Hurricane Katrina destroyed Old Age Thinking in a matter of minutes

According to standard thinking, "splays" are accumulations of sediments produced by infrequent, random events over long periods of time. But Katrina proves that they can be formed in a matter of minutes! More supporting evidence for the Global Flood of Noah's day... Virtually-instantaneous Katrina deposits mimic the expected sequence of different environments over long periods of time.

Selections from Hurricane Katrina Splay Deposits: Hydrodynamic Constraints on Hyperconcentrated Sedimentation and Implications for the Rock Record, by W.R. Barnhart.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 42, Number 2, Fall 2011)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)

Hurricane Katrina made landfall over Florida, regained strength in the Gulf of Mexico, and curved northeast to strike the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts. It crossed New Orleans and the adjacent St. Bernard Parish at about 6:10 am, CDT on 29 August 2005, as a Category 3/4 hurricane, with sustained winds of over 205 kph (125 mph) (Knabb and Rhone, 2005). At 8:14 AM CDT, the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for New Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, citing a levee breach on the Industrial Canal (Place of Dead Roads, 2005). This breach appears to have been caused by overtopping of the levee wall by a storm wave up to 7 m (23 ft) high, moving up the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (Figure 1). The wave  pparently struck the levee wall broadside (Seed, 2005). The levee failed, and its breach was quickly enlarged. Within 46 minutes, by approximately 9:00 AM CDT, the Lower Ninth Ward was reported to be inundated by 1.8–2.4 m (6–8 ft) of water (McQuaid, 2005a).

The levee breach eventually widened to 61 m (200 ft), but the initial flow through the narrower outlet can be estimated from a house that was carried some distance.

At that point, a powerful current, which flowed into the neighborhood and began widening the breach, scoured the immediate area near the breach, and deposited sediment as the flow dispersed or was slowed by obstacles. During that time, more energy was added to the system by storm waves surging up the canal. Each one would further erode the scour pit, adding additional, corresponding pulses of sediment to the outflow. Flow was powered by a fall height of up to 4 m (13 ft), with a functional head pressure equal to the total mass of the top 2 m (6.6 ft) of water in Lake Pontchartrain. That was why the initial flow was sufficient to dislodge and move a house.

Splay Sedimentation at the Breach

Flow through the breach resulted in the development of a splay deposit, with characteristics that indicate the mechanics of the water flow. Figure 5 and its accompanying diagrammatic version, Figure 6, show one of the thickest and most complete cross sections through the splay.

Figure 5 (left). Vertical cross section through nearly the complete deposit, created within minutes. Figure 6 (right). Redrawing of Figure 5 showing the areas where primary composition is pink sand (P), white sand (W), andclay (C) in the cross section. From Nelson and Leclair (2006).

Katrina Splay Deposits Versus Conventional Thinking

Traditionally, splays are seen as relatively benign accumulations of sediments produced by infrequent, random sedimentary events. Nichols (1999) spent a full chapter describing crevasse splays on various types of deltas, and the expected sequence of strata.

But Walker (2007) showed how facies interpretations could be misleading, when he noted how the virtually-instantaneous Katrina deposits mimic the expected sequence “of different environments over long periods of time.

Mudstones and shales were once thought to represent quiescent sedimentation. Schieber et al. (2007) have demonstrated otherwise. Their work is supported by the Katrina splay deposits: even at high velocity, clay ovoids and floccules will form by cohesion and be deposited as distinct cm-scale laminae in regular sets of flat beds.

Conclusion

Despite features commonly attributed to low, slow flow, the splay deposits were clearly formed by sedimentation in a continuous unidirectional current, overlaid by storm surge waves. Published accounts provide a maximum time of 46 minutes for sedimentation, and a more likely minimum of 2–3 minutes is established, based on the wavelength of the storm surges.

The splay deposits also demonstrated that flat beds can be succeeded by cross beds and then revert to flat beds within a continuous, single, unidirectional current, caused by depth variations under constant flow. They also show that a sequence of wave-deposited bedforms, which could easily be interpreted in the rock record as long periods of time, can be the product of continuously depositing waves, in sequence.

This is another argument for a different approach to the rock record: abandoning the facies mode, system and working out the mechanics of deposition instead. The physics of sediment transport and deposition in moving water are well known and provide hard guidelines for the required physical conditions associated with particular bedforms.

