Contrary to what many may read into my posts, I am not throwing out the facts. I don't dispute any physical facts shown here.
However, I believe that science tends to dismiss or ignore possibilities simply because they don't agree with those possibilities.
Think Pompeii on an even grander and quicker scale.
While Pompeii holds many preserved buildings and people, I don't believe (correct me if I'm mistaken) that any vegetation is preserved in the same way. Ash may fall and cover things--but not fast enough to prevent burning. Look at the recent Mt. St. Helens explosion. The speed of that explosion was enough to flatten the forests around for miles.
Again--I'm not saying I know what happened here. But I am saying that science doesn't know either, and the proclamation of their guess is premature at best, and totally wrong at worst. I'm guessing somewhere in the middle.
I agree science doesn't know exactly what happened. The only point to my posts were to answer some other charges that were made that this was caused by a worldwide flood, simply because bark was left on the trees. As I showed, simply because bark was left on the trees is not evidence of a flood because:
1. There are cases (see other posts) of trees being quickly covered by lava without being completely consumed and also, in Pompeii, what was observed was that the hot ash and toxic gasses discharged by the volcano displaced breathable air, not at a rate where oxidation (fire) did not occur, but thousands of people did suffocate. Thus, it's not unreasonable to hypothesize that if this phenomenon occurred "on a grander and quicker scale" that oxygen would be displaced fast enough to deprive the fire triangle of oxygen, thus also preserving the bark.
2. And this is more important, that if these trees were buried in a world wide flood of water, then the rocks surrounding them would be sedimentary not igneous in nature. This is the key piece of evidence that any reasonable person must step back and say, "Yes, clearly this isn't evidence of a world wide flood. We may not know exactly how it happened, but there's no way it was caused by water".
Note for the record, I'm not saying you were claiming a world wide flood, but the original post I responded to was implying this.
“I don’t believe (correct me if I’m mistaken) that any vegetation is preserved in the same way.”
Granted that the volcanic events were different in some ways at Pompeii, but the basics are similar. Perhaps your confusion lies in “vegetation is preserved”. The trees were fossilized, not preserved as organic material.