Disclaimer

(20150703)
To Newbies.

This site advertises :-

• That Plate Tectonics is wrong,
• That it was a deliberate escape concocted to deny the emergent and highly seminal discovery in the middle of the last century that the Earth is getting bigger,
• That there has been an inexcusable and wall-eyed acquiescence by the Earth science community towards this denial ever since, and
• That there has been a self-serving, disingenuous collusion by consensus to exploit it.

In short, this site sees Plate Tectonics as a conspiracy executed by a parcel of rogues, initially in America, then by a copy-cat of all-nations.
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Not *entirely* tongue-in cheek - so, ....

...If you are a student of Earth science studying for examinations then ignore this site because there is a likeliehood that you being young and the world being the way it is you will come to see Captain Conspiracy everywhere, from Coca-Cola to football and tennis to Islamic State, and so Plate Tectonics will come as no surprise.  You could find yourself sympathetic to some of the anti-conspiratorial views expressed here and if you use them in an exam there is a very high probability that your grades could be adversely affected.  You could be seen either as someone who refuses to do their homework, or is being a jerk, or a trouble-maker, or all three.  Whichever way, you will be judged a threat to humility and graded accordingly.   Somewhere along the line you will discover that the positive encouragement to independent thinking is just hype, and that the reverse is true :-:-: the world doesn't like independent thinkers.  [This doesn't apply to wimmin - especially French ones who, although susceptible to cheap blandishments, are liked wherever they go.]

[Then something here about consensus approval being false empowerment - a bit like the male gaze if it happens to be focussed on a trailblazer in a miniskirt (in Italy) (in the 60's).  The gang selects its leader, but by the same token, spits him/her out when the time is right.]

So don't con yourself into thinking your great big idea is likely to be a wow just because you think it should be useful to others.  Good ideas are not the issue, and neither really is their usefulness to others, the grey masses, the "uninvolved", as Menard calls them. In the end and in their own time that cannot be hurried, the reasons that ideas are taken up fall like dice, aligning themselves according to societal exigencies in which individuals are bit-players only, scraping together whatever pecuniary advantage they can.

Rarely does change happen by the volition of an individual - except in Singapore where Lee Kwan Yew took an objection to long hair because there were singing beatles in Britain and thought, "Bugger having them in Singers too", objected to what he saw as potential infestations of what could otherwise be a nice place, and decided to smarten things up a bit and lift it out of the swamp.

Well, the *world* might like independent thinkers, [though to its cost if global warming and its ozone layer precursor coming under attack from my nearly-empty can of sometimes-shaving cream is any indication] but the people in it don't. You will discover that despite masquerading as a social animal, humanity as its more covert self, or its increasingly evolved apotheosis, the cyborg, is given to cannibalism of both the weak and the strong in its need to maintain (like the Earth), equilibrium.

So be careful. Big Brother has finally gotten around to watching *YOU* [Big Pointy Finger here], and he doesn't care if you know he knows you know he is.  Not just you, but anyone who in a moment of weakness expresses a dissident view.  On anything.  He is backed by powerful forces bent on making the world a 'better' place - namely the collective of our own more politically correct selves.  In the interest of peace, quiet, and harmony we will not allow ourselves to swear anymore, appropriate dress will be a 'shall', farting will no longer be a friendly and mannerly social gesture, sexist him-and-him jokes will be a 'thou-shalt-not',  and racist Scotsmen /Englishmen /Irishmen jokes will be off the menu.  Completely.  ['Her-and-her' jokes however will be ok because women are not a joke.  Women are, and expect, serious dancing - preferably the tango, so they can show off where they've been on holiday]  (That was a joke - just in case anybody was wondering).

Nothing will be fun any more -  by decree. And it will all be our own fault - for rubbing ourselves up the wrong way. And with Team Playing being the name of the game, things will probably get worse.

