How much water is on planet earth?

ThomasCovenant

The Watchtower, as I recall, get over the Noah's Flood story as regards saying the waters covered the mountains by saying that the mountains weren't

as high pre Flood as after. The water didn't have to be 30,000 feet deep.

But supposing the highest bit of land was just 100 meters tall. Times that by the surface area of the globe of 510 million square kilometers

and that is still a lot of water.

Whilst trying to work this out I came across the following site which does a good job of comparing the volume of water on the planet.

I have no idea how accurate it is.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/2010/gallery/global-water-volume.html

Tylinbrando

I've shared that image with my young sons to help them grasp the sensationalistic nature of the flood account found in Genesis.

Also by examining geology it is easy to point and laugh at claims that mountain ranges were significantly lower just a few thousand years ago. The present shape of the earth took millions of years and examining erosion processes and tectonics leads to solid evidence.

Anony Mous

If all the earth were flat and the water were on top, there would be a layer of 2 miles of water. The spheres you link to compare volume, the amount of water is tiny compared to the entire earth.

But as has been said, there is hard evidence for the age of mountains and valleys. The math doesn't add up in several ways. There is no way you can repopulate from either 2 or 7 of each, there wouldn't have been enough place for all the animals, insects, fish etc. in the world, ants alone would've overrun (and sunk) the ark. In order for there to be a catastrophic flood through rain, the water would have come down so thick and quick it would've displaced all the oxygen (Noah and his animals would've smothered), all the water in the world would've been salty and still would be... so many scientific and practical hurdles to overcome besides the lack of evidence.

chapstick

According to the UGS there are 325 million trillion gallons of water on the planet. This includes the oceans, lakes rivers, aquafers, moisture in living creatures and plants, and the atmosphere, where nearly 1/2 half of it resides...

Simon

Wow, great link - that really puts things into perspective.

Lots of places flood, I remember watching the Mississippi floods about 10 years ago (?). Anyone seeing that who didn't have modern terchology would describe it as 'everywhere' being flooded. When you're on foot then the whole world doesn't stretch very far. To take the 2-3000 year old accounts literally is crazy.