There’s this of course:
3 Likes
Nice. I’ve only looked at the first one in detail, and I think you should point out at greater length the problem of measuring erosion of terrigenous sediments and comparing it to accumulation of abyssal, non-terrigenous sediments. You might even point out that the main source for abyssal sediment is calcareous and siliceous protist skeletons, and that for the abyssal plain below the carbonate compensation depth, the calcareous skeletons don’t even make it to the bottom. And of course given subduction, none of these have been accumulating since earlier than the Triassic at most.
1 Like
Those are interesting, yes. Honestly, I just scanned the list quickly.
I’ll take a moment to share why I picked this topic of erosion rates. Mostly it was timing-related:
First, I’ve heard estimates of the equivalent of today’s continents being eroded down between 10 and 50 million years. That’s for an entire continent. Recently I’ve been coming across things that take me back to those rates.
In fact just Monday (same day as your post) I came across another one, which spurred me to post on erosion rates. I read this article about a discovered dinosaur footprint:
In it, a guy finds a dino footprint “just lying on the beach” that “could date back to around 130 million years ago” And: "In the mud, it will only be around for a few months at the most.”
Immediately my mind went to the notion of erosion rates. If those are true, in 130 million years since that dino placed that footprint, the earth’s continents could theoretically have gone through a few cycles of erosion.
Over 100 millions of years later, “Joe” finds the print while walking along the beach. An article gets written, others say “how interesting” and move on.
All the while I look at this footprint, ponder erosion rates, and think: “This is way more unique an occurrence than most people even consider.” So yeah Allen, erosion rates seemed like an interesting topic.
And it’s more than just things like dino-footprints. I come across other things that take me back to these erosion rates. For instance large planation surfaces, inselbergs, and other geomorphology.
And yes, I noticed afterwards (as you pointed out) that #1 from that AiG list is related: (Sea-floor sediment).
In reality, this one topic touches on multiple things:
-
Too little sea floor sediment
-
The amount of sedimentary layers remaining on earth
-
High erosion effects on: Plateaus and planes, inselberg, steep canyon walls, etc.
So to your credit Allen, you did pick a decent topic to start with. I threw in a related, but alternative topic. And then just now suggested a third topic (to muddy the water even more).
Therefore I’m going to let you pick from those three categories above, and we’ll start with that (and maybe get to the others??)
So Jeff somehow thinks that this footprint supports a global flood 4500 years ago. He needs to ponder a little harder.
3 Likes
@AllenWitmerMiller: Clearly, @jeffb isn’t reading anything here other than your posts, and he’s missing all the refutations of the claims he’s just introduced. Perhaps you could direct him to a few of those refutations, or just repeat them in your own words; if so he might read them and even engage with them.
7 Likes
Such a neat and convenient way of outright ignoring dealing with contradictory evidence.
At least it’s not as ridiculous as @Giltil who will simply ignore posts or even the parts of them that contain information he disagrees with despite him otherwise engaging with the person posting that information.
These people are cowards.
1 Like
BTW, I would like to steer you towards that last one, because it contains a topic I’ve been meaning to bring up anyway. And is smaller in scope: Plateaus and planes, particularly in relation to this topic of erosion rates.
Consider these two planation surfaces:
- Kangaroo Island off the southern Australian coast. Covers an area of about 87 by 37 miles and is extremely flat. The surface is estimated to be at least 160 million years old
- The flat to undulating plateau of western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, dated at over 100 million years old.
I’m finding it challenging that these remained flat for over 100 million years, when entire continent worth of sediment is eroded within 10-50 million years.
So if you don’t mind, I’d like to focus on that topic.
Many if not most of those flat areas haven’t been flat throughout geological times. They have long histories of subsidence, uplift and erosion before they started to look like they do today. Even if there is nothing left of the thick pile of rock that once covered the great continental shield areas, we can still tell that they once were there because the weight of the overlying material has changed the rocks that we now see. They display mineralogy, texture and structures that can only be explained as the effect of burial to many kilometers of depth with the associated pressures and temperatures. The dynamic crust then slowly came up again, driven by processes deep in the mantle, and all that overburden was eroded again until the current surface remained.
The evidence is there, and has been studied for hundreds of years.
5 Likes
Continents are not static. The Earth’s crust is far more dynamic than you give it credit for. Places like the isle of Wight have been below and above sea level numerous times, caused by various well understood geological processes. That dinosaur footprint was made when the location was pretty much at sea level in the Early Cretaceous. Later in the Cretaceous the sea invaded and the area was covered in massive Chalk deposits, many hundreds of meters thick - these are still very visible all around the Isle of Wight and the adjacent coasts of England and France.
Later still, tectronic forces affected the area and it became uplifted, shedding much of these sediments through erosion. But that was not the end: further incursions of the sea emplaced younger sediments again (Tertiary formations), and in turn these too were eroded when, once again, the crust was uplifted.
The end result of all these cycles of subsidence, deposition, uplift and erosion is that the footprint is now back where it started, pretty much at sea level.