Expressing individuality can be lethal whether it is in recreational sport, or its more muscular version, Islamic State. So don't go thinking about stacking Facebook or Instagram with big ideas about Earth expansion for the future benefit of your C.V. either, just because you think that things could go that way in the future. There's mostly suicidal oblivion in being first, and moreso for those who do the promos. Change waits for the right time, ..to be carried on a meme that all can own and who hardly know (and care even less) whence it blows.

It could happen that such a wind might blow, but equally it might not.  Plate Tectonics has stayed the course for more than half a century, and although there are beginning to be murmurs of change in the direction of Earth expansion they are weak.  It will likely take another fifty years (at least) for any change to be consolidated.  Meanwhile geologists should do the judicious thing and keep whistling to the wind and ogling sideways at the wall until some guru on the academic side of it is prepared to stick his neck out and declare the emperor naked, loud enough so that others will find it useful to listen.

Although speaking truth to power is traditionally the role of the small boy, I don't claim to be so innocent. I'm no academic but I do have a lifetime's experience (on and off) as a field geologist, with a 'specialisation' in structural geology, and think I can tell bullshit when I see it, especially when it is delivered by self-confessed  "outsiders with no credentials in structural problems [who] were having the effrontery to say that their work [i.e., the work of structural geologists] had little bearing on the gross deformation of the earth.  < ..... >  However the people who would develop plate tectonics in the next few years, would not be structural geologists nor need to become such."  Menard (1986), The Ocean of Truth, P.232. [Link] ---- and who would take an astonishing pride in saying so.

Really, the effrontery of this imperial nakedness would be truly astonishing were it not half anticipated - and so amusing (!)   Against it I make no apologies for what some might consider to be the gratuitiously aggressive, even offensive reply.   Nor for repeating it, which I do, here, now, from the considered perspective of structural geology :-:-:  Monolithic consensus though it is, much (if not all) of Plate Tectonics is asinine, and geologists going along with it for the last half-century are being either disingenous (I hope) or incredibly stupid (I fear).

There.  That's hoisting the flag and nailing colours to the mast.   I hope I've made myself clear.

However, this is just my view so don't go believing it just because I said I think I can tell rubbish when I see it.  Check out what others are saying on the subject. Don't go by credentials.  It's what they say and their reasons for saying so that count.  Let your own common sense be judge.

Excepting that I have used the work of others, like Google's earth, Unesco's geology, and Nasa's satellite gravity (and magnetics) as the building blocks to arrive at this conclusion,  the views here are mine and have no roots in others' thinking. I enter by the side-door as it were, using my own geological experience.  I am of course aware that others have views too about an expanding Earth, notably S.W. Carey, and naturally there is overlap.  A lifetime of field work (on and off) (most of it off) and much of it in complex metamorphic terrains makes anyone versed in structural geology reasonably qualified to have 'views'.  If some find mine rather strongly expressed then I can only point to the last half-century of foundational cement they are dealing with, and the number of bent people keep trying to repair it.   Dynamite is needed to shift it, which is not a job for shrinking violets.

The target reader is not the academic, nor even the geologist, really.  So mired in the consensus groove are both that they have proved themselves to be a dead loss, the first because he has to do the walkie-talkie thing and go with the flow, and the second because his preoccupation is with the immediate resource needs of society, which preclude indulgencies such as this, and so he doesn't much care one way or the other.  I write for the interested and open-minded public, whom I believe are genuinely (and rightly) interested in matters terrestrial (and educational)  - and as a caution to newbies.  There are big dangers in embarking on the Big Ship when there are holes in the hull.  And although they are plugged by many fingers it just takes a strategic one to pull itself out and the ship will sink.  But equally there are dangers related to mob-rule if you don't. If you put your trust in fingers then there is safety in numbers, and there are deck-chairs, hoopla, and a band playing. It can be a fairly satisfying deal.

But it is a long way down to the lifeboat.  And in the interest of self-preservation, in the event of an emergency it just might leave before you get there.

