Salinity of the sea rules out a young Earth

[QED]

Sir Edmund Halley came up with a way to make an estimate of the Earth's age: He realized that as fresh water is deposited in form of rain, water picks up salts and other minerals from the land and deposits them in the sea. This is why lakes are largely fresh water and the sea is salty. Halley reasoned that in time the oceans should get more salty as the salt remains trapped in them by continual evaporation.

Rather than use this to arrive at a specific date, Halley was more interested in showing that the Earth could neither be infinitely old (as the sea would be saturated with salt) nor very young (a few thousand years) otherwise the oceans would still be mostly fresh water.

Using Halley's ideas, Irish geologist John Joly went on to compute an age for the Earth which came out at around 80 Million years; an underestimate as he assumed that all salt would remain dissolved in the Oceans which it does not. Nonetheless it does serve to show that the idea of a 6000 year old Earth is untenable: for the salinity to be at its current level, then his assumptions about the take-up of minerals would have to be over thirteen thousand times too conservative.

The logic of this argument would seem to be quite accessible to any reasonable person. Does anyone disagree that it would rule-out the Earth being less than millions of years old and if so for what reason?

[jwu]

The seas already were created with salt in them...for the salt water fishes.

[/advocatus creationisti]

[ST88]

The logic of this argument would seem to be quite accessible to any reasonable person. Does anyone disagree that it would rule-out the Earth being less than millions of years old and if so for what reason?

The problem with the runoff theory of salinity is that it doesn't address the entire picture. Salinity is also affected by the minerals in the earth's crust underneath the oceans.

It is quite likely that the first water to appear on earth while/after it cooled was contaminated by the part of the crust on which it first appeared. I.e., the world's oceans were not originally freshwater only to became saline over time. Rather, they were mineralized from the beginning, with freshwater only existing as the cycle of rainwater was established.

Consider that the saltiest area of the open ocean is in the Sargasso Sea, hundreds of miles from any runoff source. In the runoff scenario, we would expect that salinity would be highest in the eddy currents of runoff sources, yet this is not the case.

Here is a graphic of mineralization of the two types of water:

Notice that for river water, the concentration of bicarbonate is much higher than of ocean water despite the fact that river water flows into the ocean. This may be explained by the carbonate intake of organisms in the oceans, but there are some elements which appear in river water that do not appear in ocean water at all, like silicates. Why would we expect that both sodium and chlorine, both required in the makeup of animals in larger amounts than silicon, would have a much higher concentration than silicon, or any of the other elements for that matter? Runoff can't be the entire story.

[craigfbrown]

We mustn't forget that Noah's Flood was said to encompass the entire earth (covering Mt Ararat at nearly 17,000 ft would seem to rule out a pet theory of mine that Noah's Flood was merely the filling in of the Mediterranean Sea when the land bridge between Spain and Morocco gave way to the Atlantic, thus flooding Atlantis!) The oceans would have had to be "fresh" water as evidenced by the dove returning with an Olive branch (since Olive trees cannot grow and would quickly die in salt water, thus it could not have been an olive branch from the old world, and had it been salt water that was receding the olive branch could not have been freshly grown!)

Although I'm fascinated with this idea of dating the earth by the salinity of the oceans, in order for the calculations to carry any degree of accuracy, Noah's flood needs to be taken into consideration (but then nobody has dated the earth at only "4,500 years old", which is where this argument would seem to take us.) Does anyone know HOW MUCH salt an Olive Tree can tolerate? And is it possible that the oceans of 4,500 years ago had a mere fraction of their present salinity - such that the Olive Trees would have survived AND the earth would still be dated as much more than the 4,500 years?

[nygreenguy]

Although I'm fascinated with this idea of dating the earth by the salinity of the oceans, in order for the calculations to carry any degree of accuracy, Noah's flood needs to be taken into consideration (but then nobody has dated the earth at only "4,500 years old", which is where this argument would seem to take us.) Does anyone know HOW MUCH salt an Olive Tree can tolerate? And is it possible that the oceans of 4,500 years ago had a mere fraction of their present salinity - such that the Olive Trees would have survived AND the earth would still be dated as much more than the 4,500 years?

