Re: Pitman's Miller Time

In message <A4VnmwSgC9gGFwxu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> writes
In message <1183041783.456997.320410@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Seanpit <seanpitnospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
On Jun 28, 6:12 am, "Lizzardwoman" <lizzardwomanRM...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

If you would just research chalk formations (in all their biogeochemical
complexity - focus on fluxes of specific elements, doubling times of
relevant organisms, etc. and not the cursory stuff you previously wrote in
reply) or the Green River Fm, you would have to discard YECism without
resort to radchem techniques which I guess you distrust per se because they
yield results counter to Bronze Age thinking.

I have looked into the formation of chalk formations. It is one of
the features that helped convince Walter Veith (Professor and chair of
the Department of Zoology at the University of Western Cape and former
ardent evolutionist) that the geologic record was a catastrophic
record. He noted that after catastrophic conditions or large
environmental disturbances, algie can grow very very rapidly creating
massive algal blooms. The formation of the chalk layers in the
geologic column follow a massive world-wide catastrophic event that
provided great quantities of neutrients to the warm waters of the
shallow oceans and seas. The resulting algal blooms could easily have
produced very thick chalk layers in very short order. No need for
millions of years which are only necessary given the blinders of
outmoded uniformitarian thinking.

How thick do you think that the chalk beds of southern and eastern England and the southern North Sea basin are?

As Dr. Pitman doesn't seem to be addressing this point ...

Figures for the total thickness of the Chalk in England include 500m in the Isle of Wight, 300m at Portsdown, 440m in north Norfolk and 415m on the Yorkshire coast (rounded from figures in Anderton et al, A Dynamic Stratigraphy of the British Isles). (Over in Ulster it's only 50m, but it approaches 900m in the English North Sea.)

Elsewhere I find quoted thicknesses of over 2500m for parts of the Netherlands North Sea, for a band across northern Denmark (and I think for the Munster Basin in Germany as well), but these figures include redeposited chalk from adjacent shallower areas.


Where do you think your hypothetical algal blooms got all that Calcium Carbonate from? (When we talk of the Chalk Sea we don't mean that the sea was composed of chalk, rather than water.)

So lets take 1000m as an estimate of the amount of thickness of Chalk to be explained.

Calcium Carbonate is about 0.1% by mass of sea water. Chalk is about 2.5 times as dense as water. (Less dense than much other Calcium Carbonate.) So to produce 1000m of chalk we need to extract the Calcium Carbonate from a column of water 2.5 million meters deep, that's 2500 kilometers (Noah's flood was a minnow by comparison), or produce the Chalk sufficiently slowly that the Calcium Carbonate in the photic zone (40m) can be replenished.

Looking at it from the other direction, extracting all the Calcium Carbonate of the photic zone produces 16mm of Chalk. Even if you were to grant -ignoring the question of where the replacement Calcium Carbonate comes from - one 100% efficient bloom every month, this would take 5,000 years to produce the Chalk. (Geological dating of the Chalk spans 35 million years, but the greater bulk was deposited during the Upper Chalk, which covers of the order of 10 million years.)

How to you explain the change in the bottom fauna over the stratigraphic column? (I'll assume that you'll explain away the change to the open water fauna as ecological zonation in the water column.)


--
Alias Ernest Major

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Pitmans Miller Time
    ... >England and the southern North Sea basin are? ... redeposited chalk from adjacent shallower areas. ... Calcium Carbonate is about 0.1% by mass of sea water. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Pitmans Miller Time
    ... England and the southern North Sea basin are? ... redeposited chalk from adjacent shallower areas. ... times as dense as water. ... (Less dense than much other Calcium Carbonate.) ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Pitmans Miller Time
    ... England and the southern North Sea basin are? ... redeposited chalk from adjacent shallower areas. ... times as dense as water. ... (Less dense than much other Calcium Carbonate.) ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Homebrew Digest #5492 (February 01, 2009)
    ... TODAY'S HOME BREW DIGEST BROUGHT TO YOU BY: ... How much increase in alkalinity as CaCO3 should 1ppm CaCO3 cause? ... A few weeks back I decided to write another brewing water calculation ... showing an imbalance when chalk was used. ...
    (rec.crafts.brewing)
  • Re: Pitmans Miller Time
    ... |>>I have looked into the formation of chalk formations. ... assume sufficient light levels the entire depth of the water column) ... | So to produce 1000m of chalk we need to extract the Calcium Carbonate ...
    (talk.origins)