>It appears to me that grasses would be unable to provide the woody
>tissue which comprises the bulk of vitrain coal.
Woody material yes, bark not necessarily. Vitrain I believe comes from
cellulose. All terrestrial plants have cellulose but not all cellulose comes
from wood. Vitrain is a coal that is "more than 95 percent vitrinite"
(Encyclopedia Britannica 1982, 4, p. 791).
Now, it is true that some vitrinite or vitrain is coalified wood. But
vitrinite also occurs in the oil and this is where I deal with it.
Vitrinite is a product of the decay of organic matter. Oils sourced from
Cambrian or Ordovician shales have no vitrinite in them (a fact itself which
is contrary to a global flood hypothesis since there should have been
terrestrial plants in the pre-flood world). But post devonian oils all have
vitrinite in them.
So, while you may be correct that a given coal or a given area has coals
predominantley associated with bark or wood, it is not necessary that the
coal came from wood unless there is preserved wood in the coal.
Unfortunately most coals show no microscopic structure.
I have tried to contact a geochemist friend of mine (he is a world class
geochemist) to confirm what I said. I will let you know.
>> I thought that the entire globe was covered in water and that all the high
>> mountains were covered by the flood. So how do you have mountains sticking
>> up when the mats are dumping? How much variation was there in the sealevel
>> during the flood? Where did the extra water come from and go to? After all
>> ups and downs in water level require extra water.
>
>There you go again. Can we stick to something a little more solid? :-)
I thought it was relevant to your model for coal formation. If you don't
have the water coming and going, you can't satisfy both the Bible and the
need to keep the mats confined.
>
>> That is a log jam. the logs are not moving anywhere, but are staying put in
>> the Lake.
>
>During one of Steve Austin's slide shows, he showed us a picture of
>Spirit Lake with the log mat in the lower left portion of the lake (as
>viewed in the slide). He then showed us another slide taken later in
>the day, and pointed out that the log mat had moved to the upper part of
>the picture, in response to the wind. Also, photos from underwater show
>the logs to be loosely floating, not interlocked.
>
I repeat, the logs are still in the lake. In a global flood the logs would
be free to float. And if mountains stuck up in one place, the currents
would usually be diverted in another direction and the mats would obediently
go with the currents.
>> I don't agree that that is what the data tells us. It only tells you that
>> if you assume a global flood which has so many other problems that it is a
>> weak assumption.
>
>Forget the global flood. Explain the Pittsburg coal data from your
>swamp model, "which has so many other problems that it is a weak
>assumption."
>
>> Shallow seas are where the fastest currents move. Go look up Bernoulli's
law.
>
>Bernoulli, is he related to that Italian, Carburetor Venturi?
Bernoulli is someone you cannot take lightly if you have ever flown in an
airplane. It is his law which says that a constriction in the flow of a
fluid must flow faster than an unconstricted area. It is that principle
which gives rise to lift on an airplanes wing. Over a continent, the
shallow waters would flow more rapidly. Go look at a creek and you will
find that the waters move slowly in the deeper parts and rapidly (called
rapids) where the water is shallow. That is bernoulli's law in action. (and
it gives rise to the old saying "Still waters run deep"). So if you want to
keep your vegetation mats together and in one place, you have to have an
isolated basin in which the water can't flow, yet on the shallower
continents Bernoulli's prinicple says very clearly that the water would move
faster (taking the mats with them) than they would in the deeper ocean
basins. Thus the vegetable mats would be expected to spend more time (moving
slowing) in the ocean basins than they spend on the continents. So your
veggie mat theory should predict thicker and more plentiful coals on the
ocean basin floors. They aren't there. In fact I know of NO coal in the
deep ocean basins. Where were the vegetable mats?
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm