For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights;
Genesis 7:4
"Geologists who do not believe the Bible base their explanations on a
different philosophy. *Thus, they try to explain
everything by slow and gradual processes over millions of years.
For these brown coal deposits, they say that the vegetation
accumulated as peat in a swamp during ideal climatic and geologic
conditions. They say the swamps formed on floodplains near the coast, which were slowly sinking and eventually inundated by the ocean.
---But the evidence indicates that these brown coal deposits did not accumulate in a peat bog or a swamp.
First, there is no sign of soil under the coal, as there would be if
the
vegetation grew and accumulated in a swamp. Instead, the coal rests
on a thick layer of clay and there is a ‘knife edge’ contact between the
clay and the coal.
This kaolin clay is so pure that it could be used for high-class
pottery. Furthermore, there are no roots penetrating the clay.
Then there are a number of distinct ash layers that run horizontally
through the coal. If the vegetation had grown in a swamp, these distinct
ash layers would not be there. After each volcanic eruption, the
volcanic texture of the ash would have been obliterated when the
swamp
plants recolonized the ash, turning it into soil. Not only is there no
soil, but the vegetation found in the coal is not the kind that grows in
swamps today. Instead, it is mostly the kind that is found in mountain
rainforests. The best match for the mix of vegetation in the coal occurs
in the mountains of the western half of the island of New Guinea some 4,000–7,000 feet above sea level.
Similar vegetation is also found in the mountains in Australia,
Malaysia, New Caledonia and New Zealand. The kinds of plants that make
up the coal did not grow in a swamp on a floodplain.
Large broken tree trunks are found randomly distributed through the
coal in many different orientations. Even swamp advocates wonder how
such large trees could have obtained an adequate root-hold in the ‘very
soft, organic medium’, and how the roots could have breathed under
water.
These large trunks are not consistent with slow accumulation over
thousands and thousands of years in a swamp, but indicate fierce and
rapid transportation by water.
Within the coal seams are pollen-rich layers up to 20
inches thick. It makes sense that the pollen was washed there by water,
because flowing water would sort vegetation into its different
components. The idea that such huge pollen-rich layers could gradually
accumulate in a coastal swamp over long periods of time does not make
sense.
When the brown coal burns, it leaves hardly any ash behind. The ash produced from most of these coals ranges from 1.5–5%, which is less than the 3–18% ash in typical peat. The low ash is consistent with the vegetation being transported and washed by water, not with lying in a swamp for tens of thousands of years.
But how would such great thicknesses of peat accumulate in a
swamp? Very precise geologic conditions would have been called for;
namely that the swamp must have subsided slowly, at exactly the same
rate as the vegetation was accumulating. If it had sunk too fast, the
water would have drowned the plants, and growth would have been stopped.
If it had sunk too slowly, the organic debris would have emerged above
the water and decomposed. And these precise geologic conditions would be
needed for tens, or hundreds of thousands of years! Geologically, the idea that thick seams of brown coal accumulated in a swamp is ridiculous in the extreme.
Not only does the swamp model have
problems explaining the seam thickness, but it is also difficult to
envisage how vegetation could have accumulated over such a large
geographical area. As well as covering a huge area of land, the Latrobe
Valley Coal Measures extend hundreds of kilometres under the ocean to
the continental shelf. Indeed, the crude oil under Bass Strait was
derived from these coal deposits after they were heated in the Earth.
Even today the oil continues to form under the sea. How could the precise environmental and geological conditions have been
preserved over such a large area for such a long time? Understandably
we do not see peat swamps covering such extensive geographic areas
today. Rather, peat only accumulates in relatively small, isolated
swamps." CMI
