilage are sufficiently strong to keep most skulls, limbs, and backbones together, as is evident in the tragic results of natural catastrophes today. <br />
<br />
On the other hand, the abundance of weathered fragments of only the most resilient bones (vertebrae, teeth, shells) fits perfectly within the conventional framework of paleontology. The Cretaceous rocks of Bryce Canyon National Park, along with most terrestrial sites from which dinosaurs are recovered, were formed largely by rivers and floodplains. Sedimentary structures help us to interpret features like migrating dune formations, levee overflow, and clay-rich lowlands, where the bony remains of rotting corpses are most likely to accumulate. Perhaps you've hiked past the remains of something like a deer or a snake, where only a pile of disconnected bones remains. If so, you can imagine that in a typical river plain, occasional floods are capable of burying the recently deceased for fossilization. These remains will scarcely resemble that famed velociraptor from the badlands of Hollywood-staged Montana, but such is the true face of vertebrate paleontology and the fragmented nature of the fossil record.<br />
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-5284554797073260592014-06-30T17:41:00.001-07:002014-07-01T17:40:20.621-07:00What Georgia Purdom could learn from TED Talks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In her recent blog post, Dr. Georgia Purdom of <i>Answers in Genesis</i> <a href="http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/georgia-purdom/2014/06/25/is-cancer-research-dependent-on-evolutionary-ideas/" target="_blank">criticized</a> an article by Dr. Scott Kaufman from <i><a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/04/ken-ham-obama-proves-bill-nye-wrong-about-evolution-with-white-house-science-fair/" target="_blank">The Raw Story</a></i>, who highlighted two projects at a White House science fair to demonstrate some inconsistency on the part of Ken Ham. The <i>Raw Story </i>piece followed up on a claim by Ham that none of the celebrated science fair projects depended on 'molecules-to-man' evolution. Ken Ham apparently sees this as support for his claims that creationism doesn't stifle real scientific development, contrary to the evidence I raised in <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-us-needs-more-scientists-and-ken.html" target="_blank">my last post</a>. Since two of the science fair projects addressed major developments in cancer research, however, Dr. Kaufman was quick to point out the hypocrisy in Ken Ham's claim. He writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The link [Ken Ham] included to the projects presented at the White House Science Fair... lists two studies of the behavior of cancer cells, both of which depend on theories of cellular development that are themselves predicated on evolutionary theory."</blockquote>
According to Dr. Purdom, modern cancer research need not appeal to the principles of evolutionary theory to function. But to make this claim, she must limit evolutionary theory to a piecemeal, nuanced derivative of the original—a rhetorical tactic not well understood by her audience. A more honest approach would be to admit openly: "Well yes, cancer research does draw on principles of evolutionary theory, but I am still critical of and reject several components of evolutionary theory."<br />
<br />
I will rely on those of you with stronger backgrounds in biology to clarify, augment, or correct my own position, but to my knowledge, human cancer research interacts with and depends on evolutionary theory in at least two important ways:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1. The genetic elements of cancerous cells are subject to (and often derive from) mutation, and so a major challenge of cancer research is understanding the evolution of individual diseases and the response by individual species (e.g. <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v417/n6892/abs/nature00766.html" target="_blank">Davies et al., 2002</a>; <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140624092530.htm" target="_blank">Domazet-Lošo et al., 2014</a>).<br />
2. The behavior and treatment of human cancers can be assessed through other mammals, like mice (e.g. <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7123/abs/nature05372.html" target="_blank">O'Brien et al., 2007</a>), on the grounds that humans share a common ancestry with these animals.</blockquote>
Like many Americans (perhaps including some of you), Georgia Purdom rejects that humans share a common ancestry with other animals, and she is free to try and defend that position. Chances are, she and likeminded creationists could contribute to ongoing cancer research. But it is fairly misleading to characterize this research as employing <i>only</i> the "tools of good observational science"—presumably in contrast with broken tools of bad, historical science?—or to pretend that evolutionary theory "has nothing to do with it". In the words of Dr. Paul Davies (quoted <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140624092530.htm" target="_blank">here</a>), "we will fully understand cancer only in the context of biological history."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit3gdB9cboMpscZm39IesuVzAHitVXFZqZCtVUK72oVQXaNK5tzgqKca4y_NRRphDR8lgNBRSdskX_5N6yfUVFww8-r3_k0HWuupFWfEnq9mQhdjL-Z4akWMJq3kpLlSMRVwL3sv1vrZVm/s1600/PurdomScience.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit3gdB9cboMpscZm39IesuVzAHitVXFZqZCtVUK72oVQXaNK5tzgqKca4y_NRRphDR8lgNBRSdskX_5N6yfUVFww8-r3_k0HWuupFWfEnq9mQhdjL-Z4akWMJq3kpLlSMRVwL3sv1vrZVm/s1600/PurdomScience.jpg" height="252" width="500" /></a></div>
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Dr. Purdom's mischaracterization of science, which propagates the <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2012/04/understanding-historical-science.html" target="_blank">false dichotomy</a> between 'observational' and 'historical' science, along with her downplaying the role of certain fields in biology, all contribute to the growing negative attitude among evangelicals toward careers in science. The satire piece by Scott Kaufman (who, Dr. Purdom kindly reminds us, <i>only</i> has a Ph.D. in Literature) is thus in line with the thesis of my previous post and elucidates the rhetorical effort by Answers in Genesis to disassociate mainstream geology and evolutionary theory from the rest of science (you know, the part that's 'successful'). So I would like to thank Dr. Kaufman, who—despite his 'meager' credentials—seems to understand the nature of science better than Dr. Purdom and is willing to share that knowledge with others.<br />
<br />
<i><a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/naomi_oreskes_why_we_should_believe_in_science" target="_blank">"Why we should trust scientists"</a></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
The link above is to a recent TED talk given by Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science. Therein, she addresses the paradox of science communication: <i>all</i> of us must appeal to authority—an informal logical fallacy—to accept conclusions reached by scientists outside of our own specialty, but we should still trust scientists and the conclusions they reach in consensus.<br />
<br />
Most relevant to this discussion, Dr. Oreskes takes a closer look at the scientific method, which is commonly oversimplified by textbooks. She demonstrates how aspects of observation, hypothesis, laws of nature, and historical evidence have worked in conjunction through a not-so-well defined method. Scientists have to be creative to solve the diversity of research problems they face, and most endeavors will involve both 'historical' and 'observational' methodologies. According to Dr. Oreskes, however, the robustness of the scientific method is <i>not</i> the basis for our trust in scientific consensus. The way she arrives at this conclusion is fairly intriguing, so I won't spoil it here.<br />
<br />
In the introduction, this talk appeals to a slight mischaracterization of Pascal's wager and what initially appears to be an unfair contrast of faith and science (keep watching, it's not). In the end, though, I would highly recommend the video to inform your own thoughts on the nature of science and/or facilitate discussion (I suppose that is the goal of TED talks, right?).<br />
<br /></div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-10366707298429016892014-06-25T16:18:00.000-07:002014-07-24T18:48:16.670-07:00The U.S. needs more scientists, and Ken Ham isn't helping<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In February of this year, millions of Americans tuned in to see how popular scientist Bill Nye would fare in public exchange with Ken Ham, president of the largest organization promoting young-Earth creationism. I've already given <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/02/ham-and-nye-agree-ken-hams-creation.html" target="_blank">my thoughts</a> on the debate, but a few weeks after the fact, a good friend of mine challenged a key accusation from Bill Nye, which got me thinking. During his closing remarks, Nye exhorted the audience to extinguish YEC from the public sphere for the sake of our society:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."</blockquote>
<br />
I don't doubt the sincerity of Nye's invitation, with which I (and many of you) can empathize fully. The underlying implication, however, is that one cannot succeed in the natural sciences if one is caught up in the young-Earth paradigm touted by Ken Ham. Being the sharp public speaker that he is, Mr. Ham anticipated this sort of accusation in his opening presentation, during which he broadcasted short interviews with U.S. scientists that accept the young-Earth position. I would conjecture that Nye's exhortation thus fell on deaf ears among the audience, who had just witnessed firsthand that YEC's <i>can</i> be effective scientists and engineers.<br />
<br />
<i>Evolution and technological development</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
In particular, Ken Ham highlighted the work of creationist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Vahan_Damadian" target="_blank">Raymond Damadian</a>, who invented the MRI. Through this case in point, Ken Ham established well that believing in a young Earth and rejecting evolution does not <i>necessarily</i> cripple you from solving scientific problems and developing the technology needed in our modern world.<br />
<br />
Ham proceeded to challenge Nye to cite one piece of technology that could not have been developed apart from accepting an 'old Earth' and 'molecules-to-man' evolution. We should give Mr. Ham credit for making his point clearly, but in the spirit of honest discourse, we must recognize that his challenge is extremely misguided.<br />
<br />
In limiting this challenge to 'pieces of technology', Ken Ham subtly tried to link the theory of evolution to all other disciplines, as though this foundational principle <i>of biology</i> were some sort of epistemological framework on which all secular knowledge is built. This overstated connection—completely foreign to actual scientists and most Christians—is illustrated well in a couple graphics used by AiG and creationists around the web. The first appeared in Ken Ham's presentation, as I recall:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV6pPVq0rA5tgMqLRCZCQIifl8bI9u_K10_gSX0QSiJQhfc-9kY62lC2VXj13HSVd9CA4ENOyvu8RRdnrud0gz8PsJjzL7w-tfdGYdABF0bdoxW6-oTVTyo8iLoobH_9UnM0P0VjqBpziy/s1600/castlesinconflict.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV6pPVq0rA5tgMqLRCZCQIifl8bI9u_K10_gSX0QSiJQhfc-9kY62lC2VXj13HSVd9CA4ENOyvu8RRdnrud0gz8PsJjzL7w-tfdGYdABF0bdoxW6-oTVTyo8iLoobH_9UnM0P0VjqBpziy/s1600/castlesinconflict.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
According to this cartoon, believing in evolution and/or 'millions of years' constitutes a philosophical framework that sprouts all the world's problems, as well as an attack on the integrity of sacred scripture. Alternatively, this set of beliefs is a tree of 'bad fruit' that is rooted in sin:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicS9yD2YAAADfW0m0sFJx3V7RA7aff5WY9WV_AkaR0CLbhByyycWHoYB8g0PNUgJoG416bIyC4lRBGs7qcF0v4qvBuH_TMHbo1CjdvqFmMwpB7Bz6rvolM9BK0sJxHDiedTYhE78IIRcxd/s1600/evolutiontree.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicS9yD2YAAADfW0m0sFJx3V7RA7aff5WY9WV_AkaR0CLbhByyycWHoYB8g0PNUgJoG416bIyC4lRBGs7qcF0v4qvBuH_TMHbo1CjdvqFmMwpB7Bz6rvolM9BK0sJxHDiedTYhE78IIRcxd/s1600/evolutiontree.gif" height="320" width="296" /></a></div>
<br />
What is missing from this implied philosophical connection is a sound argument to support it. The theory of evolution is <i>not</i> morally prescriptive (i.e. it cannot tell you what you <i>ought</i> to do in life); rather, it is an explanatory framework through which relevant data in biology, geology, anthropology, etc. are scientifically coherent. If we share a common ancestry with other primates, it does not logically follow that you can freely rape women (<a href="http://www.godofevolution.com/some-memes-about-young-earth-creationist-author-darek-isaacs/" target="_blank">as YEC Darek Isaacs put it</a>). Following the logic of Ken Ham, the observed fact that genocidal dictators with military support often <i>do</i> get their way would imply that they <i>ought</i> to get their way. As for the rest of us, we can distinguish between an objectively <i>descriptive</i> theory in science and a morally <i>prescriptive</i> philosophy.<br />
<br />
Ham's false dichotomy between a system where "man decides truth" and "God's word is truth" serves well to keep his audience skeptical of both evolution and mainstream geology. Ultimately, however, we must deal with the fact that to read and understand God's word, we utilize the same cognitive abilities that allow us to reconstruct the common ancestry of life on Earth over millions of years.<br />
<br />
Coming back to Ken Ham's challenge, we might be hard pressed to find a piece of technology that <i>demands</i> a belief in evolution or an old Earth. Of course, this is as meaningful as finding a successful businessman who rejects string theory. On the other hand, thousands of scientific instruments (including mass spectrometers, seismic detectors, and equipment to read the human genome) were developed to test hypotheses that confirmed 'molecules-to-man' evolution and an old Earth. Genuine scientific inquiry <i style="font-weight: bold;">inspires and facilitates</i> technological development like a catalyst, so as far as I'm concerned, Ham's challenge has been answered countless times.<br />
<br />
<i>Why are Evangelicals underrepresented in the sciences?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
So it's possible to be a creationist that designs medical equipment, invents better cell phones, or builds spacecraft. But how does the prevalence of young-Earth creationism affect public attitudes toward science? I would hypothesize that by selectively undermining entire subdisciplines (like geochronology, climatology, or evolutionary ecology), Ken Ham and his organization have all but extinguished the genuine curiosity that would otherwise drive members of his audience toward those fields. Why spend 6 years in poverty (i.e. graduate school) to specialize in a subject rooted in lies and bad science? Why contribute to scientific research that begins with a rejection of God's word? Intentionally or not, Ken Ham has scared young scientists from taking the necessary steps to realize their dreams and make an impact on the scientific community. If you believe that the Bible is God's word, and God's word is truth, then this is a step backward for Christianity.<br />
<br />
And even if you don't, but still believe that science is foundational to modern society, you can agree this is a step backward for humanity.<br />
<br />
Only two weeks after the Ham/Nye debate, <i>Christianity Today</i> <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/february-web-only/study-2-million-scientists-identify-as-evangelical.html" target="_blank">reported on a study</a> that confirmed my suspicions. Despite the overall positive tone, given that a large percentage of 'rank and file' scientists identify as Christian, I noticed immediately that Christians are underrepresented in the scientific community compared to the general population. This feature is quantified in Table 5 of the original study by <a href="http://elainehowardecklund.blogs.rice.edu/files/2014/02/RU_AAASPresentationNotes_2014_0220.pdf" target="_blank">Ecklund (2014)</a> from Rice University:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8D77CL9Xdu8POU6V_hanRRLQkfZydC8Am7QnRht4zRQaWjn1lGy0qpj64GltngbSQT7RKNb4VxMJD6bnD9LtFVnkcZL5N_a7-EBNcfuYZkHP6bHAR3sLw2DrOdrOCqCmLJ-yy6lVsBPzA/s1600/EcklundTable5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8D77CL9Xdu8POU6V_hanRRLQkfZydC8Am7QnRht4zRQaWjn1lGy0qpj64GltngbSQT7RKNb4VxMJD6bnD9LtFVnkcZL5N_a7-EBNcfuYZkHP6bHAR3sLw2DrOdrOCqCmLJ-yy6lVsBPzA/s1600/EcklundTable5.jpg" height="271" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
According to these polling data (n = 10,241), Evangelical Protestants are the single most <i>under</i>represented religious group among U.S. scientists. Mainline Protestants and Catholics, who are more likely to accept mainstream biology/geology, are slightly better represented, consistent with my purported connection to the 'science skepticism' of creationist claims. Ecklund (2014, p. 13–14) writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Evangelical Protestants... are more than twice as likely as the overall sample to say they would turn to a religious text, a religious leader, or people at their congregation if they had a question about science."</blockquote>
It is important to note that being religious does not necessarily deter one from becoming a scientist in the U.S. While atheists/agnostics are better represented among scientists, unsurprisingly, it is not nearly to the same extent as Jewish Americans or the catch-all category of Middle and Far Eastern faiths. So I would encourage you to read the original study, which I don't intend to review exhaustively here.<br />
<br />
<i>Conclusion</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Among religious groups where YEC ministries have the greatest impact, relatively fewer congregants pursue careers in the natural sciences. Ken Ham may believe that one can be an effective scientist as a creationist, and he may be right. But Bill Nye's exhortation to extinguish YEC from the public sphere for the sake of modern society is equally valid. It appears the prevalence of YEC in the U.S. <i>can</i> impact our reputation as a leader of research, technology, and design.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-71767152805480587312014-06-24T16:09:00.002-07:002014-06-24T16:43:02.000-07:00"Best evidences for a young Earth": Snelling and our salty seas, Part 3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>(continued from <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/06/best-evidences-for-young-earth-snelling_23.html" target="_blank">Part 2</a>)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
In case you are now exhausted by the topic of salt in the oceans, I want to reassure you: this is the light at the end of the tunnel.<br />
<br />
Thus far, I have tried to examine closely and honestly the methodology of <a href="http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/The-Seas-Missing-Salt.pdf" target="_blank">Austin and Humphreys (1990)</a>, which I described as unscientific and oversimplified. By no means is this a personal attack, as I have documented precisely how Austin and Humphreys have ignored or miscited key data and thus employed unjustifiably simple models to convince readers that the oceans must be younger than 62 million years. They tout confidence not shared by the very authors they cite. Furthermore, they have been resilient in the face of criticism, refusing to update their model despite that more research is available every year, which could drastically improve it.<br />
<br />
In the <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/06/best-evidences-for-young-earth-snelling_23.html" target="_blank">last post</a>, I focused on the various mechanisms by which sodium is added to the world's oceans. By reading through all sources cited by Austin and Humphreys, as well as newer studies from the past 24 years, I found numerous flaws in the 'sodium inputs' reported by Austin and Humphreys and utilized in their model. Most of their figures far overestimated the amount of sodium carried to the oceans, and some of the proposed mechanisms add no sodium whatsoever on geological timescales. These authors are thus guilty of some basic errors in accounting, as well as some basic misunderstandings of geochemistry, for which they ought to be held responsible. But that is the nature of science: we open our research to criticism, by which it might be refined. If we refuse to accept that criticism, science cannot advance.<br />
<br />
In this final post, I will briefly address the 'sodium outputs' reported by Austin and Humphreys (1990), followed by a 'balanced checkbook' of the global sodium cycle that shows why the oceans are <i>not</i> missing salt.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz_IBPwjlMdwmqoCCJ79dEQiUd2lZtMhyphenhyphenzJHar_xjuUFpZ8Wt6p3IfzqoUgskiLToL04mFqkjeVqe4ewsQXCkcqHJGqOxhx862wd0VIxOT_1evB6u-F4YOBXNnlzby8k7_q1aRVzWlRVhd/s1600/Table2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz_IBPwjlMdwmqoCCJ79dEQiUd2lZtMhyphenhyphenzJHar_xjuUFpZ8Wt6p3IfzqoUgskiLToL04mFqkjeVqe4ewsQXCkcqHJGqOxhx862wd0VIxOT_1evB6u-F4YOBXNnlzby8k7_q1aRVzWlRVhd/s1600/Table2.jpg" height="181" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Table 2</b> from Austin and Humphreys (1990), summarizing<br />
model outputs of Na from the ocean. Units are in 10<sup>10</sup> kg/yr.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Sodium Outputs</b><br />
<br />
<i>1. Sea spray</i><br />
<br />
One of the most active and constant processes by which salt is removed from the oceans is felt by anyone that spends much time at (or lives near) the beach. Rust and corrosion are constant worries for any machinery exposed to the sea breeze, which is full of salty droplets of water. Austin and Humphreys (1990, p. 5) describe sea spray rather well:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Waves of the sea, especially breaking waves along the shore, produce air bubbles in the water. Collapse of these bubbles shoots into the air droplets of seawater which evaporate to form microscopic crystals of halite. Crystals of halite are carried with other aerosols by the winds from the ocean to the continents."</blockquote>
While sea spray <i>does</i> remove massive quantities of salt from the oceans (Austin and Humpreys estimate 60 million tons/year of sodium, Table 2), the vast majority of this salt returns swiftly to the oceans via rivers and groundwater. You may recall from last post, I likened the process to withdrawing $20 and immediately re-depositing the money into your account. Since I determined the long-term sodium input from sea spray to be 0 tons/year, we must also remove sea spray as a sodium <i>output</i>.<br />
<br />
By comparing Table 2 to Table 1 from Austin and Humphreys, we find that sodium lost via sea spray is greater than sodium gained by ~5 million tons/year. I cannot say whether this imbalance was intentional, but it may reflect a real, albeit minor, long-term loss of sodium to the continents. For example, some sea spray particles will end up falling as rain over the Great Basin of the United States, but no rivers drain from the Great Basin to the oceans. In other words, these bits of salt will eventually get buried in sediments or groundwater storage on the continent, providing a long-term sodium sink.<br />
<br />
From a 'deep-time' perspective of geology, those continental reservoirs of sediment and groundwater may eventually be uplifted and eroded into the oceans. Therefore, it becomes impractical to calculate precisely how much sodium is lost, <i>long-term</i>, via sea spray; we simply know that the amount should be greater than zero.<br />
<br />
For the purpose of this discussion, I will follow <a href="http://www.ajsonline.org/content/305/3/220.abstract" target="_blank">Holland (2005)</a> and consider the long-term sodium output via sea spray to be <b>0 tons/year</b>. But we might allow the sodium loss to continents to be as high as the minimum imbalance from Austin and Humphreys (1990), which is <b>5 million tons/year</b>.<br />
<br />
<i>2. Ion exchange</i><br />
<br />
Cation exchange is a blessing to those with 'hard water', as water softeners work by exchanging calcium and magnesium for 'softer' ions like sodium. In the oceans, the process works in reverse: clay minerals tend to absorb sodium while releasing calcium and magnesium back into the oceans. Since clay minerals are abundant as suspended particles in river water, the rivers deliver millions of 'sodium-absorbent' sponges every year.<br />
<br />
Austin and Humphreys cite a handful of studies that attempt to estimate the total uptake of sodium via cation exchange. These estimates have not change substantially in recent years, and Holland (2005) uses the same figure (35 million tons/year) in his table. Of course, the total amount depends strongly on the amount and composition of sediments delivered to the oceans, which means that it will vary on geological timescales with riverine inputs of sodium. Therefore, we can take the flux used by Austin and Humphreys as a reasonable, if not a high-end, estimate of sodium lost via cation exchange: <b>35 million tons/year</b>.<br />
<br />
<i>3. Burial of pore water</i><br />
<br />
Marine sediments dominated by clays in particular are extremely porous, meaning that abundant seawater is present between the particles. In short, the seawater gets buried within the sediments, along with the salt it contains. Austin and Humphreys cite an earlier, rather crude estimate of sodium loss via pore-water burial of <b>22 million tons/year</b>.<br />
<br />
We should note that pore-water burial is a complex process, accompanied by numerous chemical reactions (e.g. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703712005558" target="_blank">Scholz et al., 2013</a>). Therefore, it is difficult to estimate precisely the total flux of <i>any</i> element, let alone sodium. In addition, the rate at which marine sediments are buried will vary on geological timescales, depending on the rate and character of global tectonics. During the formation of major mountain belts (like the Andes, Rockies, and Sierra Nevadas), we should expect greater rates of sediment accumulation and pore-water burial, in particular because such mountain ranges are accompanied by deep-water ocean trenches, in which miles of sediment accumulate relatively 'rapidly'.<br />
<br />
<i>4. Halite deposition</i><br />
<br />
Austin and Humphreys' assessment of halite (NaCl) deposition is rather misleading. They note correctly that modern marine sediments are "nearly devoid of halite", but do not address completely why this would be characteristic of Earth history. Halite deposition is limited by the fact that halite (NaCl, or 'table salt') is extremely soluble in water. For seawater to precipitate NaCal typically requires that a body of seawater become isolated from the oceans, after which an evaporative basin forms under intensely arid conditions. One example of this phenomenon in relatively recent geological history is the Mediterranean Sea, under which thick deposits of salt are buried under younger sedimentary layers. The Natural Historian blog on this topic provides <a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2012/09/08/salty-sea-part-3-young-earth-creationism/" target="_blank">an excellent graphic description</a> of the process and these Mediterranean deposits.<br />
<br />
In their discussion, Austin and Humphreys (1990) do acknowledge the existence of such halite deposits in the geologic column, but do not consider it to be a significant sodium sink. To establish this, they divide the global inventory of Phanerozoic halite deposits (4.4x10<sup>18</sup> kg of sodium) by the length of the Phanerozoic (they use 600 million years) to produce a 'time-averaged estimate' of sodium loss through halite deposition: 7.3 million tons/year of sodium. This number is much smaller than other fluxes of sodium to/from the oceans, so they proceed with confidence (p. 8):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"...it is extremely unlikely that the “time averaged” halite output contains a significant error. No major quantity of halite in the earth’s crust could have escaped our detection."</blockquote>
Austin and Humphreys derive their estimate of global halite deposits from an earlier study by <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/1170.html" target="_blank">Holland (1984)</a>. Now, what might have changed since 1984? For one, the ability of salt deposits to prime crude oil for harvest has made them a valuable target for petroleum exploration in recent decades. Hence we know far more now about the extent of halite deposits than we did 30 years ago.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, the global inventory of halite deposits (~32x10<sup>18</sup> kg; <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018206002483" target="_blank">Hay et al. 2006</a>) is <b><i>~3 times larger</i></b> than the estimate used by Austin and Humphreys. Based on fluid inclusion analysis and mass balance calculations, Hay et al. (2006) further estimate that about 50% of halite has eroded back into the oceans over the course of the Phanerozoic (an assumption shared by Austin and Humphreys). According to these data, the time-averaged flux of sodium from the oceans via halite deposition is <b>~35–41 million tons/year</b>. This figure is close to the maximum flux via halite deposition in Table 2.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLFb1QQMgyQWL9lD7vQGw1RWpCK_6jc9giZYEdwpp-tzrG62vGvBxo7BcWLXd5ExkESlBdsufeuqzcHtUsVbmwjGLCsqB8y7zOMjdomVMg-yN4HNgpk7aVDoFg0T5S18nJ7dkB-HH8qzG/s1600/Hay2006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtLFb1QQMgyQWL9lD7vQGw1RWpCK_6jc9giZYEdwpp-tzrG62vGvBxo7BcWLXd5ExkESlBdsufeuqzcHtUsVbmwjGLCsqB8y7zOMjdomVMg-yN4HNgpk7aVDoFg0T5S18nJ7dkB-HH8qzG/s1600/Hay2006.jpg" height="250" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 5</b> from Hay et al. (2006); the distribution of halite deposition by<br />
geological age over the course of the Phanerozoic. Large outcrops of<br />
Cretaceous (K) aged salt deposits are known from Texas, Mexico,<br />
Portugal, and Spain.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In the last post, I suggested that sodium inputs/outputs via chloride solution and halite deposition should not be included in a long-term model of the sodium cycle, because eventually, these halite deposits will be eroded back into the oceans. Technically, we could remove both quantities from the final table. Having included them, however, we can confirm that the estimated fluxes I've provided are consistent with observed data. If, on average, 38 million tons/year of sodium are removed from the oceans via halite deposition, and 17.6 million tons/year of sodium are added to the oceans via chloride solution in rivers, then we can expect that after 600 million years, 12.2x10<sup>18</sup> kg of sodium should now be locked up in Phanerozoic halite deposits. Since sodium is 1/3 the mass of halite (NaCl), that makes 36.6x10<sup>18</sup> kg of halite. This figure is only slightly more than 32x10<sup>18</sup> kg, the documented global inventory of Phanerozoic halite deposits from Hay et al. (2006). Within uncertainty, therefore, my refinement of Austin and Humphreys' model is accurate for the past 600 million years.<br />
<br />
<i>5. Alteration of basalt</i><br />
<br />
Sodium removal via low-temperature alteration of basalt on the seafloor constitutes a relatively minor sink. This rate is dependent on that of seafloor spreading, and so it will vary over geological history, but the total flux is too small to impact significantly the final calculation. I don't see anything problematic with the figure, so I will keep Austin and Humphreys' cited flux of <b>4.4–6.2 million tons/year</b> of sodium.<br />
<br />
6. Albite formation<br />
<br />
I discussed at length in the last post why albite formation is a significant sink of sodium from the oceans and concluded that <b>25.3 million tons/year</b> of sodium are removed via this process. This is one of the more significant errors in the model by Austin and Humphreys (1990), who mistakenly supposed that sodium was added to seawater through off-axial vents near mid-ocean ridges.<br />
<br />
7. Zeolite formation<br />
<br />
This final sodium output is likewise so small, that it will scarcely impact the final calculation. Again, I see nothing problematic with the figure cited by Austin and Snelling, so I will leave it intact.<br />
