The bogus seawater argument of the creationists
This is a standard argument from creationists. It shows up in various ways,
but the main theme is that someone figures out the rate at which an element
is being deposited in the ocean by the rivers, divides that in to the amount
of that element in the ocean, and comes up with an age for the oceans.
This is a terrible way to estimate the age of the oceans.
It is terrible for the same reason that you can't figure that you're going
to get rich, based on your income alone. There's an outgo as well. Same
for the oceans -- chemical, biological, and physical processes remove elements
from the ocean (largely by forming sediment).
Below is a posting of mine from 1996 when this arose yet again on the
net. I present two particular arguments in this one. First, that if you
apply the method to several of the elements, rather than a specially chosen
one, you find 'ages' of the ocean anywhere from 53 years to 83 million
years. Second, the materials in the river flow aren't the same as the materials
in the ocean, therefore any model which assumes that they are (as does
the above creationist argument) is horribly wrong.
Robert Grumbine bobg@radix.net
From rmg3@access4.digex.net Sun Dec 15 10:03:19 EST 1996
Article: 296144 of talk.origins
Path: news2.digex.net!digex.net!not-for-mail
From: rmg3@access4.digex.net (Robert Grumbine)
Subject: Re: Creationism VS Evolution
Followup-To: talk.origins
Date: 15 Dec 1996 09:49:50 -0500
Organization: Under construction
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Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <59136e$l17@access4.digex.net>
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Newsgroups trimmed, followup set to talk.origins, and a copy sent to
McClendon. Resume posting at your own risk.
In article <32AF877B.5EEF@ix.netcom.com>,
Judson McClendon wrote:
[items deleted for web page purposes, RG 1997]
>What makes you think the sea was as salty then? Calculations based on
>the rate at which salt is deposited in the oceans yeild an age of the
>earth not more than about 10,000 years.
Calculations by whom? I've seen one such calculation cited as being
from Henry Morris, in _Scientific Creationism_, 1974. In this, only
one element was used for the residence time calculation, nickel. I
thought it was a bit odd to use nickel, rather than, say, sodium, for
the computation considering that nickel is quite rare in the ocean and
sodium is a major part of the salt. So I looked in to _Tracers in the
Sea_, by W. H. Broecker and T.-H. Peng, Eldigio Press, 1982 (pp. 26-27)
for the residence times of other elements. A partial listing from
the periodic table is:
Element Years Residence time
Lithium: 570,000
Boron: 9,600,000
Fluorine: 500,000
Sodium 83,000,000
Magnesium: 13,000,000
Aluminum: 620
Silicon: 20,000
Phosphorous: 69,000
Potassium: 13,000,000
Calcium 1,100,000
Titanium 3,700
Vanadium 45,000
Chromium 82,000
Manganese 1,300
Iron 53
Cobalt 340
Nickel 8,200
Morris managed to select about the only element there is for which
the residence time was less than 10,000 years but more than 6,000.
From even this partial listing, we have a range of 53 years to
83 million years. This is obviously a _terrible_ way to estimate
the age of the earth; and it is for this reason that others have referred
McClendon to geochemistry texts.
There is an even simpler grounds for rejecting any attempt at a
residence time argument for the age of the oceans. That is, the
stuff from the rivers isn't in the same proportion the same as what is
in the ocean. The ocean contains table salt (Sodium Chloride), the rivers
supply, primarily, chalk (Calcium Carbonate). This has been known for
over a century. One relatively old source for this (this is no new fact!)
is Chamberlin, T. C., An attempt to frame a working hypothesis of the cause
of glacial periods on an atmospheric bais, J. Geology, 7, 545-584, 1899.
[items deleted for web page purposes, RG 1997]
--
Robert Grumbine rmg3@access.digex.net
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences
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