This dynamic nature of the Earth’s crust has been well known for literally hundreds of years. The geological sciences have investigated, analysed and understood these processes in great detail all over the globe.
As a non-geologist I won’t blame you for not knowing about this, but that doesn’t mean that nobody else knows about it either. There are libraries full of information accessible to anyone who really wants to understand this. There are amateur geological societies who will accept anyone as a member who has some interest in Earth Science. They organise lectures and field trips to look at features like these and many more. Why not join one and see for yourself how incredibly diverse and exciting our understanding of the planet is? It makes for great days out as well!
6 Likes
Kangaroo Island is frequently described as “rugged”, and this topographic map certainly doesn’t indicate it as being “extremely flat”.
The Arnhem Land plateau is topographically complex, including sheer escarpments (especially on its western perimeter), deep narrow gorges, spectacular waterfalls, and the headwaters of some of the largest river systems in the Northern Territory, including the Katherine (Daly), Mary, South Alligator, East Alligator, and Mann Rivers, plus tributaries of the Roper River. – Western Arnhem Plateau
Doesn’t sound “flat to undulating”.
Jeff’s ‘Kangaroo Island’ claim appears to be based on this:
- Existence of significant flat plateaux that are ‘dated’ at many millions of years old (‘elevated paleoplains’). An example is Kangaroo Island (Australia). C.R. Twidale, a famous Australian physical geographer wrote: “the survival of these paleoforms is in some degree an embarrassment to all the commonly accepted models of landscape development.” Twidale, C.R. On the survival of paleoforms, American J. Science 5(276):77–95, 1976 (quote on p. 81). See Austin, S.A., Did landscapes evolve?Impact 118, April 1983. Age of the earth
There are two problems with this:
-
The YEC telephone game of Steven Austin → Don Batten → Jeff, seems to have serially distorted the topography of Kangaroo Island – progressively ‘flattening’ it.
-
Batten’s quote from Twidale’s (nearly 50 year old) article is out-of-context, and misrepresents its intent – (i) Twidale is explicitly talking about “paleoplain remnants”, not paleoplains that exist in their entirety (i.e. not about large flat areas), and (ii) he concludes:
6 Likes
Well, I dunno, I find it hard to attribute motives to people I don’t understand and can’t comprehend. Yesterday, I was shown an image on a phone purported to be an alien spacecraft (taken near pic de Bugarach) by a masseuse friend of my wife. It looked like a box moth to me and I said so. I was gently dismissed as a sceptic. There seems to be a widespread desire that I personally lack to see mystery and purpose everywhere.
ETA perhaps I should have put this in a peanut gallery thread. I find the YEC position on Geology farcical but the rebuttals can tweak my curiosity, resulting in me learning something new. Something in the thread caused me to remember the stone house a school mate lived in that I used to cycle to visit regularly. The grey stone was soft, easily marked, and weathered badly. I was told it was Binton (the name of that village) stone that used to be quarried locally. But now I know it was/is called Wilmcote limestone, a type of mudstone in the Blue Lias formation, dating from the Jurassic era, 200 million years ago.
Thanks. There is a lot more that could be said about each of them, but I wanted to focus on the elementary basics. There are a lot of discussions, both from young earthists themselves and in response to them, that get deep into technical details, but I’ve found that more often than not, it’s at the level of the elementary basics that young earth arguments break down.
Take for example, radiocarbon in ancient coals and diamonds. The need to correctly account for contamination and other forms of error like that is one of the most basic, fundamental requirements of every area of measurement-based science, and should be obvious to anyone who has done any form of non-trivial lab work over and above compulsory science education at school. Yet young earthists dismiss contamination as a “rescuing device.”
I generally take the view that when discussing subjects such as these, one should focus on the elementary basics such as that before progressing to more advanced topics. If young earthists are making a dog’s dinner of even stuff that gets taught to teenagers at secondary school, you can take it as read that they aren’t going to fare any better when attempting to address more advanced details at undergraduate or postgraduate level.
I’m sure that most of the posts I wrote back then could do with a makeover, and of course if anyone else thinks they can do a better job than I did of addressing Answers in Genesis’s top ten, they’re always welcome to have a go, but I’m not spending much time on discussions about creation and evolution these days as I have other things to focus on.
3 Likes
Jeff said this was his intent.
I think the only way to be YEC is to avoid engaging with evidence (and the critics). If a YEC is forced to engage with the evidence, as Glenn Morton did in his work as a oilfield Geologist, they probably can’t stay with those beliefs and find another way. Or maybe they keep quiet about doubts; social pressure in YEC can be intense.
And Jeff, if you are reading, I mean that as a general observation, not a personal criticism. It is common to see YEC denying the laws of physics, and it doesn’t get much less scientific, or much more denial of evidence, than that. It is my observation that YEC prefer to argue topics which they consider “safe”, where there is no risk of engaging deeply, or nothing that matters enough to cause them to rethink beliefs.