<br />
<b>The Global Sodium Cycle in Perspective</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
After examining all of the supposed inputs and outputs of sodium to and from the world's oceans, we can evaluate the argument by Austin and Snelling (1990) through an updated table:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqRNKPbuJVzsIXCF20yOwgkufE4_KBjWZDyRsUWIezrxFhAnWlEF9uK0U5-3-pj8dBkKVCsKMvGz9sC3lKgCuO5qzbjchj-7DLHi3ybSmgnu3A9CAHG7hK9XGElTVMIqnciL88SPHgdjW4/s1600/FinalTable.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqRNKPbuJVzsIXCF20yOwgkufE4_KBjWZDyRsUWIezrxFhAnWlEF9uK0U5-3-pj8dBkKVCsKMvGz9sC3lKgCuO5qzbjchj-7DLHi3ybSmgnu3A9CAHG7hK9XGElTVMIqnciL88SPHgdjW4/s1600/FinalTable.jpg" height="260" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Revised table of sodium fluxes to/from the oceans, as compared to Austin and Humphreys (1990). Uncertainty estimates represent 20% of total flux, as suggested by Holland (2005). Therefore, the total sodium input of 138.7 million tons/year is within uncertainty of the total sodium output of 126.4 million tons/year. According to these figures, the oceans are in steady state with respect to the sodium cycle, and the 'salt chronometer' provides no challenge to their conventional age of 3 billion years.</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Immediately evident from this revised table is the fact that Austin and Humphreys (1990) significantly inflated and overestimated sodium inputs to the oceans. They accomplished this goal by the selective sampling of literature (some of which was already outdated by the time of their publication) and the use of high-end estimates without reporting uncertainties. In addition, they assumed (sometimes blindly) that these fluxes should stay the same over geological time. In fact, none of them should remain constant over tens of millions of years, given the dynamic complexities of our Earth systems.<br />
<br />
The flux of sodium to and from the oceans via these various processes is not extremely well understood, even in the modern day. The processes are complex and must be estimated from limited data. Unfortunately, Austin and Humphreys could not afford to be honest about the nature of geology when it comes to documenting global geochemical cycles. In any case, we may finally put to rest the argument that the ocean's salt content limits the theoretical age to only 62 million years. Given that sodium inputs and outputs are essentially in balance, this upper limit crumbles entirely and is rendered scientifically meaningless.</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-7475835254692556892014-06-23T17:25:00.002-07:002014-06-23T23:05:08.339-07:00"Best evidences for a young Earth": Snelling and our salty seas, Part 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(continued from <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/06/best-evidences-for-young-earth-snelling.html" target="_blank">Part 1</a>)<br />
<br />
I have already concluded that attempts by Snelling, Austin, and Humphreys to estimate a maximum age of Earth's oceans are both unscientific and inaccurate. More recent work (e.g. by <a href="http://www.ajsonline.org/content/305/3/220.abstract" target="_blank">Holland, 2005</a>) determined that no long-term surplus of salt (or even just sodium) exists that would limit the theoretical age of the oceans to a few tens of millions of years. Regardless, YEC's continue to tout the 'salt chronometer' as convincing evidence against the conventional age of the Earth by citing <a href="http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/The-Seas-Missing-Salt.pdf" target="_blank">Austin and Humphreys (1990)</a>, whose model has not been updated in more than two decades. Therefore, I want examine more closely this classic YEC model to determine whether it ever offered a valid, scientific challenge.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>"The Sea's Missing Salt": Austin and Humphreys (1990) propose a dilemma</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The known and conjectured processes which deliver and remove dissolved sodium (Na<sup>+</sup>) to and from the ocean are inventoried. Only 27% of the present Na<sup>+</sup> delivered to the ocean can be accounted for by known removal processes. This indicates that the Na<sup>+</sup> concentration of the ocean is not today in “steady state” as supposed by evolutionists, but is increasing with time. The present rate of increase (about 3 × 10<sup>11</sup> kg/yr) cannot be accommodated into evolutionary models assuming cyclic or episodic removal of input Na<sup>+</sup> and a 3-billion-year-old ocean. The enormous imbalance shows that the sea should contain much more salt than it does today if the evolutionary model were true. A differential equation containing minimum input rates and maximum output rates allows a maximum age of the ocean of 62 million years to be calculated. The data can be accommodated well into a creationist model." <i>-Excerpt from the abstract, <a href="http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/The-Seas-Missing-Salt.pdf" target="_blank">Austin and Humphreys (1990)</a></i></blockquote>
The methodology by Austin and Humphreys is as straightforward as balancing your own bank account: subtract your total number of monthly expenses from your total monthly incomes, and you can calculate the net monthly change to the account. Their conclusion is likewise as simple as the following logic: last month, I added $100 to my account, so I currently have $1,100 in the account; therefore, my account could not have been opened more than 11 months ago.<br />
<br />
Imagine this describes your bank account, which you actually opened some 20 years ago. You might be quick to respond in several ways: 1) the net change to my account is not always positive, because sometimes I spend more than I earn; 2) the net change to my account has not been $100 <i>every</i> month, but has been more or less in the past; or 3) if there is an error in accounting, I didn't actually add $100 to my account. As it turns out, all three responses can be given to Austin and Humphreys, who—despite more than 30 years of new research on the Earth's oceans and geochemistry—have not updated their 'accounting'.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho32DJeaxCgne4DbprV9LnKDJ-M1jhYCiG-msxWCqUn7Rokxh8HesCbphZ6b-dlZJd1_iiRpB96bY_10KtKgVQPQmgv_NwNwwMLgkFtK77GiId234YqCPdK4EuPN2tA629a12jsEtnGp0D/s1600/NaTable1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho32DJeaxCgne4DbprV9LnKDJ-M1jhYCiG-msxWCqUn7Rokxh8HesCbphZ6b-dlZJd1_iiRpB96bY_10KtKgVQPQmgv_NwNwwMLgkFtK77GiId234YqCPdK4EuPN2tA629a12jsEtnGp0D/s1600/NaTable1.jpg" height="320" width="307" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Table 1 from Austin and Humphreys (1990), summarizing<br />
model inputs of Na to the oceans. Units are in 10<sup>10</sup>kg/yr.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Sodium inputs</b></div>
<i>1. Rivers: Sea-spray component</i><br />
The first item in Table 1 of Austin and Humphreys (1990) indicates that 50–55 million tons of sodium are added to the oceans via droplets of water containing sea salt, which fell into rivers draining into ocean basins. The origin of this sodium, however, is the ocean itself. As waves crash over the ocean, tiny droplets of salty water are carried off by the wind and deposited over the continents. Since this mass of sodium moves directly from the oceans to the rivers and then back again, it should not be included in the table of inputs. If you draw $20 from your account, only to deposit it back into the account, the net change is zero. Therefore, the real influx of sodium via sea-spray input to rivers is <b>0 tons/year</b>.<br />
<br />
<i>2. Rivers: silicate weathering</i><br />
Austin and Humphreys cite Meybeck (1987), who estimated that ~62 million tons of sodium are dissolved through chemical weathering of silicate minerals (e.g. feldspar) and delivered to the oceans via rivers. This estimate is based on modern analyses of rivers and major watersheds, however, and Meybeck notes that precise masses are very difficult to assess, due to a lack of direct measurements. Assuming the accuracy of their figure, in any case, we should also note how this number (62 million tons) can vary through time. <i>Nobody</i> expects that it would remain constant over hundreds of millions of years.<br />
<br />
First, sodium delivery via silicate weathering depends on the global weathering rate, which itself depends on climate, sea level, and global tectonics. Glacial conditions enhance silicate weathering by crushing millions of tons of silicate minerals into fine powder, which gets washed downstream to the oceans. Therefore, sodium delivery should be less for a majority of Earth history, during which glaciers were absent. Higher sea level limits the amount of land (particularly sodium-rich coastal sediments) exposed to chemical weathering and erosion. Therefore, sodium delivery should be less for a majority of Earth history, during which sea level was higher and less land area was exposed. Finally, the formation of large mountain ranges, particularly where annual precipitation is high, contributes substantially to modern silicate weathering. Relatively recent mountain belts like the Himalayan and Sierra Nevadan ranges expose more silicate minerals to chemical weathering and erosion. They also promote strong precipitation (rain/snow) over the continents, by forcing air masses upward. Therefore, sodium delivery should be less for periods of Earth history when massive orogenic belts did not exist.<br />
<br />
In any case, more recent work by Holland (2005) provides a better estimate of sodium from silicate weathering. Therefore, the total influx of sodium via silicate weathering should be <b>≤55 million tons/year.</b><br />
<b><br /></b><i>3. Rivers: chloride solution</i><br />
In the modern geological setting, a small percentage of the land area (<2%) is comprised of some very salty rocks. These small outcrops of halite, gypsum, and ancient marine clays contribute a relatively <i>huge</i> proportion of sodium to rivers draining into the oceans (today, as much as 75 million tons/year, including agricultural runoff). Quite simply, rock salt is far more soluble than minerals like feldspar, so any exposures of rock salt at the Earth's surface will erode thousands of times faster than, say, granite and other silicate rocks.<br />
<br />
Before we consider "chloride solution" to be a long-term Na input to the oceans, however, we need to ask: what is the source of sodium in these rocks? Geologists agree unanimously that these Na-rich minerals were precipitated largely from seawater, either as ocean basins became isolated (e.g. the Mediterranean Sea) when sea level was much lower, or as warmer climates evaporated more water from shallow seas. Whatever the mechanism, this source of sodium to the oceans <i><b>ultimately derived from the same oceans!</b> </i>That being the case, Austin and Humphreys are wrong to include this flux in their table without adding it directly to the other side, because in the long-term, <i>no more sodium can be dissolved from marine salt deposits than was removed at some point in the past</i>.<br />
<br />
In terms of our analogy from accounting, imagine that you sporadically withdrew money from your account and hid $20 bills around your house. Whenever these bills resurfaced (say, during 'Spring Cleaning'), however, you took the money back to the bank and re-deposited it into the same account. The amount of money going back into your account cannot be more than the amount originally withdrawn (wouldn't that be nice!). But according to the accounting by Austin and Humphreys (1990), an average of 75 million tons of sodium were added to the oceans every year, despite that less than 40 <i>thousand</i> tons (see Table 2) were 'withdrawn', on average, each year. Austin and Humphreys have failed miserably in this simple test of accounting.<br />
<br />
So we have determined that Na from "chloride solution" should not be included in the table of Na inputs, so the actual number <i>should</i> be <b>0 million tons/year</b>. I will include it here, because I will also consider Na <i>removed</i> by halite deposition, as Austin and Humphreys have done. However, I use a more reasonable estimate of long-term "chloride solution" using the data of <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018206002483" target="_blank">Hay et al. (2006)</a>, who estimated halite burial and erosion over the course of the entire Phanerozoic. These data take into account the fact that at various points in Earth history, more or less halite has been exposed at the Earth's surface. As it turns out, the total area of 'salty' outcrops (~1.3%) is much higher today than for the bulk of Earth history, because most of these outcrops are only Miocene in age. Prior to the Miocene, (>23 million years ago), these salt deposits didn't exist and therefore could not have been dissolving back into the oceans. The amount of salt being dissolved from evaporite minerals and added back to the ocean has fluctuated substantially over time:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwtdvYosrzoXoR0LHL_adoTTbalJfrtgbSxYRY1tfZHNv7PODc5beYupJWSKfGxwpj0ArUZg_PpV-h4Fxckvw4VkPICyAKCrMCSZUA8eTQ-mHBJq_NzupSfWfmaqV0i-vlBQbNGbUHEY1b/s1600/HayCl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwtdvYosrzoXoR0LHL_adoTTbalJfrtgbSxYRY1tfZHNv7PODc5beYupJWSKfGxwpj0ArUZg_PpV-h4Fxckvw4VkPICyAKCrMCSZUA8eTQ-mHBJq_NzupSfWfmaqV0i-vlBQbNGbUHEY1b/s1600/HayCl.jpg" height="252" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Estimated influx of <i>Cl<sup>-</sup></i> to the oceans over the Phanerozoic, according to<br />
Hay et al. (2006). Each atom of Cl<sup>-</sup> should be accompanied by one Na<sup>+</sup>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The average influx of sodium via "chloride solution", according to data from Hay et al. (2006), was about <b>17.0–18.3 million tons/year</b>, <i>much</i> less than the figure cited by Austin and Humphreys.<br />
<br />
<i>4. Ocean floor sediments</i><br />
<br />
As marine sediments accumulate on the ocean floor, the uppermost centimeters of sediment tend to release sodium into the ocean while absorbing both Mg and Ca. This phenomenon was quantified for Atlantic Ocean sediments by <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0016703779901637" target="_blank">Sayles (1979)</a>, cited by Austin and Humphreys. A later review of the topic by <a href="https://www.blogger.com/Geochemical%20%20cycles:%20The%20continental%20crust%20and%20the%20oceans" target="_blank">Drever, Li, and Maynard (1988)</a> also cited Sayles (1979), whose estimate appears in Table 1.4 of their paper. This is the figure used by Austin and Humphreys (1990), who conclude that 5.0 x 10<sup>12</sup> moles/yr of sodium (1.15 x 10<sup>11</sup> kg/yr) are added to the oceans every year by this process. It is the largest single input of sodium used in the model by Austin and Humphreys (Table 1).<br />
<br />
Although nobody questions that the diagenesis of ocean sediments (i.e. their chemical modification after burial) releases Na into the oceans, the calculated magnitude is very much in question. Drever, Li, and Maynard (1988) also include a previous estimate by Maynard (1976), which is 6 times smaller than the figure by Sayles (1979). Even the more comprehensive data from Sayles (1979) indicate substantial variation in this flux from one location to the next, and by no means have all the world's oceans been studied in this manner. Drever, Li, and Maynard (1988) conclude:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"...it seems likely that the relative changes in [Na<sup>+</sup>] are correct but the absolute magnitudes are <b>too high by a factor of at least 2</b>." (emphasis mine)</blockquote>
If we take the advice of Drever, Li, and Maynard (1988), whom Austin and Humphreys (1990) cite to obtain their figure, then the actual flux of sodium from ocean-floor sediments should be <b>~52.5 million tons/year </b>or less. The associated error bars are high, however, and we can expect this flux to have varied over Earth history, since it depends strongly on the amount and composition of sediments delivered to the oceans.<br />
<br />
<i>5. Glacial silicates</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Austin and Humphreys include the sodium input from "finely pulverized glacial silicates", which they estimate crudely from the volume of rock being eroded by the Antarctic Ice Sheet. This process is important today, because most of Antarctica is covered by active glaciers. These massive ice sheets are missing, however, from the majority of Earth history. In fact, tropical plant fossils are common among sedimentary layers from Antarctica. Therefore, the estimated 39 million tons/year of sodium from "glacial silicates" is not applicable to a long-term model of the sodium cycle.<br />
<br />
In addition, there is no direct evidence for how much sodium is shed from the Antarctic continent and dissolved in seawater, and the estimate by Austin and Humphreys is certainly way too high. The only study they cite is from 1964 and did not address sodium dissolution directly, let alone in Antarctic waters. Nonetheless, they assume that <b>64%</b> of all glacially eroded rocks dissolve <i>completely</i> in seawater rather than accumulate as sediments. Is this realistic? Not at all.<br />
<br />
The actual long-term influx of sodium from glacially pulverized silicates is slightly more than <b>0 million tons/year</b>, but far less than the 39 million tons estimated by Austin and Humphreys. Even if we use their figure, we should multiply it by the small fraction of Earth history during which large continental glaciers existed, which yields <b>~1 million tons/year</b>.<br />
<br />
<i>6. Atmospheric and Volcanic Dust, and 7. Marine Coastal Erosion</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Austin and Humphreys once more make gratuitous assumptions about how much silicate dust/sediment completely dissolves in seawater. Their estimates of Na influx from these two processes are so low, however, that ignoring them completely would not change the total estimate of sodium inputs. Therefore, I will include their estimates to be generous/conservative.<br />
<br />
<i>8. Glacier ice</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Yet again, Austin and Humphreys include a relatively insignificant process that is not applicable to the majority of Earth history. They estimate that ~1.2 million tons/year of sodium are added from glacial ice containing salt trapped from the atmosphere. If the glaciers were absent, however, this tiny amount of halite dust would either be washed back to the oceans through rivers or buried in surface sediments. Once again, I will include their estimates to be generous/conservative, but I want to highlight the unscientific nature of their methods, which they employ under the guise of being thorough. If we have no reason to expect that large glaciers were present for the past 62 million years, then why include this flux in a model that supposedly characterizes the last 62 million years of Earth history? Austin and Humphreys most certainly know better, so the fact that glacial ice is included as a sodium input reveals the dishonest tactics behind their work.<br />
<br />
<i>9. Volcanic Aerosols</i><br />
<br />
This flux depends, of course, on rates of volcanic activity, which undoubtedly varied in Earth history. Nonetheless, this sodium input is far less than the uncertainties of other large fluxes, so it matters little whether the flux is included in the total calculation.<br />
<br />
<i>10. Groundwater seepage</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
According to Austin and Humphreys, large amounts of groundwater are seeping into the oceans, carrying some <i>96 million tons/year </i>of sodium with them. This is the second largest input of sodium from Table 1—how is it calculated? Citing Garrels and Mackenzie (1971), they take the difference between global runoff and global rainfall minus evaporation to be the amount of groundwater seeping from continent to oceans every year. They then multiply this mass of water by what they assume to be the average sodium concentration of groundwater.<br />
<br />
This almost makes sense, intuitively. Imagine you poor 100 liters of water into a large wooden planter, of which 10 liters evaporate into the open air. Now, 90 liters of water remain somewhere in the planter. Imagine now that 80 liters leaked out of the planter onto the lawn through cracks between the wood (much like rivers discharging into the oceans). What about the remaining 10 liters of water? We must assume that this mass of water infiltrated through the planter and seeped into the ground on which the planter is situated, right?<br />
<br />
Not entirely. We can be certain that some of this water will be stored in the planter itself. Likewise, some 3.3x10<sup>20</sup> kg of water on Earth is now stored on the continents in underground reservoirs, because not all precipitation ends up in the oceans. Therefore, Garrels and Mackenzie (1971) take the difference (used by Austin and Humphreys) as a <i>maximum</i> estimate of groundwater flow to the oceans. Given the large errors in calculating global precipitation, evapotranspiration, and runoff, they further write:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Conceivably this excess could be delivered by subsurface flow. If so, and if these ground waters have about the same total salinity as streams, approximate 4x10<sup>14</sup> g/year of dissolved solids could be entering the ocean basins from subterranean flow. Both required assumptions are shaky; from the preceding discussion of stream discharge it is clear that a 10 percent difference between total precipitation minus evaporation and stream discharge <b>could be accounted for by errors in either estimate</b>. Also, we do not have good numbers for the dissolved solid content of those ground waters reaching the sea." (emphasis mine; from this quote, we learn that groundwater may or may not be seeping into the oceans in large quantities)</blockquote>
So Garrels and Mackenzie (1971), writing in an era before satellite constraints on the global hydrological cycle, proceed with caution in estimating the maximum plausible influx of sodium to the oceans from groundwater (which they estimate to be 20 million tons/year, a meager 20% of the value used by Austin and Humphreys). Regardless, Austin and Humphreys use a high-end estimate of groundwater seepage with confidence and further imagine that groundwater seeping into the ocean is, on average, <i>5 times saltier </i>than river water. They provide no direct evidence of this figure, to which they attach almost no uncertainty (unlike Garrels and Mackenzie, whom they cite). On the contrary, they suggest only that it might be even higher!<br />
<br />
Since groundwater seepage to the oceans occurs mainly from shallow, coastal aquifers, it is rather reasonable to assume that groundwater seeping into the oceans is about as fresh as rivers draining into the oceans, and <i>not</i> five times saltier. Very saline groundwater is found only in deep, continental aquifers, or coastal aquifers where recent salt deposits exist (e.g. around the Gulf of Mexico). The strategy of Austin and Humphreys, therefore, is one of selective sampling of ballpark estimates from rather old scientific literature, after which errors/uncertainties are ignored or minimized unrealistically.<br />
<br />
Since Garrels and Mackenzie reviewed estimates of global precipitation, evapotranspiration, and runoff in 1971, ongoing research and technological development has provided the scientific community with far more accurate and comprehensive data. A more recent assessment of the global water cycle is presented by <a href="http://acd.ucar.edu/~lsmith/GEWEX-JHydroMet8.pdf" target="_blank">Trenberth et al. (2007)</a>, from which I took the figure below.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gdkvIMrugcV0rPKHYUFeVjgvbnxngm_Uqww9qWEnu8mXvOcYIGRQdDVs8ad_Ra_1AZ_srpg8v4QtD4MveamDsaEKppEfnsAmpeV1TbYhdT8GY0Hw47KOQ6AztUlKLbMVrmXJOMrAOreH/s1600/WaterCycle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gdkvIMrugcV0rPKHYUFeVjgvbnxngm_Uqww9qWEnu8mXvOcYIGRQdDVs8ad_Ra_1AZ_srpg8v4QtD4MveamDsaEKppEfnsAmpeV1TbYhdT8GY0Hw47KOQ6AztUlKLbMVrmXJOMrAOreH/s1600/WaterCycle.jpg" height="308" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1 from <a href="http://acd.ucar.edu/~lsmith/GEWEX-JHydroMet8.pdf" target="_blank">Trenberth et al. (2007)</a>; summary of the modern water cycle.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
According to their review of data published within the last decade, the difference between surface runoff (40 thousand cubic km) and precipitation minus evapotranspiration (113 - 73 thousand cubic km) is precisely zero. In other words, groundwater seepage is <i>not</i> a significant flux of water to the oceans, and should occur only locally or in response to minor climate fluctuations.<br />
<br />
Before concluding, we should be thorough scientists and ask: what is the <i>source</i> of sodium dissolved in this groundwater seeping into the oceans? We cannot answer precisely, but we can be certain that much of the sodium in groundwater (like in river water) derives from either sea spray or dissolved halite deposits underground. Since the sodium in sea spray or halite deposits derives directly from the oceans, we should remove that amount from any long-term model of the sodium cycle (again, we are simply re-depositing money withdrawn from the same account).<br />
<br />
Taking all of these factors into account, we may conclude that the total influx of sodium from groundwater seepage cannot be higher than <b>20 million tons/year</b>, as estimated by Garrels and Mackenzie (1971, Table 4.11). More likely, however, the total long-term input is effectively <b>0 tons/year</b>.<br />
<br />
<i>11. Seafloor hydrothermal vents</i><br />
<br />
The final sodium input used by Austin and Humphreys (1990) constitutes their most egregious error in accounting. They claim that ~15 million tons/year of sodium are added to the oceans from water cycled through hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. In fact, a wide base of scientific literature from the past 3 decades, including papers cited by Austin and Humphreys, proves just the opposite: hydrothermal vent systems <i style="font-weight: bold;">remove</i> sodium from the oceans, and they do so in massive quantities. This major error was first documented by Glenn Morton in an open letter entitled <i><a href="http://www2.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199606/0051.html" target="_blank">Salt in the sea</a></i>. Dr. Snelling even acknowledges the error (though subtly) in his <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/9-very-little-salt-in-the-sea/" target="_blank">summary article</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Long-agers also argue that huge amounts of sodium are removed during the formation of basalts at mid-ocean ridges, but this ignores the fact that the sodium returns to the ocean as seafloor basalts move away from the ridges." (notice, he makes no attempt to refute the claim that sodium is removed during basalt formation, but only to misdirect the accusation)</blockquote>
Unfortunately, Dr. Snelling offers no evidence for his claim that sodium taken up at mid-ocean ridges eventually returns to the ocean (mainly because he is wrong—it does not). The process by which sodium is removed from oceans through hydrothermal vent systems is called <i>albitization</i>. In short, feldspar minerals in oceanic crust (being created constantly at mid-ocean ridges) are converted from calcium-rich feldspar to sodium-rich feldspar in the presence of hot seawater. This chemical alteration releases calcium into the oceans in exchange for sodium, balancing the global cycle. <a href="http://elements.geoscienceworld.org/content/6/3/173.abstract" target="_blank">Bach and Früh-Green (2010)</a> write:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Alkali elements [e.g. sodium] are leached from the rocks by seawater-derived fluids in high-temperature, axial, hydrothermal processes, while in low-temperature ridge-flank systems, they are transferred from the circulating seawater to the oceanic crust. <b>The net effect is that oceanic crust is a prominent sink for alkali elements</b>...” (emphasis mine)</blockquote>
As oceanic crust moves away from mid-ocean ridges, the crust's temperature drops and hydrothermal vents become less active. The majority of newly formed albite is crafted deep within the oceanic crust, however, and is not exposed to seawater once hydrothermal waters cease to circulate. Bach and Früh-Green (2010) add:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Hydrous minerals (smectites, zeolites) and carbonates form in these ridge-flank systems and slowly <b>seal the crust</b>, which also becomes <b>increasingly insulated from the ocean</b> by the accumulation of sediments." (emphasis mine)</blockquote>
Snelling's misdirection is thus wildly inaccurate; this major sodium sink does not return to the oceans. Therefore, Austin and Snelling (1990) have listed a sodium input that should be counted as a sodium output. So what is the magnitude of sodium lost to oceanic ridge systems?<br />
<br />
The uptake of dissolved sodium by mid-ocean ridge processes was noted by Holland (2005), who follows Berner and Berner (1997) and estimates that it accounts for <b>~25.3 million tons/year</b> of sodium drawn out of the oceans. I devised my own calculation using chemical data from 152 hydrothermal vents (documented by 5 separate papers, listed below), and multiplied the average sodium loss through hydrothermal vents by the estimated volume of water circulated through those vents. Using this method and taking all uncertainties into account, I estimated that the total sodium loss via albitization is <b>11–47 million tons/year</b>. This figure encompasses the estimate by Berner and Berner (1997), so I am fairly confident in the results. <i>(Note: contact me if you would like to see my original data/calculations, which are too large to paste here).</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
The major error of Austin and Humphreys (1990) is one of basic geochemistry. They concluded that hydrothermal vents add sodium to the oceans because water emitted by those vents contains a higher concentration than seawater, but this approach ignores the fact that <i>water itself</i> is lost in the process of hydrothermal alteration. In other words, when newly formed oceanic basalt is exposed to hot seawater, not only does it take up sodium into its mineral structure, but it also absorbs <i>water</i>. Therefore, we cannot use the concentration of sodium (i.e. total grams of sodium per liter of water) as a guide to estimate sodium loss/gain, because we know that water itself is lost in the process. Instead, we must use the ratio of Na/Cl in hydrothermal vent water relative to that of average seawater (chlorine is not lost or gained, so it will stay constant). As <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703710006344" target="_blank">Reeves et al., 2011</a> put it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Endmember Na/Cl ratios... are all lower than the seawater ratio, consistent with the removal of Na during albitization...”</blockquote>
Despite this basic error in geochemistry, YEC ministry sites continue to reference the work by Austin and Humphreys unreservedly, propagating the false notion that sodium is constantly added to the oceans through hydrothermal vents. I hope you can sympathize with the challenge that we critics of YEC face: it is far easier to spread misinformation than to correct it.<br />
<br />
<i>Conclusion</i><br />
<br />
Thus far, I have only addressed the <i>inputs</i> of sodium estimated by Austin and Humphreys (1990), but we can see already that these authors employ a rather deceptive strategy to win over their young-Earth audience. Most of these fluxes are calculated by ignoring basic geochemistry or selectively citing high end estimates, even when the cited authors advise against it. In the next article, I will briefly examine their estimates of sodium <i>outputs</i> to see if the integrity of their research improves. Concluding there, I will provide a revised table that more accurately reflects the sodium cycle and proves that world's oceans are just as salty as we might expect on a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth.<br />
<br />
<i>(to be continued...)</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>References for hydrothermal vent calculations:</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/95RG00283/abstract" target="_blank">Von Damm (1995)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X98001083" target="_blank">Von Damm et al. (1998)</a><br />
