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a_haworthroberts wrote:It seeks to portray a stark 'either or' battle within geology between uniformitarian 'dogma' and overlooked catastrophism in understanding Earth's history - clearly.
The Bible, specifically Genesis, is mentioned but the viewer is NOT told that the makers and presenters (Paul Garner, John Whitmore, Andrew Snelling) all think - by faith - that the planet is just 6,000 years' old.
Moon Fire wrote:*twitches*
I've aquired this need to see it for myself and shred it a little
*twitches some more*
a_haworthroberts wrote:After seeing the horizontal over vertical layers at Siccar Point, and hearing about Hutton and Lyell, we are told by the narrator "catastrophism ... was considered out of bounds". But then "many rock layers pointed to processes more rapid and violent than those going on at the present day". (Ah yes, we don't get tsunamis and explosive eruptions of Mount St Helens these days.) And "within the last 40 years, belief in large-scale geological catastrophies, one regarded as heresy, has become fashionable again - even mainstream".
Derek Ager's work on catastrophism is referenced, and his views on the Sutton Stone (near Swansea) - which we are told contains pebbles "'floating' within a mass of finer sediment" - are mentioned. "Ager concluded that it must have been deposited by an enormous wave of water carrying mud and pebbles... the Sutton Stone had been formed in a single, sudden event".
a_haworthroberts wrote:Paul Garner and the narrator then discuss granite. "Geologists have usually assumed that this process of granite formation must have taken immense periods of time." "But then came a revolution ... in the 1990s geologists began to call into question almost every aspect of the story". They cite THIS paper, whose Abstract does not refer to 'less than 10,000 years': http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 669a0.html
a_haworthroberts wrote:But cue one Andrew Snelling. With reference to molten granite magma he mentions the 'space problem' and says "they're talking about six, ten, twenty years at most for some of these bodies to accumulate". Paul Garner mentions a mineral found in granites and adds "epidote is only stable at very high pressures" and "the only way that we could find epidote crystals in granites at the surface today is if they were transported upwards in the magma very, very quickly".
a_haworthroberts wrote:Snelling refers to 'convective cooling' of granite magma; references are provided to back up the claim that swirling water and steam allow efficient cooling which need not require millions of years. On the face of it, this may well be correct. But it hardly overturns all slow uniformitarian processes thought to have formed many rocks around the world.
a_haworthroberts wrote:Huge past volcanic eruptions known as flood basalts are then mentioned - which created the lava flows found in Northern Ireland, western Scotland and Greenland. The narrator claims "they all formed at about the same time" (he doesn't say 'during Noah's Flood'). He does then mention "the catastrophic flooding associated with the rapid melting of the ice sheets at the end of the ice age".
a_haworthroberts wrote:And then: "many individual rock layers were formed quickly - but quite often the next layer seems to have been added quickly too". Mam Tor, Derbyshire, is offered as an example of this claim. Mention is made of fast-flowing turbidity currents and sediment in the Atlantic (turbidites) that resulted from the Grand Banks earthquake of 1929. Garner states "these sandstones at Mam Tor are turbidites" (the transcript cites a 1960 paper in the Journal of Sedimentary Petrology). Referring to the mudstones at Mam Tor he says "there are fossil shells but if there were animals that were living here for any length of time then they ought to have burrowed into the mud...".
a_haworthroberts wrote:Cue the narrator again. "Convincing evidence for long ages of geological time is difficult to find". Really?
He seeks to dismiss radiometric dating methods: "many lava flows formed during recent volcanic eruptions give very old dates by radioactive methods - revealing problems with the standard assumptions". Which those idiot uniformitarian scientists ignore, presumably. Of carbon-14 found in old fossil samples he argues that some claim "that the carbon-14 must be due to contamination ... however, the technicians in dating laboratories meticulously clean such samples with hot strong acids and other treatments to remove contamination" (the word used is 'remove' not 'prevent').
a_haworthroberts wrote:We are informed that the oceans are not salty enough and appear to contain too little sediment for their presumed age, even with the recycling caused by tectonics.
Apparently supported by a science paper dating from 1964, we are then informed "geologists estimate that a continent like North America is being eroded by water and wind at a rate of about 60 millimetres every 1,000 years". The next but one sentence (not accompanied by any reference) reads: "the erosion rate seems very slow, but it suggests that North America could have been worn down to sea level in only 10 million years". I can't say exactly how, but I suspect that someone is trying to pull a 'fast one' here (pun unintended).
And then: "it is reasonable to ask how mountain ranges believed to be hundreds of millions of years old could have survived to the present-day". (According to Wikipedia, the - ancient - Appalachians 'first' formed around 480 million years' ago; the Gamburtsevs in Antarctica are thought to have been formed 'twice'.) Is this pseudo-science, or merely misdirection involving known facts?
It is claimed that vast coal seams can be formed rapidly by water transport. Fragile shell fossils are often found broken, suggesting that the sediments within which they were found were "most probably formed catastrophically" (no supporting reference is provided).
More questions are posed - regarding the formation of chalk. "The ancient chalk is very pure... If it was laid down slowly over millions of years, it's hard to see how mud or sand could have been prevented from being washed in and mixed with it". But then we are told of "layers of volcanic ash" within chalk in East Sussex.
Back to Siccar Point. We are informed that Hutton 'missed' greywackes (which are resistant to erosion) below the - smooth - unconformity at Siccar Point. These are said to be turbidites. And the viewer is shown what is claimed to be rapidly laid down breccias - containing angular rock fragments of varying sizes that haven't been 'sorted' and 'graded'.
Paul Garner then suggests that the 'dogma' of uniformitarianism may have triumphed for almost 200 years "in spite of the evidence and not because of it".
Narrator's conclusion.
Catastrophism is "the dominant force that has shaped our geological history".
"Catastrophism is alive and well on planet Earth - and the evidence is rock solid!".
Dr_GS_Hurd wrote:Moon Fire wrote:*twitches*
I've aquired this need to see it for myself and shred it a little
*twitches some more*
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A large whisky will calm the nerves.
a_haworthroberts wrote:Someone sent me a private email about this thread. But due to unexplained password problems I CAN'T read it.
Moon Fire wrote:a_haworthroberts wrote:Someone sent me a private email about this thread. But due to unexplained password problems I CAN'T read it.
That was me!
Dr_GS_Hurd wrote:The first sentence of the Nature article on granite reads, "The Earth's granite crust harbours continental landmasses that have remained stable and above mean sea level for more than a billion years(1)."
Brilliant.
Are you still having problems Ashley? Were you trying to log in to read the PM from the email notification? It shouldn't cause extra problems, but you never know. If you're logged in to post, as you are, you should have no problem reading PMs without further ado.a_haworthroberts wrote:It wouldn't accept my usual password. I asked for what I assumed was an email to reset my password - but just got a message with an activation link. But having clicked on it, then NEITHER my intended new NOR my old password would work. At this hour of the day I can't be bovvered to do any more...
And I thought that God loved technology.
Snelling refers to 'convective cooling' of granite magma; references are provided to back up the claim that swirling water and steam allow efficient cooling which need not require millions of years. On the face of it, this may well be correct.
Back to Siccar Point. We are informed that Hutton 'missed' greywackes (which are resistant to erosion) below the - smooth - unconformity at Siccar Point. These are said to be turbidites. And the viewer is shown what is claimed to be rapidly laid down breccias - containing angular rock fragments of varying sizes that haven't been 'sorted' and 'graded'.
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