Thursday, February 24, 2011

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/  ]

Saturday, February 12, 2011

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/  ]

Thursday, February 3, 2011

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/  ]