Posted on 07/10/2004 8:00:26 PM PDT by bondserv
Plate Tectonics Gets Squishy 07/09/2004
Two reports on plate tectonics this week make it seem less like “hard” science. Over 30 years ago, plate tectonics theory surprised many by going mainstream. In recent years, however, observations have complicated matters.
In the July 8 issue of Nature,1 Norman H. Sleep evaluates a paper in the same issue2 that tackles the problem of hotspots. Regarding “inadequacies in understanding the relative motions between plates,” he comments, “In case you think this has been sorted out to decimal places in the past 30 years, it hasn’t.” (For background, see 04/02/2004 and 11/04/2003 headlines.) Sleep praises the efforts of Steinbeck et al. to understand hotspots and fluid motions in the mantle, particularly how the Hawaiian chain could make a sudden turn. But he ends, “I expect that debate will continue on the relative fixity of hotspots, the rigidity of tectonic plates and mantle dynamics.”
The Himalayas have been another poster child of plate tectonics theory. Richard A. Kerr in the July 9 issue of Science3 discusses new satellite measurements around the Tibetan plateau that cast a popular theory into question. It has long been taught that Mt. Everest and its range were thrust up as India crashed into the Asian continent. New synthetic aperture radar measurements from the InSAR satellite show much slower movement along faults than expected – like 0 to 7mm per year instead of 30, in one instance, and a factor of 10 lower in another. Interference diagrams, on the other hand, show the entire region deforming. Instead of a rigid mass moving between faults “like a watermelon seed between two fingers,” the Tibetan plateau seems to act like a fluid, as if “India were colliding with a water bed.” Kerr remarks, “For almost 40 years, scientists have recognized that Earth’s ocean floors jostle and slide past one another like enormous rigid plates. But how well continents fit into this plate-tectonic scheme has been less clear. Now, satellite measurements of the Tibetan Plateau suggest that when continents go head-to-head in mountain building, they can behave more like unbaked pizzas.” Another scientist concluded from the new data, “Continental tectonics is not plate tectonics.” Rather than stand and fight, Kerr says, this part of the continent is trying to escape.
Now I’m getting hungry for pizza and watermelon. Geological fads are like panaceas that cure all the symptoms until the MRI arrives. Some unscrupulous theorists like Charles Lyell fudged data to make it fit their mental pictures of what they thought the world should look like.
When plate tectonics theory became popular in the 1960s, some holdouts complained it was being foisted on them like a new religion. For example, even as late as 1983, in a popular geology book sold in western National Park bookstores, geologist Donald L. Baars had asked whether the theory was “Geophysics or Metaphysics?”—The concept of the New Global Tectonics may be liked to a new religion; since hard facts are lacking, if one is not a “believer” one is considered an “atheist” with regard to the many theories and interpretations of the “clergy”—the oceanographers and geophysicists. Many of the concepts are plausible and exciting, and sometimes they fit the hard geologic facts. Many times, however, they are contradictory and totally incongruent with known geologic facts, at which time the facts are ignored. With enough “faith,” every known earth event is compatible with the religion, especially with respect to oceanography. On land, however, where outcrops and fossils abound, it is often extremely difficult to be a “follower.” The entire doctrine may in time be proven true, it may be completely disproven by geologists, or a compromise may be reached. I prefer to think the last possibility is likely. ... [He describes some examples of contradictions.]Undoubtedly, various fluids and solids are moving various whichaways down under our feet, at various speeds and in various directions, but as with many things in science, the phenomena are too complex to reduce to simple models. What explains one province may not explain another. A neat global diagram of rigid plates floating on convecting mantle currents makes a nice flannelgraph in Monday School, but what was the Historical Geophysics? We’ll have to wait and see what happens to this religion. The lesson is: don’t take the national park diagrams on blind faith.
It would require another book to argue fully the pros and cons of plate tectonics theory. It is obvious at this point that I have not been totally converted to the religion. That is a matter for individual preference. You are free to believe as you wish, but please, don’t send missionaries! (Emphasis added.)
