Plate Tectonics is a Theory

Earth expansion is a fact
( .. an animated description of "what you see is what you get" .. )

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Earth expansion is an observation of how things actually are, contextualised through crustal evolution over geological time since the Mesozoic. Plate Tectonics is a hypothesised denial of this on grounds of "No known mechanism". It is nothing less than a celebration of ignorance.

1.  Destruction of the ocean floors. We might (with Earth expansion) say that Plate Tectonics should begin with the creation /extrusion /emplacement of the ocean floors, because after all something must be created before it can be destroyed. 

But creation is not where Plate Tectonics begins.  Nor does it really begin with the destruction of the ocean floors. It begins with the *perceived need* for their destruction (J.O.)  It's a subtle difference that shifts the emphasis from the fact to the perception of the fact. The destruction itself is arguable, but for Plate Tectonics the *perceived necessity* for destruction is very real.

So the case for Plate Tectonics does not rest in the facts themselves, nor exactly in the way they are interpreted (though this is somewhat closer), ..  but in the way they could be perceived to be structured in the first place - *IF...* (and it's a very big 'IF' ) in order that they *can* be interpreted as desired.

The way I read it (as outlined in earlier posts), it begins exactly where the website of the USGS says it begins, .. with Harry Hess's *surmise*, .. as follows:-

"..The size of the Earth has not changed significantly during the past 600 million years, and very likely not since shortly after its formation 4.6 billion years ago. The Earth's unchanging size implies that the crust must be destroyed at about the same rate as it is being created, as Harry Hess surmised." [emphasis - df.  ]  ( http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/understanding.html  and scroll down to "Convergent boundaries".)

Thus are facts nuanced (by presenting 'surmise' as a stated 'fact' of unchanging size.  The foundation is not in the body of the paragraph, but in the last four words - "as Harry Hess surmised" (that the crust must be destroyed at about the same rate as it is being created) - and they are hoping nobody notices the segue. It's quite possible the author him/herself didn't notice, though I doubt it.  Syntax like that is a quite slippery thing to construct. The Wikipedia succeeds in being more factual and says it this way :-

"Plate tectonics < ....... > is a scientific theory which describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere. The theory builds on the older concepts of continental drift, developed during the first decades of the 20th century (one of the most famous advocates was Alfred Wegener), and was accepted by the majority of the geoscientific community when the concepts of seafloor spreading were developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s."

 ..which acknowledges that Plate Tectonics was based on earlier ideas of Holmes and numerous others (and not on a surmise of Hess) - that convection was the driver of continental separation.  It followed Hess's rejection of the implication of the geological evidence [presented by Carey] that the earth had expanded, which would "solve three of my [Hess's] greatest difficulties regarding the evolution of the ocean basins."

 Note that Hess didn't reject the evidence, .. he rejected the implication that followed from it re. enlargement as "philosophically unsatisfying", and therefore substituted the *need* for destruction of the ocean floors to match their creation (creation being all about expansion). No-one has contradicted Carey's case for expansion on geological grounds, only on the claim of "no mechanism".

The underpinning of Plate Tectonics was therefore not based on empirical fact but on Holmes' (and others') theory of convection,. The comment that  "crust being destroyed (at subduction zones) at the same rate as it is created  means that the Earth is not increasing in size", is entirely  hypothesis, and the circular argument is obvious, which incidentally renders Plate Tectonics equivalent to Junk Science. (Junk science is when the initial assumption (not the data) is used as the supporting pillar to reach the  conclusion inherent in the assumption.)

Many people were working in the new field of geophysics, and framed their results according to Hess's surmise (cited above), thus skewing the emphasis of the findings away from geology.  This is the reason why Plate Tectonics (as a theory of convection) supplanted continental drift as something new when it wasn't.  The way Hess in his 1962 paper dismissed Holmes's work on convection reads as a classic example of appropriation.  The problems he was trying to address in relation to the ocean floors were by no means new :-

"In reality, this question had been solved already by numerous scientists during the forties and the fifties, like Arthur Holmes, Vening-Meinesz, Coates and many others: The crust in excess disappeared along what were called the oceanic trenches where so-called "subduction" occurred." ...  (link)

What he was doing in adopting this was avoiding having to face the implications of the data of continental retrofits and much else, which supported a smaller Earth as illustrated by Carey.  And he was not alone. The complicity of the entire geophysics community in Hess's appropriation is apparent from the reference in the Wikipedia, that Hess's paper was "for a time the single most referenced work in solid-Earth geophysics".
(Continuing the above quote..) :-

" ... Therefore, when various scientists during the early sixties started to reason on the data at their disposal regarding the ocean floor, the pieces of the theory fell quickly into place. Wikipedia ref." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics
    "Mid-ocean ridge spreading and convection"

I don't believe the "various scientists" did accept it on the data, because the essential facts on which those pieces of the theory "fell quickly into place" described creation of the ocean floors, which were all about the Earth getting bigger (expansion).  Geophysicists were effectively taking the fall-back position of adopting the theory-of-the-day of convection that for nearly two decades had been first-year text-book geology  - and (riding on the back of sea-floor spreading) calling it new.  I believe *this* was the reason why geologists "adopted it" -  because they already accepted it as a norm.  They didn't "adopt" it at all (on new data); they already owned it.  They must have, because as a theory it had been standard text-book geology for nearly two decades.

The phrase "quickly falling into place" seems to be designed to gloss over this point, with the purpose of talking up new data of the ocean floors. Media likes to be part of  'new developments' - especially ones related to new fields emerging from prestigious institutions.  In today's terms  the "falling quickly into place" was a 'media beat-up'.

Thus was laid the track down which the brand new gravy train was about to roll.  What was being proposed in principle, in terms of theory at least (convection) was no more than people already knew from the work of Wegener and Holmes.  Certainly the facts emerging from the ocean floors were substantial, but that substance, first and foremost, supported expansion.  Destruction was a device, an avoidance, a ploy ( /cop-out), to avoid having to face what could not be talked about, i.e.,  everything that the criticism of "no mechanism" could be aimed at.  As a result and with a consensus assured, the emphasis was towards shoring up and confirming the meme that people already knew, rather than (as science demands) its falsification.

It was a classic example of the 'meme machine', .. an appeal to people's intuitive understanding of the way tectonics worked using crumpling tablecloths to describe mountain building, and soup-in-a-pot to describe convection :- "Everybody already knows what we mean, so we don't have to explain ourselves very well.  In fact we don't even have to explain ourselves at all; all we have to say is, "everybody knows" ".  And from then on, slogans will do. 

In fact those subduction zones need very close scrutiny, which, in their reference to 'flat subduction' and "overriding" Plate Tectonics is only now beginning to do.  "Flat subduction" does not return oceanic lithosphere to the deep mantle.  And with no return to the deep mantle there is no convection, only spreading (/"growth") and decoupling of the crust from the mantle, . which is expansion.  Sea-floor spreading is the fact.  The theory to explain how so much has occurred is still not known, but the geological reality is a powerful incentive to get to know.

Hence the *necessity* of subduction, with all its contradictions, for without it, Plate Tectonics is in the same ("no mechanism") position as Earth expansion.  But the 'soup-in-a-pot' convection model has no currency in the exchange with Earth expansion, based on factual evidence in the alternative blog (which Plate Tectonics ignores).

In short, Earth expansion includes facts that Plate Tectonics omits, and explains facts for which Plate Tectonics provides only self-contradictory conundrums.  By the very nature of scale and time of parameters in Earth science, predictions are specious. The only valuable prediction is that Plate Tectonics will naturally evolve to Earth expansion as 'observation + logic' trumps theory founded on "philosophical un-satisfaction", denial of evidence,  ignore-ance of what can be directly observed, and skewed perceptions of how things could be otherwise - *IF*.


[ See also blog for Earth expansion at :-
http://earthexpansion.blogspot.com/]

Big Lie #11 - Mountain building by plate collision

..In which we continue the dismantling of Plate Tectonics by the rejection of so-called 'fold mountains'


Current consensus recognises five types of mountains.  Not being at school any more I can't tell if this is so or if it is just a joke. Here they are:-  1. volcanoes (which are self-evident examples of a 'built' mountain), 2, 'dome' mountains apparently pushed up by igneous intrusion, 3. horst mountain formed by an uplifted block of crust (or a crustal block bounded by downfaults), 4.  fold mountains formed by elevation by crustal crumpling, and 5. plateau mountains, formed by erosion of plateaus.  This last is frequently referred to as 'pseudo-mountains' because they are a topographic curiosity formed by weather, and not orogenic aspects of crustal formation.  Not real mountains at all, in other words (in the consensus view).

Now, this classification strikes me as odd to say the least - so it could be a joke, though if it is then with 25,800 google-entries on the net at the time of posting, it's a bit stale by now.  I certainly don't remember there being any such division when I was at school (though it's been a while) - a mountain was just a mountain. What's the deal ?  It's a land form, not a geological one any more than a hill, a valley, ..a plain, ..a cliff etc etc., (..a waterfall?).  We wouldn't dream of classifying hills or cliffs as 'geological' features.  Besides, ever since school, I've always thought hills and mountains were formed by erosion - by rivers cutting down the land, forming ravines, gorges, valleys, and finally, with what was left as attrition continued, mountains, hills, and finally a peneplained surface, where no more erosion was possible.

Well, ..weren't they? ..   ??     Apparently no.  It seemed that was only half the story.  The other half lay in the reason for the elevation of the land in the first place, which was deemed to be due to crustal crumpling by continental collision. ..hence 'fold mountains', while the other lot, 'plateau mountains', those formed by the erosion of a peneplained surface, were designated not really mountains at all (since they were formed by erosion).

Now, .. it used to be wrongful practice in geology to name elements according to one's perception of how those elements came to be formed; 'genetically' so to speak (rather than morphologically, i.e., how they physically are).  I guess, however the first classification, 'volcano', seems to be ok. It's in that middle ground, being formed by a build-up of volcanic detritus, which is 'geological stuff', rather than being formed by weather - like the other mountains.  Nevertheless, the word refers to the physical description of the edifice, not the fact that it can spew lava.  It may seem a bit like splitting hairs, but it is an important distinction within the broader perspective that differentiates taxonomic aspects from genetic ones. Dinosaurs for example are classified by their descriptive characteristics of size and bone structure, not because they could run fast or ate meat or vegetables.  The second is an inference dependent of the former.

Similarly in tectonics. So we shall set aside 'dome' and 'block' mountains, in order to consider the two main categories, which  are 'fold' mountains and 'plateau' mountains.  However the caution just mentioned regarding taxonomy v. genesis has come to be overlooked by Plate Tectonicists to the extent that 'fold mountains' (23,600entries) are considered today, not to describe mountains that look like folds, but mountains that are formed by folding.  And 'plateau mountains' are thought to be formed by a continuation of the erosion that formed that land surface. The second is true, the first is not; with cursory examination it can easily be seen that both are really the same thing, namely 'plateau mountains'.

As we have seen it is simply wrong to link folding with mountain 'building', and it requires no more than a casual Google Earth traverse of the Earth's surface to show it to be wrong.  All regions of the Earth from whence 'fold mountains' are described, are in fact eroded plateaus ('plateau mountains').  Once upon a time it took adventurous people to climb mountains and look to the horizon to verify this, ..and then write about the implications of what they were seeing using the concepts of orogensis, taphrogenesis, and epeirogenesis, developed over decades of study of regional geology. These days children can do it with the passing ease of Google Earth before playtime, and even though they may not easily understand the meaning of those terms, they can at least easily see the common heights of the mountain tops, and with a little help from the teacher and a sketch on the blackboard, know that the mountains have been carved from a planed surface, and not formed by the folding.

Fig.1. Blackboard sketch.  Mountains formed by erosion; folding predates the erosional surface.  The jagged surface of mountains is unrelated to the folding in the rock.

So, if children can do it (before playtime), .. (see that mountains wherever we look are erosional features carved from an earlier peneplained surface), then what are Plate Tectonicists up to, maintaining the myth of colliding plates heaving and shoving and pushing up mountains? Which is it?  Are mountains formed by pushing up?  Or eroding down?  And which authority would *you* rely on to tell you? - those putting it around that mountains are formed by the collision of colliding plates?  Schoolchildren before playtime?  Me?  Or your own eyes, as you too load Google Earth, and see for yourself - that the surfaces from which the mountain belts are carved were once flat?

What they up to?  What they are doing is a combination of building on sand (taking the simplisitic picture of rumpling tablecloths as an analogy of folding that they learned as children), telling lies by omission (ignoring the peneplanation that typifies the high tracts of the planet in order to support their contrived model of Plate Tectonics), and drawing the long bow.  They are relying on institutional kudos to pull Joe Public's leg to get grant money to research faeries up the garden path with smushy chicks.  Are we to believe that they do not know that a conformity of rocky peaks derives from a once-flat surface? ... either peneplained or directly exhumed from the sea?  Look, ..these are guys at the most prestigious institutions in the world, and they are ignoring the fundamentals of erosion that are taught virtually in primary school, and using that ignore-ance to obstruct investigation into the most profound question of the Earth sciences that's been around for the last more than sixty years, "What is it, that is causing a massive blowout of the planet to create the oceans of the world?"  And at the same time, at the cost of billions of dollars of taxpayer's money,  they are giving oxygen to the supposed rationale for investigating 'Plate Tectonics' on other planets, .. when through the imaginary lens of so-called 'fold mountains' it doesn't even exist on this one.

( "We are a community of scientists."  ..  ?? )

That's big bikkies if you ask me (the lies, and the wasted expenditure in the name of so-called 'science').  And you thought it was just the financial sector that could work out ways how to rip you off?   How do you feel about that, .. spending your money just to shore up their ignore-ance.

'Fold mountains' ?  ...   The term epitomises the nonsense of Plate Tectonics that was an adaptation of a convenient and naive sketch of the analogy between folding and crumpling tablecloths learned when they were children before school. They are hoping the same meme will help it work on you too - like pot-of-soup convection, ..both of them contrived to by-pass a problem that was (and still is) profound, which was (/is),  "What is the process that has caused the outward movement of the Earth's surface from an equilibrium condition on the ocean floors or of zero erosion near sea-level, to the highest elevation on the planet, ..and that accounts for the extrusion of the mantle that is everywhere young?"

An Earth that is expanding provides the answer, and, in the context of the choice that faced Plate Tectonicists in the beginning   -  the only answer.  But no, geophysicists back then chose to look at the problem from the oceanic side, from aboard the Big Ship trolling the oceans with a black box which they believed would tell them what to think, .. and *philosophised*  in a 'whilst-this-and-whilst-that' way, about tablecloths, mountains and the continental crust, rather than looking at the problem from the continental (field /geological) side (of geology and geomorphology - of mountains, plateaus, and peneplains, ..of orogensis, taphrogenesis, and epeirogenesis).  And (dammit!), they just plain got it wrong.  What doozies!! (?)  Well, not for the bad guess, ..anybody can get the flip of a heads-or-tails wrong, ..but for their determination to maintain that wrong in the face of the obvious right.

"...We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."  ~  George Orwell.

Bang, bloody bang.

"Are they nuts?"
"Have to be."
"Why?"
"Sitting in the dark."
"Sucking blood?"
"Yeah.."
"Weird people."

No, .. not nuts, ..not weird, ..just cognisant of the need to build and maintain a consensus in order to ease publication /grants /careers.  Is that science?  For the bereft many, sadly it is. 

So take a trip on Google Earth and check out the high surfaces of the planet from which mountains are carved (not 'built'), and find them to be incised peneplains.  These days children can do it in class (before playtime).  But to understand why Plate Tectonicists cannot, we have to recognise the decades of baggage that have to be off-loaded, but which they cannot do without copping a whole lot of egg-on-face, because their mistake was apparent from the beginning. For "philosophical reasons" they deliberately chose the option that contradicted the geological facts, rather than further investigate those facts.

(" When thoughts, logic and facts have the potential to humiliate and frighten, they will always be ignored. "  ~ Mister Supernatural )

Fig.2  The uplifted floor of the Upper Triassic sea, known now as the Italian Alps ('Dolomites').  The floor was already essentially flat, so, ..minimal erosion on emergence.  You can see it, can't you (thanks to Google), .. tide out, the water washing over it.  It almost still looks like a rocky coral shore, (It's been eroded a bit since of course.)   :))

However it is not the *mistake* that will be the future focus of attention, but the reasons why so many could get it so wrong and for so long (and still persist in doing so).   In short, Plate Tectonics will go down as the biggest con-job in the history of Earth science, if not science as a whole.

