The Letter the CRSQ didn't want you to read

A note of explanation: This is a letter that I submitted for publication in the Creation Research Society Quarterly in response to an article Carl Froede published. Before submitting this, I had several professional geologists critique it and I had a few geology professors look at it. Because of this, I know that the technical issues in this are correct. But the Creation Research Society Quarterly decided to reject it. I would suggest that they don't want their readers to know of the massive pollutional problem created by the global flood. That is a shame.
After the references for the pollutional letter, I include my reply to Eugene Chaffin's rejection letter. The letter was rejected for some very interesting reasons--GRM
Volcanic Pollution in the Global Flood
Carl Froede has suggested the volcanic deposits found in the geologic column can be explained as having been emplaced subaqueously in the flood. Such a position creates a problem of oceanic and atmospheric pollution. Froede apparently accepts that at least up through the Eocene the entire geologic column is due to the flood. This is deduced from his acceptance of early Tertiary beds as Flood deposits. These include the Oligocene Clarno formation, and the Eocene Yellowstone Fossil forest beds at Specimen Ridge (Froede, 1996, p. 123-124) Such an acceptance of a late end of the Flood implies that all the volcanic material stratigraphically below the early Tertiary rocks be emplaced within the single year of the flood. This is because the volcanic rocks are sandwiched between various fossiliferous, flood deposited sediments. Given Froede's background, it is surprising an EPA employee such as he would overlook the massive pollutional problem such a scenario would entail.
Volcanic rocks give off prodigious quantities of poisonous gases and acids which would be harmful to Noah and those on the ark as well as those in the sea. Compressing the time frame for all the volcanism to occur would lead to an atmosphere and ocean which would be incompatible with life. Considering that Froede does not believe in rapid continental drift (Froede 1998, p. 46), the following calculation will minimize the amount of acid put into the ocean waters.
Courtillot (1990, p. 89) showed that 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. There are approximately 82 x 106 cubic kilometers of basalt in the world's pre-Oligocene flood basalts (Hess 1989, p. 180; Coffin and Eldholm 1993; Morton, 1998). This means these basalts emitted 1.64 x 1014 tons of H2SOand 3.6 x 1014 tons of CO2. This much H2SOwould give the oceans a pH of 3.7 which would have disastrous consequences for life forms living outside of the ark. According to the Nova Scotian Department of Environment (DOE), when waters reach 6.0 pH, the insects, crustaceans and some plankton disappear. When waters reach 5.0 pH, mosses and unwanted plankton invade the waters and some fish disappear. But when water goes below 5.0 pH, nearly all the fish die. So, a global flood in which just a small fraction of the volcanism on the continents occurred during a single year would result in an ocean devoid of life.
Courtillot (1990, p. 89) also mentions the CO2emissions from the Deccan Traps would be 30 x 1012 tons. This works out to 3.6 million tons of COper cubic kilometer. The implications of this data for the global flood are important and unaddressed. The CO2represents 5.8% of the entire atmosphere. How does this relate to the present atmosphere? Currently we are approaching 400 parts per million (ppm) COin the atmosphere, yet the young-earth creationist scenario would produce an atmosphere that had AS A MINIMUM a COlevel of 58615 parts per million. Scientists are worried about a 600 ppm COworld next century. Given that worry, the post flood world, as envisioned by Froede, would create such a hot climate that all life terrestrial would also be destroyed.
And given that other creationists (Austin et al, 1994) believe the entire ocean basins were created (via runaway subduction) during the Flood, inclusion of the emissions during runaway subduction would vastly exacerbate the problem. The above calculations should be considered a minimal value for the pollutional problems created by a global flood.
Because of these difficulties, it would be impossible for anything to survive the flood outside of the ark, and since some of the acid would escape to the atmosphere, the occupants of the ark would die from inhalation of toxic vapors. And if, in order to explain this data, Christians must appeal to the miraculous, then it is no longer within the realm of Creation Science, but falls into the realm of Creation Miracles.
References
Austin, Steven A, J. R. Baumgardner, D. R. Humphreys, A. A. Snelling, L. Vardiman and K. P. Wise. 1994. Catastrophic plate tectonics: a global flood model of earth history," in Robert E. Walsh, ed., Proceedings of The Third International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship. Pittsburgh. Pp. 609-621.
Coffin, Millard F, and Olav Eldholm 1993. Scratching the surface: estimating dimensions of large igneous provinces." Geology, 21:515-18.
Courtillot, Vincent. 1990. "A volcanic eruption," Scientific American 263:4:85-92
Froede, C. R., Jr. 1996. "Evidences of catastrophic subaqueous processes at Goat Mountain, in Big Bend National Park, Texas, U.S.A." Creation Research Society Quaterly, 33:115-126
Froede, C. R., Jr. 1998. The heat issue within catastrophic plate tectonics. Creation Research Society Quaterly, 35:46-47.
Hess Paul C. 1989. Origins of igneous rocks, Harvard University Press. New York.
Glenn R. Morton
16075 Longvista Dr.
Dallas, TX 75248
My reply to Eugene Chaffin's rejection letter. I will only publish my part of the reply as I do not feel comfortable quoting Chaffin's letter without his permission. I will paraphrase the portions where I quoted him in my reply. Those places will be italicized. If anyone wants to see the letter, I will show it to them in person if they come to Dallas.
                                             Glenn R. Morton
                                             16075 Longvista Dr.
