What IS Science And What IS NOT Science?

kuresu writes:But a vapor canopy? what the hell is that?

Percy writes:Dr. Jones has posted concerning the paper Temperature Profiles for an Optimized Water Vapor Canopy by Larry Vardiman, and you have responded, so let's stick with this one.

Percy writes:It has been explained many times here at EvC Forum, perhaps even in replies addressed directly to you though I don't actually recall, that Baumgardner (note your misspelling) is a legitimate scientist who does legitimate science having nothing to do with creationism that gets published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and who also does creationist research that never gets published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.Baumgardner's creationist efforts, for example his Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The Physics Behind the Genesis Flood, isn't science because he is postulating about a phenomenon for which there is no evidence. Like many creation scientists he has completely ignored the initial scientific requirement to only hypothesize about observed natural phenomenon. He's hypothesizing in a scientific manner about the Genesis account of Noah's flood, but because he did not begin with evidence for the flood drawn from the natural world his hypothesizing is therefore disconnected from the natural world that it is science's purpose to study, and it is therefore not science.

Baumgardner scientific research paper writes:OBSERVATIONAL SUPPORT FOR CATASTROPHIC PLATE TECTONICS
If such a dramatic catastrophe has occurred in the recent past of our planet, surely there should be abundant observations to confirm it. Because of space restrictions I will limit my discussion to only a few lines of supporting evidence. First, there is the rock record itself. ............... Beyond such impressive lateral continuity at the regional scale, Ager [1] documents many examples of amazing persistence in physical properties of sedimentary units on a global scale. One example is the classic set of formations that comprise the German Triassic: the Keuper, Muschelkalk, and Bunter. These formations with near to identical coloration and physical properties are also found across Europe from England to Bulgaria and in North America on the eastern seaboard as well as across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona [1, pp. 4-6]. ...............Further, the general absence of erosional channels at boundaries between these sedimentary units suggests a single continuous cataclysm [3, pp. 42-51].
Of course, one of the chief mental barriers to acceptance of the idea of a single cataclysm is the belief that radioisotope dating has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Phanerozoic record spans many hundreds of millions of years. There is a startling inconsistency, however, between radiocarbon and long half-life radioisotope methods. Since the advent of the accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) approach to measuring 14C/C ratios about twenty years ago, AMS analyses of organic samples from throughout the Phanerozoic record consistently show reproducible amounts of 14C that constrain their ages, instead of to 30 or 100 or 350 million years, to less than 70,000 years. This is true of essentially all samples tested since the early 1980’s in dozens of AMS laboratories around the world as documented in the peer-reviewed radiocarbon literature [9]. Recent AMS analyses conducted by the RATE team on a set of ten coal samples solidly supports this conclusion [9]. The extreme conflict between 14C age determinations and methods based on longer half-life isotopes is pointing to the likelihood that a foundational assumption of radioisotope dating, namely, that nuclear decay rates have always been time-invariant, is incorrect. ...............Moreover, the observed small amount of helium in the Earth’s atmosphere is consistent with only a small amount of helium outgassing from the Earth’s mantle and crust, contrary to the higher levels expected if the conventional radiometric time scale were true [11].
Another indication that the uniformitarian time scale is faulty is the timing of the uplift of today’s continental mountain ranges. Ollier and Pain [24], have reviewed the considerable documentation in the geomorphology literature for a recent (Plio-Pleistocene) near-synchronous uplift of all the continental mountain belts. They point out that in most cases this uplift was preceded by widespread regional erosional planation of the land surface. They emphasize that both the planation and the rapid uplift were
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global phenomena. But they are utterly mystified as to what could have been the mechanism for the vertical uplift. ............Catastrophic plate tectonics, however, not only solves the time scale problem, but it also accounts for the widespread erosional planation, provides the mechanism for large local changes in crustal thickness, and explains why the uplifts occurred simultaneously.
................ Cenozoic portions of geologic history are compressed into the span of a year in the catastrophic plate tectonics framework, uplift naturally takes place afterward and, especially from a uniformitarian perspective, appears sudden and simultaneous. The earlier planation corresponds to large-scale erosional processes operating while most of the continental surfaces were still near sea level. Hence, the timing and simultaneity of the uplift of today’s mountains represents powerful support for a recent catastrophic plate tectonics episode.
