Creationist Claims CD210 of Mark Issak
Keith Littleton
by Mark Issak at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html
"Mouth of Colorado river doesn't have enough
sediments for Grand Canyon."
The below post of mine provides an answer to this
creationist claim.
------ reposted stuff below this line ----------
Re: Colorado Delta Missing?
Author: Keith Littleton <litt...@vnet.net>
Date: 1998/05/11
Forum: talk.origins
Posted on: 1998/05/11
Message-ID: <6j865m$5q0$1...@ralph.vnet.net>
Approved: rob...@ediacara.org
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Organization: Vnet Internet Access
--------------------------------
In article <35577785...@news.blue.net>,
tea...@bbtel.SPAMLESS.com wrote:
>On 11 May 1998 14:12:56 -0400,
>>John <sem...@olywa.net> wrote:
>> ...
>> ... The only significant content of the speech
>>reported the next day in the 'Olympian' was the claim that
>>erosion of the Grand Canyon would have left a huge delta
>>at the mouth of the Colorado River. It's the kind of thing
>>to which a lot of people might react "Oh yeah, that's right."
>>Anyone have a calculation of just what dimensions
>>this delta would be expected to assume?
>
>I'm not sure what you mean. The one that is there is
>pretty huge already. If I remember my maps, it's not a delta
>exactly because of the currents there. It's a long depositional
>chain that extends into the ocean, sort of hangs a left, and
>extends down past Baja California. ...
This has been discussed before as a search on Deja News
will show. In this case, the creationists simply ignore
published geological research that shows a huge volume
sediment has filled the rift valley into which the Colorado
River has built its delta into. Below, is an article that I
posted months ago to talk.origins about this very same
question.
Dr. MacRae pointed out that a significant proportion of granites
and other rocks would have weathered into cations that would
been carried down the river, not as solid material, but in
solution and, thus, not contributed to any pile of deltaic
sediments at its mouth.
Yours,
Keith Littleton,
litt...@vnet.net
New Orleans, LA
====== reposted text below this line ========
Subject: Re: Creation Page - Colorado River Delta
From: litt...@comm.net (Keith Littleton)
Date: 1997/06/27
Message-ID: <33b3deb1...@ediacara.org>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
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In Message-ID: <5oeqf0$kl2$1...@kerberos.ediacara.org>,
mac...@UNSPAMgeo.ucalgary.ca (Andrew MacRae) wrote,
>In article <33AABC...@dtx.net>
>The Dman <dm...@dtx.net> writes:
>|Please visit my Creation Evidence Web site:
>|http://www.dtx.net/~dman
>
> I got far enough to notice that you cite the Paluxy "man
>tracks" as evidence of the coexistence of humans and
>dinosaurs, and that, for some perplexing reason, you think
>post-1981 discoveries have not been conclusively refuted.
>Please try looking at more recent literature. Here
>are two excellent papers on the supposed "man tracks":
........stuff snipped......
>====from http://www.dtx.net/~dman/lpage3.html ====
>The volume of sediment that is annually carried through the
>Grand Canyon via the Colorado river was measured. If the
>river was 10 million years old as evolutionists claim it is,
>then enough sediment would have flowed through the river
>to completely bury California in 6 miles of sand and silt. The
>fact is that there is nowhere near enough sediment at its
>mouth for it to be even close to that age.
>====
This argument is a variation of the creationist complaint /
claim that there exists insufficient sediment at its mouth to
even account for the Grand Canyon and that the Colorado
River Delta even lacks a delta. This claim is then used
to argue that the Biblical Flood carried this sediment all
away.
>1.) Instantaneous sediment transport rates do not equate
>to average accumulation rates. You need some documentation
>of where these numbers came from and how they were
>measured. They may not be representative of the current
>sediment load.
>
>2.) Does your "cover California in 6 miles of sand and silt"
>incorporate compaction of the sediment and dewatering of the
>clays, which can amount to reductions in volume of over 50%?
>
>3.) There *is* a huge pile of sediment at the mouth of the
>Colorado Delta at the northern end of the Gulf of California.
>It infills the northern part of the Gulf to several kilometres
>depth (5-8km, if I remember correctly), and extends as far
> as the Imperial Valley, and far offshore to the south.
>
>4.) Tectonic motion of Baja California, if restored to the
>state a few million years ago, implies that the ancestral
>Colorado River did empty into and pile up considerable
>amounts of sediment over SW California early in its
>history. This material has since been transported
>(tectonically) further north, and is not obviously
>associated with the present-day exit of the Colorado.