—Donald L. Baars, The Colorado Plateau: A Geologic History (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1972, 1983, pp. 217-218, p. 219).
The turtles that live their life on the Brazilian shoreline but return to Ascension Island, (in the middle of the South Atlantic) suggest that these animals are responding just like other animals that migrate to procreate in "home waters!"
Heck, I like to read SciAm and National Geographics. Nifty maps and theses.
It's actually basically of impossible for the creationists to comprehend science.
The words of Genesis getting modified some here and there (a sentence added here, one removed there, and rearranged a bit in order) is unthinkable.
Because it's religion, not science.
The details of Plate Tectonics get modified all the time. It doesn't mean the whole theory is gone. It's just the result of new measurements, debate, etc. Nothing in the posted article is overturning Plate Tectonics.
The plates move; the movement can be measured. Year by year.
Hotspot theory is in an interesting state of flux (they might not be fixed, and there might not be as many "real" ones as once thought), but that's only one side component of the whole thing.
Anti-science archival ping.
BTW, plate tectonics was about 5 years old in 1972. If it had been overthrown then, it wouldn't have been quite that much of a revolution. If it were overthrown now, it would be.
Just WHERE is the lever that pushes the continents around?
Define the internal push-point that forces trillions of tons of Earth to move against one another.
Surely there have been many quite 'old' theories that have been 'overthrown' by more knowledge gained, why should PT be sacrosanct?
But there are people who are not paying lest they hazard the fires of Hell by so doing. Then, there are people whose idea of paying attention is sifting through volumes and volumes of publications looking for only a tiny handful of "honest" quotes which can be used to paint a wrong picture, in effect "lying with truth."
It's a result of evolution. Some have a dominant 'faith' gene which allows them to fit in within groups. In days of yore, this was an excellent survival strategy. While the agitators where off discovering, fighting, challenging, etc., a significant number kept their heads down and focused on harvesting the wheat. The same tendency to pay obedience to tribal leaders has merely been shifted, first to rock/tree gods, and now to more embelished versions.
Heh. Great post.
Thanks for the ping!
Why should that bother an evolutionist? If they were really concerned about hard science, they'd reject evolution.
Geomorphology bumo.
"In the July 8 issue of Nature,1 Norman H. Sleep..."
"Richard A. Kerr in the July 9 issue of Science..."
These are recent articles on the subject. Baars just said the same thing better in 1983. People from the past aren't always dumb knuckledraggers as you seem to assert.
LOL!!
So.... if Mountains are MADE by Plates crunching together, how did Ol' Gondolaland (sp?) manage to EVER get layers and layers of rock deposited?
Isn't there some kind of verticle gradient needed to move dirt downstream?
And just WHERE did ALL that sand come from that is in the massive SANDSTONE layers that makes up so much of the American Southwest?
No no no no no no no no no no no no no! Bears "said it better" because he said something utterly different. The question is how he managed to get republished in 1983. His statements should have been recognized as unsupportable by that time.
The recent articles contain the usual arguments about areas of uncertainty on the current frontiers. I tell you what's going on here on every thread in which you post this stuff, but I'll say it again.
Coppedge is one of those data lawyer creationists, a type of player visible on these threads. He assembles lying mosaic pictures with bits of truth selected with microscopic care from the real scientific literature. Yes, one can make an argument that this is somehow better than the Carl Baugh fake-artifacts school of how to paint a lying picture, but I'm not impressed. It's what you do, not how you do it.
Tell your friends to stop dishing this stuff up.
I have a better solution:
At every opportunity, admit that there is much yet to be learned before we can use this information to mold it into the Evolutionary model. Geology plays a large role in the evidences which are supposed to support evolution. If Plate Tectonics is questionable, then the explanations for sedimentary, volcanic, hydro oceanic and fossil deposition scenario's, become a 50 year rabbit trail of misleading support.
Letting this play out further, continues to go against your theory. Coppedge's continued exhibition of the multiplicity of holes in the accurate representation of the data, chafes.
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