You are living in momentous geological times. Plate Tectonics is under attack and being consigned to the refuse bin of history.  Earth expansion, once a soaring target of achievement brought low by a cabal of robber barons, is now a phoenix rising from the ashes of their misadventure.  Physics, with its preoccupation with 'mass-as-a-particle', is likewise challenged (BBC). Is geology once more providing the evidence that will lead to a change in thinking in that field?

That's rhetorical. The answer one way and another is :- very likely.

But, .....

The purpose here is first and foremost to convey geological simplicity by presenting the 'picture on the front of the box'.  The pile of jigsaw pieces inside it is dealt with as we go.

Ideally, simplicity should be at the heart of instruction for newbies.  But it isn't.  For the cognoscenti of Plate Tectonics in charge of the scripts, ever ready to see complexity where there is none and revel in the opportunity to do jigsaws, simplicity is a difficult concept, so we leave them to do their bottoms-up, jigsaw thing.  The theme here is top-down, .. a morphotectonic reconstruction of the crust and the mantle, that tells us quite simply that "what we see is what we get" - the mantle has broken through the crust making the Earth's surface hugely bigger (and thereby its volume) (and mass) too.

For some to say that this is an old view that was debunked decades ago is just wrong.  It never was (debunked). Geology got hijacked by geophysics at (=>) a very vulnerable time in history.  There *is no dialogue in the scientific literature (to speak of), nothing that dissects the 'errors of expansion', because there are none, of a geological nature at any rate.  There is only the admission by Plate Tectonics (cast as a charge against Expansion), of an inability to comprehend the compelling implication - that as well as the Earth's surface area increasing, the Earth's interior must be getting bigger (and increasing in mass) too.

Without getting into the intricacies of the atom, mass, standing waves, energy, entropy and the umpteen particles that 'must' exist ["if"], this concern is usually expressed as "mechanism".  But it is another escape-word devised by the club of passwords and secret handshakes and free-lunch generally to avoid acknowledging terrestrial reality and doing something about it.

It's true.  We don't know.  There *is* no known mechanism - in the mainstream at least..  but to balk at trying to find one when the surface geology of the Earth is so clearly telling us that one must exist, is an abrogation of responsibility and duty to both science and the public who fund it. Those most concerned with the nature of energy, massiness, and the material stuff that manifests it, who thought they were getting somewhere (until being turned into pumpkins on the "stroke of a funding midnight") should really pay attention to the Earth's surface geology, which for half a century Plate Tectonics has been doing its level best to pervert and distort to suit its own punt for financial backing, initially from the military (for submarine warfare), then later from wherever it could.

There is no escaping the fact that the Earth really *is* as we see it.  The continental crust is distended by a mantle whose 'extrusion' is the same age as, or younger than,  the ruptures initiating breakthrough. Quite apart from (=>) Plate Tectonics' inherent error (slabmen 1,2) there is no space nor time for subduction of the oceanic crust due to mantle convection, to operate.

Of course geology is interested in the Earth's interior, but it is far more interested in deciphering the structure of its crust.  Despite geophysicists astounding naivety (Menard above), this does require skill.  However it isn't rocket science.  It is perfectly accessible to anyone with a smattering of natural science gleaned from popular media.

My own observation is that Earth's surface geological structure is commensurate and congruent with a significant observable change in its rotational axis since Pangaean times, and likely earlier.  Something happened (/is happening)  to transform the energy of the system since the Earth differentiated into a core mantle and a crust that is making it bigger and increasing its mass.  My guess is that it could possibly be related to Moon capture back in Hadean times, which had a protracted expression in deep rupturing of the brittle outer shell of the Earth that culminated in mantle breakthrough during the Mesozoic.  But it is an off-the-top-of-the-head, unsupported guess, ..  Eugen Ellis has a different view. (repeat link).

