Re: Plate tectonics - Back to the FAQS

From: Hank Oredson (horedson_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 02/04/05 

Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 01:24:44 GMT

Tell me about that factor of ten to the seventh power.
Or perhaps ten to the ninth power, as another poster pointed out. 

-- 
  ... Hank
http://home.earthlink.net/~horedson
http://home.earthlink.net/~w0rli
"don findlay" <don@tower.net.au> wrote in message 
news:1107459806.742600.213990@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> 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.
>