References (selected)

Knabb, R.D., and J.R. Rhome. 2005. Tropical cyclone report: Hurricane Katrina. National Hurricane Center. 20 December 2005 (cited in Timeline, 2006).

McQuaid, J. 2005a. Anatomy of a disaster. Newhouse News Service. 8 September 2005 (cited in Timeline, 2006).

Nelson, S.A., and S.F. Leclair, 2006. Katrina’s unique splay deposits in a New Orleans neighborhood. Geological Society of America Today 16(9):4–10.

Nichols, G. 1999. Sedimentology and Stratigraphy. Blackwell Publishing, Boston, MA.

Place of Dead Roads, The. 2005. NOAA/NWS knew of levee breach morning of
Monday 29th. http://theplaceofdeadroads.blogspot.com/2005/09/Noaanww-knewof-levee-breach-morning.html.

Schieber, J., J. Southard, and K. Thaisen. 2007. Accretion of mudstone beds from migrating floccule ripples. Science 318:1760–1763.

Walker, T. 2007. Katrina’s splay deposits: a small example of the power of flowing water. Journal of Creation 21(3):8–11.

When you tell one of God's stories, don't let anyone change it!

The local village elder was a recent convert from Islam and was eager to learn more of the stories himself. A hush fell over the indigenous home because when a village elder speaks everybody listens. The man began to repeat a portion of the story he heard from the boy. But the boy grew uncomfortable. We didn’t know the language but we could tell there was something wrong. The boy’s youthful impatience bubbled over until he finally interrupted the elder. Shock and laughter blew through the crowd.

I asked what had happened. It turns out the elder had misremembered a point in the boy’s story and while his comments were by no means unorthodox, they betrayed he did not know the boy’s story as well as he thought he did. The boy’s father had taught him that God’s stories were the most important stories on earth and that when you tell one of God’s stories you must not let anyone change it. The boy was not willing to let even an elder change the story he told.

The elder joined in on the laughter and thanked the boy for his correction. In that one moment, the boy was more than a boy. He was a brother helping another brother to better follow Jesus. It just so happened that at that moment his brother was the village elder and he was a skinny shoeless boy who knew one of God’s stories.

The boy learned this story, as he did dozens of others, from his father. His father learned it from a neighboring village elder. That elder had learned it from an Ethiopian Christian trained to plant churches using Chronological Bible Storying among his native people. The boy was using the same methods and stories that his father was using to plant churches. While the boy’s current audience happened to be all believers in Jesus, he continued to do what he did in any context: share the stories of God’s Word. To our amazement standing in front of us, was a nine-year-old boy who was trained to be a church planter.

(extracted from Doug Bender and Steve Sims, Short-Term Trips, Bible Storying and Church-Planting Mission Frontiers, January-February 2012, U.S. Center for World Missions)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)

Only a Catastrophic Flood can Explain Flat Plains Across the World

Nearly flat plains that are dozens of kilometers across are found all over the world. Evolutionary scientists have developed many different theories, all of them assume that the earth has experienced uniformitarian conditions with only tiny gradual change going back millions of years. But each theory has fatal flaws. The only scientific explanation that works is that these erosion surface were created by water runoff during the retreating sheet flow stage of the Genesis Flood, recorded for us in the Bible!

Selections from Origin of Appalachian Geomorphology, Part II: Formation of Surficial Erosion Surfaces, by Michael J. Oard.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 42, Number 2, Fall 2011)

An erosion surface is a land surface shaped and subdued by the action of erosion, especially by running water. A nearly flat erosion surface is called a planation surface. Gravel-capped planation surfaces are found all over the Earth. Good examples are found in the northern High Plains of western North America. Figure 2 shows the flat surface of the highest planation surface, the Cypress Hills of southeast Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan, Canada (Oard and Klevberg, 1998).

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)

Cypress HIlls planation surface near Reser Lake, Canada, Elevation 1300 meters.

In the 1800s, many geologists believed that erosion and planation surfaces were caused by marine planation during sea level rises. Then in about 1900, William Morris Davis developed the “cycle of erosion” or the “geographical cycle” for the formation of erosion surfaces called peneplains.

