(Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )
Since we're talking about closing the Pacific being the yardstick whereby we can regard or disregard Earth expansion I think I'll make an observation about the language Plate Tectonics uses to bamboozle folk. I'm looking for a quote that highlights the sort of shennanigans that advertisers, spruikers, pollies and propagandists get up to when they want to sell you a line and hope you'll buy it.
They say when a controversial topic gets heated it's not long before Hitler gets a mention. Well, I'm going to kick it off right here with an aphorism attributed to his propagandist-in-chief, Mr Goebbels. No doubt he learned it from somebody else (it does have that certain ring of foreverness about it), but he achieved a certain notoriety for proficiency in its execution, so he can probably lay most claim to it. You know the one, ..about the big lie: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
But the rest of it goes like this: "The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Mr Goebbels had the interest of his boss in mind, and no doubt some aspirations of his own, and was talking about state control and the military situation of the day, but the way science is organised through state funding I reckon there are close parallels between state control and the control of Big Science, and the need for Big Lies, that we need to be very wary of.
Now, I must make it very clear that I think state funding for science is an *excellent* thing, but what I think is *not* an excellent thing is the way that science (and the control) can get corrupted when the funding gets appropriated by what we know as the peer review system, when Science gets pushed out of the driving seat by the hoon Consensus, and the investigative byways of science get taken off the destination board and replaced by a joyride of yahoos going one place only - the public purse, .and intent on kicking up as much bulldust as necesssary on the way. When it becomes a gravytrain, loaded up with as many hangers-on as it can be packed into it, that's when it gets a bit iffy. When that happens then the whole notion (indeed the whole intention) of the public getting vlaue for its money goes for a burton. The peer review system never works well when there is power involved (church, police, judiciary, state). Why should we think science is any different? Are they all saints or something?
Anyway, ...the words of Plate Tectonics and bamboozling folk. The one that keeps cropping up is 'shrinking', ..as in "The Pacific Ocean is shrinking". And this is the quote I found that is probably most apt to describe it:- "A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years." (~Wendell L. Willkie), the good catchword in this case (and Plate Tectonics is full of them) being 'shrinking'.
Now, .maybe not everybody has read 'Alice in Wonderland', but most will probably be familiar with Alice shrinking when she drank the stuff in the bottle. But I think any parent would have a hard job convincing even a child of four that that she's shrinking when Mum pulls the blankets over her before kissing her goodnight and switching off the light.
Strangely however, it seems to work with adults and Plate Tectonics and the Pacific, ..about the drift of the continents covering it up and forming the back-arc basins on the western side and American override covering it up on the on the eastern side. The Pacific ocean apparently is "shrinking" as the continents drift over it. Like the Moon shrinks maybe, when the shadow of the Earth passes over it.
"No, Mr Galileo, .. that does *not* mean the Earth is round. The Moon is simply shrinking in a funny shape. Now take your very nice piece of optical glass and piss off and do something useful with it, rather than trying to make people believe that it means the Earth is round and that everything on that bit down there is upside down.
"Mum, will I disappear when you switch off the light? " "No, m'dear, but you will certainly not exist if I am not here to see you."
What sort of bullshit do 'scientists' think they are subjecting us to in the name of being clever?, and asking us to pay for it? It's doubtful if children of impressionable years would actually fall for that stuff, but going by the google - http://tinyurl.com/25rpme2 - up Plate tectonics does the same thing with adults in full daylight, and has no trouble getting them to buy the shrinking one for the Pacific , and other such nonsenses (such as the ca-Chunk factor) similarly, ten for a penny, ..and reckon they're getting a bargain.
Is this what we're up against? That the "Pacific Ocean is shrinking"? .. And what then, ..continually getting bigger - expanding, like a balloon - somewhere else? So it's continually ballooning out over there and shrinking over here? And there are two processes then that Plate Tectonics must explain - one being how the Earth manages to expand in one place and shrink in another? And in between it does what then .."spreads"? And this is all because of 'convection'? "More research is needed", perhaps, ..to go with the 'Wilson Cycles' ..the very clever stuff where the Earth keeps renewing itself by disappearing up it own, ..you know, ..fiery ring. (Hey, ..fancy putting our name to that one..)
If there is one thing Plate Tectonics is full of, with its plates and subduction, shrinking and spreading, ridge-push and slab-pull, roll-back and blob tectonics, it is more weasel words than an insurance policy. For when it comes to liability for explaining what it purports, every invented word is a dodge, an avoidance, a disingenous ploy to circumvent what is clearly apparent to anyone with half a brain - that the ocean floors are young, that they have distended the continents, and that there are no grounds *whatsoever* for the invention of a mythical Panthalassa "that must be destroyed, for otherwise the Earth would be getting bigger, which is nonsense because we cannot think of any possible way how this can be so, and because *we* know what we're talking about we're going to invent subduction - to shrink the ocean floors over here to compensate for them getting bigger everywhere else."
In other words - weasel words, ..to cover up the hubris of ignorance and to justify a disinclination (or an inability maybe?) to engage honestly with the geological facts. A probability with a certain historical precedent that has passed into lore:-
"Whenever ideas fail, men invent words." ( ~Martin H. Fischer)
"Language forces us to perceive the world as man presents it to us." (~Julia Penelope)
"Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is." (~Walter Kaufmann
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."( ~George Orwell)
I like George Orwell. He says it well. I see he died in January 1950. I wonder what he might have had to say about Mr Hitler and his pal, Mr Goebbels when it came to the point of clear language. While probably not in overly enthusiastic agreement with their declared *intent, I'll bet he couldn't fault the *content.
(Plate Tectonics - The Big *Con*.)
[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/ ]
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