A3. Coal and Oil
The amount of coal and oil existing today greatly exceeds what could have been produced by decaying plants and animals in a few thousand years. It is naive to think that today’s coal and oil came from the buried remains of Noah’s antediluvian world. Most creationists simply have no idea how much raw material would have been required, especially for the oil deposits.
Because coal and oil are important economic resources, geologists have worked hard to estimate how much of these resources exist. The creationist writer Morton cites data published by Hunt indicating that the carbon in the coal alone is 50 times that in the entire present biosphere!…And the carbon in all oil deposits is 666 times that in the entire present biosphere! That in oil shales and other sedimentary rocks (which Morton doesn’t mention!) is 40,000 times that in the present biosphere. And that doesn’t count the enormous quantities of carbonates, much in the form of fossil shells. The Livingstone Limestone in the Canadian Rockies contains at least 10,000 cubic miles of broken crinoid plates!
Just how thick did Dr. Hovind say that antediluvian vegetation was?
In doing your math, be sure to allow plenty of open space for grasslands, so that the buffalo, horses, and numerous other grazers, past and present, have plenty of space for their herds. Be sure to have plenty of deserts or neardeserts for your reptiles. Most of them require a dry environment. You will also need plenty of marshy tundra pasture for your mammoths and other preflood, coldadapted grazers.