Dear @Bill_II:
Ask your son, unless you are embarrassed to.
You excel at double-talk. Of course moist air will mix with dry air. So will hydrogen. Dry air is still more dense than the same volume of moist air at the same temperature.
Maybe this will get through to you:
Neither do you know it. Not all rain starts as snow. Ask your son.
I did. Did you forget?
And again that is not a factor that is included in the models used to predict rain.
Did I say all rain? Many people do not know that some types of rain starts as snow. Do you know the difference between warm rain and cold rain? Do you know what is needed to produce rain before you get to water vapor and the condensation process?
There are several different processes that produce rain and all are much more complicated than gbob’s simple idea.
Sure, now you sidestep the obvious inference.
I just meant it as an interesting factoid. Not trying to advance an argument.
Conditions at the bottom of the Mediterranean
One of the reasons I go down so many different trails is that objections to geologic theories can come from so many different directions, meteorology, paleontological, physics, basin modeling, sedimentology, geochemistry, economics, drilling, production etc. To be a successful oil finder means one has to have a working knowledge of all these areas because when you sell an oil deal, you never know what kind of question you will be asked about your prospect. Forty seven years of finding oil brought me a lot of contact with these and other issues.
This post will be a bit more difficult for most as it does get into how the atmospheric temperature works. I am sorry about that but it must be covered.
Thus, for the past two weeks, I have been investigating an atmospheric model for the Mediterranean. One will wonder of my qualifications for this, but my first aricle in the Creation Research Society Quarterly was "Can the Canopy Hold Water? and I calculated the surface temperature of the earth under Henry Morris’s water vapor canopy. Such a canopy would make earth hot as Venus. Needless to say, the creationist world didn’t like that paper. Thus I have had experience writing and defending my work in this area. That paper was eventually accepted by YEC physicists as being correct, and the vapor canopy fell out of favor with YEC leaders by the early 1990s
The pressure would be 1.4 atmospheres. I have checked that there is no danger of caisson’s disease (decompression syndrome) because no one could climb up fast enough to cause it. Sealab occupants lived at 6 atmospheres for extended periods of time, although they did need a special atmosphere.
I mentioned this model in a previous post and mentioned that I had been thrown for a loop on the cool temperatures determined from the halite inclusion data (mentioned in a previous post). It showed that the salt deposits at the base of the Med were deposited at an average temperature of 18-20 deg C. This places strong limits on an atmospheric temperature profile.
Plant pollen temperature calculations also agree with these temperatures.
"For the post-evaporitic interval CAM reconstructions are available for Maccarone (Fauquette et al., 2006: ca 5.5 Ma to 5.3 Ma), where MAT is evaluated between 16 and 20°C for most spectra, but up to 23-24.5°C for a few others, with most likely values oscillating between 17 and 20°C (only one spectrum shows a lower MLV around 15°C). MAP is less stable along the succession. The first part of the sequence is characterized by large intervals, from around 400 to 1300 mm - MLV 1100 mm -, and smaller intervals from 1100 to 1300 mm, whereas the second part of the Messinian is characterised by more precise ranges from 700 to 1300 mm with MLV around 800 to 1200 mm. Bertini A.; Martinetto E… Messinian to Zanclean vegetation and climate of Northern and Central Italy / - In: BOLLETTINO DELLA SOCIETÀ PALEONTOLOGICA ITALIANA. - ISSN 0375-7633. - 47 (2)(2008), pp. 105-121., p.117
I have been unable to replicate 18-20 deg C for the average temperature at the bottom of the Mediterranean, we know from two facts that it wasn’t too hot. First there are the animals who lived down in that pit. The problem comes from the adiabatic lapse rate. Every kilometer one drops into a basin, the hotter the air becomes from the starting point. To generate a model matching an 18-20 deg C average temperature in a 3 km deep basin requires a starting point at sea level of freezing. The only solution I can think of to match these two data points is to have a semi-permanent temperature inversion, but I don’t know how realistic that might be.
From Britannica: If the land is rolling or hilly, the cold air formed on the higher land surfaces tends to drain into the hollows, producing a larger and thicker inversion above low ground and little or none above higher elevations. Temperature inversion | Definition & Facts | Britannica
In this cold time on earth (see below), when Antarctic glaciations has recently started, could it be that cold air collected in the Mediterranean? I don’t know and the idea is no longer verifiable.
