God's Action in the World Part II

Part II of talk on God's providence.

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The Origins of the Hawaiian Biota

Hawaii and Evolution Lecture series. A series of three lectures given to an introductory biology class.

Part I: What is the origin of the Hawaiian Islands - what can everyone agree about
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Part II. The origin of the plant and animals of the Hawaiian Islands - micro or macro-evolution?
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Part III. Natural Selection as an explanation for the origins of the Hawaiian plants and animals
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God's action in the world: Part I

Week 1 of a three part series on the definition of Biblical miracles and providence.

Audio file only (mp3)

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YouTube - A German Park Ranger in Black Forest - The Spiny Quillwort

Wow, an actual YouTube video featuring Isoetes. Well, its a parody but nonetheless I was so surprised to find anything featuring the quillwort.
YouTube - A German Park Ranger in Black Forest - The Spiny Quillwort

Flushing of multi-year sea ice from the Arctic basin

Thomas Homer-Dixon - Flushing of multi-year sea ice from the Arctic basin

Amazing animation of the ice build up and movement in the arctic through the winter of 2007/2008. Note especially how the ice actually flows down around Greenland (upper right) and how even during the winter large portions of the thicker muti-year ice were breaking up (lower right corner). Despite our rather cold winter the new ice formed in the arctic is the least every seen and if the same melting occurs this summer the arctic ice may almost completely disappear this year.

Lectures on Genetic Engineering

Below are links to my Sunday School lectures on genetic engineering:

Week 1 Audio file only (mp3)

Week 2 Audio file only (mp3)

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If I only had time to go through and edit out all the "and so" repetitions they would be considerably shorter:-)

Beyond the Age of Petroleum

Beyond the Age of Petroleum

I thought this was a pretty good summary of the oil situation right now.

iCyclone - Home

iCyclone - Home

This is a link to a hurricane page produced by a guy on a weather list that I frequent. He goes by Hurricane Josh and he regularly chases hurricanes on the east coast. In this case he flew to a small town on the Yucatan Penisnula to witness the landfall of Catagory 5 Hurrican Dean a week ago. Check out the trailer on this site of footage he took of Dean. Amazing stuff even if it was at night.
J

IEA sees oil supply crunch looming

IEA sees oil supply crunch looming - Yahoo! News

Now the International Energy Agency is admitting that supplies won't meet demend through at least 2012. They are essentially admitting that 70$ barrel oil should be seen as normal for the foreseeable future if not higher prices. This is quite a contrast to just two years ago when the same agency said that 2006 would be a blip and that there would be plenty of oil coming on-line in 2007. They predicted there was no reason to believe that oil should be greatly above $40/barrel through the end of the decade.

Iran's own oil consumption dilema

The figure below is one from an article on goldseek.com (click on entry title) that addresses subprime mortgages but tosses in a very interesting discussion of the oil situation in Iran. Many wonder why Iran is rationing fuel when they are one of the biggest producers of oil in the world at around 4 billion barrels a day. The fact is that the Iranian government subsidizes gas prices such that a gallon of gas only costs around 43 cents. The graphic below illustrates that Iran spends a whopping 38% of their state budget on these subsides. As population increases and oil prices increase that percentage will grow. Their oil production may decline because of the very poor investment environment there. The end result is that Iran is in grave economic danger despite the seeming plenty of their oil resources. The world should be concerned because we are counting on increased oil exports in the future rather than decreased.

Hovind (aka Dr. Dino) and the CMI/AIG split

Hovind certainly represents an extreme in YEC thought. Just go to YouTube and there are hundreds of clips that will give you a sense of how far out there he is. What I have found interesting to witness are the reactions by other creation science organizations to Hovind's ministry and problems. This is an area we see another distinction between the approaches of AIG and CMI and was one of the first cracks that appeared about two years ago in what was just AIG at the time. AIG had published a direct point by point response to a letter by Hovind which was highly critical of Hovind and warned other Christians to be wary of his ministry. About two years ago that warning about Hovind disappeared from the AIG site. It seems that Ham's approach to other YEC organizations is to not reveal dissent within the ranks but to show a unified front to the lay Christian. Interestingly the authors of that Hovind response are now members of what is now CMI. With the creation of CMI's web!
site that letter about Hovind has reappeared and can be seen HERE.