The Rise and Fall of Davis’s “Cycle of Erosion”

Davis imagined that the many erosion and planation surfaces there were caused by ancient rivers and streams sweeping back and forth, smoothing the land over millions of years. Davis’ idea was strongly influenced by the theory of evolution (Flemal, 1971).

Davis believed that, just like life, landscapes evolved through progressive stages, each exhibiting characteristic landforms. Davis applied the popular analogy of age to landscapes. They initially started in their youth, with the tectonic uplift of a level surface; progressed to maturity, with strong dissection by rivers and streams; and finally reached old age, where the land is finally subdued to a low relief peneplain near sea level (Johnson, 1954) and ready for another cycle.

But this idea is fraught with difficulties. During the early 1900s, despite its popularity, geologists slowly became skeptical. By the 1950s, the hypothesis was widely rejected.

Davis could not demonstrate the transitions between stages by detailed observations and experimentation. When challenged on that point, he simply pointed out the many flat surfaces of Earth’s landscape as evidence for his hypothesis (Johnson, 1954; Chorley et al., 1973, pp. 242, 243)—a logical fallacy called begging the question, a type of circular reasoning.

Peneplains are rolling erosion surfaces. To form a flat planation surface would take more time than was available, even on the geologic timescale. Ollier (1991, p. 200) claimed that just one-half of Davis’s cycle took the last half of the Phanerozoic, or 250 million years, in the highlands of southeast Australia!

Another major problem is that streams and rivers dissect a surface; they do not plane it. Davis also failed to provide any examples of the ending stage: a peneplain at sea level (Flemal, 1971; Chorley et al., 1973, Phillips, 2002).

The Weathering Hypothesis

A number of other hypotheses have been proposed in place of the cycle of erosion, but none seem to have fared well. These hypotheses include Walther Penck’s erosion during slow tectonics, Lester King’s parallel retreat of slopes, John Hack’s dynamic equilibrium, C. H. Crickmay’s lateral planation and unequal erosion, and the weathering hypothesis developed in the early to mid-1900s. The weathering hypothesis is the most popular idea today and seems to have survived among geomorphologists.

In the weathering hypothesis, erosion or planation surfaces form by two processes. First, a landscape is chemically weathered downward with time. The boundary between the weathered debris and unweathered rock is called the weathering front. Most weathering is accomplished by ubiquitous shallow
groundwater (Baker and Twidale, 1991, p. 81). Second, the weathered debris is removed by sheet wash, stream erosion, or other mechanisms.

However, there are many problems with the weathering hypothesis.

1) Weathering causes a rough surface, not a planation surface. Most telling, weathering does not form a planation surface and would form an erosion surface only with great difficulty. Factors driving weathering rate vary spatially (Birkland, 1984; Hall, 1988), as does erosion. Lithology and drainage patterns are especially relevant to the weathering rate (Summerfield, 1991). Therefore, the weathering front should
be rough and not planar. Twidale (2004, p. 160) stated: “Weaknesses
in the country rock are exploited by moisture and the weathering front is frequently irregular in detail: a topography is developed.” How could an exceptionally flat surface over a large area form by such irregular weathering?

2) weathering is more likely to destroy a planation surface than to create on Hall (1988, p.12)

3) Weathered debris must be stripped from the area. Even if the weathering occurred on a planar surface, there is the problem of stripping the debris away just as evenly (Bishop, 1966). King (1975, p. 309) questioned how deep weathering products could be removed from a flat surface, leaving no weathered material behind.

4) planation surfaces sometimes cut across both weathered and unweathered surfaces, indicating that planation is independent of weathering (Bishop, 1966, p. 149).

5) How would the weathering hypothesis account for all the rounded rocks on top of some planation and erosion surfaces, especially those obviously transported long distances? The weathering hypothesis cannot account for any of these, whether on the high plains of Montana or the rolling plains and plateaus of Kentucky.

Evolutionary Uniformitarian Hypotheses do explain Flat Plains

Davis confidently predicted that uniformitarianism would lead to robust explanations of landforms during the twentieth century, but it seems he was as wrong about that as he was about the cycle of erosion. Why have scientists failed to explain such common, obvious features? Once confident in their explanations, geomorphologists now wander in the wilderness (Baker and Twidale, 1991, p. 81). Could it be that their basic starting premise of uniformitarianism, or actualism, is wrong and needs to be discarded?

