Energy stored in the biosphere?

[RGK]

Hi, 1st post.

I am interested in the following falsification of the young Earth creationist(YEC) viewpoint. The Earth is obviously old but it is not so obvious to the uneducated. So I am hoping this argument will be easy enough to comprehend that it will provide a source of serious doubt for some YECs.

Their model (for the majority anyhow) is that the global flud of Noah created the geologic column and is the event that created fossil fuels.

I've come across a figure for the total energy of all the fossil fuels stored in the Earth here:
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/152461/
It is 5x10^19 kilogram-calories or 2.1x10^23 Joules

The figure I am missing and can't seem to find utilizing google is what amount of energy is stored in the biosphere that would have been available to be turned into fossil fuels by the flud of Noah. I hope you can see where I am going with this.

A YEC needs to have a factor between the fossil fuel energy and the biosphere energy close to one. If the factor is orders of magnitude greater which I suspect it is then that creates a nice piece of data to further falsify the YEC paradigm.

So are there any figures available for the energy stored within the biosphere (that portion that would contribute to fossil fuel production)? Thanks.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Welcome to the forums RGK. We generally don't allow these sort of debunking threads, especially on these topics. The type of people you wish to argue with won't listen to your facts anyway, there is already a mountain of evidence they are ignoring so why would one more point hammer it home? This thread will remain locked but please feel free to utilise these forums for learning and discussing scientific subjects you are interested in.

 

[Huyen401]

Hi there, welcome to the forum! It's great to see someone interested in exploring and understanding different viewpoints.

I can definitely see where you're going with your argument. It's always interesting to see how scientific evidence can challenge certain beliefs and theories. I'm not an expert on this topic, but I did a quick search and found a few sources that might be helpful in your search for the energy stored in the biosphere.

According to this article from the National Geographic (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/biosphere), the total energy available in the biosphere is estimated to be around 10^25 joules. However, this includes all forms of energy, not just the ones that could contribute to fossil fuel production.

I also found this research article (https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo578) which estimates the amount of energy stored in living organisms to be about 2.2×10^21 joules. Again, this is not just the portion that could contribute to fossil fuel production, but it might give you a better idea of the scale.

I hope this helps in your research and argument! Good luck.