X-Files, Catastrophism and a Young Earth

In the first episode of the X-Files (Sep. 10, 1993), special agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) said this about alternate explanations,

J. Harlen Bretz proposed a huge flood through Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington that formed the Channeled Scablands.  The flood cut canyons up to 900 feet deep‼  For decades, Bretz suffered ridicule for his radical views.  However, in 1963, the International Association for Quaternary Research sent a telegram to Bretz ending “We are now all catastrophists.”  Bretz received the Penrose Medal (highest geology award) and claimed, "Perhaps, I can be credited with reviving and demystifying legendary Catastrophism and challenging a too rigorous Uniformitarianism." [1]

Should we always trust the experts?  Sometimes they are dead wrong.  Two intriguing books highlight this fact:

Consider the great Life-on-the-Moon hoax of 1835.  The New York Sun reported about research claimed to be from the Edinburgh Journal of Science that claimed that sentient beings were seen on the moon. [2]  This discovery was allegedly made by the very real mathematician, astronomer and chemist  Sir John Herschel (son of William Herschel who discovered Uranus ♅).

Scientific fraud is real.  In 2005, it was revealed that anthropologist Reiner Protsch von Zieten had fabricated false dates for ancient human fossils for decades. [3]  If the common dating methods are wrong and most of the rock record was formed catastrophically, then Young Earth Science (YES) is plausible.     

Are members of the academic elite ever willing to challenge ensconced conclusions?  Former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophy of Science, Philip Kitcher, boldly declared that, “it is not necessary, and it may not even be true, that all species are historically connected.” [4]  If our favorite planet is young, evolution is left out in the cold.

Be curious - learn the facts that support YES - Young Earth Science.

Notes:

1) YES - Young Earth Science by Jay Hall (IDEAS, Big Spring, TX, 2014), p. 93.

2) Regret the Error by Craig Silverman (Union Square Press, NYC, 2007), pp. 30-35.

3) Wrong by David Freedman (Little, Brown & Co., NYC, 2010), p. 256.

4) see the bottom of p. 347.

No Fossil Trees with Thousands of Rings

Tree rings grow support for Young Earth Science (YES).  Tree Rings Matter.  What tree in the fossil record has the most rings?  There is a Sequoia specimen with 816 growth rings.  Just search “sequoia 89 by 68.”  Where are the fossil trees that are thousands of years old?  Sequoias, Redwoods, Bristlecone pines, Junipers and Olive trees can live for thousands of years.[1]  Why are there no 2K, 3K or 4K year old trees in the fossil record?  If the earth is young this is no problem.  How do supporters of Old Earth Fallacies (OEF’s) handle this enigma?    

Many attempt to avoid the weight of this argument by claiming that the fossil record of trees is not abundant.  The oldest forest trees are dated at 385M years by Big Science, so lack of fossil evidence is just an escape mechanism.  If there have been hundreds of millions of years for fossil trees to form, then why do we see no fossil trees with thousands of rings?  Trees can’t run away from tsunamis or floods.  We witnessed the initial formation of fossil trees in the 1980’s.  According to Wikipedia:

“…virtually identical lahar and stream deposits that contain buried upright standing trunks of forests and beds of transported logs and upright stumps were created by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, and other Quaternary and Holocene eruptions of other Cascade Range volcanoes.  The Late Pleistocene lahar and stream deposits of Mount St. Helens contain buried prehistoric logs and in place (in situ) upright tree trunks that are in the initial stages of being naturally petrified by silica.” (emphasis added)

Erling Dorf (d. 1984) was a professor of Geology at Princeton.  He studied the fossil trees at Yellowstone and found that the average number of tree rings was 500 – far less than 4,000!  At one time the Yellowstone Fossil Forest was considered to have taken 20K years to form.[2]  Now a catastrophic interpretation is widely accepted.

Some might claim that redwoods don’t ever become fossilized, but that’s not the case.  The PetrifiedForest near Calistoga, CA has the largest fossil trees in the world.  There are redwoods and one pine that have been turned to rock.  The fossil tree named “The Queen” is estimated to have 2K rings, but this deposit is of relatively recent origin according to standard geological dating (3.4M).[3]  The point is, where are the trees from Jurassic times with 2K, 3K or 4K rings? 

