OMG! Bryan Fischer Is So “Good” at “Science!”
Turns out that Bryan Fischer is not only an “expert” on the first amendment of the constitution, he’s a “great scientist” as well, as this video posted by the folks at Right Wing Watch, clearly demonstrates.
Looks like I get to do another post on creationism and this time, dealing specifically with the world that supposedly existed right before Noah’s Flood.
The “vapor canopy” is the perfect explanation as to why people in the old testament lived so long. Why people living for centuries upon centuries in ancient times when people only live to be slightly over one hundred at most now, in spite of our far superior medicine and technology, couldn’t just be myths, right?
Never mind that as Paul Farrar at Talks Orgins has pointed out,
The “vapor canopy hypothesis” states that before the flood, the water existed in the atmosphere as water vapor. The flood occurred when this vapor condensed and fell as rain, flooding the earth. The flood subsided later, various explanations being given for where all that water went.
First, let us look at atmospheric pressure. For the earth’s atmosphere, the pressure is almost exactly hydrostatic, since it is held to the earth by gravity and velocities are too low to significantly change the pressure. In plain language this means that the air pressure at any point is equal to the weight of the air in a unit area column above that point. At sea level, air pressure in US engineering units is about 14.5 pounds/sq inch because a column of air one inch square extending to the top of the atmosphere weighs (Guess what!?) 14.5 pounds. On top of Mt. Everest, the pressure is lower because the lowest and densest 9km of the atmosphere is below that point.
Now the “vapor canopy” would form a part of the atmosphere, being a body of gas (water vapor) gravitationally held to the earth. It would in fact be most of the pre-flood atmosphere. There would have to be enough vapor to form 9km of liquid, when condensed, and, therefore the vapor would weigh as much as 9km of water. The pressure at the earth’s surface, where Noah and family lived, would be equal to one atmosphere PLUS the weight of a 9km column of water of unit area. This is equivalent to the pressure 9km deep in the ocean. What is this pressure? Well, each 10m of water is roughly equivalent to one atmosphere, so the pressure would be 900 atmospheres. The atmosphere would also have a composition of about 900 parts water vapor to one part of what we call air today.
How could an atmosphere almost 100% water vapor not condense? The temperature would have to be raised to the point where the partial pressure of water equals 900 atmospheres, i.e. the boiling point at that pressure. So we find Noah et al. living in a 13,000psi boiler. Is this credible?
In other words even if Methuselah and everyone in his time had special genes that gave him the ability to live for over nine hundred years before the Great Flood, ( of which there is no evidence for, and plenty of evidence against ), it wouldn’t matter because he would’ve been crushed to death by the intense atmospheric pressure. In order for the “vapor canopy” hypothesis to work, Earth would have to have a greater atmospheric pressure than Venus!
Because of these similarities, it was thought that below its dense clouds Venus might be very Earthlike and might even have life. But, unfortunately, more detailed study of Venus reveals that in many important ways it is radically different from Earth. It may be the least hospitable place for life in the solar system.
The pressure of Venus’ atmosphere at the surface is 90 atmospheres (about the same as the pressure at a depth of 1 km in Earth’s oceans). It is composed mostly of carbon dioxide. There are several layers of clouds many kilometers thick composed of sulphuric acid. These clouds completely obscure our view of the surface. This dense atmosphere produces a run-away greenhouse effect that raises Venus’ surface temperature by about 400 degrees to over 740 K (hot enough to melt lead). Venus’ surface is actually hotter than Mercury’s despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun.
That means that the Earth pre flood, would have about one hundred times more atmospheric pressure than Venus! It would be more like living inside a gas giant, like say, Jupiter.
Jupiter probably has a core of rocky material amounting to something like 10 to 15 Earth-masses.
Above the core lies the main bulk of the planet in the form of liquid metallic hydrogen. This exotic form of the most common of elements is possible only at pressures exceeding 4 million bars, as is the case in the interior of Jupiter (and Saturn). Liquid metallic hydrogen consists of ionized protons and electrons (like the interior of the Sun but at a far lower temperature). At the temperature and pressure of Jupiter’s interior hydrogen is a liquid, not a gas. It is an electrical conductor and the source of Jupiter’s magnetic field. This layer probably also contains some helium and traces of various “ices”.
Only thing is, it would be impossible for a human being or any animal on Earth to survive those conditions. Basically no one could live on Venus, or the mythical pre Noah’s Flood Earth, because it would be way too hot, and they would be crushed to death. Needless to say Earth never had an atmosphere like that, and if it did, something would have to happen to drastically change it before the world be habitable for life as we know it. Life as we know it, includes human beings and all the animals that supposedly went two by two onto the ark, and than somehow repopulated the Earth without any of the problems that we would expect based on how genetics works.
Bryan Fischer has put his ignorance on display once more. Like all creationists, he’s either, incredibly ignorant and or delusional, or lying. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought what RoseAnn Salanitri said about evolution being false because Eskimos don’t magically grow fur, was a convincing argument. It had about as much basis in fact as what he said on his show about the “vapor canopy.”
One might as well watch Cracked’s “Marvels of The Science” instead of listing to creationists. Its about as informative, but much more entertaining, and oh and unlike creationists, the people who made these videos don’t actually expect you to take them seriously, and would probably be horrified if you did. That’s another big plus in my book when something clearly is a bunch of nonsense.*
*Note that these Cracked videos contain some foul language, so you may not want to watch them with your children around.