<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002JB001957/abstract" target="_blank">Seyfried et al. (2003)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703711000032" target="_blank">Seyfried et al. (2011)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703710006344" target="_blank">Reeves et al. (2011)</a><br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-65532644883297750802014-06-16T16:51:00.000-07:002014-06-17T00:24:52.843-07:00Earth's 'Underground Ocean': No remnant of the Flood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I suppose every good science story deserves a creative headline. Reporting the latest research on the boundary between the upper and lower mantle, however, were catchy titles like this:<br />
<br />
• <a href="http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2014/06/new-evidence-for-oceans-of-water-deep-in-the-earth.html" target="_blank">New evidence for oceans of water deep in the Earth</a><br />
• <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/13/surprise_three_times_as_much_water_as_all_of_earths_oceans_trapped_underground/" target="_blank">Splash! Three times as much water as ALL of Earth's oceans found TRAPPED underground</a><br />
• <a href="http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2014/06/evidence-supports-existence-oceans-water-earth" target="_blank">Evidence Supports Existence of Oceans of Water in Earth</a><br />
• <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/earths-underground-oceans-could-have-three-times-more-water-than-the-surface-9534266.html" target="_blank">Earth's 'underground oceans' could have three times more water than the surface</a><br />
<br />
Anyone that understands young-Earth creationism and how it processes scientific reports should be able to anticipate this optimistic, yet naïve response: "Well that explains where all the water from Noah's flood went. We creationists have been saying all along that the highest peaks were once covered by water!" I've seen it pop up on several occasions, despite that neither AiG nor ICR have yet made this connection [<i>correction: </i>Dr. Liz Mitchell of AiG <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/geology/rocks-and-minerals/diamond-ringwoodite-reveals-water-deep-earths-mantle/" target="_blank">has</a>; see comments to this post]. In any case, it may have something to do with a statement reported here (last paragraph) by Dr. Stephen Jacobsen, a co-author on the paper:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We should be grateful for this deep reservoir... If it wasn't there, it would be on the surface of the Earth, and mountain tops would be the only land poking out."</blockquote>
The results from <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6189/1265.short" target="_blank">Schmandt et al. (2014)</a> are by no means trivial, and personally I am fascinated by continuous geological discoveries so far removed from direct observation (perhaps it is the geological equivalent of deep space monitoring and theoretical physics). But the creative headlines are a bit misleading as to the nature of these deep-mantle 'reservoirs' of water. As <a href="http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/06/a_section_of_earths_mantle_is_melting_and_a_alien-looking_mineral_is_to_blame.html" target="_blank">Real Clear Science reports</a> (along with the actual text of those articles cited above), melt zones near the transition between the lower and upper mantle (~600 km below the surface) are being produced by dehydration of a mineral called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringwoodite" target="_blank">ringwoodite</a>, which is <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v507/n7491/full/nature13080.html" target="_blank">up to ~2.5% water by weight</a>.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn4.sci-news.com/images/enlarge/image_1806_1e-Ringwoodite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn4.sci-news.com/images/enlarge/image_1806_1e-Ringwoodite.jpg" height="272" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sample of diamond with a tiny inclusion of ringwoodite—the first direct evidence of a deep mantle reservoir of hydrous olivine. Image from <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v507/n7491/full/nature13080.html" target="_blank">Pearson et al. (2014)</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The water is present only as single oxygen and hydrogen atoms (–OH) bonded to the most common mineral in the Earth's mantle: <i><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine" target="_blank">olivine</a></b></i>, a ferromagnesian silicate named after its characteristic color. If mantle rocks containing ringwoodite sink below the transition zone, the ringwoodite breaks down into its constituent parts: olivine and water. Despite that the concentration of water is never high enough to make droplets of liquid water, these free molecules diffuse into the lower mantle rocks, lowering their melting point. A similar reaction occurs when we spread salt over ice. Salts break down into cations and anions (like calcium and chloride), which lowers the melting point of the ice and allows it to convert from solid to liquid without raising the temperature.<br />
<br />
Partially melted mantle rocks (not entirely liquid, because only a small percentage actually melts) are more buoyant than those surrounding, which forces them to rise toward the surface of the Earth. Within the transition zone, however, any free water molecules would simply react with olivine and convert back to ringwoodite. This metamorphism completes the cyclic process that, according to Schmandt et al. (2014), maintains a transition zone containing ringwoodite over a partially melted boundary between the upper and lower mantle. This boundary is detectable through seismic data, according to the authors.<br />
<br />
<i>Is there any connection to the Flood?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
It has long been known that hydrous minerals like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphibole" target="_blank">amphibole</a>, along with marine sediments, cause dehydration melting in the upper mantle, which is a major cause of volcanism associated with subduction zones (e.g. Japan, New Zealand, the Pacific Northwest). This process occurs primarily at much shallower depths than the mantle transition zone, however, which means that relatively little surface water is subducted to depths >525 km, where these 'underground oceans' currently exist. In addition, these reservoirs and mass transfers are all part of the global water cycle. <b>The more water that is subducted below the surface, the more volcanism returns it to the surface.</b> Therefore, the deep reservoirs of water hypothesized by Schmandt et al. (2014) could not possibly be remnants of a surficial flood from any point in Earth history.<br />
<br />
Besides, the subduction of lithospheric plates <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2012/07/orinoco-flow-sediment-subduction-and.html" target="_blank">occurs at rates so slow</a>, the 'Flood waters' could not have completed even 1% of their journey since ~4,500 years ago.<br />
<br />
<i>How should we understand Dr. Jacobsen's statement?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
In saying that "we should be grateful for this deep reservoir", Dr. Jacobsen does not imply a one-way, high-capacity conveyor between water on the Earth's surface and water in the deep mantle, which could have sequestered massive oceans. He means rather that if it were not for the constant conversion of water and olivine to ringwoodite within the transition zone, this water would have been added slowly back into surficial reservoirs through volcanism. Instead, it is locked up in minerals as solid as your own jewelry, so that Earth's water content is split between liquid reservoirs in the surface and mineral reservoirs deep underground.<br />
<br />
So, the case against Flood geology remains: there is not sufficient water on the surface of the Earth to have covered all its continents with a worldwide flood. Where did the water come from? And where did it go?<br />
<br /></div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-73661698088583003712014-06-12T13:53:00.000-07:002014-06-22T16:40:27.051-07:00"Best evidences for a young Earth": Snelling and our salty seas, Part 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Is our universe is full of clues that it cannot be millions—let alone billions—of years old?<br />
<br />
Many young-Earth creationists are convinced this is the case, despite that no scientists are scrambling to counter their claims. To understand why, I want to continue my review of Dr. Andrew Snelling's <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/the-10-best-evidences-from-science-that-confirm-a-young-earth/" target="_blank">10 Best Evidences from Science that Confirm a Young Earth</a>, which attempts to equip readers with a set of foolproof arguments in favor of that position. Most recently, <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/05/best-evidences-for-young-earth-snelling.html" target="_blank">I examined Snelling's claim</a> that given the modern ocean-sediment flux, our oceans cannot be more than 12 million years. It took little effort to expose the misleading tactics of Dr. Snelling, however, who miscited key papers and ignored some basic geological principles and data to build his argument. In the end, we find that the ocean-sediment flux offers no challenge to those who accept the conventional age of the Earth and its oceans.<br />
<br />
Dr. Snelling and others have employed similarly deceptive methods to claim that our oceans should be much saltier, if indeed they are ~3 billion years old. According to <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/9-very-little-salt-in-the-sea/" target="_blank">Evidence #9, Very Little Salt in the Sea</a>, more salt enters the ocean every year than is removed by natural processes. Dividing the total salt content of the oceans by the net rate at which salt accumulates yields a maximum age of 62 million years.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8CgKNmzNsL8nhYHl-Ukbi4IzR8AGB-S3DWAWb9vBrr5aZDOBlP4JoILUkiL46PHlWO41X88aXwyibMYqA_dNECsn00aY_ZhAuKvysAyoX20ITQ6XLOnQcNtGpJy8qt2NNc4CWmGrS81T/s1600/SaltySeas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig8CgKNmzNsL8nhYHl-Ukbi4IzR8AGB-S3DWAWb9vBrr5aZDOBlP4JoILUkiL46PHlWO41X88aXwyibMYqA_dNECsn00aY_ZhAuKvysAyoX20ITQ6XLOnQcNtGpJy8qt2NNc4CWmGrS81T/s1600/SaltySeas.jpg" height="246" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 1 from <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/9-very-little-salt-in-the-sea/" target="_blank">Snelling (2012)</a>, illustrating basic inputs and outputs of Na<br />
to the modern oceans. He cites a maximum age of 42 million years, rather<br />
than 62 million years estimated by Austin and Humphreys (1990), whom<br />
he cites (perhaps a typo?).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><br /></i>
<i>History of the 'Salt Chronometer'</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Dr. Snelling is following in the footsteps of Edmund Haley (1715) and Irish physicist John Joly (1899), who first proposed quantitative methods by which the maximum age of the Earth could be calculated from the ocean's salt content (<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018206002483" target="_blank">Hay et al., 2006</a>). The latter concluded that assuming a constant influx of salt, no more than 100 million years could have transpired since the birth of originally freshwater oceans. Despite the ingenuity of these early calculations, geologists abandoned the salt chronometer in favor of radiometric dating for one vital reason. Geological history far too dynamic to assume constant geochemical fluxes (whether of salt or anything else), so the upper limits by Haley and Joly became scientifically meaningless. In addition, the discovery of relatively pure, sedimentary salt deposits indicated that salt can and has been removed from the oceans in the past, negating the principle claim by Joly that salt accumulation is an irreversible process.<br />
<br />
Decades later, <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1963GeCoA..27.1055L" target="_blank">David Livingstone (1963)</a> would revisit this question in terms of the sodium cycle. He confirmed that a net influx of sodium to the oceans did exist, following estimates of riverine delivery by <a href="https://archive.org/details/datageochemistr00clargoog" target="_blank">Clarke (1924)</a>, by which all dissolved sodium could be accounted for in a few hundred million years. Livingstone (1963) recognized, however, that this upper limit is very sensitive to the estimated volumes of metamorphosed versus <i>un</i>-metamorphosed rocks, since the latter contain more sodium. After correcting the ratio, he concluded that the maximum age of the oceans (based on sodium cycling) could be extended to as many as ~2.5 billion years.<br />
<br />
Young-Earth researchers Steven Austin and Russell Humphreys apparently were not satisfied with the work by Livingstone, so they devised their own assessment of the sodium cycle and its implications for the maximum age of the oceans. They presented their <a href="http://www.icr.org/article/sea-missing-salt/" target="_blank">full-length paper</a> in 1990 at the Second International Conference on Creationism, and it is this work primarily on which Dr. Snelling bases his claim that the modern oceans contain too little sodium for an old Earth.<br />
<br />
<i>Sodium, not salt</i><br />
<br />
Sea salt consists of more ions than just sodium (Na+), so it should be noted up front that the titles of these YEC works are a bit misleading. The claim by Snelling, Austin, and Humphreys is <i>not</i> that the oceans are missing 'salt', but rather that if the modern, net flux of <i>sodium</i> (as calculated by <a href="http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/The-Seas-Missing-Salt.pdf" target="_blank">Austin and Humphreys, 1990</a>) is extrapolated blindly into the past, we arrive at a zero concentration of sodium about 62 million years ago. As with Snelling's examination of the ocean-sediment flux, this methodology is extremely simplistic and involves more assumptions even than the pioneering efforts by Halley and Joly. Hence, it should be obvious why geologists and geochemists are not scrambling to account for the ocean's missing salt: it's not missing.<br />
<br />
So why focus on sodium, rather than other major components of sea salt: chlorine, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sulfate, or carbonate? The truth is, of these major ions cycling through the Earth's oceans and crust, we understand sodium rather poorly. Unlike the other elements, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_sodium" target="_blank">sodium</a> does not have multiple stable isotopes, so it is far more difficult to track how it moves from crust to river to ocean to sediment and back again (stable-isotope ratios reflect how much of that element was added/subtracted via specific processes). Another reason that Austin and Humphreys focused on sodium, if I may conjecture, is that sodium is the <i>only</i> element for which there appears to be a positive annual flux to the oceans. If they had chosen to estimate the minimum age of the oceans using chlorine, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, or carbon, they would have arrived at an age of infinity or beyond.<br />
<br />
<i>Why are the oceans salty at all?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Before jumping into the details, we should pose this very simple question to YEC's. In the context of an 'old Earth', it makes sense why the oceans contain various dissolved salts in the concentrations observed today: crustal minerals have been weathered and eroded over millions of years, delivering dissolved ions to the oceans via river systems. But why, in the YEC scenario, do the oceans contain massive quantities of salt in the first place? The only answer that may be given is that God simply created the oceans to be salty, with a chemical composition that only appears to have been reached via long, geological processes.<br />
<br />
This <i>ad hoc</i> response is typical for the YEC-style, retrospective fitting of data: "God made the oceans salty because otherwise, we can't explain why they're salty". Of course, I will grant that in a divine, fiat creation of the oceans, salty oceans are a hypothetical possibility. But I want to highlight the arbitrary nature of the explanation, because this characteristic is anticipated neither by scripture nor theology. On the contrary, we might expect <i>freshwater</i> oceans from the image of God separating the 'waters above' (the source of rain/snow) from the 'waters below' (the oceans). Salty oceans are not necessary to maintain the abundance of life therein, but rather an impediment to many organisms sensitive to salinity changes. God may as well have made freshwater oceans with marine organisms suited to living in freshwater—why not? Instead, the undrinkable seawater makes the oceans a terrifying desert to humans, among other creatures.<br />
<br />
In conclusion, one may speculate as to the divine reason behind the oceans being salty, but the argument will always proceed in the opposite direction of scientific inquiry. This one example elucidates how the YEC paradigm does <i>not</i> arise from scientists examining the same evidence through an alternative worldview. Conventional geologists form testable hypotheses against the evidence until a unifying theory emerges; YEC geologists shake the box of data until a few pieces seem to fit into their preconceived notion of Earth history. The very methodologies are antithetical, and so the resulting paradigms will never converge.<br />
<br />
<i>Unscientific procedures</i><br />
<br />
With regard to both ocean sediments and dissolved sodium, YEC's have utilized overly simplistic models to estimate the maximum age of the oceans. It is vital to understand that their conclusions depend on the accuracy of a scientific <i>model</i>, because <i>all</i> models work on a suite of assumptions in an attempt to describe reality. Now, relying on assumptions does not cripple science. On the contrary, it is both necessary and productive, because identifying model assumptions opens them up to falsification, a key component of science. As the saying goes, 'all models are wrong, but some are useful'. We expect from the beginning that Austin and Humphreys' model will be wrong, but to what extent is it useful?<br />
<br />
To determine this, Austin and Humphreys need to demonstrate that the intrinsic assumptions of their model are robust. For example, Austin and Humphreys assume that the mass of sodium delivered to the oceans by rivers remains constant over time (or at least within a narrow range). But is this a valid assumption? To my knowledge, neither author has established why the riverine input of sodium could not have varied more substantially in Earth history, though basic geology tells us that it should. The bottom line is, no serious geologist/geochemist attempts to reconstruct Earth history by extrapolating modern rates blindly into the past, so the methodology of Snelling, Austin, and Humphreys is about ~200 years out of date. In my next post, therefore, I will examine the sodium inputs and outputs utilized by their model in light of modern geological principles and studies. How well do you suppose their numbers hold up?<br />
<br />
<i>A lot can happen in 24 years...</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Since the original publication by Austin and Snelling (1990), little to no attempt has been made to update this common YEC argument for a young Earth. Nonetheless, real geological research has expanded exponentially on this topic, due to advances in technology for surveying the deep oceans. More data are available to estimate riverine inputs of salt and sediment. Major depositional and tectonic events have been discovered or better described, which should impact reconstructions of paleooceanographic conditions (like salinity, sediment recycling, etc.). One of the weaknesses of the YEC approach is that it too commonly relies on a select few papers while ignoring followup research. For example, this paper by <a href="http://www.ajsonline.org/content/305/3/220.abstract" target="_blank">Holland (2006)</a> addressed the topic of seawater composition over the past ~550 million years. Was he scrambling to explain why the oceans are not saltier? On the contrary, he writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The sum of the two loss rates [of sodium] is the same, within the uncertainty of the measurements, as the estimated rate of the river input of Na<sup>+</sup>." p. 231</blockquote>
In reference to the following table of modern and mid-Cenozoic fluxes:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhagJGih076cE_xV1yDSaATQ2IZkSW-2r5CNBbhb3Og-9d3m7MmsTaqJvhZVR2CTcVLGGSfeW6uG2CnlpUw09Y1qWltks3rKXmiSCvSYS9KkW6sAJ1H-u5FmRl-lNG5WiLvB_XHok5i1n7T/s1600/Holland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhagJGih076cE_xV1yDSaATQ2IZkSW-2r5CNBbhb3Og-9d3m7MmsTaqJvhZVR2CTcVLGGSfeW6uG2CnlpUw09Y1qWltks3rKXmiSCvSYS9KkW6sAJ1H-u5FmRl-lNG5WiLvB_XHok5i1n7T/s1600/Holland.jpg" height="165" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Holland (2006); summary of Na inputs and outputs to/from the oceans.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I would anticipate YEC's to respond that this approach is too simple (Austin and Humphreys do include more inputs and outputs), but we'll find out in next post why it is not. In any case, we should note that Snelling, writing in 2012, ignored and dismissed the ongoing research since 1990, such as by Holland (2006). For this reason, authors like Snelling may persuade their own audience of YEC readers, but will never impact the scientific community.<br />
<br />
<i>(to be continued...)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<i>Additional Reading (from The Natural Historian Blog):</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2012/08/28/salt-ocean-sea-age-earth-young-confirmation-bias/" target="_blank">The Salty Sea and the Age of the Earth, Part I – Confirmation Bias</a><br />
<a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2012/09/03/the-salty-sea-part-ii-a-young-earth-salt-chronometer/" target="_blank">The Salty Sea Part II: A Young Earth Salt Chronometer?</a><br />
<a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2012/09/08/salty-sea-part-3-young-earth-creationism/" target="_blank">The Salty Sea Part III: Are the Oceans Getting Saltier Over Time?</a><br />
<div>
<a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2012/09/23/salty-sea-partiv-jay-wile-age-earth-young/" target="_blank">The Salty sea Part IV: Dr. Wile’s Use of the Salt Chronometer</a></div>
<br /></div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-348344964446754502014-06-06T12:22:00.001-07:002014-06-09T13:55:21.078-07:00Dry me a river: regional and global drought in a warming climate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The American southwest is known for being hot and dry, and for the millions of residents flocking to desert metropolises like Phoenix and Las Vegas, this relatively stable, snow-free climate is one of its major appeals. For those managing its water resources, fighting wildfires, or growing crops, however, the threat of climate change to America's desert landscapes is a serious concern. It's no secret that global temperatures are on the rise, and snowbird states like Arizona have felt the impact (Fig. 1). For the brave few that enjoy Arizona's sauna-like summers, this may not sound so bad. But higher average temperatures and a warmer global climate has detrimental implications for water resources in the American west. Basic physics and climatology tell us to expect the following long-term hydrological impacts in a warming climate:<br />
<br />
<b>1)</b> More heat means more evaporation. With all else constant, that means less water staying in soils and feeding rivers/aquifers.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHx2mLypEJsWim7iIfxfzF-235pH0QLTNOjzAe8xCbY340ZWQXQew9sKAtuL0dXYI7bxtoKLRmHaz3FrQcP7zS8j95NfveCTemfLw_IWyw4e6UcnCANyIvawAtvlXUxFMpOsepWMOllBaZ/s1600/ArizonaT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHx2mLypEJsWim7iIfxfzF-235pH0QLTNOjzAe8xCbY340ZWQXQew9sKAtuL0dXYI7bxtoKLRmHaz3FrQcP7zS8j95NfveCTemfLw_IWyw4e6UcnCANyIvawAtvlXUxFMpOsepWMOllBaZ/s1600/ArizonaT.jpg" height="319" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 1: </b>Trend in mean annual air temperature for AZ.<br />
Image from Climate Central's <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-heat-is-on/" target="_blank">interactive database</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<b>2)</b> Warmer winters mean less snow at higher elevations. Since snowpack is the major source of runoff to rivers and aquifers, that means less water available to plants and humans alike.</div>
<div>
<b>3)</b> Warmer oceans means greater storm energy, which results in more water falling in fewer events. Downpours in the southwest produce rapid runoff, which tends to infiltrate less effectively than steady rain/snow. </div>
<div>
<b>4)</b> Warming climate means an expansion and strengthening of the subtropical high pressure belt, which currently contributes to the semi-arid climate of the American southwest. A similar phenomenon during the Medieval Climate Anomaly contributed to the 'megadroughts' (Fig. 2) partly responsible for sudden collapse of several Native American populations, such as the Anasazi.<br />
<b>5)</b> Finally, a more indirect link: global warming has caused a steady decline in Arctic sea-ice volume and extent since the 1970's. A reduction in Arctic sea-ice extent tends to weaken the polar vortex, which means stronger meridional (north–south) atmospheric circulation during winter. Counterintuitively, melting Arctic sea ice results in more frequent winter chills for much of the continental U.S. (as we saw in recent months), but it also means fewer Pacific storms reaching the American southwest (i.e. drier winters). Apart from the monsoon-driven regions, we can expect a significant <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/07/3370481/california-drought/" target="_blank">reduction in effective moisture</a> for the southwest (including California) from this factor alone.<br />
<br />
Confirmation of these most basic predictions is available through multiple proxies of drought, which have been summarized in the recent <a href="http://swccar.org/sites/all/themes/files/SW-NCA-color-FINALweb.pdf" target="_blank">Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States</a>. The authors conclude that despite relatively stable levels of <i>annual</i> precipitation, rising temperatures and reduced snowpack are characteristic of recent decades, of which the most recent (2001–2010) was one of the driest/hottest in over a century. Since ~1980, these trends became distinguishable from the natural background climate variation, according to <a href="http://tenaya.ucsd.edu/~dettinge/barnett08.pdf" target="_blank">Barnett et al. (2008)</a>, who attributed ~60% of drought trends to forcing by greenhouse gases. Drought reconstructions by <a href="http://amir.eng.uci.edu/publications/13_Drought_Trend_TAAC.pdf" target="_blank">Damberg and AghaKouchak (2013)</a> confirm the trend toward drought in the American southwest, which <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/107/50/21256.abstract" target="_blank">MacDonald (2010)</a> and <a href="http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai_JGR2011.pdf" target="_blank">Dai et al. (2011)</a> note is consistent with the modeled response to global warming and may only get worse.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4VQn2VXFVv2OEsldKVxE3nktjlcusPnxmFFy6Qy7XBU2prwwaH4INuUrWyvhCafrQA04e7uL0SNAEtZwl3JudegIZLMeKfMFypPXtp6Xiw1v6Elcp_aBkKODyst8RNodw8kDcR3SC7oTA/s1600/Paleodrought.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4VQn2VXFVv2OEsldKVxE3nktjlcusPnxmFFy6Qy7XBU2prwwaH4INuUrWyvhCafrQA04e7uL0SNAEtZwl3JudegIZLMeKfMFypPXtp6Xiw1v6Elcp_aBkKODyst8RNodw8kDcR3SC7oTA/s1600/Paleodrought.jpg" height="355" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 2: </b>Last 1,200 years of drought in the southwest. Figure taken from the<br />
Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
While the American southwest is no stranger to extreme drought (Fig. 2), the possibility of returning to the climate of the Medieval Climate Anomaly is all but comforting to those managing its water resources. There will always be wet and dry years, but the increasingly robust forecast is that we can expect fewer wet to combat the dry.<br />
<br />
<i>Additional climate filters: PDO and ENSO</i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/pdo-f-pg.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/pdo-f-pg.gif" height="262" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 3: </b>PDO index since 1950, from <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/pdo.php" target="_blank">NOAA</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One cannot address the question of climate change in the southwest without considering the most prominent, natural thermostats lying just off the coast. Year-to-year climate of North and South America varies substantially due to oscillations in sea-surface temperature (SST) in the Pacific Ocean. This variability is due to the fact that Pacific SST is not geographically homogenous. In some years, it's colder in the east Pacific than in the west (La Niña), while in others, it's warmer in the east Pacific than in the west (El Niño). The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO; Fig. 3) is described by a temperature gradient in the northern Pacific ocean from the middle of the sea to the California coast. The positive index reflects relatively warm waters off the California coast and a weakened high-pressure cell. Weakening of the high-pressure cell allows more storms to penetrate the continent from the cool waters of the northern Pacific. Notice that the PDO tended to be positive during much of the 80's and 90's (Fig. 3). This positive phase was accompanied by wetter conditions in the American west/southwest, refilling of dammed reservoirs, and rapid, optimistic growth in cities like Las Vegas/Phoenix.<br />
<br />
The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the PDO's slightly more chaotic cousin. Comparing figures 3 and 4, however, you can see that they are positively correlated. In fact, the positive trends in ENSO and PDO from 1950–1998 explain why most regions in the southwest have enjoyed slightly more precipitation during the same interval <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JD012866/abstract" target="_blank">(McCabe et al., 2010)</a>, while the negative trends since 1998 partially explain the current 'megadrought'. When precipitation trends (McCabe et al., 2010) are plotted alongside temperature trends (i.e. a measure of potential evaporation and transpiration), it becomes apparent that recent global warming has exacerbated the drought and that future warming will impede drought recovery in decades to come.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglKFczBNy5fKiG6Th3nZ8t4i94eZifNB_lxdLhQnKsK6E7NnGzi9YVXcO-fKgT7N5vQ0Qj7s8XgkezXHoOCWu4rosqycNuzWGu03rjAd4rt8_uzauolDoESgSGnbEpe36RDvhqlHfcfo-V/s1600/ENSO.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglKFczBNy5fKiG6Th3nZ8t4i94eZifNB_lxdLhQnKsK6E7NnGzi9YVXcO-fKgT7N5vQ0Qj7s8XgkezXHoOCWu4rosqycNuzWGu03rjAd4rt8_uzauolDoESgSGnbEpe36RDvhqlHfcfo-V/s1600/ENSO.png" height="121" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 4: </b>ENSO variability since 1950, from the <a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/" target="_blank">NOAA ESRL</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Given the high variability of naturally occurring climate oscillations like PDO and ENSO, it's not surprising that non-climatologists <a href="http://blog.drwile.com/?p=12552" target="_blank">like Dr. Jay Wile</a> are skeptical of global warming's impact on recent droughts. In my opinion, Dr. Wile has oversimplified the science of climate change and therefore expects a simple correlation between CO2, temperature, rainfall, and drought. But if global warming does affect drought in the southwestern US, that trend will be <i>superimposed</i> on the ENSO/PDO variability shown by figures 3 and 4, and researchers agree that is indeed the case. Dr. Wile cited McCabe et al. (2010) to suggest that the American southwest has not seen more drought, but that study only addressed trends in <i>annual</i> precipitation. Annual precipitation has changed little for the southwest since 1950, and in many parts has increased slightly, but the <i>type </i>of precipitation falling (snow vs. rain) and the timing of that precipitation has changed systematically in response to global warming (Barnett et al., 2008). When all factors are considered, therefore, a more dismal outlook emerges, so McCabe et al. (2010) themselves do not share Dr. Wile's skepticism of global warming or its impact on drought in the southwest.<br />
