Wave action from Hurricane Katrina (2005) uncovered an ancient cypress forest at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Located about 10 miles off Alabama’s coast in about 60 feet of water, the cypress is so well-preserved that, when cut, smells like fresh wood!
What is surprising, and humorous though is how a submerged cypress forest can uproot irrational and downright false claims about the past, present, and future!
Old Earth or Young, dinosaurs and humans lived at same time
First watch the video below, then read this article (click here for article). The video claims the forest is 12,000 years old, while the article claims it is 50,000 years old! I would claim both are wrong! The 50,000 year date was arrived at by using radiometric dating methods (C-14), the same methods that are revealing dinosaurs were around at the same time as the submerged cypress trees!
Like many Christians, I trust Biblical history as true history, so I think the 12-50 k year-old dates are incorrect interpretations anyways. It’s the folks who trust radiometric methods to give reliable ages who have A LOT of explaining to do! In the old earth/young earth discussion, reasonable arguments can be made by both sides. However, as anyone whose had some basic high school logic instruction knows, just because an argument is logical, doesn’t mean it’s true. And while there are reasons to believe radiometric dating gives real ages, I say they are not good reasons.
Radioactive Carbon-14 (C-14) decays into Nitrogen, and should be non-existent in objects millions of years old. Researchers used the C-14 method to date the cypress trees at 50,000 years old. But C-14 in dinosaur tissue is giving similar ages! Plus, “old earthers” believe humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, so the only reasonable conclusion, whether you interpret the earth as young or old, is that dinos and humans lived at the same time. It is irrational to claim otherwise. So, not only are the old earth conclusions about time not very reasonable, they are downright irrational, too!
Massive sea level rise in the past
Global warming alarmism continues, with doomsday prophets claiming 2047 as the point of no return. But look at this cypress forest, buried in 60 feet of water. Old earth or young, the timeframe here was post-Ice Age. But, talk about sea-level rise! Global warming alarmists have entire nations in a panic over prophecies regarding miniscule sea level rises. These cypress trees reveal though, that not so long ago, the sea level was much, much lower. It’s been rising since the last Ice Age! This is not cause for panic of any sort.
The cypress forest is just one more in a multitude of data points affirming the biblical pattern of Creation, Flood, Ice Age, present. As Michael Oard and other natural historians describe, post-Flood seas were warm, generating massive evaporation, which in turn would generate massive precipitation and ice-buildup. As the oceans cooled, the ice buildup slowed, then started to melt, creating huge spring floods. A catastrophic flood, hurricane, etc., is responsible for rapidly burying the massive cypress trees and submerging them in a rapidly rising Gulf of Mexico.
Federal Mismanagement of Red Snapper
From Alabama to Texas and beyond, red snapper populations are definitely not in jeopardy! In the video below, red snapper are seen swarming around the cypress trees. The same is true around oil and gas platforms off the Texas coast. Yet, in a move that defies reason and reality, the federal government keeps claiming snapper populations are in jeopardy! In recent years, including 2013, excessively tight restrictions were placed on recreational anglers, including month-long seasons (or less), and 2-fish limits. States are getting fed up with the feds, and hopefully they will respond by allowing states to manage snapper populations in federal waters past their own state boundaries. A lot of the confusion over red snapper management stems from bad population models, coupled with politics related to recreational and commercial fisherman. The reality is, there’s plenty of Gulf of Mexico to go around for everyone. With some common-sense management strategies, a reef-dwelling fish like red snapper can be turned into a bounty for commercial and recreational angler alike.
By trusting Scripture as true history and trusting God’s directive to “do science” in Genesis 1:26-28, Christians everywhere can come to more reasonable conclusions than the world does regarding the past, present and future.
Studying His Word and His Works 