“Plateau” section of Jeff’s first video (5 minutes long):
[Interviewer] Yeah. - As as water does anywhere, when it flows off something, it creates gullies or rills and those sort of things we see today, if it’s a much larger scale, it’ll have much more of an impact. - Yes, so that’s water gaps under fit rivers, 70% of the continents covered with sedimentary rock. So these were some of the things you were starting to find, and I believe there was a a number of other things as well. - Yes. For example, plateaus are common. 40% of the planet is essentially sedimentary plateaus, and the plateau is essentially a elevated, relatively flat area. Now, 60% of Africa is a plateau. And so I began to ask the question, how do you find plateaus of elevated areas with relatively uniform surfaces or slightly undulating surfaces that are meant to be hundreds of millions of years old? Surely they would’ve been torn apart at this stage yet to see it so prevalent as I flew around the world, you could be flying for an hour and still see the same plateau, and you’d ask, well, what happened over those hundreds of millions of years? - So Ron, for those of us that are not earth scientists, what’s the problem with a plateau? So just first of all, a plateau, if I’ve got it right, it’s an elevated flat area of land. And I guess, I think of is a rock in the middle of Australia? Is that a plateau? - No, a rock is actually a tilted sedimentary layer. - Oh, okay. - If you look at the great dividing range, - Yes. - It is actually a plateau. - Okay. So you’re talking a- - Big. - Much larger thing. - Big scale. Now we can have small plateaus. We’d call 'em different names, measles and buttes and those sorts of things. They’re the remnants of a larger plateau, but we have plateaus still. - Okay. - All around the planet. And they are elevated, they have been slightly eroded on top, but nowhere near the extent that one would expect. - Yes. - The erosion over that period of time. - Okay, so because one comes to mind, Tibetan plateau is another one. - That’s another example. - Would be a large one, I guess. So what you’re saying is the issue with them is that they’re raised and that they’re flat and there should be erosion. - There should be, yes. - There should be gullies or divots, or? - They should be continuous erosion over all of those millions of years. So I would expect to see a more undulating surface. - Got you, and you said 40% of the continents are covered by plateaus. - Correct. - So that’s a lot. We’re talking about a lot of plateaus and they’re- - Yes. - And if the long ages are true, then we should see undulations, we should see erosion. And what is that because of different weather systems occurring in the plateau? Like what if it was a uniform weather? Is that possible or? - No, that’s not possible. - Yeah. - Even in small plateau areas on the great dividing range, within a single catchment, we’ve monitored rainfall and erosion and so on. And depending upon where the rain falls on the day, it can have a significant impact or it could have no impact. So it depends on the interaction. As I come back to geomorphology, it’s the interaction of the actual geology with the atmosphere, with the biota as well. And so you get highly diverse reactions, but the fact is we don’t see it on the plateaus. - Yes. - So all those millions of years of weather patterns migrating, changing has had no, if that’s what occurred, have had minimal impact. - Got you. So seeing the extent of these plateaus, learning the extent of them made you think, well, the normal explanation for the, or the millions of years don’t fit with the plateaus. That’s what you’re saying. But how does the worldwide flood fit with the plateaus? 'Cause that was a conclusion you came to. - It’s the plateaus are made of sedimentary rocks. In other words, they’re torn up from other rocks. Now, to do that requires an erosional process, and erosion takes a lot of energy. Now, when you start looking at plateaus, that may be up to 12 kilometers deep in sediment from the top to the bottom. And on average there are about two kilometers worldwide. You’ve gotta ask, well, that’s a lot of sediment. Where did that come from? Why was it so beautifully packed? Why was it so, such sedimentary beds so extensive up to 10,000 square kilometers in the area? What river process could do that today? - Right, so just to break it down, you said up to two kilometers thick worth of- - That’ll be an average. - An average. - It’ll go deeper to 12 kilometers easily. These plateaus, easily.