Fig.3. Close up of the rocky shore above.  Makes the sea-shore a bit more difficult to see because the sea-shore is a point in time, whereas the build-up is over many millions of years.  ("Build-up?" Do we mean this is how mountains are built?  No, .. but by the logic of Plate Tectonics it might as well be,)  (image courtesy of wikipedia )

[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/  ]

Dracula's Blood cuts the mustard?

 This is not about the science
( .. It's about the facts not cutting it)

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If I were to write a nice little smiley note to all believers in Plate Tectonics in a bid for hearts and minds, .. you know, to win friends and influence people, this is what I would say:-

"There is light at the end of the tunnel of your philosophical dissatisfaction. There is a simpler paradigm. Your trials, ..your tribulations, are over. Your calls for "more research needed", are now thankfully redundant. Ocam's razor, sharp as it ever was, is telling you all conundrums besetting Plate Tectonics are explained in a single cut. The mustard has been sliced and you are saved the bother. The jigsaw is done. There *is* no more research needed. You can all go home."

"So far so good?"
"Nah, mate, ..failed the first hurdle."
"What?  what's the first hurdle?"
"The heart - you just drove a big wooden stake right through it."
"How? Isn't it good to have a problem solved? 
"Did you come down in the last shower of rain or what?"
"How?"
"Coz there's a whole lot of people whose whole existence is all about solving problems, doing jigsaws, and they just love doing them in the dark.  Don't you know?  It's their job to keep telling everybody just how dark the place is.  Shine a light on them with a solution and it's worse than cock-crow to Dracula."
"You mean they're not interested in solutions?"
" 'Course not. You tell them the jigsaw's done an', .. well, .. what are they going to do for an encore?"
"Well, couldn't they do something with Earth expansion instead? .. in the daylight so to speak?"
"You mean after telling everybody how fascinating the dark is when doing jigsaws?"

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(I guess that's it, isn't it - people expressing their  philosophical dissatisfaction with daylight are hardly likely to change hats at the drop of one and advertise it just because somebody switches a light on, ..are they? )

"Does that mean I'm wasting my time, .. trying to wheedle Plate Tectonics into seeing it's trolling around a dead Dracula?"
" 'Fraid so."
"Is that why they're not speaking to me?"
" 'Fraid so."
"Blood?"
"Yeah.."
"Jeez, ..if that was me, ..I'd ditch it like a shot."
"Yeah, ..but not everybody's an empirical rationalist enchanted with daylight. There's a lot of currency in dead Draculas, provided you can keep them dark and the blood warm. There's a whole industry peddling them."
"EeeEEyukK.  What's the going rate?"
"A sinecure, ..a lifetime's career, mate."
"Wot?  ..Sucking blood in the dark?
"Yeah, ..in the dark.."

(Plate Tectonicists - pushing shit uphill maybe a better way of putting it, .. or rather, up a mountain.  Condemned forever to have the shit (and the mountain) roll back down on them.  The ancient Greeks tell a good story about that, but didn't quite have that additional bit about the mountain falling down.  Guess they didn't know then about the Earth expanding and the propensity for mountains to do exactly that or they would have added it to the plot, ..given the uphill strugglers being such a mendacious mob deserving of burial.)

"Gee, that's no way to win friends and influence people."
"Wot?"
"Telling them they're a mob of mendacious bloodsuckers."
"So what do you suggest I do call them,"
"Well, be nice. Tell them their labours are appreciated."
"But they're not."
"Tell them anyway."
"They'd see right through me."
"No they wouldn't.  They'd just love people to tell them what a great job they're doing."
"Sucking blood?"
"*Withdrawing* blood. It's to prevent illness and disease and promote the healthy balance of humors."
"*I* don't think it's very funny."
"They've been doing it for at least two thousand years."
"Yeah?  Don't people die?"
"Well, .. that's exactly the point:- Really spectacular prevention wouldn't you say?"
"Sure, .. I'll say.  Ok, I suppose we can build around that, ..about death being a spectacular prevention of illness and disease."
"Good.  You're getting the picture."
"What about lobotomy, can we throw that in as well?"
" <  &%&^#$$@ 




Plate Tectonics bleeds Joseph Blogs
(The 'facts' - not cutting it) 

[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com.au/  ]

Hill Buildies, the Footsoldiers of Plate Tectonics

If I were a student doing geology, coming at it cold so to speak (well, not exactly cold because I would have seen stuff about it on the telly, .. I would have been primed as it were, already 'set up'), ..I would find Plate Tectonics highly appealing because I would know a bit about it already (.. having been set up).  I would be positively disposed.  I would have already internalised it, appropriated it as 'mine'.  I would own it, ..and would view anybody who tried to disabuse me of my internalised belief as a crank. (..Must be, going against what everybody already knows to be true) (I saw a program on it on telly after all.)

Well, it's how it works isn't it?   Get the kids.  Get them young.  Set them up.  Bob's your uncle.  It's how it's done.  From the military to suicide bombers [1] . [2], ..where's the difference? (which is most organised?) (Which is most committed?) It's the whole point of school, isn't it,  .. to prepare children for the world in which we live.

Just reading an article here where it says about 13% of teachers advocating creationism in the classroom. and (which is more disturbing) the cautious 60% afraid to let their advocacy show. How, among that lot, do we encourage the child to develop to independent rational adult assessment, when we drag the baggage of childhood impressionability and belief along?

Now I don't know anything much about biology, nor quantum mechanics, but if I were in a classroom as a child with a teacher telling me, I'd be inclined to believe what he was saying, because, .. well, he's a teacher, and particularly when there's an exam at the end of it all which says, "This is stuff you need to know."  And implied would be, not just for the exam, but for it's own sake.  It's school after all.  You know nuthin'.  They're teachers.  They do. You learn stuff because it's right.  I mean, ..they wouldn't be telling you rubbish would they?  But it's not really presented as an opportunity for discovery of the mind and what you might think about for yourself.  It might masquerade as that to begin with, but the class had better all end up at the same place, .. or else.

There's a box to tick, ..and you'd better get it right.

I'm an old guy now, but I remember when I was at school a defining moment when I just about jumped out of my skin (maths class) because the teacher (I still remember his name - rest his soul) (good teacher too, and well liked) had thrown a duster at me, .. one of those hard-backed wooden things that if it hit you would have been bloody sore,  but he was a good shot and it just rattled off the desk, as was no doubt his intention.  He came up and stuck his red old face right in my young and lovely one,  and said (and I still remember it - verbatim) (one way to impress kids, eh?), ..he said, "You, Findlay, ..the trouble with you, ..you're a why-man, ..and you'll find out this world doesn't *LIKE* why-men."

I could not for the LIFE of me work out what he was on about, or why he suddenly had reason to say that.  I was absolutely shaken.  But he's been dead right (all these years).  It upsets people when you ask why.  And often upsets you when *they* tell *you* why.  Especially when you don't ask in the first place and they just tell you anyway, because they think it would be somehow good for you to know - whether you like it or not.  Like here.

But it's been asking why that's led me down this road of Earth Expansion, as answers to why-after-why-have kept clicking like tumblers on one of those fruit machines, and when Plate Tectonics keeps throwing up combinations that just drive you up the wall.  Coming at it from knowing a bit about geological perspective (and not as a child having been instructed in the finer arts of plates)  I find it mindboggling that Plate Tectonics can be taught in the classroom any more, to the point where I have to recognise that the veracity of the science is not the issue here - it's about the politics of educational hierarchy, the 'curriculum' and "maintaining standards", .. whether (scientifically) right or wrong.

And, in turn, societal cohesion.

Which reminds me of another article I came across recently (I don't remember how recent it actually was), ..the gist of it was that a law had been passed (New Mexico, I think) that gave teachers the right to tell the class (if they wanted - because it seemed like they didn't have it before) that alternative views existed to whatever it was that was being taught, but I think they still drew the line at discussing what those views actually were.  I more remember one of the comments, which said "It is more important for teachers to teach the curriculum, than to have any personal views on the subject."  (and presumably say what they were), which it must be conceded is difficult to argue with.