Ahnert (1998, p. 229) noted that new approaches with new methods are required to understand erosion surfaces (his peneplains): “There are still many aspects of peneplains to be explained. Perhaps some entirely new approaches with new methods are needed.”

I agree that a new approach is needed—a catastrophic approach.

Erosion Surfaces were Created by Runoff from the Genesis Flood

Davis’s antipathy to the Genesis Flood led geomorphology into a dead end. That is because the key to geomorphology is the Genesis Flood (Oard, 2008), precisely contrary to conventional thinking over the past century.

It is looking like planation and erosion surfaces can be explained by—and only by—the retreat of Floodwaters off emerging continents. Since many planation surfaces are quite large, covering areas > 2,500 km², planation requires a large-scale process, best explained by the sheet-flow phase of Walker’s (1994) model (Figure 38).

Figure 38. Walker’s classification of the Flood into the 150-day flooding stage and the 221-day retreating stage with five phases. Large scale erosion surfaces were created by water runoff during the retreating sheet flow stage.

Summary

Proponents of the weathering hypothesis can take comfort in one thing: no other secular geomorphological hypothesis explains the observations either. They all have numerous weaknesses, as noted by conventional old-age geologists (Crickmay 1974, p. 192, brackets mine):

The difficulty that now confronts the student [all who study geomorphology] is that, though there are plenty of hypotheses of geomorphic evolution, there is not one that would not be rejected by any majority vote for all competent minds. This situation is in itself remarkable in a respectable department of science in the latter half of the 20th Century.

This situation is remarkable indeed! The only scientific explanation must be a catastrophic approach. Planation and erosion surfaces that are common worldwide must have formed in the past by some large-scale unique event (Oard, 2008).

Large erosion surfaces would have easily formed during the sheet-flow phase of the retreating stage of the Genesis Flood. Like many similar locations worldwide, water flowing away from the rising Appalachian Mountains planed the land, creating erosion surfaces on both sides of the mountains. The speed of the erosional event, the extent of the sheet-flow currents, and the water velocity are all recorded in the presence of large erosion surfaces with erosional remnants and resistant gravels transported over great distances.

References (selected)

Baker, V.R., and C.R. Twidale. 1991. The reenchantment of geomorphology.Geomorphology 4:73–100.

Birkeland, P.W. 1984. Soils and Geomorphology. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Bishop, W.W. 1966. Stratigraphical geomorphology: a review of some East African landforms. In Dury, B.H. (editor), Essays in Geomorphology, pp. 139–176. Heinemann, London, UK.

Chorley, R.J., R.P. Beckinsale, and A.J. Dunn. 1973. The History of the Study of Landforms or the Development of Geomorphology—Volume Two: The Life and Work of William Morris Davis. Methuen & Co. LTD, London. UK.

Crickmay, C.H. 1974. The Work of the River: A Critical Study of the Central Aspects of Geomorphology. American Elsevier Publishing Co., New York, NY.

Flemal, R.C. 1971. The attack on the Davisian system of geomorphology: a synopsis. Journal of Geological Education 19:3–13.

Hall, K.J. 1988. Weathering. In Moon B.P., and G.F. Dardis (editors), The Geomorphology of Southern Africa, pp. 12–29. Johannesburg, South Africa.

King, L. 1975. Bornhardt landforms and what they teach. Zeitschrift für Geomorpholgie N. F. 19:299–318.

Oard, M.J., and P. Klevberg. 1998. A diluvial interpretation of the Cypress Hills Formation, Flaxville gravels, and related deposits. In Walsh, R.E. (editor), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Creationism, technical symposium sessions, pp.421–436. Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA.

Oard, M.J. 2008. Flood by Design: Receding Water Shapes the Earth’s
Surface. Master Books, Green Forest, AR.

Summerfield, M.A. 1991. Global Geomorphology. Longman Scientific & Technical, New York, NY.

Twidale, C.R. 2004. River patterns and their meaning. Earth-Science Reviews 67:159–218.

Walker, T. 1994. A Biblical geological model. In Walsh, R.E. (editor), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, technical symposium sessions, pp. 581–592. Creation Science
Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA.

The bus driver cursed the dead grandmother for denting his bus. 19 years later...