<br />
<i>Global trends in drought: is the Earth as a whole drying up?</i><br />
<br />
In 2013, the IPCC <a href="http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank">reiterated their long-held assessment</a> (p. 205–206) that in response to global warming, dry regions tend to get drier and wet regions tend to get wetter (see also <a href="http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/seager/Seager_Naik_Vecchi_2010.pdf" target="_blank">Seager et al., 2010</a>; <a href="http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.pdf/Drought_ClimCh_v7-ss.pdf" target="_blank">Trenberth et al., 2014</a>). There are no shortage of studies exploring the impact of global warming on drought, so I am only addressing a fraction of what might be said. Nonetheless, models (i.e. basic physics and climatology) generally predict that with time, we can expect a larger percentage of land area on Earth to be characterized by drought conditions. This seems counterintuitive, because a warming atmosphere simultaneously results in a more intense hydrological cycle (warmer air holds more moisture, for example). However, most of that extra moisture is confined to the equatorial region, high-latitude continental regions (including the Arctic and Siberia), and certain coastal regions, due to the way moisture is transported around the globe. Most models <i>do not </i>predict this change to be catastrophic or sudden, but suggest rather that it will take decades or even a century for average drought conditions to affect some 5–20% more of global land area (e.g. <a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n1/full/nclimate1633.html" target="_blank">Dai et al., 2013</a> is a high-end estimate; see Fig. 5). For some regions, it is predicted that drought will increase from reduced precipitation, whereas in other regions, drought will increase primarily from enhanced evaporation as air temperatures continue to rise, or from enhanced SST, which affects pressure patterns and atmospheric circulation.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh_yDL9cIevMRIhU9Vu-v5Qw_j4nXOh2vUyMLmzwjEqxvzZRQ4g-gdkxLEV2xDhsKuJikdP3HbD2JlqOW7e_BPNbsToT6ei2nffc58RSJBJuXITWEFO5gGCregOBQUjaolZBTIhGL7bB53/s1600/Slide36.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh_yDL9cIevMRIhU9Vu-v5Qw_j4nXOh2vUyMLmzwjEqxvzZRQ4g-gdkxLEV2xDhsKuJikdP3HbD2JlqOW7e_BPNbsToT6ei2nffc58RSJBJuXITWEFO5gGCregOBQUjaolZBTIhGL7bB53/s1600/Slide36.jpg" height="298" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 5: </b>Slide 36 from a presentation by Aigou Dai (<a href="http://dam.itpcas.ac.cn/press/Dai_Drought-ITPR.pdf" target="_blank">PDF here</a>), illustrating modeled<br />
drought response to enhanced SST under global warming scenarios.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Has global drought increased over the past century in response to global warming? It may sound like this is an easy prediction to test, but it's not. The key factor lies in how 'drought' should be quantified. One classical formulation, called the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) calculates the effective water balance by comparing total precipitation to the solar energy available to evaporate that water. Several researchers have criticized the use of PDSI to quantify drought solely because of its simplicity (i.e. it doesn't take into account actual soil moisture, wind velocity, and other factors that affect evaporation). In other words, although PDSI can track drought from a basic climate perspective, it may overestimate actual evaporation and thus real risk of drought to agriculture.<br />
<br />
To correct this bias, researchers like <a href="http://amir.eng.uci.edu/publications/13_MSDI_Param_AWR.pdf" target="_blank">Hao and AghaKouchak (2013)</a> have devised a more comprehensive metric for drought to forecast crop shortfalls. This metric was applied to the globe by <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/sdata20141" target="_blank">Hao et al. (2014)</a>, who captured historical droughts over the past 30 years. No significant trends emerged from the reconstruction, which <i>may</i> suggest that global drought has not increased with global temperature (of course, neither has it decreased). I would caution against over-interpreting <i>historical</i> trends from their plot, however, since it was not their intent to answer how global drought has responded to global warming trends. In fact, their data cover a very short period of time (1982–2012), during which a shift from a predominantly El Niño to La Niña conditions explains why global drought appears <i>slightly</i> more extensive at the beginning of their record. Furthermore, the driest regions on Earth were omitted from their reconstruction, due to their high sensitivity to changes in precipitation. Finally, given their emphasis on soil moisture in the drought metric, it is likely that <a href="http://www.worldwatch.org/global-irrigated-area-record-levels-expansion-slowing-0" target="_blank">extensive crop irrigation</a> and management will artificially mitigate the level of drought severity in some major watersheds. The areal extent of irrigation (which affects semi-arid regions already susceptible to drought) has increased steadily from 1982 to present, and since humans <a href="http://www.worldwatch.org/node/11312" target="_blank">irrigate and rotate crops in response to short-term climate variability</a>, human activity on land can blur long-term trends according to this measurement of drought.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/full/nature11575.html" target="_blank">Sheffield et al. (2013)</a> also criticized the simplicity of classic PDSI formulations and argued that global drought has changed little in response to global temperature rise. To accomplish this, Sheffield et al. (2013) devised a better formulation of PDSI, which incorporated more variables to estimate real evaporation, and reconstructed global drought trends for the past 60 years (Fig. 6).<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdUPKG4UvOWUngdUG45Z7am5rL3SyGxNtJ_Qkmg_pO1k4xscYheo-2POH0T7RqyHKjToSz886YgnVOUCEKfLhSgLaZED7EH-387P1lOBydtLX7a2yQI-qZL9WnUfLd9I6WjSv_-rqE94Us/s1600/Sheffield.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdUPKG4UvOWUngdUG45Z7am5rL3SyGxNtJ_Qkmg_pO1k4xscYheo-2POH0T7RqyHKjToSz886YgnVOUCEKfLhSgLaZED7EH-387P1lOBydtLX7a2yQI-qZL9WnUfLd9I6WjSv_-rqE94Us/s1600/Sheffield.jpg" height="205" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 6: </b>Global drought over the past 60 years, from Sheffield et al. (2013),<br />
using the classic PDSI metric (blue) and a more rigorous calculation (red).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The blue lines in Figure 6 are similar to the reconstruction by <a href="http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/Dai_JGR2011.pdf" target="_blank">Dai (2011)</a>, who demonstrated that PDSI has decreased substantially (i.e. more prevalent drought) over the past 50 years on a global scale. This conclusion by Dai (2011) cannot easily be ignored, since is corroborated by evidence of enhanced evapotranspiration (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010JD013847/abstract" target="_blank">Wang et al., 2010</a>) and reduced streamflow (<a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2592.1" target="_blank">Dai et al., 2009</a>) during the modern warming period. The latter is a more direct measurement of effective moisture over land, since it relies less on computer models to reconstruct trends (keep in mind, <i>all</i> reconstructions of global drought are modeled interpolations of historical data, and so <i>all</i> have intrinsic uncertainties). One important proxy not considered by any of these models is the shift from winter snow to winter rain at high elevations, and the shift toward earlier dates of snowmelt (e.g. Barnett et al., 2008). As less precipitation falls as snow and that snow begins to melt earlier in the year, available water resources <i>will</i> diminish, even if PDSI and soil moisture do not change significantly. Taking all of these factors into consideration, we can say with moderately high confidence that over the past 50-60 years, drought <i>has</i> increased on a global scale. It's only a question of how much.<br />
<br />
Despite the conflict with Dai (2011), Sheffield et al. (2013) did not entirely negate their conclusions regarding global drought. It is apparent from Figure 6 that the last three decades were characterized by more extensive drought than from 1950–1977, both in terms of PDSI and total land area in drought conditions. When I plotted the revised data myself (the red line in Fig. 6a), I obtained a downward (drying) trend, which is statistically significant at 99.4% confidence. Therefore, it is important to note that the title of Sheffield et al. (2013)—"<i>Little</i> change in global drought over the past 60 years"—does <b>not</b> mean "<i>no</i> change in global drought".<br />
<br />
The most important revision by Sheffield et al. (2013) is that oversimplified calculations of PDSI resulted in an overestimate of drought response to global warming and, therefore, an overestimate of future drought risk from climate change. One key difference (overlooked by Dai, 2011) is the cooling effect of evaporation on air temperatures over land. Like a giant air conditioner, enhanced evaporation works as a negative feedback that slightly mitigates rising air temperatures. Amid the academic controversy, however, these authors worked together on a more recent synthesis (<a href="http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.pdf/Drought_ClimCh_v7-ss.pdf" target="_blank">Trenberth et al., 2014</a>) that affirmed drought has and will increase in response to global warming, though the response is more complex and less uniform than previously stated (Fig. 7).<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2gqzOcw7BTG102bapRgay3sCEwUEcVULduub4I-5dDOrlyFS5LMdtzb8Btb76_E0UHHpT6hyx1MOgt_yIfb1xwYe4D6DryFjUAj1zC_EY9C449qyvjkzN9rt21RpMmAt5gPpdTpIc7to4/s1600/Trenberth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2gqzOcw7BTG102bapRgay3sCEwUEcVULduub4I-5dDOrlyFS5LMdtzb8Btb76_E0UHHpT6hyx1MOgt_yIfb1xwYe4D6DryFjUAj1zC_EY9C449qyvjkzN9rt21RpMmAt5gPpdTpIc7to4/s1600/Trenberth.jpg" height="261" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 7: </b>Modeled reconstructions of global drought from historical data,<br />
according to <a href="http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.pdf/Drought_ClimCh_v7-ss.pdf" target="_blank">Trenberth et al (2014)</a>. Note the downward (drying) trend.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Three out of four global drought reconstructions by Trenberth et al. (2014) indicate that drought has become more prevalent over the land surface since global temperatures rose significantly in response to greenhouse-gas forcing. This conclusion is similar to Damberg and AghaKouchak (2013), who also noted reconstructed a trend toward enhanced drought (though their trend is statistically significant only for the southern hemisphere and individual watersheds on land). The initial predictions by the IPCC assessments, as well as Dai (2011) have been refined, but not negated.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Conclusion</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Despite existing uncertainties in quantifying the response of drought to global warming, whether on a regional or global scale, the general consensus is that drought has already become more extensive and severe, and that future warming will only exacerbate the current situation. This relationship is more dreary from a human perspective, since growing population will only increase water-resource and agricultural demands, and <i>no studies</i> imply a wetting trend. Although we have much to learn about how global warming impacts the hydrological cycle, Dr. Wile's skepticism is premature and misguided, at best. Perhaps the best indication of this lies with the fact that none of the researchers cited (Dai, Trenberth, Sheffield, Damberg, Hao, AghaKouchak, McCabe, Barnett, or their co-authors) share Dr. Wile's skepticism regarding global warming.<br />
<br />
And neither do I, but I'm just a lowly paleoclimatologist. ;)<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Note: </i>This controversy has reached the Senate floor in Washington D.C. as well. Go <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/critique_of_pielke_jr_statements_on_drought.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> for a interesting discussion on the misperceptions of what climate scientists are/are not saying regarding global and regional drought.</div>
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-71969688109458045362014-06-04T11:38:00.000-07:002014-06-04T11:38:04.326-07:00Concordance in meteorite dating: have I misunderstood Dr. Snelling?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I want to take a moment to clarify what I said in a recent post, <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/05/andrew-snelling-concedes-radiometric.html" target="_blank">Andrew Snelling concedes, radiometric dating of meteorites is solid</a>, because I stumbled upon some confusion by popular YEC blogger Dr. Jay Wile. Amid comments beneath an unrelated post, Dr. Wile was directed to the link above, to which <a href="http://blog.drwile.com/?p=12518&cpage=1#comment-86633" target="_blank">he responded</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Not surprisingly, you are mischaracterizing Snelling on his discussion of meteorites. He never suggests that the radiometric dates of the meteorites is accurate. He only states that there is concordance... Accelerated decay would affect all isotopes in the universe, not just the ones on earth. As a result, it would be surprising if there weren’t concordance."</blockquote>
Presumably, by "you", Dr. Wile is referring to the author of the blog (me), rather than the kind person who linked to it. In any case, this sort of response ensures me that Dr. Wile never read beyond the title of the article. The meaning of my title is <b><i>not</i></b> that Snelling would openly admit to the accuracy of radiometric dating, but that he's finally run out of bad arguments with which to distract his readers and delved into the realm of 'so absurd, he may as well just tell them the truth'.<br />
<br />
By admitting to concordance between multiple independent dating methods applied to meteorites, Snelling essentially has conceded the strongest evidence that radiometric dates for our solar system are accurate. He can pretend that an alternate explanation still exists, but as a lover of parsimony and progress, I will call the resignation when I see it.<br />
<br />
So, I haven't mischaracterized Dr. Snelling on his discussion of meteorites. On the other hand, Dr. Wile <i>has</i>, in suggesting that "it would be surprising if there weren't concordance [between dating methods]." Dr. Wile strangely ignores the main 'hypothesis' of Snelling's article, which Snelling himself falsified thoroughly: accelerated nuclear decay should have affected each decay system to a different extent (depending on atomic mass and mode of decay), resulting in systematic <i><b>discordance</b></i> between the results. Snelling favored this explanation when it seemed to support his collection of dates from the Grand Canyon volcanics, and he devotes several plots in his most recent article to establishing that it cannot be applied consistently to extraterrestrial rocks. For this reason, Snelling relies on poor eisegesis of the Hebrew text to pull another rabbit out of the beaten hat and suggest that concordance of meteorites is a function of 'primordial creation chemistry'. I demonstrated why this <i>ad hoc</i> explanation would not work in <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/05/andrew-snelling-concedes-radiometric.html" target="_blank">my response</a> to Snelling, which Dr. Wile dismissed without reading to maintain his reputation in the comment wars.<br />
<br />
To accept Snelling rationalization, we'd have to assume that God rigged the isotopic chemistry of meteorites and other solar bodies, so that after X amount of accelerated nuclear decay, all solar bodies would only appear to be 4.56 billion years old, based on our knowledge of radioactive decay <i>in the present</i>. In such a scenario, we would expect extreme discordance among dating methods 1) if that arbitrary interval of radioactive decay were slightly shorter or longer (this doesn't work like a fast-forward button that controls only part of the universe), or 2) if modern decay rates were slightly faster or slower. Since God is the one fine-tuning the dials, it seems suspicious that he would choose the only setting that makes modern science appear successful, don't you think?<br />
<br />
The mystery of <i>discordance</i> between radiometric dates for Grand Canyon samples vs. <i>concordance</i> of radiometric dates for meteorite samples is rather easily solved, and we need not invoke physical absurdities like accelerated nuclear decay. Samples from the Grand Canyon were collected and submitted for analysis by the RATE team; meteorite samples were collected and submitted for analysis by experts in the field of geochronology. In <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/03/inventing-isochron-steve-austin-andrew.html" target="_blank">my review</a> of some shady RATE team tactics, I highlighted the fact that Snelling and Austin chose highly altered samples for radiometric dating, despite their knowing full well how chemical/thermal alteration affects the model age of rocks. In other words, they attempted to rig the results. Closer inspection of their data, however, reveals that their results still supported the conventional age of Grand Canyon basalts, and no discordance really exists. A literature review of radiometric dates for Grand Canyon basalts since 1998 (when Snelling and Austin submitted their rigged selection) demonstrates that in the hands of experts, these rocks are dated consistently and precisely from one method to the next.<br />
<br />
So which is it, Dr. Wile? Should we expect concordance or discordance between various methods of radiometric dating, and specifically why? What is the mechanism by which accelerated nuclear decay affects the U-Th and K-Ar systems by ~1–6 orders of magnitude (depending on where in the geological column the rocks are found), but the radiocarbon system by substantially less? Why do direct dating methods like U-Th and Ar-Ar, applied to single crystals, yield similar results as isochron methods like Pb-Pb, Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf, Rb-Sr, applied to multiple crystals? Why should we expect noble-gas daughter products within the U-series and K decay systems to remain trapped in the crystal structure, despite radioactive decay so intense that it could melt the whole rock?<br />
<br />
Can accelerated nuclear decay explain the model ages of 'post-Flood' features like caves and Quaternary marine, lacustrine, and glacial sediments, which are dated at thousands to hundreds of thousands of years by a combination of radiocarbon, U-series disequilibrium, OSL, and TL methods? Of course not. <i>Accelerated nuclear decay</i> is nothing more than a copout, like a bottle of whiteout to erase any contrary evidence to the young-Earth paradigm. It is entirely <i>ad hoc</i> and lacks any physical/theoretical framework. Above all, it makes no testable predictions in real-world data. Therefore, it is below pseudoscience, which at least tends to offer arguments that <i>sound</i> plausible.<br />
<br />
Many years ago, Dr. Wile posted that he gave into the notion of accelerated nuclear decay only "<a href="http://blog.drwile.com/?p=297" target="_blank">kicking and screaming</a>", because he sincerely didn't want to believe that half-lives of radioactive nuclei could change. Along with Russell Humphreys' failed helium-diffusion study, Dr. Wile cites as convincing evidence a handful of papers demonstrating that under extraordinary circumstances (such as heating tritium after absorbing it onto 15-nanometer particles of titanium to invoke nuclear pairing of 3He atoms, or burying polonium inside copper metal and dropping the temperature nearly to absolute zero), the radioactive decay constants can change by a few percentage (in most cases) to as much as 300% for one short-lived, heavy isotope. As a nuclear physicist, Dr. Wile knows well that these studies have nothing to do with the science-fiction claims of the RATE team. He knows just as well that Russell Humphreys' modeling of helium diffusion in zircons <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/02/clearest-evidence-that-earth-is-6000.html" target="_blank">fares no better</a>, in particular because the claim is falsified by <i style="font-weight: bold;">every single application of (U-Th)/He thermochronometry</i> since the inception of the RATE team. Therefore, I do not perceive Dr. Wile as one kicking and screaming, brought in only by a wave of evidence, but as one looking actively for excuses not to trust it.<br />
<br />
<br />
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-65136540575863734502014-05-29T18:27:00.000-07:002014-05-29T18:27:03.265-07:00"Best evidences for a young Earth": Snelling and the ocean-sediment flux<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In September, 2012, Answers in Genesis featured a review article of what they deemed the <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/the-10-best-evidences-from-science-that-confirm-a-young-earth/" target="_blank">10 Best Evidences that Confirm a Young Earth</a>. From this list, I have already addressed #2 (Bent Rock Layers), #6 (Helium in Radioactive Rocks), and #7 (Carbon-14 in Fossils, Coal, and Diamonds) in previous articles:<br />
<br />
• <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/04/rock-layers-folded-not-fractured-or-are.html" target="_blank">"Rock layers folded, not fractured" — or are they?</a><br />
• <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/02/clearest-evidence-that-earth-is-6000.html" target="_blank">Clearest evidence that the Earth is 6,000 years old: helium diffusion in zircons</a><br />
• <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2010/11/radiocarbon-evidence-for-antiquity-of.html" target="_blank">Radiocarbon evidence for the antiquity of the Earth</a><br />
<br />
So today, I want to discuss one of Andrew Snelling's arguments from the content of our oceans that the Earth cannot be hundreds of millions of years old. Snelling presents us with two claims on his list: #1, that too little sediment is accumulated on the ocean floor, and #9, that the oceans contain too little salt. Let's begin with #1.<br />
<br />
<i><a href="https://answersingenesis.org/geology/sedimentation/1-very-little-sediment-on-the-seafloor/" target="_blank">Evidence #1: Very Little Sediment on the Seafloor</a></i><br />
<br />
The argument here is rather simple. Snelling cites an article by <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/235936648_Geomorphic_Tectonic_Control_of_Sediment_Discharge_to_the_Ocean_-_the_Importance_of_Small_Mountainous_Rivers" target="_blank">Milliman and Syvitski (1992)</a> to claim that every year, rivers discharge 20 billion tons of sediment into the world's oceans. He further cites <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JB093iB12p14933/full" target="_blank">Hay et al. (1988)</a> to claim that only 1 billion tons of sediment are removed by subduction of oceanic plates (and with them, marine sediments). At this rate, Snelling claims, the whole of the marine sediments on the ocean floor would accumulate in only 12 million years.<br />
<br />
Snelling's claims and calculations are riddled with errors and what I can only deem very dishonest research. First, Milliman and Syvitski (1992) note up front in their abstract that their estimate of sediment discharge applies only to the modern period prior to human damming of rivers. Dams tend to reduce the sediment output of rivers to the ocean by mitigating floods that carry substantially more sediment. Secondly, and most important, the authors suggest that "prior to widespread farming and deforestation... sediment discharge probably was <b><i>less than half </i></b>the present level." In their discussion, Milliman and Syvitski (1992) estimate the total sediment discharge to the oceans was "considerably less" than 10 billion tons per year.<br />
<br />
So already, Snelling's calculation is off by a factor of 2 or more, due to his unwillingness to read the entire article that he cited (or even the entire abstract!). Correcting the misquotation already shifts the age estimate of ocean sediments to more than ~30 million years. Granted, this number is less than 3 billion years (the estimated mean age of our oceans), but if Snelling is willing to deceive his audience by misquoting a publicly available abstract, his methods are already suspect. One should also note that of the dozens of studies regarding sediment flux to the oceans, Snelling cites only one. Why? Since Snelling published his article in 2012, estimates of sediment flux to the ocean have multiplied and improved. One of the most recent publications places a long-term estimate at 5.5 billion tons per year <a href="http://www.tectonics.caltech.edu/meetings/journal_club/session5/Willenbring_et_al2013Geology.pdf" target="_blank">(Willenbring et al., 2014)</a>, which is far less than the 20 Gt/yr used by Snelling.<br />
<br />
<i>Uniformitarian extrapolation</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Anticipating criticism, Snelling writes that "those who advocate an old earth insist that the seafloor sediments must have accumulated at a much slower rate in the past." He provides no citation for this response, presumably because his readers would never ask for one. Thus he sets up a strawman to persuade his readers that us 'old-earthers' are desperate dogmatists. In truth, the main errors (below) in Snelling's article have less to do with the actual rate of sediment flux to the oceans. Nonetheless, we should consider the way that Snelling twists uniformitarianism in his approach to persuading readers of a young Earth.<br />
<br />
There is nothing scientific about extrapolating rates of any natural process blindly into the past. Either one should establish good physical reason for these rates never to change (as with the speed of light or radioactive decay), or one should make predictions about past rates that can be tested by historical evidence (like the kind preserved in rocks). Thus Snelling's age estimate of the oceans, based on sediment flux, remains only conjecture and is as weak as his poorly derived assumptions.<br />
<br />
First, why should we expect the rate of sediment delivery to the oceans to have remained constant over time? Apart from human influence, natural variations in climate affect sediment delivery, because the temperature and precipitation affect rates of chemical/physical weathering. Glaciations significantly increase the sediment flux by grinding millions of tons of rock into dust and gravel, but widespread glaciation is far more common today than even 2 million years ago, and is absent from the vast majority of Earth history. Glacially and tectonically driven changes in sea level also affect sediment flux to the deep ocean, since higher sea levels reduce the area of exposed land that can be eroded into the oceans. On longer time scales, plate tectonics greatly affect the sediment flux by raising mountain ranges and deforming brittle rock formations. Today, massive mountain ranges span the whole western coasts of the Americas, and the Himalayas constitute the single largest source of sediment to the oceans. These mountain ranges are relatively young, however, so it's reasonable to conclude that sediment flux is far greater today than for much of Earth history.<br />
<br />
<i>Ocean sediments in the dividend: Snelling's big error</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
To estimate a maximum age of 12 million years for the oceans, Snelling used his sediment flux of 19 billion tons per year to determine how long it would take to accumulate 1,300 ft (400 m) of sediment, which Hay et al. (1988) take to be the average thickness of ocean sediments. However, this average thickness includes <i><b>only deep ocean pelagic sediments</b></i>, of which ~74% is biogenic calcite that formed in surface waters (i.e. was not carried in by rivers). Since most riverine sediments accumulate on the continental shelves, deltas, and other nearshore basins, Snelling is comparing apples and oranges to make his case. In fact, he does <i>not even include</i> continental shelves, deltas, and other nearshore basins in the calculation, despite that he depicts the continental shelf in his Figure 1, titled "Where is all the sediment?".<br />
<br />
Snelling also cites Hay et al. (1988) when he claims that only 1 billion tons of sediment are removed from the oceans via subduction, but this amount <i>only accounts for deep ocean sediments</i> removed via subduction, so it is incomplete. Total subduction is sufficient to recycle the entire crust in 1.8 billion years (<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825209001512" target="_blank">Clift et al., 2009</a>). Snelling's calculation thus falls to pieces with very little examination.<br />
<br />
Most of the sediment carried to the ocean by rivers accumulates in deltas and along the continental shelves. In fact, the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta accumulated up to 70 m during the Holocene alone (i.e. in 11,700 years), according to <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11707-008-0051-8" target="_blank">Khan and Islam (2008)</a>. Prior to dam construction, this river system also carried nearly 1/10 of the global sediment flux. The sedimentary layers in delta sequences tend to be hundreds of meters to miles in thickness, so if we are to ask "Where is all the sediment?", the first answer should be: deltas. Fjords constitute another significant catchment, and provide ~25% of recent riverine sediments (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.3390040311/abstract" target="_blank">Syvitski et al., 1987</a>), due to the efficiency of glacial ice (particularly when it melts) in discharging sediment to the oceans.<br />
<br />
<i>Ocean sediments in the rocks: Snelling's really big error</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
A bulk of sedimentary rocks in the Earth's crust have been interpreted to be marine sediment sequences. If this interpretation is correct, then nearly all of the sediment load from rivers since the beginning of Earth history is bound up in the rocks beneath your feet. Strangely, Snelling omits this massive reservoir of riverine sand, silt, and clay while determining that our Earth's oceans cannot be older than 12 million years. The sheer volume of sedimentary rock is astounding, but is consistent with the estimate by Willenbring et al. (2014) that approximately 5.5 billion tons of sediment were discharged each year into the oceans.<br />
<br />
We can visualize this process from a cross section of just one record of nearshore deposition, which begins with the Marcellus Shale (a major source of petroleum today). Notice that the sedimentary layers thicken to the east, where the sediment source (now the Appalachian Mountains) was once located. More than a mile of sediment accumulated in this region in a few millions of years:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Catskill_Magnafacies.svg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Catskill_Magnafacies.svg" height="176" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellus_Formation" target="_blank">Wikipedia commons</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yet Dr. Snelling omits this volume of sediment from his calculation, asking us rhetorically to account for its fate. How long will YEC's continue to trust Andrew Snelling to do their research?</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-78240438240186999422014-05-26T01:01:00.002-07:002014-05-26T11:36:02.592-07:00"A Matter of Faith": Fear Factor - 1, Academia - 0<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zrOJFxlTDmILTpg715In61xDZ30SQJF8YhQxNOuJHpr_2WRcUSadm2kwI2eZLqt0cQBG0BJsVHi-83FENrsagPDFZAxtQoKShf44IvGP9tSSXaq2po4Y7fleVfLUHOmM0uxgtMP-V3FN/s1600/matter-of-faith.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8zrOJFxlTDmILTpg715In61xDZ30SQJF8YhQxNOuJHpr_2WRcUSadm2kwI2eZLqt0cQBG0BJsVHi-83FENrsagPDFZAxtQoKShf44IvGP9tSSXaq2po4Y7fleVfLUHOmM0uxgtMP-V3FN/s1600/matter-of-faith.jpg" height="258" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Which came first: the chicken or the egg? Today we'll learn that evolution has the answer!" In the upcoming film <i>A Matter of Faith</i>, Harry Anderson plays Professor Kaman, a popular biology professor teaching college freshman about the origin and diversity of life through something called science. In other words, he's the villain.</td></tr>
