Noah's Ark

First let me say thanks to Helen for her gentle way of dealing with this. I lurk over on the CvE forum a bit and more often than not this is the approach you take rather than the way I have seen others react.

Thanks. I am naturally a very curious person.

Is there much evidence of this? Logically I would think that if salt water fish adapted from fresh water fish after the flood that you might see signs of that. Off the top of my head you might see that most fresh water fish can be identified as a close relative of a corresponding salt water fish or that most salt water fish might have a high toerance of lower salinity.

Any guess as to how long the mixing would take? (I have not read the reference material yet. That may have to wait for a weekend or something.) I would think that it would not take too long. There would have to be a whole lot of water flowing around. At the very least, as the water rose then water from somewhere else would have to flow into the Pacific Basin.

My concern is that is takes a lot of water to flood the entire earth. Since water is an incompressible fluid something has to expand to force it out. Given the bursting forth presented, the simplist explaination is geothermal energy where the water is superheated and the expansion of steam moves the water. The next most common gas that can be expanded to force water out under pressure is CO2 and it would take a lot of CO2 to move that much water which could make the atmosphere unbreathable. Water oozing out does not indicate water under much pressure but something closer to the groundwater systems of today where water can come back to the surface in springs and wells and is in equilibrium with water from the surface entering the subsurface system. Also the entire surface of the ground being so watered is different than cracks forming in specific areas and bursting forth.

I did say "gross" approximation. If only the land were lower OK. But if the seas were also shallower then the volume of additional water required would still be significant compared to the volume of existing (liquid) water.

It is actually a very easy calculation. Calculate the volume of water needed to give an amount of rain. From this you get the latent heat released by the condensation of that much water straight out of steam tables. If you then take this much heat and divide by the mass of the atmosphere and the heat capacity of air you get the temperature change. I had to rely on a value for the weight from a NASA website and it was somewhat difficult to find. But the thing is, even if the value is off by an order of magnitude you still only get 20 feet instead of 2 feet. Not much considering the magnitude of the event. Now admittedly to make it accurate you would have to set it up as a rate of heat release and calculate the change in heat escaping to deep space as the atmosphere got hotter. You could then see where the actual temperature went after a given period of time. Some of the energy released would also not be used to heat the atmosphere but would be used for such things as wind. But the simple model is not that inaccurate. In a local case, such as regional monsoons, the area involved is quite tiny. The heat that is released can cause enough convection to drive the cloud tops straight to the tropopause. Some energy is used to drive strong winds. Think about hurricanes for a moment. Their great power comes from the heat released from condensing moisture. It is also a much different situation to spread a few feet ofver the world in the course of a year than oven the entire earth at the same time in the course of several weeks. And under normal conditions some of the heat to evaporate the water in the first place comes from the atmosphere which is then balanced when the water later condenses.

Cringing. That was pretty much my reaction when I ran into some of the arguments for the first time. I also got a bit angry. I realize that a lot of people are just trying to help and go out and regurgitate things they have been told without being equipped to really judge te validity. I like the people on this site better because they seem to have distilled things down to the better arguments.

I have been here long enough to figure out the relationship between you and Barry. I have been to the site a few times but mainly to read short bursts on things that come up in discussions here. When I get a little free time I will dig deeper.

The weakness that I have, and I think that this is true for most people to some extent, is that I have very limited knowledge of many of the areas of discussion. I'm and engineer so I have a decent background in basic physics, and good basis in chemistry. I can think critically and can use the overlap between what I know and new areas to help me to understand. I also do research (applied) for a living so I have some idea of how research is done and I have published papers and presented results at conferences and gone through Q&A afterward so I understand a bit of how this goes on. But when it gets to details of biology or geology or astronomy or particle physics I am out of my league and am dependant on the person making the argument to put it at a level where I can apply what I do know to understand the new information. But it is hard to make specific and convincing arguments without getting into technical details.

I have made a few comments and questions above. I will also be doing some reading. Maybe if I can make a short list of some of my questions and get them into a coherent form I can drop one off in the CvE forum every once in a while. Things seem to have slowed down there lately anyhow.

Thanks again. You'll probably continue to see me around.

 

HI, and thank you for your kind remarks and the time you took with that.

I'm going to ask Barry to take a look at your posts, as he is the one who has done the math. Despite the fact that I taught algebra I a bit, the thought of the equations you and he do leaves me shell-shocked...

In the meantime, I am flying to Australia tomorrow as he is scheduled for surgery there on Monday. Between the time warp and our desire to spend a couple of days quietly together before surgery, I won't be in contact with anyone for about a week. So I'm not ignoring you! If you would like to pose some questions privately to Barry, however, please feel free to use our baptistmail address
[email protected]

Since it's web-based, we can access from anywhere we are. (It's also the one with no ads and no spam!)

Your points are good, but I know he has already considered them and worked with them, so best you two hash it out!

By the way, I prefer your approach, too. I get downright tired of frontal attacks!

God bless.

[ August 28, 2002, 10:31 AM: Message edited by: Helen ]