Arvel Joffi

I was reading the garbage thread, Evidence for a young Earth..., and this thought occured to me:

If sea levels rose enough to cover the earth, there would be frozen remnants at the poles and at high elevations. Specifically, there would be saltwater glaciers, most especially in places that are never or rarely above freezing. Yes, I know that rains are purported to have caused the flood, so waters high enough to cover the earth would have greatly reduced salinity - but it would still be there.

(I know glaciers are specifically formed from snow accumulation, so I apologize if my terminology is a little off.)

funinspace

There's probably enough wiggle room in the construct to allow one to say that it would have taken a while for the temperatures at the poles to drop enough for salt water to freeze. So it would have run off before the freezing began. This is probably one of the more minor oddities. There's a thousand bigger holes like all the bugs and fresh water fish: how could they have survived. And that we have ice core samples going back roughly 720,000 years. How could one relate a Noah flood to reality if you have to go that far back, just to solve this one problem.

Mr. Anderson

No no! See, the salt content of the water was so high it lowered the freezing point of the water to the point where no glaciers could form. Plus the salinity killed all the fish too, and dissolved them so there wouldn't be a fossil record of any sort. And the salt came from God crying about how he had to kill his own creations.

[/end YECism]

Arvel Joffi

Good points, good points. I guess I should take into account that the warmth of God's love would keep the waters from freezing.

Oikoman

Its not that simple... the freezing point for sea water is only two degrees below zero, however the salts in seawater are not incorporated into the sea ice, so sea ice when melted yields fresh water.

Jet Black

I thought the flood would have just tore up the glaciers, being less dense than water and all. oh hold on, remember that before the flood, the whole earth was at a balmy 25-30 celsius.

Arvel Joffi

I did not know that. So icebergs are fresh water?

diGriz

I've read that they lose their salinity over time.

Plognark

From what I recall, you've got to freeze salt water rather quickly to "lock" the salt into the crystalized water. Otherwise, if they form slowly, the crystal structure doesn't really incorporate the salts into it. I could be wrong though, this is just going off of stuff I read a long time ago.

DeLurking

That´s true (or my professor is either mistaken or a liar) I recall that it´s even energetically more efficient than evaporation.