All of which leads us to arrive at the question, when it comes to the Earth sciences, who sets the standards for the core curriculum in schools (and universities)? ..because it seems that Plate Tectonics gets more than a casual mention.  And the further question, in whose interest is it - the students', ..the school's, ..whose, exactly?  Because from a geological perspective it might just as well be creationism being taught, as Plate Tectonics. Plate Tectonicists just don't have a leg to stand on, when it comes to occupying the high ground of scientific respectability.  Nothing wrong with the core geology of course, just the theory, but these days it's quite a challenge to unravel fact from fiction in whatever field you care to mention.

"Get them young, learn 'em up, and Bob's your uncle..."

<Boom>   Canon fodder.  Just having a gander round cyberspace, there are a lot of suicide bombers lighting themselves up in defence of Plate Tectonics. For whose benefit?  Certainly not theirs, (..trolling that baggage around.)  Whose then?  Teachers?  I don't think so.  I'm sure many emphasise the theoretical aspects, but I'm also pretty sure they must find the fact/fiction thing a bit difficult going by the many articles that describe that model.  So whose then?  In whose interest is it, that this nonsense gets taught in schools?  Students? Not them either, getting sent out into the world only to discover later that their teachers were not served well by their thoughtmasters.  

Whose then?

It's fairly easy to identify the multifarious interests of the Christian Right in the case of the 13% creationism, but what cabal is it that occupies the remaining 87%, given the importance of 'institutional kudos' to university administration boards?


[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/  ]

Big Lie #9 Subduction 1

"We need to return to the geological path signalled by Wegener, and jettison *ALL* of Plate Tectonic theory, which is framed essentially around failure to understand a mechanism for the sudden and rapid breakout of the mantle bubble that caused the global enlargement we see today, manifest in the creation of the ocean floors."    That's me, quoting me, from the last me-post.  (Well, if you can have i-this and i-that, and Ya-tube, i don't see why WE can't have the odd bit of *me* too, out there in hyperspace.  Going by the blogs on Plate Tectonics there aren't too many of me around. So in the interest of evening up the narcissism score, here we go  (I think it's true anyway - about jettisoning.)

Convectioneers, ..sailing the Big Ship, ..thinking that if they all line up under the flag and chant the "Wot abaht subduction" mantra it will keep them walking on water for the rest of the year.  Or six inches above it more like,  if your read their litany.  Maybe they just want to insist on looking at it from the ocean side because that guy they've nailed to their cross, .. their sacrifical lamb, .. their *Hero* (along with some flanking others) Harry Hess, worked in the navy.  (Don't know what that's got to do with anything about Plate Tectonics. There's a *B*' of a difference between admiral and admirable.  I worked as a milkman once, ..and people put glasses of milk next to plates, ..but I guess that's another issue.) (Ennyhow, ... )

So he did (navy) *but* this is a CONTINENTAL argument, not an OCEANIC one.  Big difference.

The  jigsaw of Plate Tectonics might be about OCEANS. But the jigsaw of Earth expansion isn't.  It's about CONTINENTS.  Oceans are all young and make the Earth bigger when they make their way through the crust. (So I don't know what sort of a jigsaw Plate Tectonicists think they're doing anyway).  It's the continents that Earth expansion is talking about.  You have to take the oceans out of the picture and do the jigsaw thing with the continents out of the way.  Then if all the pieces fit, you have to accept it. Or at least you have to accept that it is a jigsaw worth doing, ..a picture worth looking at, ..something about not-knowing and trying to *get to know*, a thing about SCIENCE, that is. 

You can't pull a disingenuous fast one as PT-ers want to do and say, "Ok then, ..we'll take the oceans out of the way," and then with some hat-magic sleight of hand substitute another imaginary one for which there is no evidence and say, "Hey, ..look everybody,  see? ...it still doesn't fit.  No finding out needed."   'Coz that's exactly what they do.

Plate Tectonicists want to keep the argument sloshing about in the water, where people can't get a grip of it, rather than beach it so people can.  ...Bunch of bloody mermaids, bamboozling folk with their tales, trying to subduct MEN OF HARD ROCK to their nether regions with all that talk about sucking and pulling.  ... Wish somebody wou...

'Course the bloody jigsaw fits - from the *CONTINENTAL* side.  Easy too.  What else would it do?   If PT-ers have a problem trying to make it fit from the OCEAN side that's their problem (trying to shove a whole Panthalassa into a non-existent hole..).  But they *don't* have a problem because they don't *WANT* to make it fit.  Confucius he say, "No fit, no problem", and if there's one thing about PTterologists, it's that they think they're pretty wise guys.  But in fact if it fits, then they're out of a job.  That's why they're so vocal about subduction, ..and trying to keep whole schemmozle WET, bamboozling everybody, ..keeping them at sea.  Those Pteros, they can't avoid the fits in the Atlantic, Indian and Southern Oceans, they even need them, ..but push their Pacific button and tell them that fits too and whoh-hoh, ..hear them squeak! 

This guy on this wikipedia says, "Without subduction, plate tectonics could not exist".  Well he's dead right, of course.  Neither it would.  But subduction is not the issue, and it's a bit myopic and silly to think it is, really.  The mantle can swirl and birl and twirl as much as it likes underneath the continental crust, ..can convect like a witches cauldron, ..subduct nineteen to the dozen, ... twenty seven-and-a half-even, if it likes, .. it doesn't make one whit of a difference to what's happening upstairs.  So what if the mantle's *is* subducting?  It proves / disproves absolutely nothing about crustal tectonics, plate tectonics, blobtonics or any other kind of tonics.  So why should it make any difference if it's happening underneath the continent, or at a crack in the continent, or on the edge of one, when that edge is just as legitimately the edge of continental lithosphere, as it is the edge of the oceanic one?  There's *two* sides to that there edge.  Pteros find it convenient to disregard that, ..  it's not the oceanic crust returning to the deep mantle that's going on, but the continents sliding out over the mantle that's happening.   They even say so themselves when they use the word 'overriding'. 

Anyway, ..more and more the word is not "subduction", but "FLAT SUBDUCTION" or "flat slab subduction".  Google 'em up and see.  Subduction, meaning the return to the deep mantle, is a furphy.  All around the Pacific (the only place there is any going on), the buzz is now "flat slab subduction".  Under the Himalayas as well, lifting the Tibetan Plateau up.  .....the flat bit going down and along the asthenosphere, i.e. the continental crust leaning over the oceanic crust as the curvature of the Pangaean hemispheres (du Toit's 'Laurasia' and 'Gondwanaland') flattens off.  No return to the deep mantle.  And so long as the crust and mantle are detaching, .the crust collapsing and skating on the mantle, ..you know, with the Earth rotating and all that, and lagging west into the bargain, you can forget all about satellite measurement meaning anything as regards convection / plate movement.   Anyhow, what's twenty years of satellites against two hudred million and more of the real crustal thing?  Do they think just because they're angels they have some sort of passport to higher authority than common sense?  Like belief? (That's for Ray, if he's reading this.)  Hi Ray!   :-) 

These Ptero-guys, ..they really just don't have a geological clue, ..or a leg to stand on when it comes to subduction.  Showing 'slabs' in their articles, ..indeed.  Doesn't it occur to them it's just the mantle turning down against the continental lithosphere? .. which is wot dense stuff *does* when less dense stuff floats on top of it - ..it turns ... (everybody, ..all-together-now)  ..."DowWWn" ...  (YaAAyyyy !!!)

Subduction?  My Aunt Fanny.

(Wonder what it would look like, if you floated a lump of rock in an even denser rock...) (or even metal, say...)

Fig.1  Oceanic deeps mark the subduction zone as cold heavy metallic mercury subducts beneath the ancient continent of Reginia, .  Or if we prefer to stretch a point and turn it around, Continent HMS (the unsinkable) Gold Pound Coin adrift on a sea of mercury, proves once again (beyond a sea of doubt),  that material properties are critical  in the search for substances that can support Plate Tectonics assertion that mantle convection is the modus operandum for global tectonics.  ("The owl and the pussycat went to sea, in a beautiful gold pound coin.." ;  Mermaids, ..the souls of owls and pussycats, drowned at sea.. ) Image courtesy of the wikipedia, reproduced here in the interest of informing all schoolchildren (and others who may be interested), in order to focus on the critical point of oceanic deeps that develop subduction zones when oceanic crust (blue-grey) subducts beneath the UK (gold)...     "Mantle, which is also blue-grey.. has the property of mild steel.." 