My inability to match the two temperature calculations above, does not mean life didn’t live in that basin. We know from paleontology that elephants, Myotragus, hippos, giraffies etc lived numerously in that basin. This failure to match the temperature target does not invalidate my thesis of this being Noah’s flood.
This problem also required a closer look at the variation of lapse rate with pressure. I found an interesting chart on that issue. Most people use a constant lapse rate for quick approximations but the lapse rate is not constant with pressure.
The model I built calculates the lapse rate and the temperature for each meter. These temperatures are probably closer to the maximum daily temperature. I would think they would somewhat mirror the range seen in the Okovango delta in Africa, which is in the midst of a delta.
Temperature (°C)
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19/32 | 19/31 | 18/31 | 14/31 | 9/28 | 6/25 | 6/25 | 9/28 | 13/33 | 18/35 | 19/34 | 19/32 |
This range of 35 deg celsius (95 F) is in the range of what I calculated. The Okovango delta, which is a great analogue to what the dried out Mediterranean was like, has experienced 44 deg C (111 F). While a miserable day, with water and shade animals will survive this. I survived this kind of temperature in Oklahoma when I was growing up and my parents didn’t have air conditioning at the time.
"Botswana sets record high temperature. The temperature in Maun, a gateway to the world heritage site Okavango Delta in northwestern Botswana, reached 44 degrees Celsius, above the previous record of 43.3 degrees Celsius set in 1944 in the capital city of Gaborone, Botswana Press Agency (BOPA) reported Monday. Jan 11, 2016 Botswana sets record high temperature | News Ghana
Below are the result from my model, starting with the lapse rate.
The lapse rates above are colored for various relative humidity values. The label at the top right is for the blue bottom curve.
Using these lapse rates and starting at 300 K (27 C) we find that just descending into the basin adds 12-27 deg to the temperature at -3 km.The first picture I start with the sea level temperature as 300 K and the second picture starts at 285 K. As can be seen it is really hard to get the temperature at the bottom of this canyon to match the halite fluid inclusion temperatures. It is this that I base my rejection of those temperatures as being too cold. Absolutely dry air makes it hotter. The more moisture there is, the cooler the bottom temperature will be.
Were sealevel temperature reach 310 K( 98 F), only the higher relative humidity temperature values would be tolerable for long. The one argument I can give against such high temperatures, is that if that happened each year, many of the animals we find living in the Messinian in the Mediterranean basin would not have survived.
As I pointed out earlier, the upper Miocene was a time of great cold on earth.
Part of this cold was due to a fall in CO2 from 1200 parts per million in the Eocene to about 250 ppm in the upper Miocene. See below red dots.
The one thing I am unsure of in the model is what should be the starting point for the temperature at sea level and how does it vary throughout a Miocene year?
I calculated dewpoints, which are the temperatures at which water will condense, regardless of how slowly it rises–that is simply not part of the equation. I used the approximation at Dew point - Wikipedia. It is accurate to within a degree as long as the relative humidity is above 50%.
Given the claim made that slowly rising air won’t condense, I would like to point out two examples. Air inside a greenhouse has an upward velocity of zero!. All it takes for the moisture to condense on the glass is for the temperature of the inner glass pane to drop to the dew point inside the greenhouse. Secondly, one often sees fog in a valley in the fall. The rate of upward movement is again. Again, all it takes for that humidity to condense is for the temperature to drop to the dew point. It matters not what the speed of uplift is or isn’t, dew point temperature controls when the moisture will condense to liquid.
Below is a list of dewpoints for air starting at -3km for various relative humidities.
starting at 300 K at seal level.
RH]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] 100 ]]]]] 90 ]]]]] 80 ]]]]]70 ]]] 60 ]]]][ 50
elevation of dewpoint -2999 -2522 -2177 -1564 -1386 -1238
temperature at -3 km ]]] 312.]] 314. ]] 315.]] 317]] . 319.]] 320.
