Plate Tectonics Gets Squishy (P.T. looks less like "hard" science)

Creation-Evolution Headlines ^ | 7/09/2004 | Creation-Evolution Headlines

[RadioAstronomer]

If Plate Tectonics is questionable

Which it is not. I can measure the sea floor spreading. Continental drift is no longer in question. There may be portions that are not fully understood, however, the theory is sound.

[Hunble]

Like you, I am rather baffled about this thread.

Can anyone explain to me how this is any different from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11?

Identifying intentional deception is one of the best methods of telling right from wrong. Why do people like these require the usage of deception to support their world views?

Please present the raw data, and allow me to decide which theories best support the evidence.

As always RadioAstronomer, this was a general comment about this thread, and not directed toward you in any way.

[bondserv]

Which it is not. I can measure the sea floor spreading. Continental drift is no longer in question. There may be portions that are not fully understood, however, the theory is sound.

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. [snip]

...the Tibetan plateau seems to act like a fluid, as if “India were colliding with a water bed.” [snip]

From what they gather, we will have to wait and see if the modern technology that they are using to confirm the theory, doesn't unconfirm it, as these to statements seem to imply.

[Aracelis]

...the Tibetan plateau seems to act like a fluid, as if “India were colliding with a water bed.” [snip]

We've been through this ad nauseum...seismic profiles, etc., etc. Additional data is legitimately used to modify and refine current scientific concepts. I cite the following from this article as evidence:

Over 30 years ago, plate tectonics theory surprised many by going mainstream. In recent years, however, observations have complicated matters.

Oppenheimer and his boys didn't know everything about fission when they tickled the dragon's tail, and neither did Hess and Deitz comprehend all the mechanisms of plate tectonics when they presented their findings. Science is a process of discovery coupled with genuine effort to explain phenomena. Those who would wave previously unobserved and unexplained phemonena as "evidence" that a particular hypothesis or theory is false are guilty of the worst sort of disinformation.

[VadeRetro]

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.

It sounds like you don't know that it's too late for geology to fail to support evolution.

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.

And now it sounds like you do know. But the trail goes back farther than the last 50 years. Wegener published his continental drift idea a century ago, although he couldn't provide a plausible mechanism for such drift and was largely dismissed. Even before then, people (like Darwin himself) realized that land bridges had appeared and dissapeared many times, allowing migrations and subsequent strandings of land animals.

[VadeRetro]

Second try, HTML tags fixed to make more sense:

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.

It sounds like you don't know that it's too late for geology to fail to support evolution.

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.

And now it sounds like you do know. But the trail goes back farther than the last 50 years. Wegener published his continental drift idea a century ago, although he couldn't provide a plausible mechanism for such drift and was largely dismissed. Even before then, people (like Darwin himself) realized that land bridges had appeared and dissapeared many times, allowing migrations and subsequent strandings of land animals.

[VadeRetro]

From what they gather, we will have to wait and see if the modern technology that they are using to confirm the theory, doesn't unconfirm it, as these to statements seem to imply.

You, like Coppedge, are allowing yourself much too much liberty with what things seem to imply. No one is fooled, and you should not be trying to fool us. We should not keep catching you at this, but we do.

[RadioAstronomer]

An alternate view: Expanding earth

Here is an interesting discussion of this:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=97e2f3e451abba2800afaaaf8ae1c097&t=4253&page=1&pp=15

[RadioAstronomer]

I can't say I agree with it

Good. I certainly don't either. :-)

[mewzilla]

The real secret behind why the Earth moves...

[familyofman]

Goodbye Pangea & it was good knowing you Gondwanaland (sniff sniff). Plate tectonics just don't happen because there is not a good fossil record to date every movement of every plate for all time.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Science tries to explain the observations; creationism tries to explain away the observations.

[RadioAstronomer]

You would like this. :-) (if you haven't seen it already)

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/signs.html

[Doctor Stochastic]

What sleep actually said in the introduction:

Flow in the Earth's mantle buffets ascending mantle plumes, causing surface 'hotspots' to move relative to each other. A chain of deduction offers solutions to an age-old puzzle about hotspot behaviour.

Steinberger, Sutherland, and O'Connell's summary:

The bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain is a prominent feature usually attributed to a change in Pacific plate motion 47 Myr ago. However, global plate motion reconstructions fail to predict the bend. Here we show how the geometry of the Hawaiian-Emperor chain and other hotspot tracks can be explained when we combine global plate motions with intraplate deformation and movement of hotspot plumes through distortion by global mantle flow. Global mantle flow models predict a southward motion of the Hawaiian hotspot. This, in combination with a plate motion reconstruction connecting Pacific and African plates through Antarctica, predicts the Hawaiian track correctly since the date of the bend, but predicts the chain to be too far west before it. But if a reconstruction through Australia and Lord Howe rise is used instead, the track is predicted correctly back to 65 Myr ago, including the bend. The difference between the two predictions indicates the effect of intraplate deformation not yet recognized or else not recorded on the ocean floor. The remaining misfit before 65 Myr ago can be attributed to additional intraplate deformation of similar magnitude.

Seems better to quote in context than to paraphrase.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Actual Summary:

InSAR Observations of Low Slip Rates on the Major Faults of Western Tibet
Tim J. Wright,1* Barry Parsons,1 Philip C. England,1 Eric J. Fielding2

Two contrasting views of the active deformation of Asia dominate the debate about how continents deform: (i) The deformation is primarily localized on major faults separating crustal blocks or (ii) deformation is distributed throughout the continental lithosphere. In the first model, western Tibet is being extruded eastward between the major faults bounding the region. Surface displacement measurements across the western Tibetan plateau using satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) indicate that slip rates on the Karakoram and Altyn Tagh faults are lower than would be expected for the extrusion model and suggest a significant amount of internal deformation in Tibet.

[js1138]

Actual Summary:

There you go again: spoiling everyone's fun with facts.

[VadeRetro]

Science tries to explain the observations; creationism tries to explain away the observations.

Very good. Variation: "Science does studies; creationism writes rebuttals."

[bondserv]

Just so you know, I am not claiming that plate tectonics is wrong. The scientists are calling it into question. If you believe I have the information to make this claim, you would be incorrect. I, like you, are not in the loop. We are forced to rely on what the folks who are doing the study choose to characterize it as.

What I can gather from your posts is that you believe there is no question regarding the mechanism of Plate Tectonics. I choose to believe that between the "Hot Spot" studies, and the deformation studies, we are far from knowing how the mechanism actually works. My speculation to this point had been in favor of P.T., but I am no longer convinced it is proof positive. The anomalies need to be sorted out first.

Doctor Stochastic, thank you for your summary posts. They have put some meat on the discussion.

[VadeRetro]

The scientists are calling it into question.

I don't believe that you don't understand what has been said to you on this thread. Coppedge has found two down-in-the-dirty-details revisions and one furniture-chewing hyperbolic naysayer from 1972, the latter railing against this newfangled plate-tectonics fad.

Coppedge and you are so far saying that you can't see the difference between what the first two and the last one are saying. Most of the posters to this thread have spotted that the first two continue to accept plate tectonics and are doing no more than tinkering with the model to answer outstanding questions. The other guy is simply a false prophet, wrong and very out of date.

This does not look good. You should rethink the whole strategy of posting Coppedge's misrepresentations, offering them up as if they were to be taken straightforwardly.

[bondserv]

We shall see.