Members of CMI have been apt to be much more critical of other creationist's theories and although I think they are wrong in general on their stances I would give them credit for at least trying to hold other creationists to some sort of standard and a willingness to discuss what is a bad versus good argument. It is this attitude that seems to be part of the reason for the tensions within AIG that eventually resulted in division. You will notice in the CMI/AIG split it is AIG that is trying as hard as it can to not speak about the issue and provide its followers as few facts as possible in order to continue the appearance that they represent the unified view of creation science. Ham's strategy in all these things is to not talk about problems and focus solely on a happy message and figure that the lay Christian is ignorant and lacks the motivation to look into the facts themselves. I think his strategy will probably work. I have many YEC friends and none of them even know!
there was a split or if they know they only know the Ham version and don't believe the split is of any importance. However, many of them also have heard of Hovind and just believe he is another Ham and can't distinguish between the two at all. That would seem to present a real danger to the YEC movement that CMI recognizes.

It's a tangled web in the YEC world right now but the average Christian is oblivious to the drama.

Sad dispute between CMI and AiG-USA

The best place to read about the facts regarding the blowup and lawsuit between Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis is on the CMI website where all the details are laid in in fine detail. There is a lot of insight into the inner workings and control that Ken Ham has over the creation science industry.
Sad dispute between CMI and AiG-USA

Another Image of the Crater Wall

Todays image from the Opportunity rover shows another spectacular view of the edge of Victoria crater. The walls here clearly show cross-layering probably from wind deposition. The jumbled layers of debris thrown out from the impact is also very clear.

The varied textures of the Victoria Crater walls

A remarkable pictures of the walls of Victoria Crater on Mars taken by the Opportunity Rover in March 2007. You have to click on the picture to see the large image and thus be able to make out the layering in the rocks. The layers exposed are really interesting because the lowest layers look like thousand of thin layers but they are not all running parallel to each other. On earth this is indicative of sediments laid down in sand dunes or possibly at the edge of a lake. Above this relatively uniform red rock is a layer which shows up much lighter and seems to have been the upper layers of rock present when a meteorite crashed in the ground creating this whole. The layers above this whitish later have similar teture to the lower layers but look like they are made of blocks of rock at various angles. See how the layers in the rock are consistently parallel within each block but between blocks they don't line up at all. It would appear that these are the remnants of the rocks thrown out of the hole created by the meteorite and so just fell in a large jumble. What is really interesting is how what seems to have been an original jumble of rocks has been completely smoothed off at the surface presumably by eons of wind action.

Below is another close up of the rock wall showing the various texture in the rocks. Click on images for much large view

Production decline worsens at Mexico's biggest oil field - Los Angeles Times

Production decline worsens at Mexico's biggest oil field - Los Angeles Times
Just reconfirmation of the problems in Mexico. Like Venezuela, Mexico desperately needs oil prices to stay high to avoid a tremendous amount of economic pain.

Mexican Oil Production

MEX200701_Fig3.png (PNG Image, 1258x963 pixels) - Scaled (81%)
Cantrall, one of the 8 largest oil fields in the world is experiencing real rapid decline in production. At the current depletion rate by the end of 2008 and certainly by 2010, Mexico will be unable to export oil at their current consumption and that assumes that Mexico doesn't increase it's own consumption. When you consider that 35% of the income of the mexican govt comes from OIL exports that is a huge economic problem. Immigration to the US is not a problem that is going to go away any time soon. In fact it is only going to increase.

Also consider that because we are pushing ethanol production and that is pushing the price of corn sky high which is resulting in Mexico exporting corn and pushing the price of corn which is widely eaten way up.

Mexico is in for very hard times in the future.

Who are the people of AIG and CMI

Hi,
I'm still thinking about the AIG/CMI split and where the creation science movement may be headed. I thought it would be interesting to look at who the people are behind these organizations right now and see if the backgrounds of those people can tell us anything about the philosophies of these organizations. The differences are quite apparent and although AIG is a dominant force in the US, their position at the top isn't necessarily assured based on the current configuration of their organization. Below I make some observations on both of these organizations.

