Flood and bristlecone pine

Moxy

i mentioned that the DC in our area featured a talk where the speaker, as an illustration of endurance, mentioned Methusaleh, the bristlecone pine that had lived for 4700+ years. i asked here for some possible explanations of this that allow for the WT flood dating. i had assumed that the standard response would be that the dating of the tree was wrong, that the rings had gotten doubled a few times or something. i dont think i received any further insight from anyone.

well, when time came for me to defend my disbelief, i mentioned this tree and its age as a problem for a literal genesis.

'what's the problem?' i was asked.

'well, that its 4770 some years old.'

'so, what's the problem? that it survived the flood.'

me, a little incredulous, 'uhhh yes. yes. are you suggesting that it lived underwater for a year?'

'why not?'

'because the rings show the relative climate for each year, the relative amount of sunlight and growth. living underwater with no sunlight for a year should leave a mark, not to mention the effect on climate in the succeeding years.'

'hmm... well i dont think the effect on climate would be all that great that it should be noticable. those trees can survive all kinds of things, even fire.'

well, so anyways this is the first ive heard the suggestion made seriously that all these trees lived happily underwater for a year with no signs of stunted growth. i dont want to look dogmatic. im sure that a tree _could_ survive underwater for some period of time but i dont know much more on the subject. can anyone (alanf maybe?) point me somewhere for further research?

thanks in advance.

mox

nicolaou

Try the links below moxy.

Here's a couple of quotes I found interesting:

The bristlecone pine chronology in the White Mountains currently extends back almost 9,000 years continuously. That's to 7,000 BC! Several pieces of wood have been collected that will extend this date back even further.

. http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/dendro.html

By using dead trees of different but overlapping ages, you can build up a library of tree rings of different calendar ages. This has now been done for Bristlecone Pines in the U.S.A and waterlogged Oaks in Ireland and Germany to provide records extending back over the last 11,000 years.

. http://units.ox.ac.uk/departments/rlaha/calib.html

Lots there to keep you busy!

Nic'

. http://communities.msn.co.uk/altJehovahsWitnesses

Moxy

thanks nic. ive read up on a _lot_ of this during my 'research period' and i mentioned the overlapping extensions to. but im trying to play devils advocate now - i want to now how plausible the pines living underwater is or isnt. this is really the first time ive heard this suggestion.

mox

patio34

Hi Moxy,

What an interesting question! I don't have time now to look at the links Nic provided. But if you find a succinct answer you feel like posting, I'd sure be interested.

BTW, AlanF is on vacation I heard, so won't be on the board for a while, I guess.

Pat

SixofNine

Well, this is not scientific on my part... but....

I believe that it would be impossible for a tree to survive being submerged for a year. For that matter, I'm guessing it would be impossible for a tree to live, totally submerged, for even a month.

Francois

There are only a few species of tree that can live underwater, and then the tops still must be in the air and exposed to the sun. If not, no conversion of sugars takes place. The most famous I guess is the cypress. But again, the greenery must be exposed to sunlight. It's just simply amazing how religious fanatics can come up with the most incredible bullshit in defense of the indefensible. And then want to be taken seriously. What a hoot!

Where it is a duty to worship the Sun you can be sure that a study of the laws of heat is a crime.

waiting

I am no expert - I am not even knowledgeable on this subject - which means I've got something to add........

1. People use to think that English Ivy killed trees basically by suffocation - because the treetrunks were literally covered. But a study was done and that wasn't the case. Trees need oxygen (sp?) and take it in through all their limbs, small or large. I would suppose also their leaves. So even if the trunk is encased, the upper limbs take in air.

2. I live by a cypress grove. They live in water - but not all of them, basically, just the root system. At least partial trunks are exposed to air, along with their greenery.

3. I was under the impression that all living plants need oxygen and sunlight - one way or another.

I'll be interested in knowing if any plant can go without oxygen and sunlight for over a year. Btw, would the flood waters have been salt? Does that pine tree normally live in any kind of salt water? Cypress live in fresh water (well, swamp really).

Good question for the curious.

waiting

Moxy

thx for replies.

well i mean something has to survive doesnt it? i assume that it is commonly understood that all the flora survived in seeds in the ground or something, frozen maybe? floating around? it seems such an obvious question: how did the eco-system survive? im sure that creationists have put forth different explanations, im just interested to know what the most plausible are - even if its really reaching. i would just think that if i had to try and justify my creationist beliefs, i would try like HELL to keep the lifespan of entire TREE SYSTEMS from overlapping with my supposed flood date. ANYTHING would be easier to explain than that. am i wrong??

mox

Trilobite

Moxy,

Plants need both oxygen gas (for respiration) and carbon dioxide gas (for photosynthesis). Most plants die if submerged for any length of time because they are not adapted to extract these gases from water, only from the atmosphere. In principle it's a bit like the difference between mammalalian lungs and fish's gills, although the details are very different. On eproblem is that CO2 levels in water are rather low. Thus, many underwater plants (e.g., pondweeds) are adapted to extract CO_2 from bicarbonate ions which may be present in slightly alkaline water. It isn't obvious that the concentration of bicarbonate ion or CO_2 would be high enough even for initially aquatic plants to survive a deluge of fresh water of such magnitude. Certainly, enormous ionic imbalances would be created.

Bristlecone pines live in very dry mountainous regions; if one was to survive the flood then, over the course of about a year it had to first make the transition from warm, moist pre-flood "greenhouse conditions" to living entirely underwater for a year and then emerge into hot desert like conditions where water was extremely sparse.

It seems extremely unlikely that a plant could not only endure these changes but also adapt to its new environment essentially instantly. A tree tells much about its life through its rings; periods of drought, for example, can be detected. It is unreasonable to expect that, not only would a bristelcone pine survive and adapt to the flood, but, further would not even "notice" this trauma it in its rings.

Other problems include: the severe mechanical damage that would be expected from a global deluge that was supposed to raise up mountains and the reduction in sunlight that plants which were deeply submerged would experience. I'd imagien that the waters would be extremely murky based on the force with which they would have hit the earth and the resulting turbulence. This would further diminish the amount of sunlight getting through. Then again, according to Genesis, plants lived for a Creative Day or so before the earth was exposed to sunlight so maybe that wouldn't have been an issue :-).

T.

philo

Was it the dove which brought Noah back a bristle cone pine tree in its beak? Or was that the Raven?

But seriously, salt water soaked into a tree has to be deadly to it, it certainly kills grass when I drag my rubber dinghy accross the lawn after sailing.

philo

Flood and bristlecone pine

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