Re: Plate tectonics - Back to the FAQS

From: don findlay (don_at_tower.net.au)
Date: 02/03/05 

Date: 3 Feb 2005 11:43:26 -0800

Q16 But surely the framework is very important, surely that's what
steers the whole ship?
A16 Of course it is, ...but it's in the nature of science that it
must be a consensus thing. It has to be a group effort. Even though
one person might initially construct it, it's only valid when consensus
ratifies it, and appropriates it for itself. The framework is a
consensus 'thing', it is not for the domain of the individual. That's
why nobody answers when anyone asks a question that doesn't quite fit
within the schedule. It is not given to any one person to answer.
Everybody looks to somebody else to take the initiative. Science,
when you boil it down, is very much a headless chook.

Q17. No puns please, this is a serious business.
A17. Is it? Well, anyhow, it is. And it's obviously where
science breaks down, because that's the conundrum science always has to
face - how to integrate new stuff into the consensus milieu when peer
review is about maintaining the status quo, maintaining the goose that
lays the golden egg which is the consensus view which presides like a
deity over the headless chook of science, ..the chook that spends most
of its time running about in circles, pecking here and scratching
there with its cocked inquisitive eye, and is happy doing just that.
That's what it was born to do, ..that and lay eggs. It doesn't know
what direction is. It's secure in its pen, presided over by consensus.
  It doesn't even know that all the other chooks have no direction
either. It doesn't know the meaning of the word. To it, the farmyard
with all its pecking and scratching and order and hemmed-in-ness, and
its attraction for pecking each others' bums is simply what it's all
about.

Q18. So what is it all about?
A19. Putting things together

Q20. And 'chooks' as you call them don't do that?
A21. No, they either scatter it around or eat it, and then give it
back in a nice round gob, a little mirror of the golden deity. A sort
of, "Look everybody what I can do." "I can do it too." Don't ask me
about the roosters ruling the roost. They're only ***-o'-the-walk in
their own pen trampling their own (and everyone else's) ***. Sure
they make a lot of noise in it, but really they have nothing to say
beyond their own echo.

Q21. So, back to the geology. What is on the outside? You were
talking about transform faults.
A21. Yes that's right. I was saying there's nothing independent
about anything 'plate' when all transforms are locked together away
from the tiny ridge-ridge part of their length, and 'plate movement' is
all-of-a-piece, i.e., when the Earth's mantle crust is a single plate.
And that makes a mockery of "the Earth is broken into a number of
plates". There is only effectively a single 'plate' - the mantle plate
with a crack in it. Well, ...two, but you know what I mean,
..basically it's all still hanging together as transform faults show.
It's never been broken up into "a number of plates that move
independently about" that crash and collide and throw up mountains.
Anyone can see that, so I don't what they're trying on, but they've
been doing it for a while, and everyone like sheep follows them.

Q22. Well, what about convection? Everybody knows the Earth's
convecting. What do you have to say about that?
A22. I don't care if the Earth is convecting. It's not an issue.
It's got nothing to do with the deformation of the crust when the
overall architecture of that is spin-related. It's a nice simple
concept and all that - hot Earth inside, cold Earth outside, .. so -
the mantle convects. So, what? There's nothing about the geology
that reflects that. And anyhow plate tectonics has shifted the
goalposts at least twice on that score, from it being the heat inside
that drives stuff up and trundles the chilled skin (with the continents
on top) along - like on a conveyor belt) to it being the coldness in
space that drives it. And it's not enough to say it's just the
temperature difference. Temperature difference just moves things one
way - in the direction of the temperature difference. There has to be
a driver for it to cycle and recycle. Plate tectonics makes no
distinction whether the boat is pulling the wake, or the wake is
pushing the boat. And anyhow. It's not an issue, when subduction
zones can be interpreted as overriding, and when transform faults
define "the Earth being broken into a number of plates" as nonsense.
As a concept, the Earth can convect all it likes. It changes nothing
about the fundamental empirical errors of plate tectonics when related
to the geology.

Q23. Twice, you said "twice". If that's the first, what's the
second?
A23. Potassium as a source for the radioactive heat that drives
convection. The half-life ran out long ago, and whatever's happening,
it's still going on. But that's the sort of half-baked ad hoc
nonsense plate tectonics thinks it can get away with.

Q24. Mountain belts then. If the Earth's crust is only one plate,
and there are no plates colliding, how do you get mountains?
A24. Yes, I used to think that too, about collision and mountains -
until I thought about it, that is, .. You have to understand what
mountains actually are, and historically how the ideas of crustal
collision giving mountains came about through extrapolating what could
be observed in the older exhumed parts of the crust to the idea of
horizontal tectonic force being related to crustal movement, ..folds,
schistosity and all of that, and then how the concept hijacks the
facts. It's a nice idea that mountains are thrown up by the crumpling
of the crust in plate collisions, but it simply doesn't mesh with
geological reality: the high mountains of the world are made of strata
that are flat-lying, and not crumpled. What's more, mountains, ..high
tracts of the Earth's crust, are just the obverse of weathering, they
are what's remaining when weathering strips the crust back down to
sea-level. There's nothing intrinsically 'mountainous' about them
other than the scars that the weather inflicts on them, so you might as
well say that mountains are artifacts of weather and climate, as that
they are aritifacts of tectonic force. The real question relates to
what is it that uplifts the crust to make plateaus, ..plateaus that
characteristically retain the flat stratification of the crust over
wide regions. What is it that uplifts the crust around these zones
known as 'subdution zones', if it is not "the Earth being divided into
a number of plates that move independently about"? What, exactly,
are subduction/ overriding zones, and what exactly is happening, when
there is uplift, but no collision?

Q25 And you've got some answers to that?
A25. Yup! ...me and some others, .... The Earth's getting bigger,
... It's as obvious as the existence of the ocean floors. Truth's
kind of like that. It hits you square between the eyes, once you stop
imposing your own overlay, stop trying to be clever and look around
you. Read about it. Why not? <http://users.indigo.net.au/don/> The
implications are quite mind-boggling. Geologically speaking it's a
very exciting time, ...every bit as exciting as the move away from flat
Earth and geocentrisim.

Q26. Before you go,. ..So why is the Earth getting bigger?
Q26 Dunno. You tell me. I'm just here to tell you it is.
There's a lot of people much better equipped than me to answer that
one, ...or anyone on the geological side of the fence for that matter.
All they need is encouragement to look at the question. But don't hold
your breath. It seems that in physics they're every bit as much
headless chooks under the stare of the golden deity of consensus, as
they are in geology.

Q27. Thank you.
A.27. You're welcome.