[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/  ]

Big Lie #8 Oblivion - The Hero's Journey

"The most powerful lie is the lie by omission"

---

Let's be very, very clear about this. The reason why Plate Tectonics was developed as a theory did not come from any astute evaluation of the geology.  It developed precisely *in spite of* astute geological evaluation.  It developed because Hess could not accept expansion despite it removing his three most serious dificulties in dealing with the evolution of the ocean basins, claiming it to be (according to him) "philosophically unsatisfying" (on account of a lack of a mechanism).

Hess, (1962):-
"..While this [expansion] would remove three of my most serious difficulties in dealing with the evolution of ocean basins, I hesitate to accept this easy way out. First of all, it is philosophically rather unsatisfying in much the same way as were the older hypotheses of continental drift, in that there is no apparent mechanism within the Earth to cause a sudden (and exponential according to Carey) increase in the radius of the Earth. .."
[The second reason was about the extra water needed - see Hollywood Cowboys post]

...and so he tarred it with the same 'no mechanism' brush as had previously been done with Wegener's observations of palaeogeological reconstructions for continental displacement ( 'drift' by the way was the term others attached to Wegener's work).  Hess's reason was "philosophical dissatisfaction", ..nothing to do with the geological facts that Hess (according to his admission that it would explain his three most serious difficulties) nevertheless clearly found intrinsically appealing.

A point for today's Plate Tectonicists to consider, ensconced as they are in the certainty of Plate Tectonics, is what would have happened had Hess overcome his "hesitation" and accepted those points.  Not only would his view have aligned with that of others who favoured expansion, notably Carey, but also with that of Heezen, Tharp, reportedly Jack Oliver; Tuzo Wilson (before his capitulation to the Plate Tectonics camp), and no doubt others who would then have seen which way the wind was blowing. The Earth Sciences would almost certainly be fifty years further advanced in the direction of expansion. There would be no Plate Tectonics theory, and no derived, abortive geological explanations  - no mountains built of colliding plates, no plates even, possibly not even any convection.  It would also have forced the physics community to address their destitute lack of understanding of the physical processes that caused the Earth to rapidly extrude a mantle bubble the like of which there was no precedent in Earth history.  And possibly by now there would indeed be understanding of a 'mechanism'.

Or would it?  Was Hess so big, that he could have had such an influence as coercing the physics establishment to put their house in order and find one?  As it was, Hess's "hesitation" (/"philosophical dissatisfaction") led him to choose the 'lose-lose' option : "We (/I) can't think of a reason; you can't have your geology".

It is difficult to assess the full legacy of this.  On the theoretical side certainly, there is half a century of misadventure in the Earth sciences (and a commensurate waste of resources) that will need to be revised.  Economically could be included the dearth of supply to the labour market following the drop in enrollments leading to the closure of geology departments, because students see little point in studying a subject that has little more than kindergarten 'soup-in-a-pot, rumplecloth' appeal underpinning it, ..that has arrived at its destination and has nowhere else to go.  As well there is the stymying of research in physics that might explain a rapid massive mantle blow-out of the planet.

Who knows?...    Given the drama described by Moores at Carey's lecture, Hess's 'hesitation' may simply have been due to the 'not invented here' syndrome.  Hess was a geologist concerned with the geophysics of the ocean floors.  Carey was a geologist of global orientation who had not only been teaching Plate Tectonics for twenty years but had, with good reason, discarded it as unworkable, and moved on to convincingly demonstrate that from a geological perspective expansion was the only viable option.

So what was going on? What *is* going on still?   Hess with his 'convection' in 1962 after all was essentially just making a pitch for the standard status quo of continental drift that had been in Arthur Holmes book Principles of Physical Geology since 1944, and which was a standard student text (and Carey by 1956 had been teaching for twenty years).  What subtexts were at work that made Hess turn away from Carey's forward position that would overcome his (Hess's) three main problems, and choose the lose-lose option?

Here's what I think is the reason.  Almost certainly Hess would have placed himself in an extremely precarious position had he accepted Carey's conclusion. And would have known it.  Right or wrong was not the issue.  Carey was a free-thinking flamboyant maverick of a geologist with a big idea and even bigger geological data to support it, and was visiting from the other side of the world.  Hess, a geophysicist, was by all accounts much more reserved and conservative, and was reportedly struggling to understand his ocean-floor data, which only clicked when the penny dropped with the publication in 1960 of Bruce Heezen's (who favoured expansion) work in the Atlantic.  (For the resistance Heezen's work generated, and the pivotal role played by Marie Tharp, read this.) It was all very well for Carey to propose expansion (and even soundly support it with empirical geological data). It was quite another for a resident (geo-) physicist "to catch that particular infection" (Armstrong quote in 'cowboys' post), and have to cite it to a funding body on his home turf as a basis for research. Such would almost certainly have been committing what some saw Carey (albeit from the other side of the world) as already having done - "professional suicide".

"..From 1930 to 1960 a scientist who supported it knowingly committed academic hara-kiri. S. W. Carey of Tasmania, a major figure in igniting the revolution, could not get his papers published in reputable scientific journals in the 1950s. "He had to run them off on a mimeograph machine and distribute them himself," Wilson says.  (By Robert Dean Clark, Society of exploration geophysicists).

Why should Carey have been perceived as "committing professional suicide"?  After all, according to Moores, Carey had blown their minds with his exposition of palaeomagnetism and polar wander paths to the extent of obviating all further discussion on the point, and Moores and Armstrong both conceded Carey's pivotal role in formulating Plate Tectonics.  What Carey had done, surely, was the stuff of the cutting edge (what's more, he followed it up by writing three books on the subject).  Why should that have been regarded as professional suicide?  Far from it, Carey's place in the history of Earth science is assured.

And why was Tuzo Wilson himself warned that he "was headed for the wrong side of the scientific tracks" by choosing geology over physics?  "at [a] time [when] students were told what they could bloody-well do"?  [And, by inference, what they couldn't].  Whatever it was, it would certainly seem to shed light on the scientific establishment's intolerance of  innovation, and the importance of 'institutional kudos'. Funding is perhaps not uppermost in the public's mind when they think of science and scientists, but it most assuredly is for those who have chosen it as a career.

And here we must  reflect briefly on this much: Science is a thing unto itself and chooses the people who do it, by setting a high bar of commitment.  

It is very important here to recognise the schism between the 'geo' and the 'physics' on which this argument for expansion turns.  The positive arguments for expansion lie in the empricial geology; refutation lies, not in any positive achievement of physics (or geophysics), but in the FAILURE of physics to understand how it can happen.  'Geo' - 'physics'.  (+   - )  =  0  (Neutered.)

Surely we can (and must!) commend Carey for his geological acumen and commitment to his conviction of global expansion, ..for speaking up forcefully for geology, ..but we must also spare a thought for Hess and see the difficulty he would have been in had he adopted Carey's position. [Edit revision here in relation to "Hess as geo-physicist":- Basically the reason seems to have been simply the 'not-invented-here' syndrome, as well as giving legitimacy to the "No Mechanism" bugbear of expansion in the face of the emerging importance of geophysics.]  It was all very well for Carey, a geologist from the other side of the world, to talk, but for Hess, a senior figure in an enterprise heavily involved in geophysics to give it legitimacy could have been fatal to his career.  In my view it was this realisation that focussed Hess's mind keenly on the need to reject expansion. He had little choice.  Even today it is an area that invites professional suicide for those 'career artists' who might venture into it.

Thus we can understand the "hesitation" (denial even), from a physics point of view.  But not from a geological one.  It is not cloth-headedness that makes geologists go along with Plate Tectonics, but pure expediency.  Few would take the route Carey did for the sake of geological principle, and Carey might not either had his position in far-off Tasmania been apparently secure. Expediency begets necessity; Carey did after all withdraw elements from his thesis, that as a graduate student he knew if included would have cost him his degree.  Carey well knew the heat in the potato he was holding, and the challenge it posed to the establishment in general, and to Hess in particular, and would therefore have also well undertstood Hess's dilema.  Whether he was sympathetic or not is another matter.  My guess is he probably was, though with some natural misgivings regarding what we might call the 'workings of the system'.