Yet another type of evidence for recent global tectonic catastrophe is the large magnitude of the temperature anomalies inferred for the rock near the bottom of the mantle. One of the most robust features of lateral mantle structure provided by the field of seismic tomography over the last fifteen years is a ring of dense rock at the bottom of the mantle roughly below the perimeter of today’s Pacific Ocean [26]. ...........Although accounting for such large density contrasts is currently a significant problem for the uniformitarian framework, it is readily explainable in the context of a recent episode of runaway subduction.
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Figure 4. Distribution of hot (light shaded surfaces) and cold (darker shaded surfaces) regions in today’s lower mantle as determined observationally by seismic tomography as viewed from (a) 180 degrees longitude and (b) 0 degrees longitude. (Figure courtesy of Alexandro Forte.)
................Still another line of evidence supporting the sort of mantle instability described in this paper comes from Earth’s sister planet, Venus. What are some of the most notable difficulties for the concept of catastrophic plate tectonics in accounting for the Earth we observe today, including its record of past geological process? One of the most prominent problems I have mentioned in earlier papers is how the newly formed ocean lithosphere could cool to its present state within such a short span of time. Discussions in early 2001 with Nathaniel Morgan, a new graduate student at Los Alamos National Laboratory with a background in multiphase heat transfer, led us both to realize that supersonic steam jets were almost a certainty along the spreading boundary between diverging ocean plates during the runaway phase of the catastrophe. Further analysis showed that jet velocities exceeding the Earth’s escape velocity might be possible. In this case, the energy per kilogram of steam escaping to space is sufficient to accomplish the bulk of the
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CONCLUSIONS
As I drive and hike through the southwestern U.S. where I live and observe on a frequent basis the magnificent exposures of the stratigraphical record, I can come to no conclusion other than the uniformitarian story, told over and over for the last 150 years or more”that present day processes operating at roughly present day rates correctly accounts for these strata”is just not true. The story simply does not agree with what can be casually observed in the field. Why then has generation after generation of geologists continued to pay it homage? Part of the answer no doubt is that much of geology focuses on the local detail and is not so directly concerned with big-picture issues. Another part of the answer, however, I believe is that a conceptual model that could account for the magnitude and character of the geological change implied by the observations was simply not available. But with the development of plate tectonics during the 1960’s, this situation changed. For the first time in human history a conceptual framework existed that could account for large-scale tectonic change in a coherent manner. A piece of the framework still lacking at that point was a detailed understanding of the deformation properties of mantle rock. But methodical laboratory experiments over the last 35 years have largely removed this barrier. It is now clear that silicates, like metals, display a rich array of deformation behavior, including dramatic weakening at high temperature and moderate levels of stress. With numerical methods now available it is straightforward to show, upon including these deformation properties, that mantles of planets like the Earth have the potential for catastrophic runaway of the material that form their thermal boundary layers. The evidence is compelling that Venus experienced such a global scale mantle runaway event in its relatively recent past. The evidence is even more compelling, in my assessment, such an event has also taken place on Earth.
I therefore conclude that God has given His church crucial insight that allows us an opportunity to present to the world a framework for earth history with vastly more explanatory power that anything that uniformitarianism has been able to muster. This is a historic moment. We have the key that unlocks secrets to the history of the Earth that no one has ever had before. I believe as creationists we should be laboring with every resource we have at our disposal to bring to fruition a comprehensive Flood geology model/framework that not only includes the large-scale tectonic phenomena but also details of dynamic topography during the catastrophe that influenced the erosion and sediment deposition patterns
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Holmes writes:Now don't get too excited. First, the studies were problematic.......

kuresu writes:you do not use C14 to date rock layers older than 70,000 years. If you do, you will automatically get a date that shows 70,000. The reason why? because at that point, there's so little unstable isotope left as to not get an accurate reading.

Holmes writes:The narrow definition tightened the screws on everyone equally

FliesOnly writes:Where are the scientific tests of even just these three statements? Do you see now what it is we have been trying to say?