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It happens once a year. Waves of college freshmen pour into the lecture halls of introductory courses to fulfill their 'general ed' requirements and get their first taste of university life. Back home, many a worried parent speculates about the potential dangers of releasing their grown-up children into the wild world of academia. With what will they experiment? Sex? Drugs? Majoring in theater? And to what kind of bad influences will they be exposed? Friends with poor study habits? Political liberalism? Campus dining plans?<br />
<br />
Now, I don't mean to belittle the ubiquitous and legitimate concern that parents have for their children first entering college and/or moving out on their own. College often is a mishmash of poor decisions and moral bankruptcy—by anyone's standard—that results in a series of life lessons and nostalgic regret for the best and worst of times. Bad behavior aside, most parents (religious or not) would also prefer to see their children grow in the worldview in which they were raised, rather than abandon it for what they learned at school. Entrusting one's higher education to professors with far more academic freedom than public school teachers, therefore, is a trial of trust for any parent hoping to confirm they have 'raised their children right'.<br />
<br />
For many families, choosing a Christian college can mitigate these concerns. The pressure to "let go of one's moral conscious" is minimized, and every professor ascribes to a statement of faith, made public by the university. While students are still exposed to all sorts of non-Christian paradigms, it is done by academics who have reasoned through the paradigms and come out the other side with faith intact. This can be a comfortable transition for students of faith into a world where critical thinking and intellectual independence are in high demand.<br />
<br />
So the otherwise anxious parent might think, "It's a Christian college; what could my child possibly encounter that would challenge his/her faith?"<br />
<br />
Well, for <i>Answers in Genesis</i>, choosing a Christian college is only the first step. Some time ago, I wrote a <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/07/book-review-part-1-ken-ham-takes-page.html" target="_blank">3-part review</a> of <i>Already Compromised </i>by Ken Ham and Greg Hall, a book that warned parents which colleges were staffed by 'evolution-friendly' faculty that rejected a young-Earth, creation science, and overly literal readings of Genesis. (In fact, some biblical professors in the sample group even rejected that Moses alone wrote the Pentateuch!) Three years later, with the upcoming theatrical release of <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/creation-debate/matter-of-faith-movie/" target="_blank">A Matter of Faith</a>, it appears the YEC's fear tactic for worried parents has changed very little:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/tZ6bUfOVf1g?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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In short, a father is surprised to learn that in a university biology class, his daughter is being taught the the most elegant and commonly accepted explanation for the origin and diversity of life on this planet. Who would have known? In response, a man shocked to find that real science conflicts with his oversimplified faith decides to do his <i>own</i> homework and, armed with strawman objections to an established scientific theory, seeks to defeat the 'already compromised' biology professor on his own turf. We'll have to wait until September 26 to find out who wins, but my money is on the guy <i>without</i> the Ph.D. in biology. If I'm right, the moral of the story will be that with a few hours in his personal library, any concerned father can discover what faithless academics failed to learn through 6+ years of graduate school.<br />
<br />
So how will this story benefit Christians with children in college/high school? Does it teach them intellectual independence and critical thinking? I want to echo here the sentiments raised by John Dunne (author of the brilliant <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Esther-Her-Elusive-God-Functions/dp/1620327848" target="_blank">Esther and Her Elusive God</a>) in <a href="http://www.thetwocities.com/culture/christian-culture/a-matter-of-fear-4/" target="_blank">his review</a> of the trailer earlier this month. John writes:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"The problem that I have... is the silly appropriation of the same trope: Christians versus educators. The attitude is Christians <i>contra mundum</i>. Christians versus the philosophers and Christians versus the scientists. If debates are what you want, watch a <i>real debate</i>. Don’t watch a scripted exchange where Christians defeat fictional foes. There is nothing about this trope that is helpful; Christians should be ashamed of the anti-intellectualism on display."</div>
<br />
As a Christian research scientist hoping to find a permanent position in academia one day, the fact that Answers in Genesis and the filmmaker are encouraging future students to immunize themselves against mainstream science is troubling to me. This sort of attitude, once hardened in the minds of zealous young Christians, is extremely difficult to crack, and it tends to leave a long-lasting imprint on the brain. Some will struggle for years trying to recover from the young-Earth molding; others will rather leave the faith altogether. In either case, the detrimental impact of Answers in Genesis on our college generations will only continue to grow so long as they're willing to resort to anti-intellectual fear tactics to preserve a failed paradigm.</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-43416748351323235912014-05-23T17:39:00.000-07:002014-05-23T17:39:39.453-07:00Andrew Snelling concedes, radiometric dating of meteorites is solid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRcCVTTJQtGAUXBWCa5GUyXn8gPhPDDGvdhhB9FchgLlvfMGdTbsBrDIrclICLzlI2l_rmjvnNIv6HAbJ0I7TCwi-9rw3DoxRHPk8p-KSvqsuoAat2y5s9GPlubG1wJejAwtOMZXnQ7DOT/s1600/fig18snelling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRcCVTTJQtGAUXBWCa5GUyXn8gPhPDDGvdhhB9FchgLlvfMGdTbsBrDIrclICLzlI2l_rmjvnNIv6HAbJ0I7TCwi-9rw3DoxRHPk8p-KSvqsuoAat2y5s9GPlubG1wJejAwtOMZXnQ7DOT/s1600/fig18snelling.jpg" height="195" width="512" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Figure 18 from <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/age-of-the-universe/radioisotope-dating-meteorites-i-allende-cv3-carbonaceous-chrondrite/" target="_blank">Snelling (2014)</a>, illustrating the frequency of isochron ages obtained from the Allende CV3 carbonaceous chondrite meteorite via <b>six</b> independent radioisotope systems (color coded, in legend). Note the strong peak at 4.56 Ga, the conventional age of our solar system and Earth.</td></tr>
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After years of sorting through the results of radiometric dates, all placing the age of our Earth and Solar System at ~4.56 billion years, Andrew Snelling <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/age-of-the-universe/radioisotope-dating-meteorites-i-allende-cv3-carbonaceous-chrondrite/" target="_blank">has essentially conceded</a> that he cannot twist isochron ages of meteorites and bulk-Earth materials into supporting his already disproven conjectures regarding accelerated nuclear decay. If you're not familiar with this claim already, Andrew Snelling and colleagues in the RATE team have decided to brush away the overwhelming evidence of an old Earth from geochronology by suggesting that at several points in Earth's 6,000-year history, rates of nuclear decay increased by a million times or more, leaving us with the false impression that geological history spans millions to billions of years instead.<br />
<br />
Despite the obvious scientific deficiencies behind Snelling's claim (namely, that accelerated nuclear decay would obliterate all life/water/atmosphere on Earth), we should give Snelling credit for being the master of <i>ad hoc, deus ex machina</i> explanations so intricate, that they are rarely found outside popular science fiction writing. But since Snelling presents his claims within the cosmic fabric of <i>this</i> reality, you should be shocked by the level of deception that Snelling employs through propagating his message, and the level of deception that he ascribes to God, who must have tinkered arbitrarily with natural laws like a skilled, cosmic hacker, laying a trap for inquisitive scientists that dare reconstruct Earth history through natural evidence or deviate from oversimplified readings of Genesis. Regarding accelerated nuclear decay, Snelling writes:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"...changes [to physical laws governing atomic binding forces] would thus have to have affected every atom making up the earth, and by logical extension every atom of the universe at the same time, because God appears to have created the physical laws governing the universe to operate consistently through time and space, though of course He Himself is not bound by those physical laws which He can change at any time anywhere or everywhere."</div>
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For Snelling, the philosophical possibility that God can arbitrarily change characteristics of how the universe functions has become an axiomatic point of departure to explain why both scientists and biblical scholars must be wrong about history. Snelling (<a href="https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/age-of-the-universe/radioisotope-dating-meteorites-i-allende-cv3-carbonaceous-chrondrite/" target="_blank">2014</a>) further writes in his concluding remarks about why meteorites may represent the 'primordial' creation material:</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"Faulkner (2013) pointed out that the Hebrew word ‘āśâ meaning “to do” and “to make” is used specifically of the creation of the astronomical bodies in Genesis 1:16, rather than the Hebrew word bārā’ meaning “to create” as used in Genesis 1:1 in reference to the creation of the universe generally... Therefore, it seems entirely possible to read Genesis 1:16 as saying God used already-existing “primordial material” which He had created out of nothing at the beginning of Day One of the Creation Week (Genesis 1:1) to then fashion it into the other planets, their satellites and the stars. Most meteorites are believed have been derived from asteroids via collisions between them breaking off fragments that then hurtled towards the earth. So to be consistent, if the asteroids were also made on Day Four from this Day One primordial material left over from the making of the planets and their satellites in the solar system, then this would imply the meteorites could represent samples of this same “primordial material.”"</div>
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The implication here is that the Genesis author chose his verbs (or received them divinely) as a function of the material origins of different parts of the cosmos, rather than something of interest to the original, Israelite audience. This line of reasoning imports a rigid—and entirely modern—distinction between the Hebrew verbs in a manner that is fine-tuned to address the concerns of a 21st-century American audience. Thus Snelling's <i>ad hoc</i> approach to scripture resides in a symbiotic relationship with his <i>ad hoc </i>approach to science, each gaining traction from the other. Snelling reads what he wants to read in scripture so that he may see what he wants to see in nature. In short, he has traded truth for certainty.</div>
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<i><a href="https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/age-of-the-universe/radioisotope-dating-meteorites-i-allende-cv3-carbonaceous-chrondrite/" target="_blank">Radioisotope Dating of Meteorites: I. The Allende CV3 Carbonaceous Chrondrite</a></i></div>
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Snelling's summary of radiometric dates obtained from this particular meteorite is messy, to say the least, and illustrates well why he will never be published in an influential, peer-reviewed journal. A bulk of the <i>Answers Research Journal</i> article consists of unnecessary background information and tedious petrological descriptions of the meteorite samples. These sections are inconsequential to Snelling's main thesis, that despite the overwhelming consistency and precision of radiometric dates (all pointing to an age of 4.56 Ga), he still won't accept that this one meteorite, let alone the universe, is much older than 6,000 years.<br />
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To preclude the most parsimonious interpretation of the data, accepted universally by research geologists, Snelling attempts to argue that the 4.56-billion-year age of the meteorite merely reflects the geochemistry of the primordial creation material. Essentially, he claims that both meteorites and the planets were derived from this primordial creation material, which consisted of all elements and isotopes created by God on Day 1. Both parent (radioactive) and daughter (radiogenic) isotopes were incorporated into the new material, according to Snelling. Then, accelerated nuclear decay affected all atoms in the universe at several stages in Earth history (defined arbitrarily by Snelling and other creationists). As a result, both meteorites and the bulk Earth contain a common distribution of isotopes from the Uranium-Lead, Lead-Lead, Potassium-Argon, Rubidium-Strontium, Lutetium-Hafnium, and Samarium-Neodymium systems, yielding a common isochron age for both meteorites and the bulk Earth. Since these model ages do not account for isotopes/elements inherited from the primordial creation material, they are not true ages, so Snelling is free to maintain his 'biblical age' of 6,000 years as an axiomatic reference.<br />
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In case you didn't follow all of that (it took me several attempts), don't worry. You need only reference Occam's Razor to understand why Snelling's conjecture is and will remain <i>ad hoc </i>conjecture. It is predictive of nothing, and his starting assumption regarding the age of the universe guides his interpretation of the data. This approach stands in stark opposition to conventional geochronology, which makes precise predictions that are confirmed/disconfirmed by real data.<br />
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Snelling's conclusions are scientifically meaningless, because he cannot account for the fact that these <b>six</b><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>radiometric systems yield the same age, based on decay rates measured in the <b>present</b>. Despite his attempt to plead otherwise (see below), the age of meteorites and the bulk Earth <i>are</i> obtained through independently verifiable results.<br />
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Why should all six isotope systems yield the same age if it is not real? That is the pressing question, which Snelling cannot answer, so he glosses over it with filler descriptions of the samples and discussions of Hebrew verbs.<br />
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If we apply Snelling's model to explain the radiochemistry of meteorites, then we must assume that the primordial creation material from which God made the meteorites/planets contained <i>just</i> the right proportion of isotopes so that after <i>x</i> amount of accelerated nuclear decay, all systems appeared to have aged <i>precisely</i> 4.56 billion years. But this is not science, and it barely qualifies as pseudoscience (which at least has the appearance of being scientific). We need a new category to account for the level of deception employed by Andrew Snelling's latest 'research' report. Can you think of an appropriate term?<br />
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<i>Why are there isotopes?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Assumed by Snelling and all other creationists is the notion that a recently created universe should contain a wide assortment of both stable and radioactive isotopes. But why? What exactly in the young-Earth creationist paradigm would predict the existence of isotopes at all? Isotopes are not necessary to maintain life, either of plants/animals or the solar system itself. On the contrary, radioactive isotopes produce destructive heat and energy, which is the single most prominent cause of cancer, among other disorders.<br />
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In conventional science, the existence and relative abundances of isotopes are readily predicted by models of solar evolution, because stars produce elements with varying numbers of protons and neutrons by combining lighter elements of varying masses. It makes sense within this paradigm that isotopes exist in the first place, and by using isotopes as tracers for natural processes, we've made sense of the history of the universe. But I want to suggest that in the young-Earth creationist paradigm, the mere existence of isotopes (radioactive <i>or</i> stable) makes absolutely no sense. Did God make isotopes just to give scientists an additional tool by which to understand physical processes 6,000 years in the future? Any answer to this question by YECs will be entirely arbitrary, rendering Snelling's model of meteorite isotope systematics even more absurd.<br />
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<i>Meteorite isochron ages using the Al-Mg, Hf-W, Mn-Cr, and I-Xe systems</i><br />
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Snelling makes an odd statement amid his discussion regarding the calibration of isochron ages to the Pb-Pb system (forgive the long citation):<br />
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"The other “successful” radioisotope methods are not really independent and thus objective,<b> because they are calibrated against the Pb-Pb method</b> (see table 1) and therefore are <b>automatically guaranteed to give ages identical to those obtained by the Pb-Pb isochron method.</b> Specifically, the Al-Mg method is calibrated against the Pb-Pb isochron age for the D’Orbigny achondrite meteorite (Bouvier, Vervoort, and Patchett 2008), the Hf-W method is calibrated against the Pb-Pb isochron age for the St. Marguerite chondrite meteorite (Kleine et al. 2005) and the D’Orbigny achondrite meteorite (Burkhardt et al. 2008), the Mn-Cr method is calibrated against the Pb-Pb isochron age for the St. Marguerite chondrite meteorite (Trinquier et al. 2008), and the D’Orbigny and LEW 86010 achondrite meteorites (Yin et al. 2009), and the I-Xe method is calibrated against the I-Xe age of the Shallowater achondrite meteorite (Hohenberg et al. 2001), which is calibrated against the Pb-Pb isochron age for the St. Marguerite chondrite meteorite (Brazzle et al. 1999). Thus, as to be expected, all the dates obtained by these methods which are calibrated against these Pb-Pb isochron ages all plot in the 4.56–4.57 Ga mode with the clustered Pb-Pb dates (figs 18 and 20)."</div>
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Note that missing from the list of supposedly 'calibrated' radioisotope systems are the ones I cited in the previous section to confirm that meteorite ages are independently verifiable (U-Pb, Sm-Nd, Rb-Sr, Lu-Hf, and K-Ar/Ar-Ar). The reason is that Andrew Snelling has misunderstood the application of short-lived isotope systems, such as the Al-Mg chronometer. Al-Mg chronometry cannot give you an age of 4.56 billion years, because it depends on a short lived isotope set (i.e. radioactive isotopes that decay very rapidly, and have disappeared since the early days of the solar system). Instead, Al-Mg isotopes tell us about how long it took for the cores of chrondritic meteorites (and their various minerals) to solidify after the accumulation of raw material. Of course, the Al-Mg ages must use the formation age of the meteorite, based on Pb-Pb isochrons, as their 'starting point'. Therefore, Snelling's claim that these systems are somehow calibrated to the Pb-Pb system to yield artificially consistent results is not only bogus, but completely ignorant of the basic science behind these various applications in geochronology.<br />
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Snelling showcases his stellar research in Table 1, which reports, for example, that some of the meteorite ages in his histogram were calculated through an Al-Mg isochron. He cites one paper by <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X08003828" target="_blank">Bouvier et al. (2008)</a>, where he claims that Al-Mg isochron ages were calibrated to Pb-Pb ages. However, not only does the reference cited provide <b><i>no isochron ages of any kind</i></b>, it also makes absolutely no mention of the Al-Mg system, period.<br />
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<i>Exhortation</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Rather than wade through Snelling's repeated attempts to rationalize the success of geochronology in constraining the age of our solar system and geological history, I strongly encourage readers to recognize that Snelling has now subtly conceded the conclusion already reached by tens of thousands of his colleagues: we can pin down the age of the Earth with great precision, and it's far older than 6,000 years. Snelling's persistent trail of misguided arguments has long lead enthusiastic readers off the path of logic and evidence, perhaps to the point that these attributes of science are no longer recognizable. For this, I cannot help but to lament the loss of millions to the dark forest where Snelling has built his pseudoscientific palace. In case the loss is only temporary, however, I will continue to toss morsels of evidence from the lonely path.</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-61801793401162392822014-05-16T16:36:00.000-07:002014-05-16T16:36:04.125-07:00Set your eyes to Zion, as a million generations before you<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYCUg2tAFWQDG9OnyiXVFhpY7ZAgw-Rmj2uhxVL5fmDsg4u7TBO8GG7FAL1zvRrood7L13kPyKJ6a6aH2xaV92R8w7I6i3cwkEnSnutmr5M3zxSeiZHRpgmC6h5zZTDslrKviMmRLC2-E/s1600/wide.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYCUg2tAFWQDG9OnyiXVFhpY7ZAgw-Rmj2uhxVL5fmDsg4u7TBO8GG7FAL1zvRrood7L13kPyKJ6a6aH2xaV92R8w7I6i3cwkEnSnutmr5M3zxSeiZHRpgmC6h5zZTDslrKviMmRLC2-E/s1600/wide.JPG" height="298" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 1: </b>View south down Zion Canyon (National Park), near the base of the Emerald Pools trail. Sandstone cliff walls are comprised primarily of the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone. The Virgin River is seen cutting through the more fragile Kayenta Formation.</td></tr>
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Easter weekend for me involved another return trip to one of the most popular hiking destinations in the American southwest: <a href="http://www.nps.gov/zion/index.htm" target="_blank">Zion National Park, Utah</a>. Located just north of the humble valley town of Springdale, the canyon is full of visitors throughout the warm season, who include outdoor enthusiasts and office hermits alike, hailing from both faraway places like Europe and Asia and the local cities of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. Many families make the rather convenient, ~3-hour trek to Zion National Park from the Las Vegas airport, before continuing a few hours south to the famed north rim of the Grand Canyon.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6aB4xbQxGfOAKw55LU_xBoBFRX0zt-vmZXrEiFPeOjcGAd7feLRk3tJgqtCsplA2iCc0uFCdpyR0APrZf2ouvNddgwixa-kV3FlqfS4wsvB8G26tVWcx_lIFgo7mL69y-0LFuP8VL2ANh/s1600/riverbank.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6aB4xbQxGfOAKw55LU_xBoBFRX0zt-vmZXrEiFPeOjcGAd7feLRk3tJgqtCsplA2iCc0uFCdpyR0APrZf2ouvNddgwixa-kV3FlqfS4wsvB8G26tVWcx_lIFgo7mL69y-0LFuP8VL2ANh/s1600/riverbank.JPG" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 2: </b>A tranquil valley setting, showing<br />the homogenous/pure mixture of sand that<br />comprises the sandstone cliffs of Zion.</td></tr>
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The proximity of these parks is no coincidence. The sedimentary rock layers of Zion National Park are essentially the Early Mesozoic continuation of those found in Grand Canyon, in a long sequence of what's been termed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Staircase" target="_blank">Grand Staircase</a> (the uppermost layer of the Grand Canyon is Permian, the last period of the Paleozoic). This stratigraphic sequence continues into Bryce Canyon, where the later Mesozoic and early Cenozoic layers of the Colorado Plateau outcrop with astounding beauty. Now, despite the ongoing debate over exactly when and how these canyons were carved out, it is universally agreed that all three monuments to the power of erosion were formed sometime in the past 70 million years in response to substantial uplift of the Colorado Plateau.<br />
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While young-Earth creationists have commonly touted the Grand Canyon as a 'monument to catastrophe', somehow in favor of their position, this region's geology remains a testament to deep time and long, drawn-out geological processes. The 'Flood Geology' position requires a dishonest telescoping of data, fitted into an extremely oversimplified model, but a wider regional perspective as much as a detailed look at these rock formations provides ample evidence that this model is flat out wrong. I want to provide you with some basic observations, which demonstrate that the Flood Geology model fails to account for the 1) time required for deposition of sediments; 2) characteristics of the rocks prior to erosion; and 3) time required for erosion/removal of the bulk of sedimentary strata from the region.<br />
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<b><i>1. Sedimentary Strata of the Colorado Plateau — all in a year's work?</i></b><br />
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Between the rim of the Grand Canyon and the peaks of Zion National Park lie <a href="http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/coloradoplateau/escalante_strat.htm" target="_blank">more than 1,000 meters</a> of sedimentary rock. Even if we allow the entire flood year to deposit this small fraction of the geologic column, this amounts to ~2.78 meters of sediment per day. While modern catastrophic floods have been known to deposit 2–3 meters of sediment in a single day (e.g. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169555X13002808" target="_blank">Thompson and Croke, 2013</a>), the deposition is very localized (confined to flood banks) and offset by more intense erosion elsewhere in the channel. In other words, the sediment is simply moved downstream, but deposition is accompanied by distinct erosional features and does not result in flat, horizontal layers. More importantly, floods that are sufficiently powerful to deposit upward of 2–3 meters in a day are also sufficiently powerful to move large chunks of rock and debris, so that catastrophic flood deposits invariably consist of a mixture of sediment sizes, ranging from sand/mud to large boulders and gravel.<br />
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Triassic and Jurassic sediments of southern Utah are well known for their heterogeneity between layers and homogeneity within. Some layers are thin and contain only silt and clay, while others are thick, cross-bedded, and contain <i>only</i> medium-sized sand. Localized deposits of fine sediment or evaporites provide evidence of temporary lakes across the landscape. Shallow erosional features are common in the form of stream-sized sandstone channels, similar to modern floodplains in semi-arid regions (<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0037073800000853" target="_blank">Martin, 2000</a>). Perhaps the best known formation of this sequence is the red-stained Navajo Sandstone, a remnant of a massive desert dune-scape that rivaled the modern Sahara. To many a geologist, the portrait of a slowly evolving desert landscape over tens of millions of years could not be more clear.<br />
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Subtle clues to the paleoenvironment recorded by these rocks come in the form of sedimentary structures and fossils. Relatively thin sandstone beds contain planar bedding (horizontal) or epsilon cross bedding, much like modern river channels that now cross the American southwest. Massive sandstone beds of the Navajo Formation, on the other hand, are rather typical of wind-blown sand dunes, whose angle of repose (30–34°) matches that of the preserved sandstone. Experimental setups today (e.g. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0037073806001400" target="_blank">Fielding, 2006</a>) have allowed geologists to distinguish clearly what kind of bedding structures (e.g. cross bedding) develop under various water depths, flow rates, etc., so that we can be confident that the Navajo Sandstone was deposited by air—not water. Other features like mudcracks or even dune collapse (e.g. <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0037073813001668" target="_blank">Bryan et al., 2013</a>) could not possibly form during catastrophic deposition.<br />
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Finally, fossils ranging from footprints (<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10420949809386417#.U3aF81hdVyE" target="_blank">Lockley et al., 1998</a>) to mammalian burrows (<a href="http://jsedres.geoscienceworld.org/content/81/4/299" target="_blank">Riese et al., 2011</a>) to body fossils of dinosaurs and other desert-dwelling terrestrial fauna (<a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1708/1044" target="_blank">Rowe et al., 2010</a>) preclude the catastrophic deposition rates required by the flood geology model, but corroborate well the conventional interpretation of these rock layers. Are we to believe that dinosaurs and small mammals were leaving footprints and making burrows while the sediment-choked flood waters raged at several meters per second? Are we further to believe that such powerful water masses imported millions of tons of sand/silt, but not an ounce of marine shells, bones, or lime mud, as is the case today when strong hurricanes/tsunamis make landfall? That is precisely what the folks at Answers in Genesis would have you believe, but this line of reasoning requires a staggering level of geological ignorance.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><br />
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<i>So the Flood Geologist is presented with a theoretical dilemma</i>. The flood model might predict either a thick sequence of sediments, produced by a powerful slurry of sediment-choked water, or a relatively thin sequence of sediments, in which sedimentary structures and fossil features might be preserved through relatively mild, oscillating flow patterns. But they cannot have it both ways. If the entire 1,000-meter section of sediment from Grand Canyon to the Zion peaks were laid down within one year, it could not possibly contain such a diverse mixture of thin and thick, planar and cross bedded layers of sand, silt, clay, and evaporite, let alone footprints and burrows of small animals, who could never have walked amid such torrential waters. Besides, footprints and burrows in soft sediment are destroyed instantly under catastrophic flow conditions.<br />
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Along the highways of southern Utah, these massive cliffs of sedimentary rock stand testament against any rapid process of formation. So if this 1-kilometer sequence—only a fraction of the miles of sediment beneath the Colorado Plateau—cannot be explained by a year-long flood, why would Answers in Genesis go on pretending that it's even plausible for the entire geologic column (give or take) to have been laid down in a year? <i>This is not a contrast between two worldviews examining one set of data</i>, but a contrast between those who are willing to examine the data and those who are willing to misrepresent them unreservedly.<br />
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<b><i>2. Post-flood transformation—between a soft rock and a hard place</i></b><br />