I do wonder therefore, ..was Hess doing the heroic thing under the circumstances and talking in code, when he conceded that expansion would remove his three most serious problems?  After all, he needn't have said that. Was he in fact throwing out a message-in-a-bottle so to speak, to the geological community when facing his moment of truth and the realisation that in having to choose the lose-lose option he was going to have to scuttle his Big Ship, or, which amounted to much the same thing, have it fated to sail the geological seas like the Marie Celeste, a ghost whose geophysical achievements would be forever consigned to oblivion in the face of the geological storm that appeared to be looming on the horizon?  That concession from Hess of a 'three-problems solution' was no small thing.  It is one too that subsequent comment has gone to considerable trouble to eradicate. To the best of my knowledge all retrospectives focus on Hess's "rejection by no mechanism", and ignore his coded(?) "acceptance of expansion" that would solve his problems in understanding the evolution of the ocean basins.

"The most powerful lie is the lie by omission"
 ~ George Orwell

 Lie?  Certainly one that Hess could not explicitly state. It is also one that the current crop of Plate Tectonicists would do well to consider when contemplating the foundation of their 'no-mechanism' position.  "No mechanism" has no place in science, concerned as it is with the collection and collation of observable empirical facts, and no geologist should be conned by that mantra. To cite "no mechanism" over the geological evidence is to support the wall-eyed ignorance of physics and to advertise ignore-ance of the geological facts - and the principles on which it is founded.

Hess, by putting the +  and the -  together like that was laying bare his dilema, and by both = 0 thereby stating that he had virtually no option but to stay with the status quo and reject expansion, for otherwise was to commit the hara-kiri Carey was perceived to be doing. From a geological perspective of course Hess would have been doing no such thing, but from a physics perspective he was. Was this why he jumped from his seat in agitation?  Bruce Heezen (geologist / oceanographer) working in the Atlantic had already published on the huge dilation there and, Hess knew, supported expansion.  Indeed it was that very work on which Hess built his own.  But then it wasn't Heezen providing the grand synthesis and bludgeoning the audience with it. Hess would probably also have known the trouble that Heezen's work was landing him in ("read this" link above).

What was Hess to do?  What he in fact did (in terms of mechanism) was to simplistically restate convection in terms already well known, and attempt to taint others' views in terms identical to those levelled against Wegener forty years earlier - of "continents ploughing through the oceans etc etc."

Hess:-
"..The continents do not plow through oceanic crust impelled by unknown forces; rather they ride passively on mantle material as it comes to the surface at the crest of the ridge and then moves laterally away from it."

...exactly as Holmes had stated it in 1944 (and earlier in 1928).  Hess was saying nothing new here.  In my view it was wrong of him, in 1962, to represent by then current views of convection the way he did, but in context we can see why he might have done so - and why others in review might have allowed him to; indeed might have tacitly encouraged him to.  For all the ostentatious trumpeting, invention of a new vernacular, and prize-givings etc., that have gone on since, convection as represented by Hess - indeed even as it is understood today, is little different from Holmes' day.  The way I see it, it was an attempt to tart up the 'geo' element  of geophysics in order to deflect attention away from the destitute-in-knowledge 'physics' part, by people who didn't seem to have much of a clue as to the Pandora's Box of geological conundrums they were opening by doing so.

Or perhaps they exactly did, .. and were far more willing to face the geological conundrums than consequences of the physics ones. 

And that is the reason why I think Plate Tectonics exists today, a blousy old lush of an empress, tarted up in incongruous geological rags for anyone who fancies having their geophysical way with her - a mute lush for all seasons, stood over by an ignorant pimp.  

Seen against this background the prizes for Plate Tectonics and calls for prizes are little more than a cop-out, .. sustenance for scientists afraid to face the unknown when facing it spells oblivion for whoever does.  The receiver is the fall-guy, the sacrifical lamb.  It is the audience that applauds, who benefits.

Basically, geophysicists are in a bind.  They cannot use geological evidence to support expansion even if they believed it, for basically the same reason Hess couldn't.  It's actually in a double bind because of the way that physics operates.  Physicists proceed from hypothesised mechanism (as many as are needed) to explain the facts (and Plate Tectonics embodies many that are contradictory).  Geologists proceed from the facts, and using the Principle of Uniformitarianism, conclude mechanism (if mechanism must be known). But the lack of known mechanism in no way subverts the arrangement of the facts, if that arrangement is made according to sound logical principles.

So long as geologists allow the tail of physics to wag this dog, there will be no advance.  Everyone will be the loser.  

Plate Tectonics as an achievement?  (I think I'll go fishing...) (..with me mate George.)

:-)


[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/  ]

The Plate Tectonics Cowboys go to Hollywood

I'm just wild about Harry..

Fig.1. Harry Hess in the role of Clarke Gable doing the derring thing in the Pacific. This was the war years. There would be another fifteen at least before Hess would write his "Essay in Geopoetry" officially underpinning convection as the modus operandum for Plate Tectonics, which he would term instead "sea-floor spreading", by which time Arthur Holmes' book, Principles of Physical Geology 332pps, published in 1944 and advocating convection for continental drift, would run to fifteen reprints. (More on H^3.)   [D.F. - For image modification, see end of post]

Those words from Jack Oliver's obituary have really got me : "All of the pieces suddenly made sense if you believed plate tectonics was going on", ..because I mean, ..why wouldn't you (believe)? Given the certitude in which Plate Tectonics is held today, what was different way back then that was holding them up? Those guys constructed the model after all. What were they alluding to then by that qualification, that today's crop of hangers-on don't know, or have forgotten, or find more convenient to forget, or have just never properly understood?

What they were alluding to was the young age of the ocean floors, and the implication that held for Earth expansion, but to properly understand how that would have appeared to those at the time we have to read between the lines of what they wrote, realising that one cannot talk about what one *doesn't* know, ..you can only talk about what you *do* know. What *was* (becoming) known was that the ocean floors were everywhere young and dilating the crust, which carried the implication that the Earth had got bigger - doubled in size. What was *not* known (and therefore couldn't be talked about) was how this could happen.

Since you can't talk about what you don't know, this is precisely the reason why the question of expansion has been - and still is - summarily dismissed, as was Wegener's continental displacement decades before, with the mantra, "no mechanism". It was (and is) a con job pure and simple, put around by geophysicists in America to deflect attention from the 'geological how' of expansion to the 'physics why' of it, ..in other words to deflect attention away from the geological documentation that would support the fact of Earth enlargement, towards the ambit of theoretical physics where there was nothing to talk about. It was an exercise in power, prestige, institutional kudos, and who controls the debate. And one in which geologists for some reason I frankly can't understand given the glaringly obvious geological inconsistences that have lined the road of half a century of geology like so many crucifixes, have been inexcusably compliant. On the one (geological) hand the facts of enlargement were there to be talked about, but on the other (physics) hand, nothing to say. It was a masterly dialectical stroke that supplanted an honest attempt at empirical geological reason with ignorance bred of overweening hubristic conceit and arrogance of the "what we don't know isn't knowledge" sort.

How's that for a triumph of 'science'? Everybody knew expansion was there to be talked about - but there was nothing to say. Some elephant indeed, occupying the room!

But what *was* already known, that *could* be talked about and linked to the newly emergent realisation of the young age of the ocean floors, was laid out in the last chapter of Arthur Holmes' book, Principles of Physical Geology, published in 1944 and summarising twenty years of teaching before that, which was entirely about mantle convection and continental drift. In 2000, Cherry Lewis, Holmes' biographer writes:-

"..Holmes, however, was one of a small group convinced from the start of the theory [continental drift]'s validity. His work on radioactivity, geological time, and petrogenesis had led him to a profound understanding of processes in the Earth's interior. Consequently, he was the first to propose that incredibly slow-moving convection currents in the mantle caused continental breakup, seafloor formation, crustal assimilation, and continental drifting. Despite his theories being ignored, he still taught them to his students for the next 30 years.

Hess would of course have known that Arthur Holmes was a staunch supporter of continental drift. In fact, by the time Hess published his seminal paper in 1962 , Holmes book, a standard student textbook of the day and by then running to fifteen reprints, clearly set out the means by which the continents were carried passively on convecting mantle, providing the mechanism for continental drift, exactly as it is understood today as Plate Tectonics.  Exactly in principle, that is, ..but in reality it doesn't work, for continents are deeply rooted, and no continents exist on oceanic mantle crust that could be said to be carried by convection. 