The brackets are to achieve formatting. Can’t find a character that is less intrusive
All parcels of air which have 50% relative humidity and above will reach dew point prior to their being pushed out of the basin. The influx of water will uplift all parcels of air and they will dump much of their water as they rise and leave the basin. Even considering tthe +/-1 degree uncertainty in dew point calculation due to the approximation, each parcel of air still will begin to condense its load of water before they leave the basin. The range of uncertainty for each relative humidity level above lies below sea level. This would be a monstrous and monstrously long rain storm and the basin filled for a year with 4-7 m per day. Once a parcel of air starts raining, it will continue to rain from it until it leaves the basin. This is because the parcel of air will be saturated the rest of the trip up and out of the basin.
Further, I expect that the rim of the Mediterranean experienced rainfall as well. The basin contained 0.16% of the world’s atmosphere. This much air being pushed out of the basin would spread out in what would best be described as air flows moving in all directions away from the Mediterranean. Any movement of the air up hills would cause further rain. This would be an unprecedented event in earth history.
Now, some will likely criticize this for not being a 40 day, 40 night storm, since I like these stories verifiable. One might be correct in that criticism given my other assumptions, unless, 40 days and 40 nights is a euphemism for a long time. Otherwise, I will plead guilty to a violation of my desire to have things in Scripture to be verifiable. One thing I have learned over the years, new information will eventually come up to clarify things I don’t currently understand.
Why this is important
The Bible is a book that claims a particular God raised a man from the dead–actually raised several people from the dead. As theistic evolutionists, atheists and others demand of YECs extraordinary evidence for YEC theories, the same can be said for the claims of a man raised from the dead. Today in the pastor’s sermon he mentioned his son asking the question, “How do we know the Bible is true?” Sadly I think the preacher gave a tautological answer to that question–Because it is God’s word. Again, such a claim should require extraordinary evidence to back it up
Let’s start with Jesus’ resurrection. Atheists say that Christianity is just another agricultural motif of a god dying in the Fall and rising in the Spring. Dionysus, Persephone, and Osiris are among them.10 Resurrected Religious Figures - Listverse. These people think the resurrection is not historically true, but true philosophically because the cycle of the year symbolizes death and rebirth. They use the same line of logic as liberal christians do with Genesis 1, the Fall and the Flood etc. (liberal is defined in post 3 here in response to Pevaquark). The question I have is, 'Is it ok to use that logic on early Genesis but not on the resurrection?" Seems to me that once we go down the ‘symbolical’/‘philosophical’ truth pathway, and excluding real history, then there really can be no objection to saying that Christianity is just another mystery cult from the first century with a symbolical, nonhistorical resurrection.
One can go backward through the Bible on any of the miracles, and make them just as symbolic as Genesis 1, or as symbolic as atheists claim the resurrection was. There is no end to our ability to extract philosophical truth from some tale, but there is limited ability to extract historical truth from that same tale.
As I said, the resurrection is a extraordinary claim which should require extraordinary evidence. I do feel that the behavior of the early disciples post resurrection is evidence that they believed in it, but that isn’t a certain criteria. Cult leaders often act like they believe what they know to be false.
What kind of evidence would suffice? The resurrection is claimed to be an act of God… But how do we know this God has the power to do it. I think we would all agree that Zeus didn’t have this power, even if it is claimed for him by some myth or another. Is Jehovah just another made up God whose followers are deluded people who really should believe something else? As I said, this claim requires extraordinary evidence. Mere mental assent to the concept that Jesus actually arose constitutes no evidence.
The only thing I can think of that really suffices is for this God to inspire the writer to tell us things that are true; things a human writer couldn’t have known. Almost as good as this is finding a way to allow Scripture to be read as a real history. The former is more direct; the latter at least gives us confidence that the stories in Scripture could be true.
No one tries to take real historical event, deny its reality and then turn it into a nonhistorical philosophical truth. No one denies that the slaughter at the Goliad during the Texas revolution was a real event. We might argue about the details but that it happened basically as reported is never questioned. Santa Ana slaughtered a bunch of Texans who had surrendered. Santa Ana had them shot in cold blood. No one says “It doesn’t have to be a true event because it was never intended to teach us real history. It was meant to teach us philosophical truth, not history”. A historian who said this would be laughed at. But somehow, we Christians come to early Genesis, make it all nonhistorical, containing only philosophical truth, and thus, no one can actually see a God who actually did some remarkable things. If God did remarkable things in early Genesis, then it supports the concept that God could actually raise a man from the dead.
