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Young-earth creationists believe that the entire
geologic column was deposited in a single year. But there is a problem
that if this is true, then Noah and company, would be choked to death on
noxious gases. Volcanoes produce lots of sulfuric acid and if all the volcanic
rocks on earth are the result of a single year's worth of eruptions, how
much sulfuric acid was placed into the atmosphere? Three volcanoes provide
the data for this calculation (de Silva and Zielinski, 1998).
Tambora erupted in 1815 and threw 20 cubic
kilometers into the air. It also threw 200 megatons of H2SO4 into the stratosphere.
This is 10 megatons of sulfuric acid for each cubic kilometer.
Huaynaputina erupted in 1604 and 1605 and threw
up 19.2 cubic kilometers of ash and rock and 50 megatons of sulfuric acid.
This is 2.5 megatons of acid per cubic kilometer.
Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 threw 10 cubic km of rock
and 30 megatons into the atmosphere. This is 3 megatons of acid per cubic
kilometer.
We will not use an average but we will use
the lower value of 2.5 megatons of acid per cubic kilometer as the value
for the following calculation.
There are huge lava flows on earth, called
volcanic traps, which must have occurred during the flood year because
they lie on top of supposed flood deposited sedimentary rock and beneath
flood deposited sedimentary rock. So if the geology requires that they
be extruded during the flood, how much sulfuric acid must come with them?
Here are some of the volumes of rock extruded to the earth's surface during
such episodes:
Volcanics flood basalt flows (Coffin
and Eldholm).
DATE
VOLUME
Ontong Java/Nauru
121-124 my 38-55 x 106
km3
Kerguelen Plateau/ Broken Ridge
114-109.5 my 15-25 x 106
km3
North Atlantic
57.5-54.5 my
6.6 x 106 km3
Deccan Traps
65-69 my 8.2
x 106 km3
Siberian
Traps
250-216 my 2.3 x 106
km3
Central Atlantic Magmatic Province(CAMP) 200
my 2 x
106 km3
Columbia River
6-17.5 my 1.74 x
105 km3
Ethiopian Traps
7.5 x 105 km3 before erosion
Other Basalt flows Volcanics flood basalt
flows (Hess, 1989)
DATE
Area
Snake River Plain
16 my
.5 x 105 km2
Parana Plateau Brazil
119-149my
12 x 105 km2
Karoo Basalts
166-206 my
>1.4 x 105 km2
Assuming a 1 kilometer thickness for the second
list of traps this adds up to as much as 1 x 108 cubic kilometers.
Given a production of sulfuric acid of 2.5
megatons/cubic kilometer of extruded material gives 2.5 x 108
megatons or 2.5 x 1014 tons of sulfuric acid that must have
come out of the earth during that single year. A ton is 1016 kg so this
represents 2.34 x 1017 kg. This is 2.46 x 1017 kg
of acid! The atmosphere has a mass of around 1018 kg. This means
that 1/4th of the atmosphere would have been sulfuric acid at the end
of the flood. This level of acidity would destroy Noah and the ark occupants.
Carl Froede (personal communication July 20,1998)
stated the he 'would agree with Morton if there were no global flood to
absorb all the gases and ash!' He further suggested that all the volcanic
rocks were deposited underwater (Froede, 1996, p. 116, 123) and the acid
ate away at the limestone creating karsts and caves. So if the young-earth
creationist position is that H2SO4 is absorbed by the flood waters and
thus the acid was kept from the atmosphere, there are other implications.
First, the volcanic traps, I cited show little
lithological or textural of having been extruded under water. Magma, when
extruded underwater, most often is quenched into pillow shapes. That is
why underwater extruded lava are often called pillow lava. While there
are some subaqueous sheet and lobate flows (Gregg and Fink, 1995), subaqueous
lava tubes (Haymon, et al, 1993), they are not as extensive and uniform
in thickness as those observed in some of the volcanic traps which are
believed to have been subaerial flows. Also, along the edges of subaqueous
flows, where the rate of lava movement is slowed, pillow lavas almost always
form. The volcanic traps don't have pillow lava and thus look like subaerial
flows. One of the flows studied by Steven Austin in his former life as
Stuart Nevins from the Eocene John Day formation concluded that it had
to have been deposited subaerially. He wrote (Nevins, 1974, p. 225)
"One of the most perplexing difficulties presented
by the Mesa basalt is its horizontal extent compared to thickness. As an
illustration of the remarkable thinness of the Mesa compared to its widespread
flow, imagine that the actual thickness of the flow were reduced in scale
to this thickness of a page of this Quarterly. In order to represent to
scale the maximum horizontal dimension of the flow, the page would have
to be 20 feet long!"
The Mesa basalt is 30-40 feet over 100,000
square miles (Nevins, 1974, p. 225)
Austin further states (Nevins 1974, p. 225),
"It is the opinion of the author that the Mesa
basalt as well as many other Cenozoic basalts flowed after the Noachian
Flood. The Mesa basalt could not have flowed during the flood otherwise
it would have been 'quenched' by the waters and could not have spread so
broadly."
So if young-earth creationists are to believe
Austin, then Austin's data would imply that many volcanic flows found in
the geologic record must have been deposited subaerially. Individual flows
of other areas are also equally thin compared to their extent.