Is the fossil record really woefully incomplete?  A scholarly work last century specifically addressed that very issue, The Adequacy of the Fossil Record edited by Stephen Donovan and Christopher Paul (Wiley, 1998).  Donovan and Paul demonstrate that protesting about the “incompleteness of the fossil record” is just an excuse.  This book deals specifically with the completeness of the fossil data.  The fossil record may be incomplete, but it is entirely adequate for most studies.

Tree rings ring true, Young Earth Science (YES) has friends in the forest.

Notes:

1) YES - Young Earth Science by Jay Hall (IDEAS, Big Spring, TX, 2014), pp. 20, 21.

2) Hall, pp. 120, 121.

3) This count is apparently based on the width of the tree.

Turbidity Currents, Turbidites and You

Turbidites are gravity flow formations often generated by earthquakes. [1]  The 1929 Grand Banks earthquake (off Newfoundland, M=7.2) and turbidity current caused telegraph cables to break and thus record its speed.  The current deposited at least 175 km³ of sediment and formed a bed more than 1 m thick (gravel to coarse silt).  A significant portion of the rock record is made up of turbidites.  If much of the Geologic Column was formed rapidly, then maybe this is a young planet after all.  Young Earth Science?  YES you can!

The Cambrian Burgess Shale is a significant challenge to evolution.  Multiple phyla are found in the earliest rocks and no transitional forms are found in Pre-Cambrian layers.  This conundrum, known as the Cambrian Explosion, is delineated in my book. [2]  The Burgess Shale is considered to be a turbidite!  So we find more evidence that the rock record was formed quickly.  So the next time you bring up the Cambrian Explosion in a conversation, be sure to point out that it favors Young Earth Science (YES).

A classic turbidite follows the pattern of the Bouma sequence.  Turbidites are very common.  As Stéphanie Girardclos et al point out in Marine Geology, “Gravity flow deposits, and particularly turbidite deposits, are ubiquitous in the sedimentary and rock record, and are economically important as potential hydrocarbon reservoirs.” [3]  GerardMiddleton (Geology Dept., McMaster Univ., Canada) concurs:  “Beds deposited from turbidity currents (called turbidites) are one of the commonest types of sedimentary rocks … the majority of sandstones in the geologic record were deposited either from rivers or from turbidity currents …” [4]

Even some gypsum beds, often thought to be the result of a long process of evaporation, have been interpreted as turbidites. [5]  Actually, gypsum may form directly as a precipitate from hot volcanic springs. [6]  So the next time you look at your wall (gypsum board), know that it supports Young Earth Science (YES).

Notes:

1) YES – Young Earth Science by Jay Hall (IDEAS, Big Spring, TX, 2014), p. 130.

2) Hall, pp. 84, 85, 116.

3) “The 1996 AD delta collapse and large turbidite in Lake Brienz” by Stéphanie Girardclos et al, Marine Geology 241 (2007) 137–154, p. 138, emphasis added.

4) “Sediment Deposition from Turbidity Currents” by Gerard Middleton, Annual Review Of Earth And Planetary Sciences, Volume 21, pp. 89-114, p. 90, emphasis added.

5) Evaporites: Sediments, Resources and Hydrocarbons by John Warren (Springer, 2006), p. 350.

6) Simon & Schuster’s Guide to Rocks and Minerals by Annibale Mottana et al (Simon & Schuster, NYC, 1978), entry 122 (gypsum).

YES - the Young Earth Science podcast 2079

How old is the earth?  Does it matter?  On today's podcast we will see how radioactive dating supports a young planet.  Click here to learn more.  Consider this shocking admission from R.L. Armstrong writing in the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics:  

This is an inherent uncertainty in dating young volcanic rocks: anomalies may be detected only by stratigraphic consistency tests, independent dating techniques, and comparison with the known time scale of geomagnetic reversals during the last five million years. [1]

If radiometric dating has an epic fail on historic lava flows, how can we trust it for old rocks supposedly billions of years old?  Let’s labor to spread the news about a youthful world.  The Truth is out there – fight the Deep Past.

What is your reaction to these words of H.G. Wells (War of the Worlds)?  “The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.” – H.G. Wells

What evidence would be required to verify a young earth?  Let us hear from you:  YoungEarthScience@yahoo.com

Learn more about Young Earth Science (YES) by getting the bold new fully documented book.