                                             Dallas, Texas 75248
                                             Sept. 22, 1998
Dr. Eugene Chaffin
[address removed--grm]
Dear Gene,
I am afraid that your letter reminds me of our last exchange when you denied that there were bird footprints in the Green River formation even after I sent you a picture of the fossil.
I would make a couple of comments about your rejection. And I need to give you some information about the last article published under my name at the CRSQ.
First, your rejection of the letter is at least partly based upon my belief in a local flood, which was not advocated in my letter. You wrote: [that he was not favorably disposed towards local flood models] I find this to be a gratuitous statement since I made no advocacy in this letter. It is a bias you have against Christians with my views and should not have entered in the editorial decision on whether or not the global flood has a pollutional problem.
Secondly, if you require me to deal with buffering agents, numerically, why did you not exercise equal editorial discretion and control against Froede's article (or any other global flood article) and demand that he (they) quantitatively account for the acid and CO2? Did you demand such rigor from Baumgardner in his papers? Of course, young earth creationists have an easy out for such problems--you all can simply make God perform a miracle to fix any problem your model has. I think we should do better than that. We humans are not the Masters of God, telling Him what needs to be done to fix our puny theories. It seems that you have a double standard going here.
Third, you selectively check my references. You wrote:
[Chaffin checked Courtillot's (p. 85) size of the Deccan traps which 'exceeds 10,000 cubic kilometers' and then told me that he found it disturbing that my letter didn't mention that]
I got the size of the Deccan traps from
Coffin, Millard F, and Olav Eldholm 1993. Scratching the surface: estimating dimensions of large igneous provinces." Geology, 21:515-18.
Which was duly referenced in the letter. I find it disturbing that you didn't do your homework and only chose the values for the Deccan traps which make your case yet accuse me of selectivity (see below).
Fourth, you never mention the CO2 problem created by the flood. Does this mean that you think my numbers are correct?
Fifth, you use my biography on the web (which is NOT referenced in my letter) as some supposed evidence that I am being selective. Since the issues surrounding my biography are NOT involved in a letter submitted on the pollution caused by a global flood, I find it very strange that you would list this as your 4th reason for rejecting my paper. You wrote:
[He noted that my bio on my web page (which was not referenced in any way in the above letter) talks about doubts I had in the late 1980s and my withdrawal from publication for about 10 years. He told me that he and I were together in Pittsburg in 1988 where we taped some television programs and that I hadn't told him of any of my doubts. Then he correctly pointed out that I had an article published in the CRSQ in Sept. 1990 in the Minisymposium on Orogeny. He then asked if this was an example of me selectively presenting data which fit the model and neglecting those that didn't. (I am not sure how a bio fits or doesn't fit a pollutional model but that is what he said)]
A. Since this is irrelevant to the scientific merits of my paper, I find it interesting that you are using personal beliefs as a measure of whether a paper should be published. This is strange for an organization that claims to be scientific.
B. You have no idea of the doubts I was undergoing at the time we met in 1988. I was disgusted by the YEC ability to ignore problems the global flood presents to geologists. I didn't express them because I was knew that I would receive from you the very treatment I am now receiving. You have no sympathy for those who struggle with the data that exists and would prefer to avoid publication of anything that would rock the imaginary world you all have created for yourselves (geologically speaking).
C. You are correct that there was an article published about my ideas in the CRSQ in June 1990. But you must know that I actually didn't write the paper although it was my words. George Howe and I were having a long letter exchange about various topics, mostly geology. I sent him information on the Haymond formation which he incorporated into an article he wrote somewhere in the late 1980s. He asked me to write a paper on my views (which I still weakly clung to at that time). I told him I didn't want to do it. At that time I knew that my young-earth views were in serious trouble and I couldn't see a way out. He then suggested that he could write the article from our letters and he would pass it by me. It was an edited version of my letters. If I recall correctly, I suggested that George ought to have his name on it, but he told me to review it and if it represented my old views, then to pass it on to the editor. I did as George asked. But I didn't actively seek publication at all. Thus the article was my words (heavily edited by George) but I didn't really write the article. So your suggestion that I am being 'selective', maybe you should look to your editorial staff for not informing you of the facts of this case.
There was one other publication during that period. I was asked to review John Woodmorappe's article for the 1990 ICC. I made a small (two paragraph) critical statement but my heart was not in it any longer or the critiques would have been longer. I found Woody's article to be shoddy, ill-conceived and totally falsified by the observational evidence. But nothing I said would make a difference just as nothing I say here will make a difference with you.
Sincerely,
Glenn R. Morton

2 comments:

  1. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your work, time and expense! - CamW30

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your efforts, Glenn. Still being read today. Much appreciated.

    ReplyDelete