Plates and plate movement

 Kiddies' Korner 
( .. the language of plates, .. as used in Plate Tectonics .. )

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Nope. Plates don't "move".  Not the way Plate Tectonics says anyway, to "collide and build mountains".  And if the crust /continent on top does, then so what? The crust on top is not a plate, and may 'move' for reasons other than 'Plate Tectonics'.

Fig.1.  Caterpillar tracks.  Just because its trax are churning like billy-o doesn't mean this baby is going anywhere. .. just round-and-round like the lithospheric plate of  Plate Tectonics.  It's stuck in mud.  No way can it even make it to the edge of the page to "collide" with and "crumple" another plate'.  So plate *movement* as Plate Tectonics needs it to be, to "build mountains", is a non-starter.  When it comes to "crumpling", *PLATES* simply don't "move".   Not according to Plate Tectonics use of the language anyway.  Convection cells don't move any more than an escalator might move out from the shop on to the street to "collide" with buildings.  And if they're "moving" on the spot then they ain't goin' no-where - much less 'drfting /gliding /diving /riding /smashing /banging /bumping or travelling across the world to collide with other 'plates' (and build mountains). 

Google search	"plates move" + tectonics ~2006       2017
"Plates move"	6,770         201,000
"plates collide	3,800           74,100
"plates slide	2,430           58,500
"plates converge"	1,630           69,300
"plates float"	1,170           28,100
"plates drift"	624              19,000
"plates dive"	624                1,020
"plates ride"	637                2,490
"plates grind"	600              22,000
"plates crash"	423              12,500
"plates crunch"	107                   371
"plates creep"	798                   287
"plates glide"	148                   670
"plates jostle"	78                  1,240
"plates slam"	198                   319
"plates ram"	error                 216
"plates smash"	error              3,800
"plates bang"	lost                   139
"plates bump"	2,940 (2012-10-17)  1,510
"plates travel"	936                1,090
"plates migrate"	2,440                706
("plates scurry")	Did not match any documents (no legs!)

And the language that *should* be used (something like "cycling") (for convection) - or even 'convect' itself, is not used.

Plates don't do any of the above verbs (not even "scurry") (so they win one on that score at least).  So Plate Tectonics runs foul of semantics again (repeat link).  All the words used are words of *translation*, which convey a completely wrong meaning of "plate movement" - particularly when it comes to the Origin of Mountains.

Fig.2. One for that dinner table conversation - Plate movement according to the lingo of Plate Tectonics. If a plate with dinner on it collides with another plate (with dinner on it), then the dinners heap up around the collision ("/crashing /crumpling /creeping) .. (jostling /smashing /ramming /bashing"), .. while one of the plates slides /glides beneath the other.

Well, .. it's what they say, .. not me.  Do me a favour and tell me if that image is basically your understanding of "plate movement" according to the liturgy.)  We can cuddle each other for support in this post-Trumpian apocalyptic /apoplectic Armageddon we're headed for.


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[20180609]
I sketched that figure after listening to two programs today, 1 : Universities and private money  and 2 Bespoke bodies  (from about 29mins on the second one for the general overview), in order to highlight the question, how can such practical medical research co-exist with such dopey nonsense as Plate Tectonics?  Somebody tell me it's me that's the dope (I don't mind), because the alternative is unthinkable, except that it is (thinkable). Unfortunately.  Eventually it will be shrugged off as "the way science moves forward", but before that happens the parlous state of Plate Tectonics should be recorded for posterity.  It should not be allowed to slip under the radar and be forgotten about without being held to account, with which in mind the BBC science /Earth department got noticed for its take on "colliding plates building mountains".  [The link on that twitterpost has moved b.t.w. to https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fzsnd ]

 However, its reference to the wikipedia appears to be a disclaimer of sorts apologising for the clips being possibly factually incorrect, and suggesting some correction may be needed.

It's true. They do.

