Summations Only

I don't know Percy, when I get involved in threads like this I always hope to find out more about what DID happen, but end up getting sucked into discussing fantasies about what COULD NOT have happened. I may have missed it, but I would have liked to see how the Transgressions/Regressions model actually fits into what we see in the GC.So I guess if anyone else would like to discuss the topic and ignore the B.S., then I wouldn't mind continuing this thread. Otherwise, shut it down.HBD

Do you mean the river as it is NOW, or the river as it was before it was dammed and diverted?Current average discharge is about 58 m³/sec.Historic average discharge about 640 m³/sec (about 11 times current rate)It had a historic peak flow of 2,800 m³/sec during the summer season (about 48 times current average)Maximum recorded flow was 10,900 m³/sec in 1884 (about 188 times current average flow)Roughly 90% of the Colorado's discharge comes from snowpack melt, mostly from the Rockies. I seem to remember there was supposed to be a couple ice ages during the time that the GC was being carved, which would have contributed significantly to the Colorado's flow. I don't think it unreasonable to estimate discharge rates to be double average historic flow. That would be a flow rate of 5,600 m³/sec, about 100 times current flow rates.That would not be the "river as it is now" would it? Could a river 100 times larger than the current Colorado carve the GC in 5 million years? SourceHBD

So, archaeological evidence suggests that the GC has been inhabited by humans for 4,000 years. Evidence for these civilizations is found in Redwall limestone caves, which is quite far down in the canyon.Ancestral Pueblos moved into the area about 500BCE (about 2,500 years ago) and had established stable settlements by 500CE. The most accessible of these was built about 1185.The first Europeans reached the GC in 1540, only 3,800 years after the flood. SourceSO... how long DID it take the flood waters to carve the GC? 300 years? 1,800 years? As much as 3,800 years?And a followup question ... where is all that sediment now?HBDEdited by herebedragons, : typo

The way I figure it, the hoodoos of Monument Valley must have been carved by runoff as the flood waters receded. Since the waters began receding on day 150 and the land was completely dry by day 371, this sets the upper limit of the amount of time it took to carve the area. So, the area was carved in less than 221 days.Monument Valley is about 28.73 square miles and some hoodoos stand 1000 feet above the canyon floor. This amounts to 5.44 cubic miles of material that needs to be removed.So we have 5.44 cubic miles of material to remove in 221 days. This converts to an erosive rate of 3.62x10⁹ ft³ /day.The hoodoos of Monument Valley must have been carved from Sept, 2348 BCE until March, 2347 BCE at the rate of 3.62x10⁹ ft³ /day. ** Faith can quote me as a source for the age of the hoodoos and the rate of erosion required to produce them. I'm real, I assure you. HBDABE: I mistakenly attributed hoodoos to Monument Valley.Edited by herebedragons, : No reason given.

So, if the Colorado carved the canyon, it should be 1 mile deep and only 2 miles wide? Sorry, my bad. It may have been this comment that confused me ... I don't think anyone supposes the Colorado river carved the plains of Bryce Canyon or Monument valley. I could be wrong, but as far as I know, the Colorado is supposed to have carved the GC, not the surrounding features.HBD

Have you really thought about that??? 5.45 trillion cubic yards removed in 100 years???? That is 150 million cubic yards per day!!! Park StatisticsI don't know ... is that really within the realm of reason??? Yea, I'll try Googling it later.HBD

Ooops, that's right. Bryce Canyon is more appropriate to hoodoo formations. Bryce Canyon has a larger area (56 square miles), but I am not clear on what the volume of material that needed to be removed was. Just change reference to hoodoos to buttes. Monument Valley only covers .02% of the Colorado Plateau, which all needs to be eroded at generally the same kind of rates. After the flood waters abated, you would have erosion of the type that we can identify with and can understand based on other known flood sources such as the Channeled Scablands being scoured by Lake Missoula floods. Erosion would have quickly settled into the kinds of processes we can relate to.

quote:

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And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dried.
Gen 8:13 - 14

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The ground was dried. The flood was over. If there were standing bodies of water left over from the flood, they would now operate in ways we can relate to today. The vast majority of the erosional work needs to be done as the flood waters drained.Or was this only a local drying? Or maybe a metaphor? Sure, there definitely would be. And then erosion would begin to operate in ways that we relate to. These extreme rates of erosion that can carve features so rapidly could not have formed by these processes, they need to be done by the actual flood waters running off. Because I am trying to imagine it from a "flood geology" perspective. I am not sure there is any way to "get all this coordinated."HBD