ANSWERS IN GENESIS:
Below are the people that AIG lists as part of their network. For some it is difficult to tell what role they have at AIG because they are full-time employees elsewhere. Some of these are much more active at ICR and with their own ministries. What I have done is lifted a bit of the info they provide to show there education, background and possible ages.
* Chuck and Evelyn Aliberto - retired public school teachers (60+)
* Dr. John Baumgardner - Ph. Geophysics, guest speaker (late 50s?)
* Donald Chittick, Ph.D - Ph.D Physical Chemistry, guest lecturer (70s)
* Dr. David Crandall Director of AIG Ministries Worldwide, Pastor (60s?)
* Buddy Davis - Speaker/singer full time with AIG
* Dr. David DeWitt - Ph.D neuroscience Case Wester Reserve, unclear what if any role he has at AIG other than content for their journal (60+)
* Dr. Donald DeYoung - Ph.D Physics Iowa State, ICR connection, guest speaker (60+)
* Dr. Ted Driggers - Ph.D. Operations Research, now retired, appears to help out with projects (60+)
* James Gardner, ministry, has his own organization but also speaks on AIG tours (50+)
* Ken Ham - President and founder (50s)
* Bodie Hodge MS SIU, mechanical engineering, 1998; full time with AIG, speaker/writer/outreach
* Bill Jack - former public school teacher, guest speaker
* Carl Kerby - ex air traffic controller, AIG Vice President of Ministerial Relations/web site (60+)
* Lynn and Miriam Klopfenstein - retired pastor and wife, local speaking engagements (60+)
* Dr. Jason Lisle, Ph.D astrophysics, U of Colorado recently, full time speaker/researcher at AIG
* Rod Martin - MA Dallas Theological Seminary, AIG senior director of new media
* Stacia McKeever, BS Biology, leads AIG "answers for kids" workshops
* Dr. David Menton, Ph.D Cell Biology, Brown U, Professor emeritus, AIG speaker (60+)
* Dr. Tommy Mitchell, MA Vanderbilt 1984, As of 2006 full time with AIG as speaker (40+)
* Dr. Terry Mortenson Ph.D history of geology, U of Coventry England, AIG speaker
* Michael Oard - Retired National Weather Service meteorologist, guest speaker (50+)
* Dr. Gary Parker - Ed.D biology/geology Ball State, AIG role unclear (60+)
* Dr. Georgia Purdom - Ph.D Molecular Genetics, Ohio State 2000; AIG full time researcher, speaker, writer
* Mike Riddle - AIG full time apologetics speaker
* "Uncle Robbie" Robinson - adjunct role, mostly kids ministries
* Geoff Stevens - training in physics and theology, ordained minister; AIG speaker
* Bob and Jan Thompson (30+)
* Dr. John Whitcomb - Ph.D theology, guest speaker (60+)


A very crude analysis: 28 people are listed, 13 with Ph.Ds of which 8 are in the Sciences. Of the 28 only a few are full time AIG staff and many of the better known names are only periodic guest speakers at the very most. Aside from a few new Ph.Ds that have been added to the staff there are few recognizable names that are dong any research which can be included in their new magazine. With the split from CMI, it is very obvious that AIG is stacked in favor of apologetics and teaching ministries with no interest in doing creation research. They are simply going to assimilate the data that other smaller organizations produce. This would seem to put ICR in a tough spot because they will be relied on more heavily for doing baseline research and yet AIG has been taking more and more of the YEC donation pool each and every year.

CREATION MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/45/63/
I'm not going to list all the CMI staff because the CMI site does a much better job of clearly stating what the roles of its people are in its organization. I think this is a very conscious decision and shows the cryptic nature of the AIG site. The latter site appears to be trying to hide the fact that really its all about Ken Ham. It doesn't seem unreasonable to believe CMIs claim that part of the reason for the breakup was because they felt that Ken Ham was too much the focus and that power needed to be distributed. The CMI web site makes it clear what the roles of individuals are. There are 14 individuals listed just for CMI in Australis of which 8 look to be working full time for CMI. Of these 14, nine have Ph.Ds in scientific disciplines and most of the other staff have science degrees as well. So the CMI staff is tipped toward science with some interest in basic creation research. I have only counted the staff in Australia but CMI has more people in more countries than AIG as well so they have greater potential as an organization.