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Let us grant, for the sake of discussion, that all the Mesozoic sediments of Zion National Park were deposited within the flood year. Now how do these sediments become rocks? Under the weight of overlying sand and silt, water should begin moving of the sediments toward the surface—a process called dewatering and compaction. If accompanied by strong earthquakes, as young-Earth geologists tell us should have been the case, we would expect to find massive dewatering structures throughout the sedimentary layers.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDBPGxw2Iy3wMR9mQDDmROzlXkIe-B1Xp4cCKf3xslEREjQViWgbGvw-gxdaetnf90kfaFkRYl-GU5CgSIHINC5C6jr_OwS_IsMx_OoePoyPFlr1a-fToGeKD4AXpqLq9gq1Z3GZQyOE7I/s1600/sandstonewall.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDBPGxw2Iy3wMR9mQDDmROzlXkIe-B1Xp4cCKf3xslEREjQViWgbGvw-gxdaetnf90kfaFkRYl-GU5CgSIHINC5C6jr_OwS_IsMx_OoePoyPFlr1a-fToGeKD4AXpqLq9gq1Z3GZQyOE7I/s1600/sandstonewall.JPG" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 3: </b>Sandstone cliff exhibiting brittle<br />fracture zones, which somewhat resemble<br />conchoidal breaks in glass.</td></tr>
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But we don't. All the layers and their bedding are intact (Fig. 3).<br />
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So how long did it take for these sediments to compact and lose enough water to begin precipitating iron-oxide cement between the sand grains (responsible for the red color of the cliffs)? By standard models of groundwater flow, this process could take thousands to millions of years, since the water is forced to flow through tiny pore spaces between grains. By no means do fresh laid sandstone bodies, hundreds of meters thick, go from sandcastle material to solid rock in a matter of days or even decades. This fact alone falsifies the young-Earth timeline, so young-Earth geologists strain at credulity in suggesting otherwise.<br />
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Flood geologists frequently make the claim that large-scale erosive processes were aided by the fact that sedimentary layers were not yet solid, meanwhile ignoring the fact that to this day, these rocks should not be solid. Even granting them this impossible scenario, however, we must note that erosion and weathering of Zion National Park exhibits features <i>consistent only with the deformation of solid rock</i>—not soft sediment. How old is Zion Canyon according to the young-Earth creationist? We cannot be sure exactly, and never would they offer an answer with much precision, but previous workers (like Austin and Snelling) cite retreat of the flood waters and/or residual inland seas as one mechanism to erode massive canyons in little time.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWSIK43NTkmPweKJ_KSfsmh3j44yobZA1xM1fd7H4w1bKEVLfzrDfCk483QzU-zm8ulEH5Yg51TM5BGaE4hL0xfpiR-xAgpoekkehJqDfa8lMnfzdoHxkWUACR8-WVcgGPvJfeB4VQXoBi/s1600/canyoncut.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWSIK43NTkmPweKJ_KSfsmh3j44yobZA1xM1fd7H4w1bKEVLfzrDfCk483QzU-zm8ulEH5Yg51TM5BGaE4hL0xfpiR-xAgpoekkehJqDfa8lMnfzdoHxkWUACR8-WVcgGPvJfeB4VQXoBi/s1600/canyoncut.JPG" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 4: </b>A side canyon, which has retreated<br />along a vertical fault (see right).</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDMaOdD08nmDceX1NqPjV-D62bcZm4Tbde75mockghTNcjS3FG4nKfspS1mhtd2QLl6__fZAO4DB3VzSzW_Ta8E0FjkaQ9YipiUFTZ3xqWWTEYiRbddeFzu2QESALqimCCBxMfVF2UDCz/s1600/faultedwall.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDMaOdD08nmDceX1NqPjV-D62bcZm4Tbde75mockghTNcjS3FG4nKfspS1mhtd2QLl6__fZAO4DB3VzSzW_Ta8E0FjkaQ9YipiUFTZ3xqWWTEYiRbddeFzu2QESALqimCCBxMfVF2UDCz/s1600/faultedwall.JPG" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 5: </b>Waterfall along the main fault res-<br />ponsible for the side canyon. These falls are<br />the source of the Emerald Pools.</td></tr>
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But if that were the case, then the erosional features of Zion Canyon make absolutely no sense. The sedimentary strata are filled with brittle fractures, joints, and faults, indicating the sediments were already solidified before the canyon eroded (Figs. 4-5). Furthermore, the canyon walls have been retreating for millennia by losing large, planar slabs of solid rock through a combination of freeze/thaw weathering and the pull of gravity. The result are pseudo-conchoidal pits on the vertical walls, as seen in the photo above (Fig. 3). Therefore, we can conclude confidently that Zion National Park was not eroded within days, centuries, or even millennia after deposition of the raw sedimentary materials. This process took far, far longer.<br />
<br />
<b><i>3. Post-flood erosion: we're gonna need a lot more dynamite...</i></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoq7P42iId-QVDOa8kaF2DnY5llRSo7c-q6TaIK0AGgF81ngDzJ8qsiCbGPd0kVTbTp1TIOcpAkVh0TCH7PTUREy1XE4QZ4ZuGVXA_sygxDPSKl_Ecq6PhbAKXLcd5dMIvqbWU7F8gePmE/s1600/pools.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoq7P42iId-QVDOa8kaF2DnY5llRSo7c-q6TaIK0AGgF81ngDzJ8qsiCbGPd0kVTbTp1TIOcpAkVh0TCH7PTUREy1XE4QZ4ZuGVXA_sygxDPSKl_Ecq6PhbAKXLcd5dMIvqbWU7F8gePmE/s1600/pools.JPG" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Figure 6: </b>Base of the uppermost Emerald Pool,<br />where the results of gravity and wintertime<br />weathering are most clearly seen. It will be<br />centuries before these boulders are ground<br />to fine sand again.</td></tr>
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The Mesozoic strata outcropping in Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks are not present in the Grand Canyon region, or even across much of the southern Colorado Plateau. Where did all the sediment go? We know that much of it was recycled into other formations across the western US, while the rest was carried off to the Baja region of western Mexico, where it now comprises much of the Cenozoic delta deposits of the modern Colorado River. As seen in Figure 2, rivers are extremely efficient at grinding rock slabs and boulders (see Fig. 6) down to fine sediment.<br />
<br />
So once again, the Flood Geologist has put us into a strange dilemma regarding the Mesozoic sediments of Zion National Park. To be eroded quickly, these sediments must have been still soft, but to produce the deformational/erosional features found today, they must have been solid and well cemented. At the same time, these sediments were eroded and transported to form other fine-grained sedimentary deposits in the region, such as the sedimentary layers of the Cretaceous Interior Seaway, which extend from eastern Utah into Kansas. This could only happen rapidly if the Mesozoic sediments were still soft. But still other sedimentary deposits contain gravel and boulders of Mesozoic sandstone layers (e.g. the Iron Springs Formation of southern Utah), indicating unequivocally that the Mesozoic sediments were solid and well cemented at the time they were eroded and recycled into other sedimentary formations.<br />
<br />
<i>Conclusions</i><br />
So which of these mutually exclusive scenarios should the young-Earth geologist choose? Were the sediments still soft or already lithified at the time that they were weathered and carried off of the Colorado Plateau? If we choose the latter scenario, we are left with one final problem: how were millions of tons of solid sand and silt stone ground to individual grains and then removed from the whole of the southern Colorado Plateau? Given the timeline offered by the Flood Geologist, it is abundantly clear that no option even begins to explain the most basic geological observations of the Zion National Park region.<br />
<br />
I highly recommend a trip to Zion National Park, if you've not made the trip so far. It is truly a testament to deep time and the gradual evolution of landscapes in history and provides some of the most unique hikes available in the U.S. Only a few hours drive from Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Red Rock Canyon, Lake Powell, Valley of Fire, San Rafael Swell (among others), one is able to trace more than ~800 million years of sedimentary strata in a single trip. Where else on Earth is that possible?</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-17061725629880348592014-03-31T13:34:00.001-07:002014-03-31T13:34:42.994-07:00Why Aronofsky's Noah is more biblical than Ham's<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZswKVHd8UcaNmDez6HLazXQI0B_ZDrWUZLh_erUPRNqSR3nyBMJWeIhEhwk3uLymfqZGoszvPOIOtKxzjlldE2Vs4gOBATZ9VifMqYvOi-GiSxg32dohE5knrcRafxkzL2QvvB6QhmyGe/s1600/Darren-Aronofsky-Noah_1387544726.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZswKVHd8UcaNmDez6HLazXQI0B_ZDrWUZLh_erUPRNqSR3nyBMJWeIhEhwk3uLymfqZGoszvPOIOtKxzjlldE2Vs4gOBATZ9VifMqYvOi-GiSxg32dohE5knrcRafxkzL2QvvB6QhmyGe/s1600/Darren-Aronofsky-Noah_1387544726.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Noah and son, Ham, before an ark in progress.</td></tr>
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"Narrative creates a world...meant to be entered, inhabited, and appropriated by the reader... As the reader dwells in the created world of the story, new possibilities are opened up for articulating and conveying truth and meaning. Narrative...configures a world that has the potential power to refigure the reader's world."<sup>1</sup></div>
<br />
The story of Noah and his ark is narrative, foremost. This fact alone drives a wedge between the highly artistic tale and the modern reader, who has all but lost his ability to read story. Relentless efforts by Ken Ham and company to reduce the tale to a timeline of facts—a journalistic record of the lost world—silenced the Genesis author long ago, whose profound dialogue of judgement and redemption itself drowned in a deluge of post-Enlightenment 'fact-checking'. To preserve the tale of Noah, it seemed, one should engage in cognitive dissonance and present a twisted form of geology allegedly in support of the biblical text. Any rejection of these pseudoscientific claims, therefore, meant dismissal of the biblical narrative altogether, because a false dilemma had already set firmly in the public mindset.<br />
<br />
For this reason, I waited eagerly for years to see how Aronofsky, who could not be bothered by Ken Ham's input, would move from a few pages of ancient text to 2 1/2 hours on the big screen. His stated agenda to transform the biblical narrative into a modern warning under the blanket of environmentalism admittedly gave me pause, and I was hesitant to form any great expectations. In the wake of Ham's resurgence in public dialogue, however, I began to hope for the best. After the public debate with Bill Nye, an announcement that 'Ark Encounter' is financially afloat, and a <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/ray-comfort-releases-his-own-noah-movie-days-before-aronofskys-film-116788/" target="_blank">theatrical rebuttal</a> to Aronofsky by Ray Comfort, I wanted this to be the best portrayal of Noah ever made.<br />
<br />
So I'm a little biased... But I did walk into the theater with inflated standards. Regardless, I wanted to see the story of Noah and his ark played out on screen, with the biblical message still intact, and that's precisely where Aronofsky delivered. In light of the evangelical uproar to censor Aronofsky, therefore, I want to tell you why I think his portrayal of Noah is, perhaps ironically, more biblical than Ken Ham's. <i>[Note: I will avoid any blatant spoilers below, but I still recommend you see the movie first!]</i><br />
<br />
<i>1. Aronofsky's Noah lives in a narrative world</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
If you expect <i>Noah</i> to reconstruct some moment in Earth history, using only the biblical text as a script, you will be sorely disappointed. Aronofsky's Noah lives on a planet that is ostensibly 'earthy', but sufficiently unfamiliar to remove the reader from critical history telling into the mode of <i>poetic historiography</i>, which better captures the spirit of the biblical narrative. For example, the biblical description of Eden sounds enough like ancient Israel to inform the reader "Hey, this story is about you!", but the strange geography and inhabitants preclude any flatfooted connection to history. Such seamless blending of historical referent and imaginative symbolism is characteristic of near Eastern historiography, including that which comprises much of the Pentateuch. For this reason, I applaud Aronofsky for not giving into the literalist's plea to "just tell us what <i>really </i>happened!" Instead, he <i>retells</i> the story of Noah in a manner that speaks specifically to a modern audience, first by removing the audience from their own world and placing them into one that is familiar yet strange. This world contains its own set of rules (including a bit of 'magic'), but the moral struggles and consequences obviously apply to humanity as we know it. Aronofsky's most brilliant connection to the modern audience is made toward the end of the movie, when Noah recounts the story of creation, temptation and rebellion over a time-lapse montage of history as we know it.<br />
<br />
<i>2. Aronofsky's Noah is theomorphic</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
God is understood in the Genesis narratives less by what he says and does himself than by the characters who honor or defy him. This may sound controversial, but I assure you, the principle is demonstrated amply through character development and intertextual allusion throughout the Bible. Biblical characters are frequently named for the attributes of God they reflect biographically, echoing the statement that mankind is made in God's image. Upholding that image, Adam names the creatures of the Garden; Noah sends out a raven alongside God's 'breath' until the waters recede; Moses separates the waters from the waters to 'create' Israel from the land. Take also the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, where God's voice is hauntingly scarce, and the drama builds through a silent march to an unthinkable end. Only when Abraham has mentally committed to the loss of his firstborn does he gain his son back from the dead, so to speak. And so in the Passover plague in Egypt, God—like Abraham—regains his firstborn son, as he would again on Resurrection Sunday. God's emotional response is understood here <i>not</i> through mythology, but through dramatic precedent of theomorphic characters.<br />
<br />
In <i>Noah</i>, God is hauntingly silent. We cannot understand who 'the creator' is or what he wants through a baritone loudspeaker in the sky, but only by the drama surrounding those who honor or reject him. Aronofsky's Noah plays out the just God, who unreservedly consigns a wicked humanity to their destruction well earned, while battling his grief over a deep love for that which is lost and hope for a new beginning. Russell Crowe (Noah) is emotionally convincing, more so than any creed simply announcing that God is both just and merciful. Perhaps the most creative example is one in which Aronofsky deviates strongly from the biblical tale, facing Noah with a murderous task involving his own daughter-in-law. This paradox is complex, and it takes a complex drama to understand fully what it means for the creator God to be the redeemer God. Speaking of which...<br />
<br />
<i>3. Aronofsky's Noah elucidates the grand paradox of the Flood narrative</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Why did God determine to flood the land? Because of the pervasive wickedness of mankind. Why did God covenant with mankind and promise never to flood the land again? Because of the pervasive wickedness of mankind. This is the paradox played out in Genesis 6–9, which perhaps never sought to answer the question bluntly. <i>Noah </i>makes clear the sins of mankind, whose greed became a plague to all of creation (even its heavenly inhabitants). Most unexpected, however, is Noah's own discovery of the innate wickedness of mankind in surveying his families primal desire for self-preservation. Aronofsky improvises where scripture is silent, and confronts the audience with a Noah who learns the hard way that "mankind is evil from his youth" (Gen. 8:21).<br />
<br />
<i>4. Aronofsky's Noah captures the psychological torment of knowing good from evil</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I anticipate much antagonism from evangelical crowds over the fact that Noah is not cast as a humble old preacher, inviting the world to his sermons while the crowds gather and cast insults. Aronofsky's Noah is rather a conflicted personality, who actively takes up divine roles, including judgement (Russell Crowe apparently retained his skills from <i>Gladiator</i> when it comes to mutilating oncoming barbarian legions). Lover of peace and harmony, this Noah yet discovers that he will resort to all manners of violence to protect his family and uphold divine justice. But Aronofsky provides the insight behind the personality of Noah, whose family struggles to understand him, primarily through prophetic dreams. We learn the cost of knowing good and evil through graphic display of each extreme, that in recognizing what is good and holy necessarily elucidates what is evil and repulsive. Noah is slow to learn, perhaps, and falls into drunken desperation to escape the inner dialogue, but he is comforted in the end by budding theologian Emma Watson (who plays Shem's wife). True to the intertextual overlap between Noah and Adam and Abraham, she informs Noah what it meant to make the Abrahamic choice in the new Eden. Aronofsky captures this profound message of the Genesis author far better than the average biblical literalist.<br />
<br />
<i>5. Aronofsky's ark accurately captures the temple imagery</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
In the narrative world he creates, Aronofsky need not obsess over the potentially seaworthiness of a large, wooden vessel. Instead, he lets the ark symbolize precisely what it should: a cosmic temple in which one finds the rest of God amid chaos and wilderness. It is no coincidence that according to Genesis, the dimensions of the ark are essentially a 3:1 scaling of the tabernacle—a mobile, holy structure that served the nomadic, covenant people of God. So I am thankful that Aronofsky's ark, which spends as much time in the movie on the ground as it does in the water, better depicted a temple than an 18th-century wharf. Even the barren landscape produced during the ark's construction (see image above) echoes the principle of life through death, and of new birth and innocence through sacrifice and cleansing. Aronofsky also forgoes the literalist's depiction of Noah's family as superhuman zookeepers and instead borrows from Orthodox liturgy, as Noah's wife (apparently a high-level herbalist) and sons carry <a href="http://orthodoxbridge.com/defending-incense/" target="_blank">incense censers</a> throughout the stables and cause the animals to slip into hibernation. Use of symbolism over pseudoscientific zoology is a win for Aronofsky, in my opinion.<br />
<br />
<i>6. Aronofsky's Noah is an environmentalist</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
This film is hardly what I would call a propagandist piece, despite its unashamed support for environmentalism over sheer human interest. Whatever the personal convictions of the writers and director, the manner in which <i>Noah</i> calls its audience to care for God's creation (and that includes our fellow man) as God commanded in the beginning is perfectly in line with the biblical message. All too often, Christians are so hesitant to associate themselves with secularist or quasi-pantheistic factions under the umbrella of 'environmental responsibility' that they are willing to promote the opposite. But Aronofsky's message is so simple as to be innocent and (hopefully) effective: taking for yourself more than what you need and casting anger, hate, and violence toward your brother is contrary to God's <i>good</i> creation.<br />
<br />
<i>7. Aronofsky's Noah is conscious of the echoes from Eden</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Despite the many ways in which Aronofsky takes creative license to improvise or deviate from a surface reading of Genesis, he stays true to the biblical message that a return to Eden is the essence of new creation. Several symbols are utilized throughout the movie (from the fertile seed that Noah plants, to the spring that rises from the ground and divides to water the Earth, to his patriarchal blessing to be fruitful and multiply). Thus Aronofsky's call to take responsibility for our actions equates to an exhortation to live as God commanded us from the beginning.<br />
<br />
That this call comes now from outside the church should raise concern to us, who have been entrusted with the oracles of God and commissioned with the task of cultivating the garden of God, so that its borders cover the Earth as the waters cover the sea.<br />
<br />
<br />
–––––––––––––––––––––––<br />
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<sup>1</sup> Allusion to Paul Ricoeur's <i>Time and Narrative</i>; citation from Diepstra, G.R., and Laughery, G.J., 2009, Interpreting Science and Scripture: Genesis 1–3: European Journal of Theology, v. 18, p. 5–16.</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-20077838549224356082014-03-28T00:29:00.001-07:002014-03-28T00:32:45.800-07:00The Great Salt Lake: Monument to Stagnation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvpsmaNBjamfa3_nY-ccqBboZhUGHyGfWB5foUcoRRZSwCsOaTU-GSweYd9Hrf6Sa63h_8fmdZqBN_BFAkmJFBb4-dXAPRdnQv4LJiHo2xosWRN1JwmE2QKQzcgP8uN7kVNeUR2YungMfi/s1600/GSL.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvpsmaNBjamfa3_nY-ccqBboZhUGHyGfWB5foUcoRRZSwCsOaTU-GSweYd9Hrf6Sa63h_8fmdZqBN_BFAkmJFBb4-dXAPRdnQv4LJiHo2xosWRN1JwmE2QKQzcgP8uN7kVNeUR2YungMfi/s1600/GSL.JPG" height="215" width="450" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reflection of the Wasatch Mountain Range (northern Utah) in the Great Salt Lake. American Bison are visible grazing near a pond at the right edge of the photo. View east from Antelope Island, just west of Farmington, Utah.</td></tr>
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Any review of the literature by so-called "Flood Geologists" will yield a plethora of hyped-up examples, in which catastrophic geological processes supposedly occurred at warp speed in the recent past. Steve Austin's "Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe" now serves as a template for reinterpreting the past to conform to an <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-oversimplification-of-genesis-and.html" target="_blank">oversimplistic reading</a> of Genesis. But closer analyses of these pseudoscientific works, which fill article databases at Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International, invariably reveal fundamental errors in data interpretation, and so the effort continues to battle the spread of misinformation by ostensibly evangelistic organizations.<br />
<br />
During a recent trip to northern Utah, however, it occurred to me that these article databases are lacking a vital bit of context: the fact that for every geological example for which 'recent catastrophe' could plausibly be argued before a non-specialist audience, there exist one million examples for which catastrophic processes make absolutely no sense. The Great Salt Lake is one such candidate.<br />
<br />
The modern Great Salt Lake, situated in the northeastern Basin and Range province of the western U.S., is but a modest residual of glacial Lake Bonneville. If you're unfamiliar with Bonneville's history, I recommend that you take an interactive tour <a href="http://geology.utah.gov/utahgeo/gsl/flash/lb_flash.htm" target="_blank">here</a>, courtesy of USGS. Since the peak of the last ice age, the lake's water level fell a little more than 300 meters, causing isostatic rebound of the underlying crust. As the weight of the water disappeared, in other words, the ground elevation rose several meters in response (similar to what happened in post-glacial Scandinavia to produce the fjords, but on a smaller scale).<br />
<br />
<i>When did all this happen?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Along the Wasatch Mountains and other elongated ranges of northwestern Utah, multiple terraces mark previous highstands in the stepwise transition from Lake Bonneville to the Great Salt Lake. The earliest dating of these shoreline sediments indicated that maximum water levels coincided with peak glacial conditions between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago (<a href="http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/69/8/1009.short" target="_blank">Broecker and Orr, 1958</a>). These authors hypothesized early on that the water level tracked regional climate changes in the Great Basin, with cooler and wetter glacial conditions promoting higher lake levels.<br />
<br />
Later radiocarbon dating confirmed and expanded upon early results (<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003101829290017Y" target="_blank">Oviatt et al., 1992</a>), after a suite of geophysical tools were employed to reconstruct lake levels and water chemistry by comparing sections of sediment across the basin (e.g. <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01187137" target="_blank">Spencer et al., 1984</a>). These studies revealed long periods—centuries to millennia—during which either a high-standing freshwater lake or a moderately low-standing saltwater lake prevailed.<br />
<br />
<i>Why should we trust the radiocarbon dating?</i><br />
<br />
Putting a young-Earth spin on Lake Bonneville would involve reinterpreting radiocarbon ages to reflect the early 'post-Flood' period when atmospheric 14C was supposedly equilibrating to modern levels. In other words, the AiG and ICR crowds would consider these radiocarbon dates to be <i>apparently</i> old, because in their view, the lake <i>must</i> post-date Noah's flood. Cramming the long history of Lake Bonneville into a few hundred years, however, would result in a nonsensical portrait, in which the sediment deposition rate no longer corresponds to the inferred climate and water-level. For example, Oviatt (<a href="http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/25/2/155.short" target="_blank">1997</a>) correlated lake-level shifts to global climate changes recorded in North Atlantic sediments, the Greenland Ice Sheet cores, and numerous cave and lake records. These various geological records are all dated by different techniques, so any young-Earth twisting of radiocarbon dates immediately collapses under the weight of corroboration.<br />
<br />
On a similar note, Cerling (<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003358949090015D" target="_blank">1990</a>) used the radiocarbon dates from Lake Bonneville shorelines to calibrate another dating technique, which measures the accumulation of 3He to estimate how long certain minerals have been exposed to the surface (useful for dating floods, landslides, eruptions, etc.). Success of this technique, which assumes the accuracy of shoreline dates, further corroborates the big picture of glacial Lake Bonneville.<br />
<br />
A young-Earth spin also leaves too little time for the lake to have alternated between salt and freshwater (see below). Lake levels can change catastrophically, but rapid salinification? Not a chance. Most importantly, any young-Earth interpretation must ignore the much longer geological history beneath the salt flats and modern lake (<a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008053505320" target="_blank">Kowalewska and Cohen, 1998</a>). The recent journey from Lake Bonneville to Great Salt Lake is only one at the end of an ~800,000-year string of similar transitions associated with glacial-interglacial cycles. Lakes and marshes (often saline) of various size and lifespan have covered the region since 2.1 million years ago, and the modern landscape has been in place for ~5 million years. No matter how one twists the timeline, 4,500 years is far too little to explain what represents only a thin slice at the top of the geologic column in northern Utah.<br />
<br />
<i>How did the lake become salty?</i><br />
<br />
The Great Salt Lake is perhaps known best for its foul smell to those who frequent its shores, due to the abundance of rotting brine shrimp. These hypersaline inhabitants are the only trace of aquatic life in the lake, whose salinity far exceeds that of the ocean. In a young-Earth scenario, it might sound reasonable to posit Lake Bonneville as a remnant of the receding flood waters, but this hypothesis fails the test of chemistry. The modern salt composition is explained rather by the evaporation of river and spring water flowing into the lake (<a href="http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70012675" target="_blank">Spencer et al., 1985</a>). When evaporation exceeds river and rainfall input, the salt content increases, because only calcium carbonate precipitates from the lake in large quantities, despite that numerous ionic compounds are carried in by rivers. In other words, the Great Salt Lake is the final product of more than 10,000 years of freshwater distillation.<br />
<br />
<i>Didn't Lake Bonneville drain catastrophically?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
To an extent, yes. As Earth began to warm following the peak of the last ice age, a natural dam at the north end of Lake Bonneville failed. Nearly 400 cubic miles of water gushed into southern Idaho through the Snake River valley, carving numerous telltale features of megafloods into the landscape (read the full story <a href="http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/hydr/lkbflood/lbf.htm" target="_blank">here</a>). As a result, Lake Bonneville fell as much as 100 meters in a geological instant.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://geology.isu.edu/Digital_Geology_Idaho/Module14/scablnds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://geology.isu.edu/Digital_Geology_Idaho/Module14/scablnds.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scablands and dry falls cut into basalt along the Snake River (image from <a href="http://geology.isu.edu/Digital_Geology_Idaho/Module14/mod14.htm" target="_blank">Digital Geology of Idaho</a>).</td></tr>
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<br />
On the one hand, Lake Bonneville bears at least one 'monument to catastrophe', but this event puts into perspective the slow and gradual histories that bound it. The water loss during the Bonneville flood represents only half the amount lost over thousands of years of slight flux imbalance. Combine this with the fact that lakes comparable to Bonneville appeared and disappeared multiple times prior to its own existence (and without the aid of catastrophic discharges). The Bonneville flood further illustrates how catastrophic flooding affects the surface of the Earth, carving mega-ripples, pot marks, and waterfalls, to name a few geological oddities characterizing 'scablands'. These features remain 'oddities' precisely because the vast majority of Earth's surface never was subjected to catastrophic flooding.<br />
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<b>Want to know more about the Great Salt Lake?</b></div>
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More than a fascinating geological site, the Great Salt Lake has both intrigued and challenged humans over a long and complicated relationship. If you want to know more about 'Our Inland Sea' from a human perspective, I highly recommend the documentary below, which packs a thoughtful arrangement of little-known, sometimes bizarre facts about the lake into 43 minutes. How did Native Americans make use of the 'sea'? The Mormons? What role did the lake play in western tourism and entertainment? You may be surprised...</div>
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Visit <a href="http://www.greatsaltlakedvd.com/">www.greatsaltlakedvd.com</a> to order a copy, or view the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeAW1fhTGCw" target="_blank">trailer</a> on YouTube. The semi-retro style of the documentary (and host's attire) might invoke some hesitation, but I actually enjoyed these aspects by the end. In my opinion, the video is very informative and entertaining given the modest price, and who knows, it might even inspire an upcoming visit to this natural monument.</div>
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-44817896094460299272014-03-18T16:31:00.001-07:002014-03-18T16:31:05.067-07:00All in a day's work: don't take Genesis too literally!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Admittedly, I rarely keep up with things over at <a href="http://www.reasons.org/" target="_blank">Reasons to Believe</a>, so I must thank the author for sharing with me his recent article: <a href="http://www.reasons.org/articles/the-sixth-creation-day-biblical-support-for-old-earth-creationism" target="_blank">The Sixth Creation Day: Biblical Support for Old-Earth Creationism</a>. This article highlights some of the basic conflicts that arise in Genesis 1–3 when forcing the literalist hermeneutic of YEC onto its narrative portrait. For those who would posit that Young-Earth readings are but a matter of basic reading comprehension, we can justifiably prescribe to them some of their own medicine in reading about the sixth day.<br />