Newbies should properly pay attention to the consensus groove.  If you're going to deviate from it then do it when you can't be nobbled.  Be clandestine.  Adopt a tactic.   Science doesn't really much mind which way round you do it, whether as a series of observations based on experience and leading to a conclusion (as here), or as a 'stab-in-the-dark', fairy-floss bright idea spun right off the top of the head, supported by later observation.  But give them the bits first and the floor plan last.  If you do it right the fact will speak for itself.  That way and without coercion everybody gets to see for themselves what it is you're trying to say.  It is 'revealed'  And thus becomes theirs. And you've done your bit.

Oblivion is yours. (Hurray?)

See what I mean?  Why would anyone want to step out of the groovy groove and commit professional suicide with a flagrant display of hubris by going and telling everybody they're wrong? It's not just you, it's your family, health, holidays, school fees, and everything about you that must be considered, not the least of which (these days of Big Brother) is your e-footprint, quite apart from 'oblivion-in-your-time' thrown in for good measure if you happen to be academically inclined.   Pressures of all sorts have put science in a very different place from where it used to be, and anyone would be challenged to say it's for the better.

It makes no practical difference to anybody whether the Earth is getting bigger or not - except for it being an addition to common knowledge and maybe for the advantage from some as-yet unknown spin-off that physics might discover /invent (=>care)  And of course, appropriate use of public funds.  Maybe in the future the Earth will explode and make another asteroid belt, but not in your lifetime, nor in the span of human existence.  So don't be a hero. Not till you get fired up enough anyway to see it through on the altar of sacrifice.  In the meantime consensus *is* important despite the stick given it here.. With pastoral care, (=>)sheep *do* safely graze despite the most portentous threat to their mental and emotional well-being gazing down on them  (in whatever form that might take).  Peace of mind is an important first step in facing up to consensus (and taking the flack from the rest of the flock).

Remember, .. that bit about the floor plan being last (even though you might have conceived it first) is important. Make sure the bricks you put in place gel with the consensus view to the extent at least that peer review will agree with them. Then hit them with the plan - the mumble in the jungle - eventually they'll get it.

Good luck..

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If  however you are a student of the *history* of science then by all means read on because Plate Tectonics is a superlative example in your field of what can happen when consensus rears its head, scepticism goes out the window, and the personal and political aspirations of career dominate.  Because here we have not just a whole field of geology, but its *entire underpinnings*  founded on (=>) assumptions by self-confessed "outsiders" who proudly announced that they "didn't have a geological clue",  and what's more, "didn't need one" (Menard above, thinking he's sweeping with a new broom) [Thomas Kuhn did advise at least some bristles on it, and that some knowledge at least of the subject to hand was necessary] .. and whom all others (geologists included) have followed like the pied piper, even when the piper himself jumped ship and tootled off..

Have we been scammed by the cognoscenti?  Well, .. let's just say if there was honesty to be found among the retinue of followers it lies in the ardent commitment of team players to the club, especially the one of comfortable torpor and (=>) miasmic effervescence of free lunch instead of bothering themselves to do anything as useful as look for an explanation for what is the most insightful realisation *ever* (!) in geology.  But to see it you have to read the runes as a movie of the past according to the(=>) principles of structural and stratigraphic superposition, not as some fairy-floss idea spun from the top of the head while proudly flaunting "no credentials" as authority for telling everybody - and what is even more amazing, .. selling it to those who *did* have credentials.

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Plate Tectonics will go down in history as the most astonishing (=>) con-job in science *ever*, not just for its geological incompetence which is perhaps excusable on account of 'credentials', but for the collusion that supported it.  And still does.  By vesting its authority in consensus it forecloses on reason and discourages thinking for yourself.  If ever there was a parallel between science and religion, Plate Tectonics is *it*. Time it was consigned to history, and scientists and science commentators alike fessed up to its darker underbelly (repeat link)

(=>) [Beating the drum.]

 ("To see what is in front of one's nose needs constant struggle.")
(~ George Orwell.)

 http://www.vox.com/2015/5/13/8591837/how-science-is-broken
 (... as illustrated here by Plate Tectonics.)