The names on the CMI site are also quite familiar to anyone who knows the creation science literature as they include many who have been the most prolific writers in the movement. The claim that AIG makes that their new magazine will be better than the old one would look to be unjustified as they have clearly lost a large percentage of the more seasoned writers. I think they will struggle to church out material and when one realizes that Creation magazine was full of horrible research it will be interesting to see how ridiculous this new "Answers" magazine will get. My guess is that it will have very little real science content and will focus on apologetic issues.

Despite the lurch that AIG put CMI in with the way the split occurred, CMI probably has a good shot at becoming a dominant force again because of their experience and because they will drive the scientific discussion. AIG looks to me to be a very week at this point. They are completely dependent on the health of Ken Ham. Without him, that ministry would completely collapse.

What will be interesting to see in two years is the financial condition of both of these organization. AIG was bringing in some 14 million in revenues in 2005 compared to 7 (or 9, I can't remember right now) million for ICR. How much of an impact will the loss of the CMI component be felt? Probably not much this first year but it will be interesting to see what happens in coming years.

Where the effects of oil prices are felt first

Read this article for the sad story of Guinea where the effects of high oil prices are quite dramatic. This story is being played out all over the world but in places we rarely hear about. It could be argued that the cut backs in oil usage in these places are what are preventing shortages and even higher prices for us.
http://www.energybulletin.net/22775.html

Victoria Crater Wall reveals some of its history

Another spectacular shot of the crater (Victoria) by the Opportunity rover on Mars. Notice the rover tracks on the surface above the wall for scale. What is fascinating about the crater wall is that you can see (not as clear in this picture as in some others unfortunately) a delineation between jumbled up rocks, as evidenced by the random arrangement and multiple directions of layering in them, at the top and then layers of rock that are broken but have layers all the same direction. The later which are the lower 50% of the rocks in the picture probably represent the original rock layers, into which the meteorite that caused the crater, plunged. The upper jumbled rock are the rock that was through up by the collision and landed on the Martian surface. What is really amazing is that this jumble of rock now has a smooth surface which the rock is traveling over that is made of what looks to be a maze of smooth topped rocks. This brick-like surface seems to be the remains of rocks that have been completely smoothed off, probably by wind, over a long period of time creating this smooth plain of what was probably a jumble of rocks in the past. The processes that caused all of these various features are not all understood but it seems obvious that no short period of time was required to produce these features.

Flood Geology's Abominable Mystery

Flipping through the most recent issue of Nature I found an article about the various microbes that have been identified in 220 million-year-old amber from the southern alps. This article along with another published this year by the same group: “Triassic Amber of the Southern Alps” in Palaios (21:143-154) reminded me of how striking the distribution of fossils is in the fossil record. In particular what is striking is the types of pollen and other microorganismal remains in these amber droplets. All of the pollen (many thousands of pollen grains in hundreds of amber droplets) found is of Conifers with many spores of ferns and lycophytes the later of which are an uncommon group today. There is absolutely no evidence of pollen from angiosperms (flowering plants) in any of this amber.

This lack of angiosperm pollen I should think would be absolutely mind-boggling to any flood geologist. Over the years members of this list have spent much time exposing the problems with thick chalk deposits, clays, salt deposits etc.. as problems for flood geology. The segregation of cocoliths and other micro-organisms in the fossil record has also been made abundantly clear. While these may be clear examples to those who are familiar with the fossil record the enormity of the problems are difficult to communicate to the lay Christian. I personally find the lack of angiosperm pollen in the bottom two thirds of the fossil record to be one of the most dramatic and obvious problems and believe it may be an easier issue for some to grasp. I like to call it Flood Geology's Abominable Mystery. Clearly the Scriptures suggest that seeded plants existed prior to the Noaic flood and thus it seems reasonable to assume that angiosperm type pollen and angiosperms in general existed prior to the Flood. Today, angiosperm pollen can be found ubiquitously on the face of the earth. In fact it would be nearly impossible to find any soil that does not have angiosperm pollen in it. While there is a fair amount of conifer pollen from pines even in a pine forest one will not find pine pollen in exclusion of angiosperm pollen. Furthermore, it should be noted that angiosperm pollen is quite distinct from Gymnosperm pollen (For a nice overview of angiosperm pollen and theories of angiosperm origins please see: http://www.unifiedworlds.com/cornet/Why02/why.htm#Angiosperm)