Holmes, (1944):-

p.306:- "..Currents flowing horizontally beneath the crust would inevitably carry the continents along with them.."
Preface:- "..While I have not hesitated to introduce current views, since these reveal the active growth of the subject, it should be clearly realised that topics such as the cause of mountain building, the source of volcanic activity and the possibility of continental drift remain controversial just because the guiding facts are still too few to provide a formation to more than tentative hypotheses. It is my hope that recognition of some of the outstanding problems may stimulate at least a few of my readers to cooperate in the attempt to solve them."

Hess (1962, p.607)

"..Long ago Holmes suggested convection currents in the mantle to account for deformation of the Earth's crust (Vening Meinesz, 1952; Griggs, 1939; 1954; Verhoogen, 1954; and many others). Nevertheless, mantle convection is considered a radical hypothesis not widely accepted by geologists and geophysicists. If it were accepted, a rather reasonable story could be constructed to describe the evolution of ocean basins and the waters within them. Whole realms of previously unrelated facts fall into a regular pattern, which suggests that close approach to satisfactory theory is being attained."

Carey (1988), in a retrospective is more inclusive of earlier workers exploring convection:-

"..Convection currents in the Earth were propsed in 1881 by Osmond Fisher, in 1906 by Otto Ampferer, in 1928 by Rudolph Staub in Switzerland, and in 1935 by C.L. Pekeris, later of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and particularly by Arthur Holmes in Durham and Edinburgh, by Felix A. Vening Meinesz in the Netherlands, and David T. Griggs in Harvard as the main driving force in Geotectonics generally, and latterly in respect of Continental drift. Keith Runcorn of Newcastle adopted convection as the main cause of continental displaement, so did Harry Hess more recently.

By skirting Holmes' exposition, by referring to it as "long ago", by not including Holmes in his references, and by delegating authority on the matter of convection to the community of geologists in general, Hess appears to taint earlier views of convection with a certain irrelevance, which is reinforced by his use of the words 'nevertheless', radical', ' not widely accepted' as if, were those views to include the right ingredient which he was about to propose, convection would be respectably instated in its proper place. Convection causing the crust to ride passively on the mantle was certainly current by the time Holmes wrote his book, and if it was also radical then it would be a topic of some discussion, and widely promulgated. Or should have been. If it were not, then that, surely, was the fault of the grey polloi of geologists whom Hess would appear to vest with authority on the matter.

So was Hess, as Holmes hoped, "cooperating in attempting to solve outstanding problems"? In my view, .. possibly. Unfortunately he seems to be somewhat ungenerous in not recognising others as the foundation on which he was building. Well aware that the current views of Holmes (and others later) did refer to the crust being carried passively on the mantle, here's how, in 1962, Hess represents those earlier views of convection:-

Hess, 1962

"..The mid-ocean ridges could represent the traces of the rising limbs of convection cells, while the circum-Pacific belt of deformation and volcanism represents descending limbs. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is median because the continental areas on each side of it have rnoved away from it at the same rate-1 cm/yr. This is not exactly the same as continental drift [read Holmes' convection]. The continents do not plow through oceanic crust impelled by unknown forces; rather they ride passively on mantle material as it comes to the surface at the crest of the ridge and then moves laterally away from it.

"Ploughing through oceanic crust" was hardly a fair representation of what either Holmes was saying, or what was by then current views, which Hess was effectively restating, but would represent by the term "sea-floor spreading", ..a well worn technique of appropriation; change the language, and hope it will be seen by the less aware (who are usually the more vocal) as changing the facts.  Carey (1988, p.104) comments somewhat acidly, "Although any loose statement denigrating continental drift got easy passage to publication during that period, anyone unwise enough to speak for it was rejected by referees and editors with snide comments."

So what was unsatisfactory about convection before Hess, that was satisfactory by the time Hess came to write about it? Seems to me it was mostly because it was Hess doing the writing.  And his pals doing the reviewing.

====

But all of this talk of 'convection' was emerging because of what, largely, could *not* be talked about, namely expansion.

Hess, 1962, History of Ocean Basins , p.610 :-

"..Egyed (1957) introduced the concept of a great expansion in size of the Earth to account for apparent facts of continental drift. More recently Heezen (1960) tentatively advanced the same idea to explain paleomagnetic results coupled with an extension hypothesis for mid-ocean ridges. S. W. Carey (1958) developed an expansion hypothesis to account for many of the observed relationships of the Earth's topography and coupled this with an overall theory of the tectonics of the Earth's crust. Both Heezen and Carey require an expansion of the Earth since late Paleozoic time (ca. 2 x 10^8 years) such that the surface area has doubled. Both postulate that this expansion is largely confined to the ocean floor rather than to the continents. This means that the ocean basins have increased in area by more than 6 times and that the continents until the late Paleozoic occupied almost 80 per cent of the Earth's surface. With this greatly expanded ocean floor one could account for the present apparent deficiency of sediments,volcanoes, and old mid-ocean ridges upon it. While this would remove three of my most serious difficulties in dealing with the evolution of ocean basins, I hesitate to accept this easy way out. First of all, it is philosophically rather unsatisfying,in much the same way as were the older hypotheses of continental drift, in that there is no apparent mechanism within the Earth to cause a sudden (and exponential according to Carey) increase in the radius of the Earth. Second, it requires the addition of an enormous amount of water to the sea in just the right amount to maintain the axiomatic relationship between sea level-land surface and depth to the M discontinuity under continents, which is discussed later." (PETROLOGIC STUDIES: A VOLUME TO HONOR A. F. BUDDINGTON, PP.599-820 NOVEMBER1962 History of Ocean Basins, H. H. HESS, Princeton University, Princeton, N. J.)

Hesitating to accept expansion in the face of it overcoming his three most serious difficulties, does not sound like honest rational appraisal. In citing "No Mechanism" Hess was merely reiterating the objection against continental drift, and with respect to the elephant in the room (expansion) was dismissing it on grounds no more substantial than that he could not think of a reason why it should be there. His other objection, the question of water, does not seem to me to be an issue; if water is seen as part of the mantle and manufactured commensurate with mantle extrusion, then the 'plimsol line' *must* be globally invariant, except for local crustal disturbances (advance /retreat /isostatic adjustment) due to curvature correction.

Eldridge Moores casts an interesting light on Hess's 1962 paper (2003, A personal history of the ophiolite concept. Geological Soc. Amer., special paper 373, page 22.)

"Late in 1959, the Australian geologist S.W. Carrey came through to deliver a lecture on continental drift and earth expansion. His ideas on expansion have been widely discounted and detract from his contributions to continental drift, however*. Carey's contribution to the contiental drift debate was to construct a spherical table, ~2m in diameter, on which he plotted the 500 fathom contour, rather than the coastlines, as had Wegener. Carey gave a three-hour spell-binding lecture, ending completely spent, covered with sweat and chalk dust. At the end we all filed numbly out of the room. Halfway througth the talk, however, Hess bolted out of his seat and started pacing up and down the aisle. Thereafter in Advanced General Geology, there was no more talk of problems of palaleomagnetism and polar wander paths. Within two months Hess was circulating a manuscript entitled "Evolution Ocean Basins [sic], which was eventually published as "History of Ocean Basins" (Hess 1962). This was the key insightful paper that gave rise to the new unifying model of ocean floor spreading, just as Kuhn (1970)*  suggested would happen in a scientific revolution. I believe that S.W. Carey must be given the credit for "pushing Hess over the edge." In his article, Hess suggested that the oceanic crust was chiefly serpentinized mantle peridotite, that the mid-ocean ridges were the loci of upwelling and divergent motion and that the continents were passive riders on mantle material." 

[*D.F. - "However" - I know of no-one who has in fact discounted Carey's analysis other than in terms of Hess's "No Mechanism". Carey does in fact provide a mechanism in the penultimate chapter of his book Theories of the Earth and Universe, (p.325) but states, "I must of course attempt to explain the accelerating expansion I have described. However, if the explanation I offer should turn out to be invalid, that explanation should be rejected, not the reality of expansion."]

[*DF. - Moores is not representing Kuhn correctly. Kuhn suggests that insights that create the paradigm shift are made by people who are either very young or new to the field and know very little of it (often both). This hardly applies to Hess, departmental head at Princeton, who by 1962 would have been fifty six years old.]

