sakrilege

How many in the Cliffs of Dover and other similar formations? Have there been any YEC explanations for the how the number of creatures represented didn't overwhelm the preflood environment?

Coragyps

I'd say there are at least several forams/coccolithophorids/whattayacallems in the White Cliffs - at a milligram each, which would be generous, you would have a million tests per kilogram of rock, and a kilo would only fill up a coffee mug or so.
T H Huxley gave a very nice speech (or essay?) on exactly this topic back around 1870. It's online somewhere, and I'll see if I can remember the title and find it.

Minnesota

Here's an interesting site that speaks to the topic.

Chalk Deposits
http://members.tripod.com/debatorial_works/id133.htm

djmullen

Coragyps: " H Huxley gave a very nice speech (or essay?) on exactly this topic back around 1870. It's online somewhere, and I'll see if I can remember the title and find it."

On a Piece of Chalk

Coragyps

Thanks, dj! I found a little calculation I did once to hush a Flood promoter re carbonate rock formation -
About 1.5% of crustal rocks are carbonates, and let's assume that half of this got deposited during Noah's little cruise. We'll give the YECs all the required minerals in solution, or sitting on the windowsills of the firmament, or whatever they choose, and just work out thr reaction Ca(+2) + 2 HCO3(-) ---> CaCO3 + H2O + CO2 (CaCO3 being limestone).

That works out to 44% by weight as much carbon dioxide (CO2) being liberated as the amount of limestone formed, or 8.8 x 10^19 kilograms of CO2. The biggest problem here is that our present atmosphere weighs 5.1 x 10^18 kg and contains only 1.7 x 10^15 kg CO2. This means that Noah's atmosphere, toward the end of the year, would have at seventeen times its current pressure, contained 94% carbon dioxide, and would have had an oxygen content below 2%. Your Coca-Cola would keep its fizz, but it'd be tough to breathe.

And this exercise ignore the big difficulties, like how you avoid the Mother of All Red Tides by growing that many plankton at once, how you get sunlight to said plankton in a rainstorm, the entire field of sedimentology...