Note:

1) “K-Ar Dating: Late Cenozoic McMurdo Volcanic Group and Dry Valley Glacial History, Victoria Land, Antarctica” by R.L. Armstrong, New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, vol. 21 (1978), p. 692, emphasis added.

Pluto is Young

According to Eric Hand, writing at sciencemag.org, “…parts of the dwarf planet’s [Pluto] surface are crater-free and therefore relatively young … [Pluto] has been geologically reworked in the recent past.”

Hand posits an enigma for followers of Old Earth Fallacies (OEF’s), “Radioactive elements in both bodies’ [Pluto and Charon the largest moon] interiors could provide some of the heat needed for geological mountain building or ice flows that repave the surface.  But Pluto, and especially Charon, are far too small for this heat to persist.”

Methane, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide may form a thin veneer over ice mountains on Pluto.  These layers would quickly sublimate into the atmosphere and erode into space.  If Pluto is young then we have no worries. 

New Horizons co-investigator Cathy Olkin expected that Charon would be an ancient terrain covered in craters.  The lack of craters implies Pluto and Charon are young – thousands of years maybe?

The lack of craters tells of a Young Pluto.  As George Dvorsky (io9.com) states, “…the surface of Pluto is young - really, really young.  To have a surface that young, Pluto must be an active world with processes that regularly resurface the terrain. The big question is: Where is this energy coming from?”

Pluto’s atmosphere is very quickly escaping into space – could this be a bold signal of its youth?  Michael Summers, deputy lead of the New Horizons atmosphere team said, “For an atmosphere that’s escaping like that, supersonically, into space, there's nothing like that in the solar system, except for the solar wind itself.”  If Pluto is young, the supposed scientific curiosity is vaporized.

How much did all this pro-YoungEarth research cost us?  Only $720M.  A more down-to-earth project is to help crowd fund a national survey on the age of the earth.  Young Pluto has a true friend in the fascinating book YES – Young Earth Science by Jay Hall.

Note: emphasis added in quotations.

YES - the Young Earth Science podcast 2078

How old is the earth?  Does it matter?  On today's podcast we will see how History supports a young planet.  Click here to learn more. 

The Sumerian King List has eight kings before the worldwide cataclysm that the epic of Gilgamesh relates.  If we convert the reigns from base 60 to decimal, we can see that the Sumerian King List sums to just seven millennia and not many 10's of thousands of years.  Could this provide support for the claim that the earth itself is only thousands of years old, and not billions? 

Celebrate your independence from Old Earth Fallacies (OEF's).  Happy Independence Day!  By the way, Ben Franklin held to a young earth.  

Search out the evidence for yourself by getting the book, YES - Young Earth Science.

Earth Shift

It is generally thought that continental drift is a slow process.  However, Alfred Wegener (d. 1930), the Father of Continental Drift, concluded that North America and Europe were moving apart from each other at 2.5 m per year! [1]  Could Rapid Plate Movements (RPM’s) fit into a more concentrated earth history and support Young Earth Science (YES)?

Consider the recent earthquake in Nepal (April 26, 2015).  The earth shifted vertically by 3 feet!  A region 75 miles by 30 miles was lifted upward according to geophysicist Tim Wright (Univ. of Leeds, UK).

It is estimated that Kathmandu moved 10 ft to the South!  Even more astonishing was Japan's Tohoku earthquake (EQ) which had plate movements of 50 meters‼  The largest earthquake in the Himalayas hit Assam in 1950 and displaced the land by 30 m.

A disaster film actually depicts the catastrophic shifting of tectonic plates which dooms Japan - Japan Sinks (2006, Nihon Chinbotsu).  This is scifi, but it is based on real science.  You can see clips from the movie here (w/ English subtitles).  According to Atsushi Utsunomiya et al, “A collapsed megalith accelerates a single-layered convection at a whole mantle scale.” [2]  Delamination was another process suggested for RPM.

To learn more about this topic, get YES – Young Earth Science where there is a whole chapter on Rapid Plate Movements (RPM’s).

Notes:

1) YES – Young Earth Science by Jay Hall (IDEAS, Big Spring, TX, 2014), p. 148.

2) Superplumes: Beyond Plate Tectonics ed. by David Yuen, Shigenori Maruyama, Shun-ichiro Karato and Brian Windley (Springer, 2007 ed., 2014), p. 396, emphasis added.