Ocean water is about 35,000mg/l salt and olea can usually handle about 4,000mg/l maximum and is considered moderately salt tolerant.

Now the vast majority of plant in the world would die REALLY fast at 4,000mg/l. Many can die in as little as 50mg/l.

[scottlittlefield17]

Sir Edmund Halley came up with a way to make an estimate of the Earth's age: He realized that as fresh water is deposited in form of rain, water picks up salts and other minerals from the land and deposits them in the sea. This is why lakes are largely fresh water and the sea is salty. Halley reasoned that in time the oceans should get more salty as the salt remains trapped in them by continual evaporation.

Rather than use this to arrive at a specific date, Halley was more interested in showing that the Earth could neither be infinitely old (as the sea would be saturated with salt) nor very young (a few thousand years) otherwise the oceans would still be mostly fresh water.

Using Halley's ideas, Irish geologist John Joly went on to compute an age for the Earth which came out at around 80 Million years; an underestimate as he assumed that all salt would remain dissolved in the Oceans which it does not. Nonetheless it does serve to show that the idea of a 6000 year old Earth is untenable: for the salinity to be at its current level, then his assumptions about the take-up of minerals would have to be over thirteen thousand times too conservative.

The logic of this argument would seem to be quite accessible to any reasonable person. Does anyone disagree that it would rule-out the Earth being less than millions of years old and if so for what reason?

Thats based on the assumption of a constant rate of which there is no proof.

[McCulloch]

That's based on the assumption of a constant rate of which there is no proof.

Generally, we assume that things go at a constant rate unless we have a reason to believe otherwise, cf. Isaac Newton.

[nygreenguy]

Thats based on the assumption of a constant rate of which there is no proof.

Proof is for math and liquor, not science. (although math is sort of a science).

All of science is based on the idea of uniformitarianism. This is that the laws of the universe are the same now since the beginning and always will be.

This is based upon inductive logic.

Now, if this "assumption" were based upon a few random events, it would be irrational.

However, since there isnt a single bit of evidence to show this isnt the case, its irrational to assume otherwise.

[McCulloch]

If salt has been accumulating in the oceans as salts flow into the oceans from rivers and only about 25% of the sodium can be shown to be leaving the ocean then, knowing the rates of sodium input and output, the maximum age of the oceans can be calculated at 62 million years.

The relatively high concentration of sodium and other salts in the seas can be explained within the biblical creation model. As the global flood ripped up the surface of the earth, much mineral content would have been dissolved in the water that would eventually become todays seas.

Source: Answers in Genesis.

[Shermana]

Sir Edmund Halley came up with a way to make an estimate of the Earth's age: He realized that as fresh water is deposited in form of rain, water picks up salts and other minerals from the land and deposits them in the sea. This is why lakes are largely fresh water and the sea is salty. Halley reasoned that in time the oceans should get more salty as the salt remains trapped in them by continual evaporation.

Rather than use this to arrive at a specific date, Halley was more interested in showing that the Earth could neither be infinitely old (as the sea would be saturated with salt) nor very young (a few thousand years) otherwise the oceans would still be mostly fresh water.

Using Halley's ideas, Irish geologist John Joly went on to compute an age for the Earth which came out at around 80 Million years; an underestimate as he assumed that all salt would remain dissolved in the Oceans which it does not. Nonetheless it does serve to show that the idea of a 6000 year old Earth is untenable: for the salinity to be at its current level, then his assumptions about the take-up of minerals would have to be over thirteen thousand times too conservative.

The logic of this argument would seem to be quite accessible to any reasonable person. Does anyone disagree that it would rule-out the Earth being less than millions of years old and if so for what reason?

This reminds of the time when some people were thinking that the evaporated water from the Gulf Oil Spill would cause oil rain.