The flatness of plateaus and plains strikes me as a topic that isn’t likely to matter. No important work or life decisions hang on this, and when explanation is provided, it can easily be filed away and ignored. Much closer to home we have the State of Kansas, which is flatter than a pancake due to millions of years of accumulated dust blown in from more western States. (Multiple tons of New Mexico blew over to KS just yesterday.)
I can sort of understand why most YEC do not engage with evidence; it can only make them unhappy, forcing difficult decisions that are likely to cause them trouble. A few YEC like to engage in public argument, but those are not the majority. So Jeff (if you are still with me), I put it to you that it matters that there are people actively engaged in science, even if it is science you reject. The age of the Earth matters if you work in the oilfields or mineral extraction. Evolution matters if you work in the biomedical sciences, OR even if you benefit indirectly (including much of modern medicine).
Your personal beliefs matter too, of course, I won’t tell you otherwise. The YEC narrative that science and religion are in conflict is only about 65 years old, and @AllenWitmerMiller was around for some of those early days. You have an opportunity here to examine the history of your own beliefs, and perhaps to set aside some of the conflict you have with science.
Rambled on much more than I intended, sorry! 
8 Likes
Would people rate YEC as better, comparable or worse than FE on this axis? (I must admit, I’ve not had that much direct contact with FE.)
I’d rate them about equal. In my experience debating Flat Earthers, there are large swaths of knowledge they avoid engaging with, just like YECs.
Admittedly it’s a little harder to judge Flat Earthers in that respect, since it seems to attract a lot more trolls than YEC.
2 Likes
Dan,
A respectable post. I did read this. And since then, went back and made sure I’ve read ones that are more recent (ones indicated I should engage with). Most of these I had read actually. And some I’ve been tempted to reply to (at least when I got the chance), including yours.
BTW, my resistance to read all posts had nothing to do with not wanting feedback, or not wanting to engage with anything. TBH, it was strictly due to me sometimes reading some of the most ridiculous comments here, and knowing I don’t have the time and effort to give them the proper response they deserve (It’s almost painful reading them at times).
But otherwise, I value all feedback, readily engage with challenges. I’ll actually seek out best arguments against YEC at times. After years of doing that, and forcing myself to do a lot of research, I can say it’s paid off. It’s gave me so much more confidence in this worldview. (BTW the most recent decent challenge has been the Joel Duff series on the Dead Sea).
Which makes statements like this rather odd to me:
Quite the opposite. Yes, that might have been true of Glenn Morton back in the 80’s (and apparently Allen). And it was true for me back in the 90’s. But all that is different now. I highly suggest you go and read post #2 above were I talked about Glenn, and the trajectory I see. Every time I see Glen Morton mentioned, I get encouraged at the current state of the YEC movement.
…
So…where from here? As you’ve seen in my post just prior to this, I replied to the plateau issue. I wanted to in order to continue with that thread. However, there are those here who seem to need me to engage with posts prior to that first. I just went back to create a list of posts that seemed to be ones that you all would need a reply to. The list started getting large. If I tried to reply to each, each replied reply would generate as slew more replies, growing exponentially. Not sure how to triage all of that.
I have a few suggestions:
- Continue with the plateau discussion (and focus on content in the two videos on that subject from the OP).
- Re-engage in talks about continental erosion effects on existing layers, but narrow the scope of that (I can think of one good way to do that).
- Implement some form of “Take a number to refute Jeff” system.
I’m thinking I’m going to need to do something like these, because I just don’t see how I can get to all of those previous posts. And honestly, I’d still like to dialog with just one person (Allen preferably), since I get way out numbered otherwise.
Thoughts @AllenWitmerMiller??
1 Like
Sure, I’ll take some ownership on the “extremely flat” phrase, if that will help move the dialog along. I’m personally opposed to any exaggerations. That was a copy/pasted phrase, and normally I would have sanitized something like that.
So if it helps, @AllenWitmerMiller , I’ll just focused on the agreed phrase: “plateau.” And re-word my statements as such:
Kangaroo Island off the southern Australian coast. A plateau covers an area of about 87 by 37 miles. The surface is estimated to be at least 160 million years old.
The idea being that after being exposed to erosion for an extended amount of time, it should not be recognized as a plateau (rather something much more undulated).
Not @AllenWitmerMiller , but I would like to note that you have spent all this long post saying that you do engage with the evidence, but in the course of it failing entirely to engage with the evidence. You claim lack of time, but perhaps you would have more time if you spent less on posts like that one.
10 Likes
That seems to be the entire area of the island, most of whose surface according to a geological map I’m looking at is Pliocene laterite. Odd.
4 Likes
It’s heavily dissected. I’ll just quote how Wikipedia describes a dissected plateau:
A dissected plateau is a plateauarea that has been severely eroded, and the relief is sharp. Such an area may be referred to as mountainous…
It can be distinguished from mountains by geological investigation, but it’s not always obvious.
And, of course it isn’t bare 170 million year-old rock. Still, you’ve answered my question above.
2 Likes