Eldridge Moores' above comment in regard to Carey is supported by that of Richard Lee Armstrong, [ Book review, Theories of the Earth and Universe: a History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences. Warren Carey. 414 pp. Stanford University Press, 1988. $45. Geological Sciences, University of British Columbia, Cananda. It was published on the American Scientist, Volume 77, 382-384, 1989.] [See also http://www.geochina.org/forum/ShowAnnounce.asp?boardID=1&RootID=6&ID=6&skin=0  ]

" ..Carey and I met 30 years ago at Yale, where he taught the graduate structural geology course in a way that has never been done before or since. He was there at a critical moment in the development of tectonic ideas in North America and clearly has to be credited with planting the seeds of the plate tectonics revolution in many places as he promulgated the gospel of continental mobility and ocean expansion. He was newly arrived at the inspiration to explain everything by accelerating earth expansion, but most of his audience did not catch that particular infection. Many, including Hess and Wilson, were persuaded to give a serious look at mobility, and, as they say, the rest is history. Being a skilled orator and able to manipulate his audience like a magician did not hurt his cause.

"The ensuing three decades have flooded us with information and new interpretations of geologic processes. The plate tectonics model has undergone considerable detailed testing, modification, and embellishment. Meanwhile, Carey has gone on to champion earth expansion from ever-more philosophical and universal perspectives. But his views on earth expansion have changed little since 1959. The new dogma he espouses is largely a static one-the same arguments, the same fallacies, and the same points of debate are repeated here with little accommodation to new discoveries. Of course Carey was nearly 100% right in 1958 about what was going on in the oceans. His detailed view of sea-floor expansion in 1958 preceded and was not much improved upon by the views of Hess or Deitz in the 1966s. Carey has a right to feel slighted here. And he correctly analyzed marginal basins and arcuate orogenic belts decades before others discovered the truth and accepted credit for it. His feelings sometimes show: "The precocious visionary bears a sinister taint, and the accolades for the great advance are worn by the nouveau-wise."

" But the essential flaw in Carey’s view of the world is his firm belief that compression in mountain belts and subduction of the ocean floor are "myth" "illegitimate faith" and "spurious concept" He minces no words in his dismissal of these essential components of the plate tectonics hypothesis. His arguments are exemplary of the failures he sees in others, but not in himself-the blind eye to contradictory data, the resort to fallacious arguments, and the mustering of nonunique "explanations" of data. Students of tectonics can only stare in disbelief and amazement as he assaults the "myths." His discussion denies volumes of modern and ancient literature on mountain belt structure, decades of study by seismologists, deep seismic profiles, deep-sea drilling results, and endless lists of quantitative models of stress and strength distribution, lithosphere bending, earthquake source mechanisms, gravity field measurements, and virtually all of geochemistry and petrology.

The last paragraph of Armstrong's critique is broadbrush denigration that in my view is without foundation. Anyone who takes the trouble to read what Carey has to say cannot doubt the compass and depth of his analysis, particularly when compared to the superficial responses of his detractors. We give the last word to Carey in respect of his assessment of the catch-up Johnnies-come-lately, and reflect that surely Carey would far rather be known as the father of Earth expansion, than as the (real) father of Plate Tectonics.

"By this time (mid-1970's) the global tectonic revolution in North America had routed all opposition to the gross dispersion of continents and had reached what I had been teaching my students in the early 1950's, but I was disgusted that the "new global tectonics" had gone only halfway. It still assumed axiomatically, notwithstanding the patent rapid growth of new oceanic crust, that the size of the earth had remained essentially constant. Hence it had to go back to the mechanism I had adopted in the 1930's and 1940's of swallowing great areas of crust down the ocean trenches, but which, after 20 years of working with it, I had found by 1956 to be unworkable on a global scale. Hence my Elsevier book [1976] set out to quash this subduction myth" (S.W.C., 1989, Theories of the Earth and Universe, extract, preface, p.x; the book in question reviewed by Armstrong.)

Make of it what you like. To me, Hess's appropriation of Holmes' and Carey's work represents a changing of the guard in the Earth sciences from geology to geophysics, in which over the last five decades, far from Armstrong's representation of the plate tectonics model as having undergone  "considerable detailed testing, modification, and embellishment", we have witnessed instead ad hoc goalpost shifts designed to obscure an incredible, breathtaking, inexcusable failure to address the inconsistencies that ("..if you believe that Plate Tectonics is going on") have arisen.

There's a certain unfortunate irony in Hess being left holding this baby of what will surely turn out to be the biggest con job in the history of modern science (Plate Tectonics), because to a certain extent he was probably the fall guy for a good number of others, but it would seem he did rush in where angels feared to tread. Holmes on the other hand, in the last paragraph of his book, was extremely circumspect regarding convection, despite probably having more authority than anyone to promote it.

"..It must be clearly realised, however, that purely speculative ideas of this kind, specially invented to match the requirements can have no scientific value until they acquire support from independent evidence. The detailed complexity of convection systems, and the endless variety of their interactions and kalaeidoscopic transformations, are so incalculable that many generations of work, geological, experimental and mathematical, may well be necessary before the hypothesis can be adequately tested. Meanwhile it would be futile to indulge in the early expectation of an all-embracing theory which would satisfactorily correlate all the varied phenomena for which the earth's internal behaviour is responsible. The words of John Woodward, written in 1695 about ore deposits, are equally applicable to-day in relation to continental drift and convection currents: "Here," he declared, "is such a vast variety of phenomena and these many of them so delusive, that 'tis very hard to escape imposition and mistake." .. " [End of Book]

...against which background the following reads somewhat poignantly, which is presumably also from Cherry Lewis although appearing on an anonymous website:-

("..Holmes made another significant contribution to geology. Years before the scientific community accepted Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, Holmes hypothesized (correctly) how it could have happened, through convection currents in earth's mantle.) Yet plate tectonics would not be widely accepted by geologists until after Holmes's death, and Holmes himself confessed in 1953, "I have never succeeded in freeing myself from a nagging prejudice against continental drift."   http://www.strangescience.net/holmes.htm

 "I have never succeeded in freeing myself from a nagging prejudice against continental drift." ...  Such an illuminating statement indeed from someone who had taught it all his life!  For why should Holmes, by 1953, in the best position of anyone to assess the veracity of a convective mechanism for continental drift, appear to be distancing himself from it?  Seems to me the reason is in the pages of Holmes' own book - Principles of Physical Geology, for those principles if applied correctly to the evolution of the surface of the land, particularly with reference to scale and in relation to the incision of elevated erosional surfaces from which mountains are carved, practically spell out Earth expansion.  Almost certainly Holmes did not entertain that exact intention to begin with, but writing focusses the mind powerfully well, .. and Holmes almost certainly could not ignore what would occur to any casual observer reading his book if they came at it already cognisant of the reality of expansion, ..that the many illustrations in his book are testimomy to the point of expansion. 

Was Holmes by then moving away from mantle convection towards the same path as Carey?  Given the paralllel life-times, the impingement of Carey's ideas on his own, and the very documentation of expansion that Holmes himself had set out in his book, and the inevitable realisation of what the flat tracts of eroded plateau surfaces must represent, I think it highly probable.  From a geological perspective there is no alternative. 

"...  And Harry's wild about me..."

[D.F. Image modification - 2011/01/26.  The above image of H. Hess was from the wikipedia commons and may have been removed by Google.  I am not reposting it in case there may have been an inadvertent infringement of copyright since I did merge it with that of Clark Gable (remaining), with the intention of space-saving.  The juxtaposition of the two was by way of acknowledging the apparent importance of Hollywood in the American psyche and the part that might play in the public perception in tying Hess's naval career (as captain and later admiral) with his academic career as one of the founders of Plate tectonics - since he's easily as good-looking as Clark Gable (in Mutiny on the Bounty), which in itself is surely worth a plate or two.  (Vivian Leigh by the way didn't understand swashbuckling at all, if all she complained about was bad breath.) ..  .. (Those cheroots from the Caribbean, ...  some weed...) ]
P.S.  2011/08/19  The black warning sign has just appeared (within the last couple of weeks or so), suggesting it could have been a Google take-down.  The original was up for about three days before it was taken down, since when it it has been an empty frame until replaced by the above.
P.P.S.  The swashbuckling picture of Clarke Gable was also removed from the Wikipedia about the same time.  Here we see him in a suit, just oozing swash.


Karaoke with Carmen





[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/  ]