Simply put, most people recognize that the vast majority of plants they see are flowering plants and these plants all produce pollen to some extent. Pollen is quite readily preserved in sediments and thus the fossil record hence the young earth creationist’s prediction would be that flowering plant pollen should be found throughout the entire geological column (even possibly in part of the column which were formed prior to death being introduced into the world!). However, this is clearly not the case and these amber pieces are just one of thousands of examples of evidence that flowering plant pollen is restricted to only the upper parts of the fossils record. How could sap have fallen from a tree, or even been on a tree, and have collected thousands of conifer pollen grains and fern spores but not have had a single flowering plant pollen grain get trapped in them? There are hundreds of other example of similar distinct distributions of fossils in the fossil record but I have always found this example of flowering plant distribution to one of the most dramatic and accessible to those that may not understand much about geology.

One YEC member’s acknowledgment of fossil succession:

In 2002, in a debate between Baumgardner and Oard over Catastrophic Plate Tectonics versus Vertical Tectonics, Baumgardner made one of the strongest admission of the reality of the fossil record that I have seen by any member of the YEC community. Oard tends to deny aspects of fossils succession and in this reply by Baumgarder quoted below, Baumgarder summarizes the ‘facts” that must be accommodated by any YEC model. To date, none of the models, including his, can account for these facts.

Quote from Baumgarder (TJ 16(1):78–81 April 2002, “A Constructive Quest for Truth”)

“As a final point, I would like to address Michael Oard’s general rejection of the concept of fossil succession in the geological record. Fossil succession represents an undeniable reality of what creationists and evolutionists alike observe in the rock strata. For example, we find no archaeocyathids, a vase-shaped coral-like organism with a double-walled calcareous skeleton, above middle Cambrian strata. We find no pentamerus brachiopods or cystoid crinozoans or psilopsid plants above Devonian strata, no graptolites above Mississippian strata, and no trilobites or rugose corals above Permian strata. On the other hand, we find no birds or angiosperms in strata lower than Jurassic, no mammals in strata lower than upper Triassic, no reptiles in strata lower than Pennsylvanian, and no amphibians in strata lower than Devonian. A similar unmistakable sequence of types also exists in the case of the microfossils.

One can personally examine the actual physical sequence of rock strata with their fossils, starting, for example, at the bottom of Grand Canyon and continuing up onto the Colorado Plateau at Bryce Canyon. Independent of the names and geological periods that have been assigned to them, these rock units indeed have genuine identity, can readily be tracked laterally for hundreds of miles, and display an unambiguous vertical fossil sequence for anyone who cares to look. Creation tours actually provide this opportunity on a frequent basis. Oard cannot provide a rational defence for his denial of such observable reality. Creationists have long recognized this ordering in the fossil record and have related it to the progressive destruction of ecological habitat as the transgressing waters of the Genesis Flood reached higher and higher topographical regions of the planet. Oard in his mind seems to be equating fossil succession to evolution, not understanding that evolution is merely the interpretation evolutionists are imposing on the observed data. If we as creationists are to make genuine progress in reconstructing the actual history of the Earth in light of God’s revelation, we simply cannot afford such denial and misrepresentation of crucially important information.”

Picture of amber (resin usually from a tree like a pine) showing spores and other organisms trapped inside. This amber has been identified from the Triassic period which is considered just over 200 million years old.

Photo: Guido Roghi/Nature

Tas Walker’s Biblical Geologic Model

In reading about the transformation of Creation Science Foundation into Creation Ministries International (there new site can be found at: www.creationontheweb.com/ ) I happened onto one of their affiliated sites which is Tas Walker’s Biblical Geology web page (www.biblicalgeology.net). I had forgotten about his particular model of all of earth’s geological history which he presented in the mid-90s. I don’t know how widespread his particular views are today, but one aspect of his view I don’t think gets enough critical attention. By attention I mean that, to me, Walker is an example of creationist consistently applying the YEC hermeneutic to all of history not just the Flood period.