<br />
So what is the argument from the sixth day of creation? Dr. Travis Campbell writes that "put simply, too many events occurred on creation day 6 to be squeezed into 24 hours." Dr. Campbell includes here the creation of land animals and mankind, planting of the garden in Eden, causing all sorts of trees to grow, covenant making, naming of creatures, and forming and introduction of a mate for Adam (the beginnings of human sexuality), among others. I will add that all the events of the Eden narrative appeal to the common experience of the Near Eastern reader, as the first of mankind is described through the experience of Israel and is placed in a microclimatic and geographic oasis <a href="http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/01-genesis/text/articles-books/futato_raingen2_wtj.pdf" target="_blank">similar to their own</a>. Thus it would be unreasonable (i.e. unfaithful to the text) to view Adam as anything <i>super</i>human.<br />
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Dr. Campbell further addresses some outlandish objections by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, author of <i>Refuting Compromise</i>, a book targeting the scientific and theological positions of <i>Reasons to Believe</i>. When I say 'outlandish', I specifically have in mind Dr. Sarfati's conjecture that in naming all the animals, Adam could have taken:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"...<b><i>five seconds per kind</i></b>, and [taking] a five-minute break every hour, he could have completed the task in well under four hours. This hardly seems onerous even for people today, and with <i><b>Adam’s pre-Fall stamina and memory recall abilities</b>,</i> the problem disappears totally." (emphasis mine)</div>
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In other words, Sarfati goes to extreme rhetorical lengths to accommodate scripture to his reductionistic reading, and in the process, he misses entirely the point why the author of Genesis cares to inform us that "whatever 'the adam' called every living creature, that was its name." (Gen. 2:19b)<br />
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To find out what it means that mankind was commissioned to name the animals, and why man reacted to woman as he did, I highly encourage you to <a href="http://www.reasons.org/articles/the-sixth-creation-day-biblical-support-for-old-earth-creationism" target="_blank">read Dr. Campbell's article</a>.</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-46658409403784307832014-03-05T18:45:00.000-08:002014-03-05T18:45:10.146-08:00Do you feel like a big toe?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The kind folks at <i><a href="http://www.godofevolution.com/" target="_blank">God of Evolution: Theology with Attitude</a></i> have turned part of my last post into a very colorful meme, for which I'm very grateful. It was a strange but pleasant surprise to read my own words so creatively arranged in the graphic. You can find the original meme <a href="http://www.godofevolution.com/christian-scientists-do-you-feel-like-a-big-toe/" target="_blank">here</a>. Please feel free to share, if the message is in any way encouraging or edifying to you:<br />
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<a href="http://www.godofevolution.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Questioning-AiG-toe-meme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.godofevolution.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Questioning-AiG-toe-meme.jpg" height="1232" width="350" /></a></div>
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-73997774641590900982014-03-04T17:03:00.000-08:002014-08-12T21:47:54.078-07:00On the oversimplification of Genesis and the "tyranny of experts"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've been meaning to get to these topics for some time now. Far more can be said about the scientific shortfalls of Ham's position in the wake of this rejuvenated topic of American discussion, and given its rejuvenation, I'll be sure to get there. Google searches for "fossil wood in basalt" bring new visitors to this blog every day, and I consider this evidence that people want to know how Answers in Genesis has 'sculpted' scientific data to work in their favor.<br />
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At the moment, I want to address a more fundamental concern keeping YEC's from ever considering the scientific fallibility of their claims: a deep-rooted sense that at the end of the day, their reading of Scripture trumps all possible critique. Essentially, the argument goes: 1) we know that Scripture's word is final on truth claims; 2) Scripture says this about creation; so 3) you can't possibly be correct about the age of the Earth and the history of its life.<br />
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Fair enough. At least ostensibly, the conclusion follows logically from those premises. So I want to focus on the second premise in light of a couple of articles recently posted: <a href="http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2014/02/on-24-hour-days-argument-in-genesis.html" target="_blank">"On the 24 Hour Days "Argument" in Genesis"</a> by pseudonymous blogger TurretinFan, and <a href="http://theaquilareport.com/do-we-really-want-a-new-reformation/" target="_blank">"Do We Really Want A New Reformation?"</a> by G.I. Williamson at the Aquila Report. In a nutshell, these articles are reminding readers that a Young-Earth Creationist reading of Genesis is the most simple and obvious (i.e. why bother following trails of evidence that already contradict a more basic axiom of truth?).<br />
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If you are an atheist reading this post, or at least a non-biblical theist, you're natural reaction might be to attack the premise that the Bible is authoritative on certain truth claims. For the sake of discussion, however, I want you to assume its legitimacy—not simply because I hold to it myself, but rather because reducing this discussion to a debate over biblical authority raises a communicative barrier between YEC's and the majority of their critics. You may ultimately want to disprove the Bible as an infallible source of knowledge, but to promote scientific literacy and mitigate the influence of YEC in education and politics (our common goal), <i>you don't have to</i>.<br />
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Why? Because the YEC's reading of Scripture is often as profound as their grasp on science, which is to say: oversimplified, and specially tailored to suit their occasion.<br />
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<i>The Earth is young, because the days of Genesis lasted only ~24 hours... right?</i><br />
<br />
If you follow AiG's instructions for reading Genesis, you might be convinced that the only key to reading Genesis like they do is to agree that the Hebrew 'yom' should be understood as a common, 24-hour day. This limits the creation of heaven, Earth, and life therein to a common week at the beginning of time. TurretinFan writes thusly:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"Arguing 24 hour days in Genesis is hardly necessary - the text doesn't just say day - it specifies the kind of day - the kind with evening and morning. It's not so much a question of arguing as just basic reading comprehension... The text says day [and] specifies the morning/evening kind of day. That kind of day is approximately 24 hours long. It's hard to see what could possibly be missing in that proof."</div>
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I've argued similarly that it makes sense to read the days of Genesis 1 only through our common experience of this natural, 24-hour cycle. The best evidence for this derives not from the inclusion of evening and morning, however, but from the fact that there are exactly 7 of them—6 for working and 1 for rest. The Pentateuch's citation of this text as a warrant for observing the Sabbath shuts the door, in my opinion, on the possibility that these days were meant to portray long eras (the 'Day-Age' reading).<br />
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On the other hand, the inclusion of evening and morning should prevent us from leaping into the premature and thoroughly disproven notion that land and sky (i.e. the heavens and the Earth), moon and star, and plant and animal all appeared within a common week only thousands of years ago. It is important to note that Genesis does not read: "there was morning and evening, comprising the first day", but "there was evening <i>and then</i> morning". Why does this matter? The interval of time between evening and morning is itself a period of rest. It is a precious set of hours in which we, the tired laborer, can regain our strength before draining it again at sunrise. It is not a Sabbath, but it foreshadows the holy rest and communion with God that awaits us and gives meaning to our six-fold engagement with toil and strife. Thus in the Orthodox tradition (and several others), nightly <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespers" target="_blank">vespers</a></i> is a prayer service in which creation hymns and 'reenactment' of the garden scene reiterate the relationship between Genesis and our daily lives.<br />
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At this point, we should recognize how the author of Genesis 1 utilized our common experience to tell a story about God (it is a radical subversion of classic mythology). We can envision God working as we do, even resting nightly as we do, until he completes his project, which is to construct a holy abode in which he can take up residence and reign sovereignly. But to argue that "since these days are 24-hour cycles, all material things occurred nearly simultaneously" is a gross oversimplification of the text. Are we to believe that God became tired and had to take the night off? Did he draw creation out over six days just to teach us a lesson about resting once a week? And finally, what did God do on the eighth day? Did he return to work or continue resting?<br />
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The days of Genesis 1 are a depiction of <i>the workweek of the eternal God, who covenanted with Israel</i>. It is a magnificent image, drawing from very limited human experience to portray that, which is incomprehensible. To anchor these days to any moment in our earthly timeline does great injustice to the profundity of the text and mocks the eternal attributes of the God described in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.<br />
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<i>Isn't Genesis written as a historical text, though, and not a metaphor/analogy? If so, why not appeal simply to the plain meaning of the text?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Yes, Genesis is historiography... among other things. But it is dangerous to apply modern 'genres' onto an ancient text anachronistically, and this very discussion highlights the reason. We need not constrain Genesis 1 to a categorical dilemma, as though it is history <i>or</i> myth<i> or </i>theology, or something else, because authors of that time did not draw such distinctions. Our desire to do so is a symptom of the modern mind, which investigates the past mainly through journalism or critical histories. Genesis is historical, but it is not journalistic. Literary images and symbolism are patched seamlessly within familiar timelines and geographies, so that overly literalistic readings are bound to run into trouble. The most obvious example is the transition from Genesis 1 to the Eden narrative, where the timeline apparently reverses or is compressed. Attempts to rationalize the chronology thus fail to explain its finer literary details, such as the function of Gen. 2:4 as a chiastic hinge between two sides of one story, the novel contrast between Eden's sanctuary and the surrounding wilderness (an image of God's covenant people as wanderers among the nations), or the creation of animals after 'the adam' but before woman to elucidate sexuality as the full expression of mankind. When asked about the 'plain sense' of the text, TurretinFan comments:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"What I mean is not some secret meaning, like in a parable or prophecy; nor some specialized technical meaning, like in some detailed discussions of theology or other technical writing. It's the ordinary meaning people normally associate with the word.</div>
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So, for example, when God says he made Eve from Adam's rib, rib means one of those bones around Adam's lungs: it is not a code word for something else. On the other hand, when God speaks of the "Lion of the Tribe of Judah," that's a prophetic reference to Jesus. Different genres, different ways of looking at words."</div>
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Without intending to do so, he relativizes the meaning of scripture to individual readers and cultures in appealing to what "people normally associate with the word". Each reader brings personal experience to every text, typically far removed from that of the author or initial audience. His example of "Adam's rib" proves this point. For one, the term translated as "rib" could simply mean "side", and need not refer to any bone. Reducing the term to a more precise anatomical reference has already raised silly debates over the number of ribs in Adam versus his descendants and female counterpart. Whether we prefer to read the word in English as "rib" or "side", the image should not be lost: from the beginning, the Bible describes humanity through unity and diversity simultaneously; mankind is male and female, and human sexuality is one expression of its multifaceted nature. This text has nothing to do with the physical mechanism by which females entered the universe, yet appealing to its 'plain sense' commonly yields that false impression. This result strongly warrants suspicion of Young-Earth hermeneutics.<br />
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Secondly, the capitalization of "Adam" assumes it as a proper name, like Bill or Frank, but never is it used as such in the Eden narrative (only the woman is properly named). In other words, the proper name is imported from his common experience with the KJV translation and readings of Genesis that conclude Adam to be the primal parent (a single human being) of the human race. Granted, biblical genealogies list Adam as a name, but in doing so, their use of the term deviates from that in Genesis 2–3. This tension reveals the dynamic use of Scripture by Scripture itself, and undermines the simple approach of "different genres, different ways of looking at words".<br />
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<i>Do we really want a new reformation?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I'm offering one among several modern Scriptural readings that rejects the scientific concordism demanded by so many early Protestant theologians. In response to our discovery that the Earth is far older than previously calculated, the 18–20th century heirs of the Reformed faith similarly struggled to reform the apparently naïve renditions of Genesis that contradicted scientific knowledge. Theologians like B.B. Warfield argued at length, moreover, that one can accept an old age of the Earth and even the tenets of human evolution without necessarily rejecting the Westminster Confession's statement that God made "all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days". It seemed that <i>semper reformanda </i>had succeeded once more in saving Scripture from the naïveté of dogma and tradition.<br />
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But then, an unexpected counter-reformation took hold on American minds, as 'scientific creationism' grew exponentially toward the end of last century. Even those less interested in the 'scientific' aspect of creationism regained lost theological ground amid the movement. The American evangelical church became YEC's largest exporter worldwide, and Christian churches became increasingly divided on the question of origins and Earth history. This division is well illustrated in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), as the debate is raised consistently in assemblies and reports, such as one by PCA geologists regarding geological evidence for the antiquity of the Earth. In light of such 'expert testimonies', G. I. Williamson, a retired OPC minister, adds his own perspective:<br />
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"I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard (or read the words of) people who say “we need a new reformation.” I agree. What I don’t hear them say is an increasing concern to me. I don’t hear them say that what we need is another rebellion against the <b><i>cult of the experts</i></b>... When Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th Century he was immediately subjected to the <i><b>tyranny of the experts</b></i>." (emphasis mine)</div>
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Williamson goes on to portray Young-Earth Creationists as stalwart witnesses to the ancient faith, armed only with the plain reading of Genesis in the high courts of experts (like me?), as though we have demanded their public recantation and full devotion to the established dogmas of modern science and historiography:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"We even hear of lectures provided at the time of a General Assembly to persuade non-experts that it is unwise to believe—and especially to teach—that the universe was created in six calendar days, around six thousand years ago... In the better days of our history this abuse would not have been tolerated. Teachings that contradicted the official creed of the church would have resulted in immediate deposition."</div>
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But Williamson denies that his position is anti-intellectual, despite the uncompromising suspicion he casts on the experts. He does this by appealing to his own subset of experts:<br />
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"The truth is that there are some very intellectual people who still believe in six-day creation. ‘Experts who think they know so much should read some of the fine material in defense of the doctrine of creation as stated in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, by men like John Byl and Jonathan Sarfati."</div>
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Yes, I've seen how Dr. Sarfati abuses scientific data to prevent his audience from taking too close of a look. I've managed to contact him regarding certain claims about geochemistry, receiving confirmation that he's unfamiliar with the scientific details and prefers to communicate science as it suits his purpose. It breaks my heart to see faithful ministers resting their confidence in his dubious claims.<br />
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Regardless, I find Williamson's analogy intriguing. It certainly has an emotional appeal among Reformed readers that will give pause to us 'experts' as we re-examine our faith and sincerity. But the longer I considered the analogy, the more it began to crumble for a couple reasons:<br />
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1) Williamson's casting of YEC's as faithful Martin Luthers is more reasonably reversed. Particularly in the OPC, those deviating from a strict, 6-day creation view are the ones cast before a panel of 'experts' in words echoing Luther's opposition: we have our doctrines, our councils, our creed and confession, unmovable and unshaken by your presumed authority as an interpreter of God's creation. Recant your claims and join our common faith, or continue in cognizant dissonance. Either way, you must deny what you consider plain and reasonable.<br />
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I pursued a degree in the natural sciences on the advice of a PCA minister. While I was still in high school, he persuaded me not to abandon my talent for the discipline, but to live out my faith through a career in the sciences. So here <i>I</i> stand, I can do no other. I cannot watch the church body continue to be deceived by folks like Ken Ham and Jonathan Sarfati. It wouldn't be right to abandon conscience and pretend that I don't know any better.<br />
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2) Regardless of who should be cast into what role in this 'new Reformation', Williamson's singling out of a 'cult of experts' immediately called one Pauline exhortation to mind:<br />
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If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (1 Corinthians 12:15–26, <i>ESV</i>)</div>
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In my experience in the church body, I've come to understand how it feels to be a big toe: I'm easy to ignore, and amid the daily life of the church, I'm more likely to be bruised than praised. Nonetheless, the seemingly more essential elders, counselors, and theologians <i>would</i> indeed be unwise to ignore my input. Not because I'm smarter or wiser, but because I have something they don't; I can contribute something they can't. I am uniquely qualified to address the question of Earth history and human origins in a way that they aren't. Simply put, I'm doing my best to keep the church from toppling over as it steps deeper into this modern era.<br />
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<i>Final thoughts</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
One can argue all they want for the 'obvious' meaning of Genesis 1–3, but the diversity of interpretation throughout church history is sufficient evidence that the meaning is anything but obvious. Perhaps we'll never persuade the devoted 'six-day creationist', but I would encourage him/her not to respond through diplomatic isolation. We can't afford more cracks in the already brittle walls of the American church, and the staunch refusal to hear all manners of evidence only propagates existing schisms.<br />
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To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that YEC's are less sincere or intelligent. Neither would I consider them less faithful or valuable to the church. But to invert the words of my friend and favorite critic, I do think they are confused.</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-69732063360078419052014-02-24T17:10:00.002-08:002014-02-24T17:10:31.068-08:00On the Age of the Earth: more than just meteorites!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If you inquire of your favorite search engine as to the 'age of the Earth', one number should dominate your results: 4.54 billion years. During the recent debate, Ken Ham was quick to point out, however, that this age is obtained through analysis of meteorites, and not the Earth itself. To conclude that the Earth is 4.54 billion years, therefore, we must argue that the principal, planetary components of our solar system formed at approximately the same time. In other words, this age depends on the fundamental accuracy of nebular theories in depicting our planet's earliest history.<br />
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A recent commenter on this blog also raised this point, so I'll reiterate my response:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"[Ken Ham] was correct that the accepted age of the Earth (~4.5 billion years) derives mainly from dating of meteorites. There's nothing wrong with this, so long as the meteorites are indeed the same age as the earth and derived from the same material from which our solar system form...</div>
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Although no rock on Earth is dated exactly at 4.5 billion years (why would we ever expect that?), we do have samples of zircon minerals that date to 4.2–4.4 billion years old... The fact that Earth materials approach 4.5 billion years, but never actually reach it, confirms the meteorite-based age of 4.5 billion years for the solar system and for the Earth itself."</div>
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Yesterday's issue of <i>Nature Geoscience</i> featured the latest research (<a href="http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2075.html" target="_blank">Valley et al., 2014</a>) on the very zircons I cited (see the BBC's report <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26324968" target="_blank">here</a>). These tiny minerals had previously been dated through a very precise, U-Pb concordia method. Given their long and likely unpleasant history (it was a hot young Earth!), however, researchers sought to confirm the validity of the age through the latest in hi-tech microanalysis. Questions remained as to whether factors like radiation damage or trace-element diffusion had compromised the models used to calculate the zircons' ages. Radiation damage would have occurred during the radioactive decay of Uranium, when high-energy particles damaged the crystal structure on their way out. Also, little is known about the mobility of lead (Pb), the radiogenic daughter product of this decay chain, within the crystal itself. If the diffusion of lead were higher than expected, then the assumption of a closed system is no longer valid, and the calculated ages of 4.2–4.4 billion years would represent slight overestimates.<br />
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Using a combination of instruments—Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD), Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer (SIMS), and a Local Electrode Atom Probe (LEAP)—the research team constrained the distribution of trace elements, the integrity of the mineral structure, and the measured isotopic ratios to confirm that the previously calculated ages were indeed valid. These results are consistent with a 4.54-billion-year-old Earth and solar system, an early magma ocean, and the presence of solid crustal rocks shortly after Earth's formation.<br />
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So the next time anyone takes Ham's lead in raising doubts about the currently accepted age of the Earth by directing you to meteorite analyses, be sure to inform them that the oldest Earth materials date so close, that the difference is inconsequential. One added lesson to this tale is that while geochronology demands that assumptions are made, these assumptions can be—and frequently are—tested thoroughly through independent techniques. Simply pointing out that assumptions exist in the historical sciences is not an argument against their conclusions. But since Ken Ham's paradigm lacks the predictive capabilities and scientific rigor of conventional geology, these red herrings are perhaps the best he can offer.</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-39101845207174140892014-02-12T18:25:00.003-08:002014-08-12T21:28:08.611-07:00"45 thousand-year-old fossil wood encased in 45 million-year-old basalt": Conflict Revisited<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One point lost by Bill Nye in the recent debate with Ken Ham was the repeated assertion that YEC researchers had dated fossil wood ~1,000 times younger than the basalt in which it was encased. If the assertion holds, then radiometric dating methods to which Bill Nye appeals as evidence for an old Earth are potentially flawed. Unfortunately, Bill Nye did not seem familiar with the claim, reported originally in 1993, despite my <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-unsolicited-advice-for-bill-nye-dont.html" target="_blank">prophetic <u>counsel</u></a>. ;)<br />
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<i>Where did these samples come from, and why were they sent to labs for radiometric dating?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
In 1993, several samples of charred and petrified wood were collected during construction of a mining ventilation shaft in central Queensland. The wood samples were seemingly well preserved inside the lava flow that encased them. Since the layers of basalt overlay early Cenozoic sediments, the expected age of the lava flow might be a few tens of millions of years. Not convinced by conventional ages of this geologic column, however, local 'young-Earth' geologists paid to have the basalt dated by the K-Ar method and the wood fragments dated by the radiocarbon method. Their reasoning was simple and seemingly innocent: if indeed the Earth is old, then fossilized wood from an ancient lava flow should contain no radioactive carbon (14C) today and will not yield a finite age; if the Earth is young as we claim, however, then detectable 14C should be present in the fossilized wood and the K-Ar age of the basalt cannot be taken seriously.<br />
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A full report of this study by Dr. Andrew Snelling of Answers in Genesis is <a href="http://www.icr.org/article/4460/275/" target="_blank">available for download</a> from the Institute for Creation Research <i>[Snelling, 2000. Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, p. 99-122]</i>. The 24-page publication is rather verbose, reading more like a drawn-out lab report than a scientific study, but it contains all the details necessary to assess the feasibility of Dr. Snelling's extraordinary claims.<br />
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<i>Wait, if the fossil wood and basalt are both older than 6,000 years, doesn't Ken Ham undermine his own position by citing this study?</i><br />
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I've described at length how apologists at Answers in Genesis use the <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2010/11/radiocarbon-evidence-for-antiquity-of.html" target="_blank">radiocarbon</a> and <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/01/has-answers-in-genesis-debunked-k-ar.html" target="_blank">Potassium-Argon (K-Ar)</a> methods to argue for a young Earth. In short, they criticize the assumptions behind each dating method. For example, 'model' K-Ar ages assume that all argon was expelled from the sample before molten rock cooled, starting the radiometric clock. If any argon was trapped in the mineral structure, however, then the rock will appear far older than it actually is. We have known for half a century that excess argon may be trapped in lava flows (especially underwater flows under high pressure), so much research in geochronology is devoted to improving the models. Today, more sensitive instrumentation and the aid of computer models allow geochronologists to identify 'excess' argon and calculate ages with far more precision than even a decade ago.<br />
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Given the <a href="http://www.pompeiana.org/News/1997/08_28_97%20-%20Precise%20dating%20of%20the%20destruction%20of%20Pompeii%20proves%20argon-argon%20method%20can%20reliably%20date%20rocks%20as%20young%20as%202,000%20years.htm" target="_blank">demonstrated robustness</a> of the K-Ar and Ar-Ar methods with these improvements, YEC's have more recently attacked the assumption that radioactive decay occurred at a constant and known rate throughout history. Many of them suggest that during/after the Flood, radioactive decay rates increased substantially, giving the false impression that most rocks are millions or billions of years old. Despite their <a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/02/clearest-evidence-that-earth-is-6000.html" target="_blank">attempts to confirm this</a> through scientific investigation, however, the claim remains <i>ad hoc</i> and unsubstantiated. On the other hand, continued success using the K-Ar system in pinning down geological events, as well as confirmation from independent dating methods, gives us ample reason to believe that the model assumptions are valid and verified.<br />
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The radiocarbon method is far more complicated than is commonly presented, so YEC's have been successful in twisting its results to support their own paradigm. Traditionally, radiocarbon dating assumes that the relative concentration of 14C (the rare radioactive isotope, compared to the stable forms 12C and 13C) does not change with time. When this assumption is used, the results are reported as "radiocarbon years before present". It is important to distinguish between "radiocarbon years" and "calendar years", because we know that the relative concentration of 14C does indeed change over time. The production rate of radioactive carbon in the atmosphere depends on the magnetic field strength, for example, of the Earth and our sun. The YEC can argue, therefore, that prior to the flood, the relative abundance of 14C was much lower than today. If this assertion holds, then plant and animal remains from before the flood should yield dates many times older than their 'actual' age (4,500–6,000 years).<br />