While H2SO4 can be absorbed by water, this
is irrelevant if the H2SO4 comes from subaerially deposited lava flows.
The volcanic traps were extruded under the air not under the water. Thus,
Noah must have dealt with. sulfuric acid.
Austin, Baumgardner et al, in "Catastrophic
Plate Tectonics," 3rd ICC pp. 609-621 suggest that the entire motion of
the continents was accomplished in the flood year. This means that a 5
km thick layer of basalt was extruded onto the ocean floor. Five kilometers
is the thickness of the oceanic crust.
The ocean area is 361 x 106 km2
and the volume of basalt extruded during the flood is
5 km x 361 x 106 km2
= 1.805 x 109 km3
Since there are 2.5 megatons of H2SO4 per km3
we find that the rapid continental drift would release
2.5 x 1.805 x 109 = 4.5 x 109
megatons or 4.5 x 109 megatons x 106 tons/megatons
= 4.5 x 1015 tons.
Multiplying the tonnage by 1016 kg/ton we find
that continental drift released
4.584 x 1018 kg of H2SO4
The mass of the ocean is 1.4 x 1021
kg. Thus you have a .3% solution of acid (by weight) in the oceans.
Conclusion
I am not a chemist, a friend who works for
the Tennessee Department of Geology (Jim Moore, personal communication,
July, 1998), calculated that that much acid would cause the ocean to have
a pH of 2.2. Froede, who works for the EPA, admitted that such a pH would
not be good for the fish. The young-earth advocates need to ask themselves
if the EPA would allow a factory to discharge enough acid to turn the river
into a .3% solution (by weight)? Fish can not live in such highly acidic
waters. Since during the global flood, the fish were not protected by the
ark they would be unlikely to survive the flood. Acid is as bad for the
gills as it is for the lungs.
There is direct observation that the above
calculation might not be too far wrong. A deep sea dive along the East Pacific
Rise was able to observe an actual undersea volcanic eruption. They measured
the pH of the water just above the magma. They measured a pH of 2.5 which
is not far from what is stated above. (Haymon et al, 1993, p. 85)
Also, if the acid is used to eat away the limestone
that the flood was busy why wouldn't it eat the shells of shellfish? Shellfish
also were not protected by the Ark and would also be subject to this highly
acidic water. They too would die. The global flood is incompatible with
the survival of oceanic life. The young-earth creationist needs to realize
that his model of the flood would turn the oceans and atmosphere into an
acidic cesspool.
Note Added in Proof:
John Baumgardner criticized this for only using
eruptive volcanoes and suggested that I should use Kilauea-type volcanism.
That data confirms what I am suggesting. According to Vincent Courtillot,
(1990, p. 89) the Deccan Traps (using Kilauea as a model) injected 6 x
1012 tons of sulfur into the atmosphere. This would make 1.8
x 1013 tons of H2SO4. The Deccan traps
are 8.2 x 106 km3. Thus, this represents 2.2 megatons
of acid/km3 for the Deccan traps. This is not far from the 2.5
megatons/km3 I used.
References
Coffin, Millard F, and Olav Eldholm "Scratching
the Surface: Estimating Dimensions of Large Igneous Provinces." Geology,
21:515-18.
Courtillot, Vincent, "A Volcanic Eruption,
Scientific American Oct. 1990, p. 85-92, p. 89
de Silva, Shanaka L. and Gregory A. Zielinski,
"Global Influence of the AD 1600 Eruption of Huaynaputina, Peru," Nature,
393(1998):455-457
Froede, Jr., Carl R., "Evidences of Catastrophic
Subaqueous Processes at Goat Mountain, in Big Bend National Park, Texas,
U.S.A." Creation Research Society Quarterly, 33(1996):2:115-135.
Gregg, Tracy K. P., and Jonathan H. Fink, "Quantification
of Submarine Lava-Flow Morphology," Geology 23(1995):73-76
Haymon, R. M. et al. "Volcanic Eruption
of the Mid-ocean Ridge Along the East Pacific rise Crest at 9o45-52'N:
Direct Submersible Observations of Seafloor Phenomena Associated with an
Eruption Event in April, 1991," Earth and Planetary Science Letters,
119(1993):85-101.
Hess Paul C., Origins of Igneous Rocks,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 180
Marzoli, Andrea et al, "Extensive
200-Million-Year-Old Continental Flood Basalts of the Central Atlantic Magmatic
Province," Science 284(2002):616-618.
Mohr, Paul and Bruno Zanettin, "The Ethiopian
Flood Basalt Province," in J. D. McDougall (ed.), Continental Flood
Basalts, (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988),pp 63-110.
Nevins, Stuart "The Mesa Basalt of the Northwestern
United States," Creation Research Society Quarterly, (March 1971),
pp 222-226.
Marc K. Reichow e al, 40AR/39Ar
Dates from the West Siberian Basin: Siberian Flood Basalt Province
Doubled," Science, 296(2002):1846-1849
Modified 6/8.02
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to DMD Publishing Home Page
(estimated from the data of Mohr and Zanettin,
1988, p. 63; Siberian Traps from Reichow et al, 2002, p. 1849; CAMP from Marzoli
et al, 1999, p. 618).