If you look at the two PDF files at the bottom of the page (Charts of Biblical Geologic Models)

http://biblicalgeology.net/images/stories/resources/geological_model_2.pdf

http://biblicalgeology.net/images/stories/resources/geological_model_1.pdf

These charts clearly portray even the 6 day creation as being periods in which geological processes were active and produced features of today’s geological column. He appears to expect that the activities of each of the days of creation will have left recognizable features in the geological column. I was wondering if anyone had any further information regarding the following observations from these figures:

1) Given Walker seems to expect that the separation of the earth from the sea resulted in particular geological features does he also expect that these processes could somehow be explained by ordinary means like the Flood (of course God did it, but in the case of the Flood he seems to have used primary secondary causes)? He does refer to the events of the 3^rd day as “a geological action”.. “setting in train processes which either formed or modified the geological structures of the earth”

2) I notice that Walker notes that during the “Biotic” stage which corresponds to the 5^th and 6^th days that there could be “possible evidence of terrestrial life and death” in the sedimentary rocks formed on those days. I’m assuming then, that he would except that some biotic death occurred and that he then believes that death as a result of Adam’s sin resulted in the death of organism with breath. Is this the consensus of the YEC community now or is Walker going moving beyond the older views?

To me, I would think that this attempt to bring the entire geological column under a model that attempts to posit the formation of vast portions of the geological column in a matter of days, compared to the hundreds of days potentially during the flood to produce a fraction of the geological column, seems highly unlikely. In fact, I have asked some lay Christians about their views of geology and many will comment that flood geology seems to make sense but when I then ask if they think it is reasonable that extensive portions of the geological column formed on the third day of creation even that sounds like too much and they say that God just did it. Of course I’ve asked how, and the response always is that it was all supernatural. I think Walker is just providing a natural extension of where YEC though leads. To me it is just another case of showing how untenable the whole edifice is though. JD

New Impacts on Mars

This image from the Mars Global Surveyor shows the same spot on the Mars surface from the year 2001 above and 2006 below. Obviously there has been a meteorite impact. It will be interesting in future years to image this same spot and to see if there is any fading of the dark sediments that were showered onto the surface. That part of Mars has many many older craters that are nearly completely eroded over time and are covered by a thin layer of dust.

Extent of Saturn's Rings

Amazing false-color view of Saturn's rings showing the distribution of ice crystals far out from the usually visible rings. Picture was taken by the Cassini space craft.

Update on CMI/Answers In Genesis Split

Creation Ministries International has recently updated their web page about the AIG split and include a very detailed (despite the title: “brief chronology of events”) that is a truly revealing look behind the scenes and should shed some light on recent speculation about the underlying reasons behind the split.  Interestingly, it appears the root cause of the division which began almost 2 years ago now is was the suggestion that AIG-USA should disperse power among more individuals rather than placing all decision making into the hands of Ham.  The end result of the split is that Ham clearly has gained an even greater hold on power and is virtually autonomous in all decisions at this point.  I fear that AIG, which is the most influential creationist’s organizations will only become more extreme in its beliefs and tactics going forward.  It will be interesting to see if some of big names that have supported his “ministry” will remain as loyal or if this will cause some re-evaluation of support in the future. It is clear that AIG/Ham are doing everything they can to keep the events of the past year out of the limelight and are acting as if nothing has happened. They are now shipping their new magazine to all subscribers of Creation Mag calling it a upgrade when really it a replacement for a journal that is still being produced and for which subscribers rightly should be continuing to receive.  

 

The chronology of events really is a must read to gain some insight into how these operations work.  I expect that if enough this raises enough public awareness that we may see a response from AIG with a corresponding chronology.

Links:

All documents http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/4769/

Chronology: http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/dispute/Chronological_orderSHORT.pdf

 

Incredible Picture of Cliffs on Mars

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/PSP/PSP_001334_2645/color.html

This image is one of many new images from the newest Mars Satelite and shows the amazing layered sediments on Mars. Click on Image for much higher resolution picture. What this, and many other images at the link above, reveal is the diverse past of Mars as it is obvious that the many layers are constructed of different textured sediments probably due to different compositions and methods of deposition.