See:
Winker, C. D., and S. M. Kidwell (1986) Paleocurrent
evidence for lateral displacement of the Pliocene Colorado
River Delta by the San Andreas fault system, southeastern
California. geology. vol. 14, no. 9, pp. 788-791.
> In short, there is plenty of sediment there. Whether
>it is enough to account for the implied age, I am not
>sure, but I doubt that your calculation is accurate anyway,
>there is enough variation in sedimentation rate that it is
>probably acceptably close, and you certainly have not
>specified enough documentation to scientifically evaluate
>it precisely. I consider your claim dubious as currently
>presented.
Dr. MacRae is quite right.
The Colorado River Delta is not as big as the Mississippi
River Delta on which I live, but still it is a large delta.
The Colorado River Delta, which has an area of about
3,325 square miles. It is about 200 miles long with an
average width of 16 miles and a maximum width of about
70 miles. Furthermore because it fills a rift valley, it
consists of a delta plain underlain by a maximum of a
little over 3.5 miles of sediments deposited by the
Colorado River.
About the Colorado River Delta, Winker and
Kidwell (1986) state:
"The modern Colorado River enters the Salton Trough
thorough a gap between the Chocolate and Laguna
mountains on the North American plate (Fig. 1), and
its radial-bipolar delta plain fans out from that point.
The presence of the Colorado River alluvium--postdating
the Lower Pliocene Blouse Formation-- along the lower
Colorado River valley and in the Yuma Desert southwest
of the gap (Olmsted et al. 1973) suggests that the river
has occupied the gap since the Early Pliocene."
In addition, Sykes (1937) states:
"The Colorado Delta, as brought under consideration
in the following studies, is an area of approximately
3,325 square miles, of which the predominant surface
constituent is the detrital matter transported there by
the waters of the Colorado (Pl. I). It is situated
between 31o 3' and 33o 45' N. and 114o 25' and
116o 18' W., and, though somewhat irregular in outline,
it takes the general form of a widely extended letter T
with a broad short stem. The full spread of the two
arms of the figure is nearly 200 miles, and its height,
in a direction perpendicular to this major dimension,
approximately 70 miles. The "stem" constitutes the
receiving bay and contains, almost axially, the crest of
the flattened deltaic semi-cone and the present termination
of the true channel of the Colorado. The right-hand, or
northwesterly, arm of the T extends, with generally
downward grades, to a level of about minus 275 feet in
the bottom of the Salton depression, rising thence again
approximately to sea level at the extremity of the arm
(here known as the Coachella Valley) and the limit of
the alluvial area. The left hand, or southeasterly, arm
is very irregular in outline and tripartite in form,
extending down both shores of the Gulf of California
and embracing an other basin (the Macuata, or Laguna
Salada, Basin) which also drops to slightly below sea
level at its deepest point. Although physiographically
a true portion of the deltaic area, this boson, or
interior basin, is partially separated from it by the long
"peninsula" formed by the Cocopa Mountains, by the
volcanic outlier of the Cerro Prieto, and by their common
encircling fringe of bajadas, or piedmont slopes."
Finally, Jenning and Thompson (1986) state:
"The Salton Trough is filled to a maximum depth of
6 km (Biehler et al. 1964) with interbedded shales,
siltstones, and sandstones of the Colorado River delta.
Detailed mineralogical analyses (Muffler and Doe 1968)
indicate that the sediments were derived almost
exclusively from the Mesozoic rocks of the upper
Colorado River drainage. Deltaic sediments exposed
in the Imperial Valley range in age from Late Miocene
to Recent and exhibit a similar mineralogical and
chemical composition throughout."
It is quite clear from the above text, that, the Colorado
River does has a delta that contains a considerable
of sediment in it. In fact, it is a substantial delta
containing over 10,000 cubic miles of Colorado River
sediment deposited over the last 2 to 3 million years
within the Salton Trough.
In addition, sediments have accumulated elsewhere
other than in the Colorado River Delta and adjacent
gulf bottom of the Gulf of California. A significant
amount of Colorado River sediment also occurs downstream
of the Grand Canyon as floodplain sediments in basins
between the Colorado River Delta and Canyon. Finally, a
large thickness of the strata exposed in the Grand Canyon
and elsewhere in the Colorado River basin consists of
limestone and dolomite. Such rock would eventually end
up in solution and be carried into the Gulf of California and
distributed among the oceans of the world.
