Robert sent in the links below and once again, a good one as far as catastrophism is concerned – go to https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/3095/sediments-sequester-carbon-fr… and https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/10/15/1913714116/tab-figures-data … and also one caught up in the co2 bubble (but don't worry as the core information is all we are interested in). Researchers have found evidence that fresh wood can move from its home in the Himalayan foothills to end up in what is called the Bengal Fan where a quirk of nature, in the Bay of Bengal, has become a depository for sediments washed out to sea by the great rivers feeding this corner of the ocean, swirling around as the currents are inhibited on three sides. The researchers claim they have found evidence that wood from far inland can settle deep on the ocean bottom, 'a discovery that appears to add to current models of Earth's carbon cycle.' We are told that monsoonal storms can cause masses of trees to float down river into the Bay of Bengal, only to be buried in the sediments on the floor of the ocean. Flooding from torrential tropical rains caused by cyclones, for example, as well as other catastrophic events (presumably tsunami waves or the like) are capable of raising large amounts of fresh wood into a watery grave. The PNAS study is said to show evidence that trees may actually travel thousands of miles from their home to settle in vast sediments exiting from river mouths. The sediment core samples were taken from the ocean floor off Bangla Desh – but note, back in the day Bangla Desh may not have been geographically where it is now. Do they assume modern climate in the region was much the same 19 million years ago ? This is of course a blip in geological time but Plate Tectonics would surely suppose a different configuration of some kind. Were monsoonal rains even a feature of the Bay of Bengal millions of years ago – indicating the research write up is based on a number of assumptions which may or may not be true. Robert points a finger at Velikvosky's 'Earth in Upheaval' as possibly the reason for the mass of vegetation that ended up in the Bengal Fan, which is one way to look at the findings. It certainly does not seem to contradict Velikovsky, on the face ot it. Wood from the sediment layer came mostly from inland sources we are told, and there are even pristine pieces of conifer (trees that now grow 2 miles above sea level in the Himalayas). That is not to say conifers may have been growing at a lower elevation at some point during the last 19 million years – as a result of plate movement (or for any other reason). We are then told the trees were likely uprooted shortly after the last Ice Age by a massive release of water from an ice dam (and you can tell an American has been involved in the research as he is clearly thinking of something like the Harlen Bretz catastrophic release of water across Oregon at the end of the last Ice Age). He can say this without any evidence of an ice dam or a huge glacial lake (formed by melting glaciers) in the Himalayas on the assumption the evidence may exist if anyone bothered to look for it. Trees from as far away as Nepal are said to have ended up in the Bay of Bengal as part and parcel of the Bengal Fan, the largest underwater sediment accumulation in the world.
Over at https://crev.info/2019/10/wood-buried-at-sea/ … we have the Creationist angle which greets the new findings with considerable scepticism as they would clearly envisage a link to our old friend Noah. Nevertheless, it has a nice description of the findings and the author appears to have read the full article. The author at the blog says the authors of the article have not provided conclusive evidence of how they interpret the sediments – and even the supplementary material is amazingly vague about the wood chips found. Are they pristine for example or are they petrified or mineralised. However, they do call it wood throughout the article even though they are predominantly referring to small pieces of wood. We must remember that even petrified wood looks and feels like wood and is evidently wood, even though it may date back to the dinosaur era. One would have thought that wood from a few million years ago was still wood – unless petrification took place before it was drowned (accounting for it sinking to the bottom).
We also learn that the core drilling rig went 2 miles down into the Bay of Bengal and this was followed by a core in the sediment of a half mile in depth. That is definitely a lot of sediments that were unable to be dragged out beyond the bay. I wonder how much plastic there is. They discovered the wood chips in core layers they dated as far back as 19 million years ago – suggesting most of it was much younger in date. We are further told by CREV that the paper is absent of details on how the layers were dated which is also relevant to the two earlier posts as well. There is no mention of the methodology of dating they used. Presumably the dates are arrived at by uniformitarian assumptions (a regular rate of laying down rather than one or several large events). CREV also queries how many monsoonal storms took place in Bangla Desh and was the assumption they made viable. Another problem they point out is that wood, especially tree trunks and large branches, float – and donot necessarily sink. I suppose that if wood is saturated it will sink but they do have a point in that rivers all over the world must bring lots of pieces of tree into the oceans – but what happens to them? In a catastrophic situation trees could well have been buried at sea – or churned into small pieces that did have a propensity to sink.
Note .. if the link above sent in by Robert does not work reduce the words on the link and go direct to the site and scroll down.
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