Este es el tipo de argumento de "un hombre sorbeto" que ha sido usado para desacreditar el concepto de la corta historia de la vida de la tierra. Yo dudo que alguien pueda asertar que la materia preservada como carbón fuera el resultado de un aóo de crecimiento, especialmente si la tierra estaba cubierta de agua y el cielo lleno de nubes. Comoquiera es una pregunta interesante, y levanta preguntas interesantes que podemos discutir.

Las tablas siguientes muestran las pruebas y los estimados del carbón, aceite y reservas de gas del mundo.

Reservas de Carbón del Mundo	in billions of short tons	(2000 lb.)
Region	Total	Recoverable
N America	2685	187
S América	35	10
W Europa	419	82
E Europa	170	46
USSR(ex)	4860	110
China	1438	99
India	57	34
S Africa	173	34
Australia	263	27
World totals	10100	629
Reservas de Gas y Aceite del Mundo	Aceite	Gases Nat.
Región	billions bbls	Trilln cu ft
Norte Amer.	75	300
C. & S.Amer.	85	210
Wst. Europa	25	200
Est Eur&SSR	100	2000
este Central	635	1620
Africa	70	330
Lejano Este	50	375
totales del Mundo	1040	5035

5000 trillones pies cúbicos de gas natural pueden cubrir sobre 94 billones de pequeñas toneladas de carbón. 1040 bbl de aceite pueden ser equivalentes a 180 billones de toneladas de carbón

Añadiendo esto a lo 10100 billones de toneladas de carbón, le dan al mundo un total de 10374 billones de toneladas de carbón fósil de materiales de materiales de plantas (gas, aceite y carbón).

Comparado con esto, la presente biosfera representa solo sobre 829billones de toneladas de carbón, sobre 8% de la amasa de carbón preservada como carbón, aceite y gas. Sobre 243 billones de toneladas métricas de plantas

Compared with this, the present biosphere represents only about 829 billion tons of carbon, about 8% of the carbon mass preserved as coal, oil and gas. About 243 billion metric tons of dry plant biomass are produced per year. If the earth were operating under conditions that were optimal, we could perhaps increase this value by a factor of 10 (larger land mass, higher CO₂, concentration, no deserts, vegetation overgrowing the oceans, optimum biomass in the ocean and seas...see below).

Allowing this optimization, we could conceivably accumulate 2,000 billion tons dry weight of vegetation per year. If an average accumulation of organic material represented ten years of growth, 20,000 billion tons of organic material would have been present on the surface of the earth at the time of the flood. In addition, about 2000 years of carbon accumulation with perhaps 10 - 20% of the carbon being permanently preserved as dispersed carbon in the sediments and the water column may have been present. Finally, there would have been an unknown amount of organic carbon added to the earth at creation to prepare the surface for habitation. Thus much of the carbon from the preflood biosphere must have ended up in places other than coal or oil and gas.

Extant peat bogs also afford an example of how the preflood environment could have held a much higher carbon reservoir than just what is in the present biomass. Other reservoirs may have included floating masses of vegetation such as are found in modern quaking bogs. Much of the Paleozoic plant vegetation must have grown under these conditions, not just because the modern representatives of these groups do, but because a even a cursory analysis of the rooting structures associated with these plants indicates they could not have grown in soil. The roots of many of the dominant tree ferns (Psaronius) show aerenchymatous (very large, thin-walled cells) tissue, characteristic of aquatic or semiaquatic plants.The common stigmaria root grew from a blunt terminal bud, throwing out pencil sized blunt rootlets with very thin walled cells, ideal for obtaining support from a bog substrate, but completely incapable of penetrating soil. Thus these forms could easily have grown atop ponderous masses of floating vegetation, allowing the possibility of an additional very large carbon reservoir.

While tropical regions store carbon in vegetation, soil is now understood to play a larger storage role in temperate regions. Total carbon stored in Canadian soils is estimated to be 263 billion tons, even under modern conditions, which are far from ideal in this environment. In British soils, for example, the carbon reservoir is estimated at 22 billion tons. But 75% of this 22 billion tons of organic carbon in the soils of Great Britain is locked up in Scotland's peat bogs! (see "Peat bogs hold bulk of Britain's carbon", New Scientist, p.6, 19 November 1994).

There was, at least in theory, more than enough carbon on the preflood earth to account for all of the coal, oil, gas and dispersed carbon of organic origin in the sediments.

______________________________________________________ Ó 2010 Arthur V. Chadwick, Ph.D.