As Dr. MacRae argues, there is indeed a substantial among
of sediments documented to underlie the Colorado River
Delta proper and fill the rift valley that it occupies. It is
also documented that the sediments which were deposited
by the Colorado River before 2 to 3 million years ago have
been shifted northwestward along the San Andreas and
related faults. Finally, a large part of the sediment was
moved as dissolved solids which end up dispersed
throughout the oceans of the worlds. Between these areas
and terrace and floodplain deposits along the Colorado
River. The sediment that is has transported downstream
should be very well accounted for.
References Cited:
Jenning, S., and G. R. Thompson (1986) Diagensis of
Plio-Pleistocene sediments of the Colorado River Delta,
southern California. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology.
vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 89-98.
Winker, C. D. (1987) Neogene stratigraphy of the Fish
Creek-Vallecito section, Southern California; implications
for early history of the northern Gulf of California and
Colorado Delta. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation.
University of Arizona. Tucson, AZ, United States. 622 pp.
Winker, C. D., and S. M. Kidwell (1986) Paleocurrent
evidence for lateral displacement of the Pliocene Colorado
River Delta by the San Andreas fault system, southeastern
California. geology. vol. 14, no. 9, pp. 788-791.
Here are some additional references.
Jenning, S., and G. R. Thompson (1986) Diagensis of
Plio-Pleistocene sediments of the Colorado River Delta,
southern California. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology.
vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 89-98.
Muffler, L. P., and B. R. Doe (1968) Composition and
mean age of detritus of the Colorado river delta in the
Salton Trough, southeastern California. Journal of
Sedimentary Petrology. vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 384-399.
Richardson, S. M. (1984) Stratigraphy and depositional
environments of a marine-nonmarine Plio-Pleistocene
sequence, western Salton Trough, California. Unpublished
Master's thesis. San Diego State University. San Diego,
CA, United States. 112 pp.
Sykes, G. (1937) The Colorado River Delta. American
Geographical Society Special Publication, no. 19,
American Geographical Society, New York, New York.
Thompson, R. W. (1975) Tidal-flat sediments of the
Colorado River delta, northwestern Gulf of California.
In R. N. Ginsburg (ed.), pp. 57-65, Tidal deposits;
a casebook of recent examples and fossil counterparts.
Springer-Verlag. New York, New York.
Winker, C. D., and S. M. Kidwell (1986) Paleocurrent
evidence for lateral displacement of the Pliocene Colorado
River Delta by the San Andreas fault system, southeastern
California. geology. vol. 14, no. 9, pp. 788-791.
The abstract for Muffler and Doe (1968), in part, states:
"The northwest landward extension of the Gulf of
California structural depression is filled with fine-
grained sandstones and siltstones of the Colorado
River delta. All are late Cenozoic and average
20,000 feet thick. Provenance is primarily from
Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of the upper Colorado
drainage basin. Wide ranges in both major and minor
elements can be correlated with grain size and clay
content of the samples."
>Please do not take this personally. I am reviewing
>the content of the site, not trying to critique your
>personal beliefs.
Same here.
Yours,
Keith littleton
litt...@comm.net
New Orleans, LA
Hall's Laws of Politics:
(1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
(2) Citizens want honest politicians until they
want something fixed.
(3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e.,
liberals defend military spending, and
conservatives social spending in
their own districts)
========= end of reposted text ================
Also, a person can also look at the July/August 1998
issue of National Center for Science Education Reports
at an article by Wilfred A. Elders, which refutes a
lot of the creationist nonsense about the Grand Canyon.
The article is titled "Bibliolatry in the Grand Canyon"
and is found pages 8-15.
The full reference is:
Elders, W. A. (1998) Bibliolatry in the Grand Canyon.
Reports of the National Center for Science Education.
vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 8-15.
http://www.ncseweb.org/newsletter.asp?curiss=8
http://www.natcenscied.org/newsletter.asp?curiss=8
Yours,
Keith
New Orleans, LA
Matt Silberstein
<kaolini...@katie.vnet.net>:
[snip]
>Hall's Laws of Politics:
> (1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
> (2) Citizens want honest politicians until they
> want something fixed.
> (3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e.,
> liberals defend military spending, and
> conservatives social spending in
> their own districts)
FWIIW the liberals of the San Francisco area worked very hard to
keep military ships, and the subsequent spending, out of the Bay
Area. And they have tried to shut down the nuclear research
associated with UC Berkeley though that brings in money as well.
[snip]
--
Matt Silberstein TBC HRL OMM
We are not here to judge other people,
we are just here to be better than they are.