A lot of assumptions that have no basis in naturalistic explanations.HBD

Really? And you have the audacity to say I deserve a punch in the nose for saying that what you are doing is apologetics, not science? If YEC were science, there would be no difference between YEC methods and other scientific methods. If the methods are developed to "serve" YEC, there is inherent bias built into them.I gave you sincere advice about how to present your ideas as scientific but you have completely ignored it and instead continue to stick to these "YEC methods" which involve a-priori conclusions and ignoring evidence.If this is how you want to handle your arguments, fine. Just don't expect anyone to accept it as science and don't threaten to punch people in the nose when they call you on it. You have admitted it with your own words.HBD

Are you for real? Depositional environments are identified by the... hhhmm, how to put this... by the environment they are deposited in. You can't move sediment, deposit it in a different environment and expect it to maintain its original identity. How could that be?Maybe what you are trying to suggest is that all sediments are flood deposits that simply look like they were deposited in a different environment. Maybe you could explain how (what appears to be) aeolian sands, limestones, lake sediments, swamps, evaporites, etc. can all form in the same depositional environment.HBD

You do mean all the strata of the geological column in the GC. You can't mean all the strata all over the world. There are plenty of places where lava flows separate features of the geological column. How does lava flow underwater and NOT produce the characteristics of underwater lava flows?If there is even 1 place where there is sub-aerial lava flows within the geological column it falsifies the statement that ALL strata are flood sediments. The Cardenas basalts are an example of the lower limit of flood deposits within the GC area.HBD

The sad thing is, she could present this in a scientific way. The problem for Faith and YECs in general is that they are unwilling to accept the conclusions of a scientific process. Instead, they start with a conclusion and work backwards. There is little way to reconcile that.I thought about starting a thread that looked at one section (I was thinking the contact between the Redwall, Muav and the Tempe Butte would be a good one) and presenting it from a YEC point of view as an example of how to present an alternative hypothesis. I just don't think I'll have time to do that though and Faith doesn't seem to be willing to approach it that way, so ...HBD

My guess is you didn't find it useful. But even so, I re-posted it here Message 281 along with some additional comments.I know you don't consider me any kind of authority on this, and that's just fine. But I am trying to explain to you WHY no one here is considering your ideas to be scientific. Whether you agree with the process or not, if you want to be considered scientific, then you have to play the game. That's how it works.If you want to do something different, no problem. Just don't expect us to consider it scientific, that's all.HBDEdited by herebedragons, : No reason given.

The way I see it, Walther's Law is really all about energy gradients. You can see this pattern of deposits in alluvial fans, to a lesser extent in rivers, and in any situation where there are differences in energy levels of water that carries sediments.As for the flood, I can't see that during the initial rising of the flood waters that there could be significant energy gradients. Especially when the initial flood stages need to strip off huge amounts of sediment so that there is actually material to deposit. I suppose there would be some gradient, like the energy on shore would be higher than that in deep basins, but if that was the case, could there be enough motion to continually strip sediment off the land? In any case, I would expect the energy of the entire system to be very high and there would be no places where there energy would be low enough to allow fine particles to drop out.So, because of that, I would not expect to see transgression sequences in a flood of that magnitude, since it would be a system of net erosion, not deposition.However, once the inundation of water ceased, energy levels would began to fall. Of course, large cobbles would fall out first then smaller clasts, ect. But once land began to be exposed at the surface you would begin to have the kind of energy gradients that Walther's Law requires. So then I would expect a long series of regression sequences.Of course, then there would be rapid plate tectonics that would alter the structures, but I would only expect that the kind of movement needed for such a scenario would keep energy levels rather high throughout the system.Idk, its all kind of a have your cake and eat it too situation.HBD

What the heck would you do with the facts? There is only one way you can interpret them. If you were presented with the following facts about the structure of a sediment how would you interpret them?Rock type: quartz arenite (sandstone) or gypsum
Grain size: sand
Grain sorting: well sorted
Grain shape: rounded
Color: yellow
Structures: cross bedded
Biogenic structures: track and trails* interpretation:
Geologist: desert dunes
Faith: flood depositsOr this one?Rock type: breccia and conglomerate
Grain size: clay to gravel
Grain sorting: poor
Grain shape: angular
Color: brown to red
Structures: graded and cross bedded
Biogenic structures: none* interpretation:
Geologist: alluvial fan
Faith: flood depositsTwo completely different structures; same interpretation. Why are the facts needed?So, do you reject that different environments would create different deposits or that we can tell which is which by analyzing the rocks? Or is it that you feel there is just no way to know that the flood did not create these different structures? If you really cared about the facts, this would be a legitimate question. As it is, you don't care about facts. What you are doing is attempting to call into question the null hypothesis, which you think will then lend credence to your hypothesis. That different depositional environments deposit different types of sedimentary structures is considered "common knowledge" in geology and it doesn't need to be supported every time it is mentioned.You need to provide evidence that the same environment can produce different sedimentary structures. In other words, demonstrate the "flood deposits" is the correct answer to both sedimentary structures listed above. That is your hypothesis - you need to support it.HBD