In 2010, missionary Curtis Sergeant was visiting a friend in an East Asian country.

A Christian woman came to their door, very excited. “I’ve got to tell you about this place I visited. It was amazing! Every village has churches. The worship is phenomenal. They’re sending out missionaries! The government formerly persecuted the Christians, and now they are encouraging churches because the crime rate is down.”

His friend asked, “Where is this place?” Sergeant smiled when she named the same province in which God had used him so many years back.......

---

It was 1991. As the overcrowded and under–maintained bus slowed to pick up a passenger on the rural Asian road, an older woman stepped out of the bushes. The bus struck her and knocked her 20 feet, killing her instantly. A small boy and girl, probably her grandchildren, fell on her body weeping. Curtis Sergeant, a strategy coordinator for the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, witnessed this from the back of the bus. He was with a national friend and they were about five hours into their ten-hour journey across the province that was to be his new mission field.

Sergeant was pained, but having spent years in less developed countries, had seen such accidents before. But what happened in the next few minutes shook him and caused him to grieve in his heart.

It wasn’t even that the bus driver spat on the body and cursed the grandmother for denting his bus. Sergeant, too far back to be able to exit to off er assistance, said to his companion, “You have to tell the bus driver to stop.” “Why?” the friend puzzled. Sergent replied “Because those children there are all alone, and someone needs to do something to help them.” Then his companion spoke the truth about the people in this mission field that caused even this veteran missionary to question God’s wisdom in sending him there. “Everyone on this bus has enough troubles of their own.” So the bus rumbled down the road.

Th is incident took place in 1991. For the next five years, Sergeant worked strategically in this province, and saw his efforts wonderfully blessed by God as a great church planting movement began in this area. Sergent remained until 1996.

The churches tended to be small. Seldom did a house church grow much larger than 30 members before it spun off a sister church. This splitting accomplished two beneficial results: it avoided attracting government attention, and it caused faster growth. A good summary of the structure of these house churches is to look at the acronym Sergeant developed, POUCH churches:

"They can model POUCH Groups." Believers (sometimes joined by seekers) can take part in these groups at home, and then become comfortable with the concept and the accountability involved as they help in church-planting. Ideally, each believer is involved in two groups: the one in which he or she is a participant, and a new one that he or she is starting. In a church-planting movement, much the same thing happens.

Nineteen years later, the same province in which God had  used him so many years back—the province that less than one generation before had been, a place of “heartless, evil people” with no hope in their hearts—was now transformed to a place where many people follow Christ.

(extracted from William Smith, Can Short-Term Teams Foster Church-Planting Movements? Mission Frontiers, January-February 2012, U.S. Center for World Missions)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)

Katya the Goth meets Jesus the Savior

"When Katya, a 15-year girl from Belarus, first showed up at youth camp two summers ago, she wore only black clothing and makeup; she identified herself with the Goth subculture. Her good friend had invited her and Katya felt accepted at New Hope Youth Camp; following camp she agreed to go to church with her friend from time to time.

"The next summer when Katya returned to camp she had embraced the Emo subculture; her favorite songs focused on death and one of her favorite pastimes was wandering around in the local cemetery at night. Again Katya had a good time at camp, as the New Hope team befriended her.

"Fast forward to the campfire on the final night of camp five months ago. "All that day," New Hope worker Uriy remembers, "we focused on the topic of having a pure heart. When the campfire was set all the kids started to come closer to it. One guy shared his testimony (he has HIV), and then we all sang worship songs together. And then I started to teach, using the parable of the prodigal son as an illustration. The kids listened attentively and quietly as the fire crackled.

"I compared the prodigal son's need for love and forgiveness to our need for love and forgiveness from the Father and explained that we can receive forgiveness only through faith in Jesus Christ and real repentance before Him. At the end I asked, 'Who of you, being aware of his or her guilt before God, wants to pray such a prayer?' It was very quiet as several came forward. One was a girl with tears in her eyes-Katya!"

"That night Katya asked God to take control of her life-and nothing has been the same since! Today Katya comes to teen club every week. Please join us in praying that the truth planted in Katya's heart-and hundreds more like her this past summer-will take root and blossom in them!

(from New Hope International newsletter, January 2012)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)
(On Twitter: FOLLOW uMarko or http://www.twitter.com/uMarko)