Genesis is important as a support for this being the real God. The description of Eden , the flood pointing and the curses (effects of a bigger brain) to a time long time ago, is something that couldnt have been known by the Hebrew writer and thus, becomes evidence of this God’s validity. Without something like this, all we have is just another mystery cult.
This is why having a way to read Genesis 1 as historical, having Eden in a place that matches the hydrology and the four rivers actually having been together at one time, and why it is important to have an actual historical flood.
People often charge me with having no faith because I need/require historical verification. I look at it differently. I think I had faith enough to believe that God really did the things described in early Genesis. Believing that made me search for evidence of those events. I spent large quantities of time in my life pursuing a real flood that would match Noah’s flood, a real Eden that matches the description found in the bible and a way to read Genesis 1 as a real set of events. Yes, I doubted. Yes, I almost became an atheist, but I didn’t. I believed what God inspired in Scripture, and found out that at the very least, those stories CAN be true.
I for one have never demanded extraordinary evidence for YEC. Just data that is accurate and fairly reported.
Except resurrection leaves no trace that is available to people in the future. Just the record of the eye witnesses. Which you can take or leave as you desire.
I propose prophecy fulfills this requirement but you seem to have no interest in looking at this. And the things you propose as “true” wouldn’t be known for 3000 years so I question why God would wait so long to revel His truth.
You have four rivers that flow into Eden and Genesis has four rivers that flow from Eden. If you don’t mind changing that detail why don’t you just change it to 3 rivers and it would match the existing rivers the author of Genesis was familiar with.
This post didn’t say “Bill demanded.”
Why would I do that? If I had, I wouldn’t have found what I found. Secondly, I abhor the approach Christians take that if we don’t like what Scripture says we just make it say something else. Such an approach is intellectually lazy.
I have looked into prophecy, Many of them are turned into postecies by our critics and we have no data with which to pin down exactly when the prophecy was written. thus, it can only work IF and ONLY IF, there is another point of certitude.
I am pretty much through with my presentation of data on the Mediterranean flood. I can’t think of anything more to cover. I am going to put an index here with Genesis Chapter references. I think only one or two of the links is not to Biologos. Thus, this can guide anyone (if any) who has interest in seeing how this fits together with scripture in a systematic way. Like I said, I think I have covered all the issues I can.
Genesis 1 God’s image Soul Days of Proclamation Quantum Soul
Genesis 2 Strange hydrology of Eden , Creation of Man, Eden and the Flood , Adam, Genetics , Brain size, Brain size 2, religion, Atmospheric model of Desiccated Mediterranean
Genesis 3 Curse1
Genesis 4 Technology of Eden, Cain and AbelTech pt 1, Tents & Music Tech pt 2, Tubalcain Tech pt 3
Genesis 5
Genesis 6-9 Flood Rainbow, Rivers, Eden and the Flood
Genesis 10
Genesis 11 Babel
Genesis 12
Genesis 13 Pillar of Salt
Genesis 41 Joseph’s Palace
Numbers Bad numbers
Job 41 Leviathan
Does faith exclude observational evidence1 , Does faith exclude observational evidence 2
Im going to take a couple of days break. Im feeling pretty bad from the chemo I had last Thursday.
How long has ANE scholarship been a thing?
ANE scholarship has enhanced our understand. It didn’t provide a totally new way of understanding.
Which is rich considering that is what you do.
Prior to the discovery of the Rosetta stone, do you really think anyone was reading Genesis 1 in any other way than as a sequence?
Yes. Many of the early Church Fathers did not take Genesis as literal history. I am sure they pre-date the Rosetta stone.
That does not answer what I asked.
Then define what it is you mean. A sequence of what? They didn’t consider it a sequence of historical events.
A sequence of numbers, 1 through 6.
It is 1 to 7 if you want to get technical and the numbers are symbolic not historical.
Where do you find 7 in Genesis 1?
It is marked as Genesis 2:2 but you are aware that the chapter and verse divisions are not inspired and are often in the wrong place. The story is Stephen Langton did some of his work while riding horseback and his pen slipped. Don’t know if this is true or not.
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
This sure reads like it should have been included in Genesis 1.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.