<br />
To document the relative abundance of atmospheric 14C over time, geologists use records that can be dated independently of the radiocarbon method. For example, tree-rings and varved lake sediments preserve annual cycles, which may be counted to obtain the actual age of each layer. When tree-rings and varved sediments are dated by the radiocarbon method, the 'radiocarbon age' of each annual band is compared to the real age to construct a <a href="https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/embed.php?File=calibration.html" target="_blank">calibration curve</a>. This curve removes the assumption in conventional radiocarbon dating that 14C was constant over time.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://questioninganswersingenesis.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-put-paleo-in-paleoclimatology.html" target="_blank">Stalagmites</a> provide another tool for gaging the history of atmospheric 14C, since these banded records are datable by the U-Th disequilibrium method or, in ideal cases, counting annual bands. By radiocarbon dating calcite along the growth axis of the stalagmite and comparing these ages to U-Th dates, geologists can test and refine the calibration curve (e.g. <a href="https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/1932" target="_blank">Vogel and Kronfeld, 1997</a>). These highly corroborated, independent lines of evidence <i>thoroughly disprove</i> the YEC claim that atmospheric 14C increases significantly only after a recent, global flood.<br />
<br />
In summary, yes: Ken Ham undermines his own position by citing this study, though he does not mean to.<br />
<br />
<i>Why did the fossilized wood give an age of 45,000 years, and how is this possible if the lava flow solidified millions of years ago?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Dr. Snelling submitted two samples of wood to two independent laboratories for radiocarbon dating by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS). He argues that since the lab obtained 'finite ages' from organic-derived carbon, the fossilized wood cannot possible be tens of millions of years old. He reports the results as follows:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b> Sample Lab Age (Radiocarbon Years Before 1950)</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Wood in drill core" Geochron >35,620 ± ?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> ANSTO 44,700 ± 950</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Other wood" Geochron 29,544 ± 759</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> ANSTO 37,800 ± 3,450</span><br />
<br />
You should notice <i>three</i> features immediately from this table that warrant suspicion of Dr. Snelling's interpretation:<br />
<br />
First, all of these ages are close to the practical limit of radiocarbon dating. Even today, radiocarbon ages exceeding ~40,000–50,000 years are commonly considered suspect, because so little radioactive carbon (14C) is being measured that it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish it from contamination or background interference (more on this later). In 1993, this caution was even more applicable, which is why many important geological studies have been updated in recent years from fresh samples analyzed with better equipment.<br />
<br />
Second, <i>neither set of dates overlaps</i> within uncertainty, as the sample age differs substantially from one lab to the other. Ages for the "other wood" samples differ by more than 8,000 years, meaning that Geochron measured more than <i>twice</i> the concentration of 14C in the same sample, compared to ANSTO's analysis. If the 14C in these wood samples were derived from a pre-Flood atmosphere, as Ken Ham and Dr. Snelling claim, then all samples should yield the same age. At the very least, each laboratory should be reporting the same concentration of 14C in the duplicate samples. But they don't. From this fact alone, we should be very suspicious that the measured 14C derived from the wood itself. More likely, we might conclude that the 14C concentration differed because variable amounts of atmospheric contamination were incorporated during each lab's preparation methods. These radiocarbon dates do not reflect the age of the fossilized wood, therefore, and do not substantiate Dr. Snelling's claims.<br />
<br />
Third, two of the analyses (first and last samples) yielded large uncertainties, which can result when too little 14C is present, or when the source of 14C is not consistent. In the latter case, the source of 14C might be a mixture of contamination sources: atmospheric CO2 or organic acids still bonded to the fossil wood, residual atmosphere inside the sample chamber, or the tiniest of leaks in the vacuum lines. As one who deals daily with mass spectrometers, I would suggest that all three are likely candidates.<br />
<br />
Why?<br />
<br />
Mass spectrometers do not count atoms of 14C directly, but compare electric intensities produced by ionized particles hitting <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cup" target="_blank">Faraday cups</a> at the end of a vacuum tube. In theory, particles of the same mass should all follow the same path along the magnetically charged vacuum tube, so the Faraday cups can be positioned to catch each isotope. In reality, particles of the same mass do not hit the same spot consistently, but produce more of a Gaussian distribution. Imagine a fire hose spraying onto a wall: most of the water hits in the center of the stream, but some veers off to the side. If the mass spectrometer measures only 14C (and not 13C bonded to hydrogen, for example), which is distributed evenly through the sample, then the center of the peak is easily found by the instrument. Wider peaks result from low or inconsistent signals, and help us understand why such large uncertainties were associated with two of Dr. Snelling's samples.<br />
<br />
Dr. Snelling provides several additional clues that would lead any other investigator to find better samples for dating. First, the basalt flow encasing the wood was only ~21–25 meters below the surface, meaning that it was long exposed to surface waters percolating downward into the rock. These surfaces waters contain not only modern atmosphere, but organic acids that bond tightly to the wood. The wood fragments themselves show evidence of being altered by intruding waters, as Dr. Snelling notes (p. 8): "Permineralization was <i>too advanced" </i>to identify taxonomically important features under the electron microscope. The porous and jointed (fractured) basalt was also altered (p. 14):<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"The basalt in the drill core does, in fact, come from the zone of weathering...where percolating oxidizing ground water readily alters minerals and rock chemistry by dissolving and removing various elements."</div>
<br />
Yet this basalt was shipped to a lab for K-Ar dating, after which Dr. Snelling criticized the inconsistent and apparently old results. But that is another issue...<br />
<br />
The fact that Dr. Snelling's wood samples were long exposed to modern atmospheric and plant material means that at least some of the measured 14C derives from contamination. Despite Dr. Snelling's rant that the laboratories made thorough efforts to remove contaminants and "staunchly defended [the ages] as valid", he admits himself that it is impossible to exclude <i>all</i> contamination. Acid washes cannot contact every single surface of the sample, perfect vacuums are not obtainable in nature, and electrical interference is a constant reality. He may continue to suggest that contamination could not have been large enough to explain finite ages of 30–40,000 years, but he cannot prove this. On the other hand, <i><b>we can disprove his claim</b></i> through his failure to replicate the results of his analyses from independent labs.<br />
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<i>Dr. Snelling's article mentions that "a δ13C (V-PDB) </i><i>value of −25.69‰ [is] consistent with terrestrial plant organic carbon...</i><b><i>ruling out contamination</i></b><i>." Is he right?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Of all the claims made by Dr. Snelling's article, this one is the most obviously and demonstrably false. Forgive my roundabout answer, but this point is important.<br />
<br />
In AMS radiocarbon analyses, the relative abundance of 13C (reported as a δ13C value) is routinely measured, because model radiocarbon ages assume that the δ13C value is exactly -25‰. This value represents a reasonable average for the isotopic composition of plant material utilizing C3 photosynthesis, like an oak tree. However, if you were to radiocarbon date a piece of ancient corn (a C4 plant, whose average δ13C value is much higher, around -13‰), you would have to consider that the corn begins with slightly more radioactive carbon (14C) than something like an oak tree of the same age. The difference results from the fact that during photosynthesis, plants preferentially incorporate the lighter isotope(s) of carbon, but the preference is stronger among C3 plants than C4 plants. Since 14C is much heavier than 13C or 12C, it is not incorporated at the same rate as the other isotopes, and this rate varies among photosynthesizers.<br />
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If you mix carbon sources with differing isotopic compositions, the δ13C changes proportionately. For example, let's mix 5 grams of wood with a δ13C value of -25‰ and 5 grams of calcite with a δ13C value of 0‰. The resulting δ13C of the mixture is -12.5‰, or a <i>weighted</i> average of the two sources. So what if the 14C in Dr. Snelling's fossil wood samples derived entirely from contamination? Wouldn't the contaminant shift the δ13C value, as he claims?<br />
<br />
No. The concentration of 14C in the modern atmosphere is ~10^-12%, or less than one part per trillion. To contaminate a 14C-free sample with enough modern organic carbon to yield a radiocarbon age of ~45,000 years, less than 0.4% of the sample's mass needs to be derived from modern material. If that material is bacteria (δ13C = -27‰ to -33‰) or humic acid (δ13C = -27‰), the δ13C value of the sample will not shift noticeably, because it is so close to the composition of the fossilized wood. But even if the material were atmosphere (δ13C = -7‰) or mineral carbon (δ13C = 0‰, give or take), the δ13C value of the sample would not shift to an extent detectable by the mass spectrometer. Here is the math:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
(0.996 * -25.0‰) + (0.004 * 0.0‰) = -24.9‰</div>
<br />
Keeping in mind that the uncertainty is close to 0.1‰, and the actual δ13C of trees ranges by 5–6‰...<br />
<br />
<i>Conclusion</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Ken Ham's appeal to young fossil wood within old basalt may have caught Bill Nye off guard, but his claim remains unsubstantiated. The actual radiocarbon ages of this fossil wood were not reproducible by independent labs within analytical uncertainty, suggesting that contamination and/or background interference was responsible for much of the detected radiocarbon. Recent advances in AMS radiocarbon dating have focused on how to account for the fact that contamination is always introduced during sample preparation and how to correct for various kinds of background interference. Regardless, radiocarbon ages close to the practical limit of the method are always treated with some suspicion.<br />
<br />
Radiocarbon dating of independently datable materials (lakes, tree rings, and stalagmites) provide highly corroborated calibration curves of radiocarbon activity over the past ~50,000 years. These studies alone disprove the notion that a recent, global Flood severely impacted concentrations of atmospheric 14C. Combining these records with the inherent uncertainties of the radiocarbon method, which were less resolved in 1993, we might conclude that Ken Ham's proposed dating conflicts are misleading at best.</div>
Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3728725441575309638.post-3807521456022174392014-02-06T16:33:00.000-08:002014-02-06T18:57:15.191-08:00Ham and Nye agree: Ken Ham's creation model is not scientifically viable<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Ken Ham deserves credit. As many predicted, he was better prepared to defend what he believes in a moderated public debate. That is not to say that he was successful, but only to clarify a point so frequently overlooked: creationists are generally neither stupid nor ignorant, and there is a reason that so many find Ken Ham convincing. But debate performance aside, let's recall the thesis of the debate:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
"Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern, scientific era?"</div>
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Bill Nye's response is rather obvious. While Ken Ham initiated the debate to defend this thesis in the positive, however, in one sentence during the Q&A session, he managed to expose a subtle truth of his own position: the creation model to which he holds is <i>not</i> scientifically viable.<br />
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I will return to this point later, but first I wanted to review a number of comments made during the debate. No doubt, you'll find a hundred articles like mine today, so I'll try to keep these unique to my experience/specialty:<br />
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<i>Who won the debate?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>I would say that in asking this question, we are missing the point of public debate. Declaring a winner for any debate depends on a number of criteria (how well the debaters supported/disproved the thesis, the effectiveness of their rebuttals, how well they stayed on topic and within the rules of the debate, etc.). These points are relevant to members of a debate team, who are training to be lawyers, politicians, or businessmen, where they will be expected to be persuasive in a timed setting. In our case, however, it serves little purpose, for it gets us no closer to the real question: who sided with truth? Public debates are rarely effective tools for determining truth. Nonetheless, too many audience members expect that a debate is not fruitful unless one side capitulates in public recantation.<br />
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So what good is a moderated public debate? It <i>informs</i> <i>the audience</i> of the arguments supporting two sides of an issue, as well as the rebuttals considered valid by representatives from each side. If you failed to come away from this debate with a better understanding of what each side believes <i>and why</i>, then the winner of the debate is, well...not you.<br />
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<i>Debate? What debate?</i><br />
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In my opinion, unless cross-examination comprises a significant portion of the event, it should not be called a debate. In cross-examination, one debater is allowed to pose only a line of questioning to the other (i.e. he/she cannot make statements or arguments, only ask questions; the opponent cannot respond only to those questions). This allows each side to focus on a specific point and force the opponent to defend it at every level. Without cross-examination, so many statements go unchecked that the audience is left only to trust one side or the other.<br />
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What we observed rather was an alternating set of presentations. Although informative, we should not be surprised that the topic of the debate was scarcely addressed. Furthermore, allotting only 5 minutes of rebuttal to a 30-minute statement is both unfair and unwise.<br />
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On this point, we should take note that <i>not once</i> did Ken Ham answer or try to support the thesis of the debate. He argued that creationists could be effective scientists and develop technology, that secularists have hijacked terms like science and evolution, that dating methods are in conflict, that he obtains his reconstruction of history from the Bible, and that naturalism presumes theism to conduct science and also leads to moral decay. All of the time spent arguing these points serves well for advertising, but does not help us to answer the question in debate.<br />
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<i>Creation confirmed by observational science?</i><br />
<br />
Several close exceptions were Ham's attempts to say that his creation model is confirmed by 'observational science', for example in that there is only one human race or that speciation can occur within 'kinds'. But he did not explain <i>how</i> and <i>why</i> his model predicts modern data. "Race" is not a rigid biological term, and as far as we can tell, the human 'races' descended from a large population in Africa—not a single family in Armenia/Turkey. The Hebrew phrase translated "after their kind", moreover, is better rendered "of all kinds", implying that God brought forth diversity from monotony and singularity. It does not necessarily support his idea of a phyletic "orchard"; if anything, it sounds like evolution!<br />
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So how do we test between Ken Ham's model and competing ones, like evolution? Ham cannot offer a method, because his model is not scientific; <b><i>it involves only retrospective fitting of a model to known data, so it can accommodate any dataset</i></b>. For example, the same genetic methods used to conclude that dogs derive from one ancient population of wolves also suggests that dogs share a common ancestor with all other mammals. To exclude this genetic evidence and cut off the evolutionary tree arbitrarily, calling it an 'orchard' instead, is both inconsistent and dishonest. Ken Ham undermines his own position in raising these points.<br />
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<i>Defining science</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
As I've argued many times on this blog, Ken Ham's sharp epistemological distinction between observational and historical science is invalid. Historical science is derived from the experimental, in that rather than design an experiment to collect data, we collect data in nature to test and reconstruct the 'experiment' that already took place. Bill Nye was right to cite <i>CSI</i> as an example of how these facets of science complement each other. If we want to confirm the hypothesis that A killed B, we construct a model to explain data that can be collected after the fact: "We hypothesize that the DNA of this blood sample will match that of the accused, if in fact A killed B, because we know from experimentation that DNA provides a tracer in blood samples that is unique to the individual".<br />
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By this approach, we investigate Earth history by making predictions about what kind of data will confirm or disprove our hypotheses. These predictions should be <i>very </i>specific. For example, we can utilize microfossils to predict <i>exactly</i> where in Cretaceous–Paleocene marine sediments there will be a spike in Iridium concentration, based on the hypothesis that it was caused by a meteor impact. Likewise, we could already predict the age of the Chicxulub meteor impact associated with this Iridium anomaly, based on radiometric dates of igneous rocks at the Cretaceous/Paleocene boundary. Similarly, if you were to analyze pollen concentrations within post-glacial lake sediments of Europe, one could predict exactly at what depth those concentrations would shift, based solely on the radiocarbon dates of their organic constituents. Why? Because geologists have reconstructed climate anomalies such as the "Bølling-Allerød warming" and the "Younger Dryas cooling" and constrained their age. Using this model, we can also predict where and why oxygen-isotope values in ice cores from the Greenland Ice Sheet shift abruptly, simply by counting the annual layers of ice back to the proposed events.<br />
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>“Molecules to man evolution has nothing to do with developing technology”</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Ken Ham is nearly right: applied physics and chemistry can generally operate without ascribing to one model of human origins over another. But so what? <b><i>This does not address the topic of the debate. </i></b>Further, he does a great injustice to science implying that only applied sciences are valid. Theoretical and historical aspects of each field are vital in forming the solid foundation on which applied sciences operate. When it comes to technology, only very specialized fields within neuroscience, physiology, immunology, etc. are likely to be informed by evolutionary theory. But advances in evolutionary biology and 'old-Earth' geology have given us ample motivation and guidance in developing technologies that aid the historical sciences, from DNA sequencing to seismic surveys of the Earth's crust.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>“We all have the same evidences; it’s a battle over how we interpret the past. It’s really a battle over worldviews and starting points.”</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">As predicted, Ken Ham devoted much of his time to this assertion. This put Bill Nye in the uncomfortable dilemma of switching to a philosophical debate or avoiding the topic altogether. Though it probably counted against him, Nye did the right thing in not trying to debate the veracity of Christian theism or the trustworthiness of the biblical record. Again, the topic of the debate was not "Who has the correct philosophical worldview/starting point?" but "Is Ken Ham's creation model scientifically viable?" Likewise, Ken Ham's discussion on the moral implications of evolution, the prospect of salvation, the purpose of life, and even the justification of laws of logic/nature in a naturalistic worldview were completely off topic. Even if Bill Nye had conceded that science lacks epistemological grounds and morality lacks authority without Christian theism, Ken Ham <i>still</i> would not have answered the question of the debate.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">
</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>“Based on the Bible's record of history, I can predict that billions of dead things would be buried all over the earth; that’s what we find...”</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Ken Ham is not alone in using this oft-repeated mantra to support his claim that the creation model makes accurate predictions. It lacks scientific rigor, however, and merely demonstrates that his model is but a rationalization of data. How does Ham know specifically that <i>billions</i> of dead things would be buried all over the Earth? Does Genesis provide a population estimate of the animal kingdom? Are we told what percentage of the Earth's surface was covered by ocean before the flood? How much by shallow oceans wherein life can thrive? To what extent were soils developed so as to provide enough nutrients from river runoff to support the planktonic food base? Secondly, why would we expect these life forms to be <i>buried</i> necessarily? Was it not possible that the flood killed but did not bury all organisms in neat, sedimentary layers?</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">To answer any of these questions, even from the biblical description of the seas 'swarming with life', he must utilize historical science—but as Ham himself claims, historical science is not so scientific. Ken Ham's creation model 'predicts' that we should find billions of dead things buried over the Earth because we've already found billions of dead things buried over the Earth.</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1"><i>Rapid post-flood speciation and the creationist 'orchard'</i></span><br />
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span>
At several points, Bill Nye challenged Ken Ham to explain how 7,000 pairs aboard the ark could evolve into our modern selection of species in just 4–5,000 years. Nye's calculated rate of 11 new species per day does not accurately reflect AiG's model, since Ham claims that fish, insects, and many other organisms need not be aboard the ark, and these groups represent a bulk of species alive today. Regardless, the speciation rate required by the creationist orchard is astounding—impossible by our current understanding of evolutionary ecology. Not only is the rate unobserved in human history, it is <i>orders of magnitude</i> higher than the fastest known cases of speciation.<br />
<br />
Complicating Ham's claim is the fact that most of the animals he envisions on the ark (mammals, birds, reptiles, and other organisms unable to survive in the water) are quite large, with relatively low fertility rates. Speciation occurs 'rapidly' (i.e. observable in human history) only among small creatures that reproduce quickly, like small fish and rodents. Large mammals like elephants, cats, wolves, and horses/camels require many times longer for genetic diversity to accumulate among isolated populations, because they take longer to mature and give birth to new generations. Nonetheless, we find fossils of modern species (i.e. must have been derived from the Ark pair) throughout what Ham must term "post-flood sediments", over a wide geographic distribution.<br />
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Some of these mammals, such as mammoths, camels, and sloths, are best known from Ice-Age sediments, particularly in Eurasia and the Americas. Let's take the case of an elephant-mammoth-mastodon 'kind', for which the average generation is ~20–30 years. Most of Ken Ham's researchers suggest that an Ice Age peaked ~400–600 years following the flood. This leaves, at best, 14–30 generations for a single pair of elephant-like creatures to evolve into more than a half-dozen individual species <i style="font-weight: bold;">and distribute themselves around the globe.</i> This scenario is absurd even for migratory grazers; do we need also to run the numbers for ground sloths, which populated both North and South America around the same time? <i>[Edit: the number of fossil and modern elephants is far higher than I imply here; for more critiques of post-flood speciation rates in mammals/birds, see also the Natural Historian's <a href="http://thenaturalhistorian.com/category/baraminology-2/" target="_blank">articles on Baraminology</a>]</i><br />
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Fossil repositories like La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles provide the final nail in the coffin. Not only were North American fauna already diverse by the time of the last ice age, but these species existed in rather large populations. Thousands upon thousands of individuals are encased in these tar pits, which represent but a fraction of the species' geographic extents.<br />
<br />
<i>"Tree rings, snow ice, and coral," says Nye</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
In a nutshell, Nye's list of things older than Ken Ham's universe is solid, but went largely unchallenged throughout the debate. Only in passing did Ken Ham suggest that glacial ice could accumulate 'catastrophically', giving the example of a crashed plane in Greenland being packed under ~250 feet of snow. The example is not relevant, though, since 1) these snow rates are not characteristic for those regions of Greenland/Antarctica where ice cores are obtained; and 2) geologists do not date ice cores by ice thickness, but by counting seasonally driven oscillations in texture and chemistry. So how is it that so many annually layered samples extend beyond ~6,000 years?<br />
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If given more time, Ken Ham might claim that <i>multiple</i> layers or growth bands could accumulate in a single year. Although such anomalies are documented, however, they are rare, but Ken Ham must consider them the norm to rationalize these data into his model of history. If such anomalies are the norm, then why don't we observe them today? 'Observational science' provides an excellent opportunity for Ham to test his extraordinary claims, but he avoids the topic altogether, because no observation confirms them.<br />
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On a final note regarding ice cores, we know the dating methods are robust, because they have been tested by individual lines of evidence. Lake sediments dated by radiocarbon and speleothems dated by U-Th disequilibrium all yield the same age of climate events found also in the ice cores' isotopic records. Ratios of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes vary within ice sheets due to changes in climate (such as temperature and moisture source). These climatic changes affecting Greenland, for example, also affect continental Europe, where cave and lake records capture the same climatic signal within their own isotopic, geochemical, or pollen ratios. The fact that hundreds of records overlap, despite that they are dated by <i>independent</i> radiometric systems, <b>thoroughly contradicts Ken Ham's claim</b> that annual band counts must have formed anomalously or catastrophically.<br />
<br />
<i>Were you there?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I was not personally present to witness every band forming within Antarctic ice sheets—does this matter? Ham's challenge only applies if every event of the past necessarily escapes scientific investigation. We must consider every criminal trial suspect, therefore, if we are to adopt Ham's anti-scientific claim. Although I watched on the internet a live stream of Ken Ham's debate, the debate is now a past event. So was my own birth, come to think of it. Can anyone prove that it ever happened?<br />
<br />
Whether dealing with modern experiments or historical investigation, <i><b>we all interpret the dataset before us.</b></i> We do not even observe billions of dead things within the rocks; we observe only the shapes and remains of what we argue and interpret to be once living organisms through the <i>historical</i> scientific method. When studying natural phenomena, we apply the scientific method to constrain the objectivity of the observer, but all is yet subject to interpretation. We do not even 'observe' the isotope ratios obtained to date minerals, but we <i>interpret</i> electric signals from collector cups at the end of a vacuum tube. It is the scientific method, therefore, that allows us even to interpret properly <i>modern</i> phenomenon. All science is hermeneutic, and historical science is no giant leap into the unknown.<br />
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So no, I was not there. Neither was Bill. Neither were you, Mr. Ham. But that is the beauty of historical science—we can still know the past! Appealing to Scripture does not solidify your case, nor distinguish you from us. Why? Because you must still interpret the written word; you must still apply historical science to reconstruct that written word from its dynamic transmission through time and space. You neither wrote it nor observed it being written. So let's thank God together for historical science, without which we could not even read the Bible.<br />
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<i>“You can never prove it’s old, so that’s not a hypothetical... Not using the scientific method.”</i><br />
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This single response by Ken Ham during the Q&A session allows us to declare Bill Nye a winner in this debate. When asked if he would retain faith in God if convinced that the Earth were old, Ken Ham remarked that science could never yield for us a reliable age of the Earth. For Ken Ham, nothing historical is subject to scientific investigation. If that is true, then at last, he has answered the question of the debate:<br />
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"Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern, scientific era?"</div>
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Ham can only defend his position by excluding the creation model from science altogether, as though to say, "No, it's not; but neither is yours."<br />
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<i>Edit: I realized that Jimpithecus, author of the Science and Creation blog, had some very similar impressions of the debate. Read those comments <a href="http://scienceandcreation.blogspot.com/2014/02/initial-thoughts-on-debate.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></div>
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Chemostrat1646http://www.blogger.com/profile/01067579479402100587noreply@blogger.com9