The Wikipedia is in a bit of a bind on that score, being skewered on the semantics of "mountain formation" v. "mountain building", which difference highlights something of the trap that Plate Tectonics has fallen into with its tectonics of crustal crumpling.  Fine, if primary school is the intended level of pitch, but for anything more they need a slap on the wrist because 1. they are abusing the public's intelligence, 2. casting aspersions on Professor Ian Stewart's standing as a science communicator (the script is just a generic consensus view)  and 3. knocking a hole in the public purse by taking him  all the way to New Zealand to read it. The offending passages (about moving plates, continental collisions buckling the crust and building mountains) are highlighted :-

Fig.3.  'Plates', the washing up, and who's doing it, .. the 'boing-boing' of plate collision (Fig.2 above)? .. or the gravitational instability of Earth expansion.  A toss-up?  (No that's not fair, .. just look at that mess on the left.)  In the interest of order, peace and  harmony, Earth expansion will volunteer.

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The Misnomer of Mountain Building

 Blue Mountains, Australia
( ...  which are neither blue, nor particularly mountainous .. )

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My dictionary says mountains are just big hills.   Geologists talk glibly enough of mountain building, ...so why don't we talk of hill-building? ...but we don't, ..do we?  Ever wonder why not...? The answer is couched in the biblical belief in Plate Tectonics. 

Fig.1. Blue Mountains, Australia .. (through a mist .. darkly). ["Plates and mountains" - (Cowboys - pulling the wool, drawing the long bow.) ]

Who remembers the good old days (Grampaw?) when mountains were just high bits of ground?  At least, higher than everywhere else.  Which was funny when you thought about it, ...because .. how come?   How did it happen that great chunks of land were higher than everywhere else?  And when you thought about it,  mountains were not really mountains at all, but just wot wuz left when there wuz valleys.  And you got valleys when it rained.    And that was what *really* made them pointy and steep (The mountains.)  The valleys.  Well, ... those fluffy clouds up there, .. sun, .. evaporation, .. condensation, ..rain-wind-and-weather, .. and climate (.. change) ..

(Then there wuz Geolorgie... an' Plate Tectonics)

"Now, ..WaaAit a Miiiinute!  What are we talking about here?  The mountains or the valleys?"
"NawwwWww, ....rain,  ....weather, ...erosion,  ... climate (change), global warming,  ..grass growing and slowing erosion and helping mountains grow, ..  Sea-level. ... "
"Sea-Level?  Is the sea level?   I thought it was round like the Earth."
"Yeah, ....Gravity.   It's been round for ever.  Ever since the planet."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah....  Well, ... sort of, ...it's kind of like, ..yeah, .. That's why its level.  At least, it's becoming level."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, ... an' you get fossils everywhere, showing every so often the sea comes up and swamps the land.  ..I mean levels the land."
"Gee, . How?  Does it really rain that fast?"
"Yeah, ..  Forty days and forty nights.  It's true."

P.T.-ers, ..Pteros, Pterologists, Pteromancers, Pterrorists 
..and the avant garde, ..the Hill-Buildies,... 
...snoring away like Rip Van Winkle.. 

Roadmap

  House  malt  rat  cat  dog  cow  maiden  man  judge  rooster  farmer  HHH

Plate Tectonics' nonsenses

 The logical fallacies of Plate Tectonics
( .. debunking the myths .. )

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

Fig.1. The three fallacies of Plate Tectonics :-: 1. plates, 2. subduction, and 3. mountain building.

ps://twitter.com/EuroGeosciences/status/914829938917806081

Plate Tectonics is a theory that purports to explain geological features of the Earth's crust in terms of mantle convection.  Seen originally as a pancake of crust being fractured and displaced atop a roiling mantle boil ("ridge-push"), the picture currently being promulgated is one of "slab-pull", where  deformation is driven by a 'slab' of oceanic crust descending back into the mantle at so-called "subduction zones".  

Cycling convection, .. driving or pulling, and/or assisted by frictional drag, .. Plate Tectonics is not very clear on the point ).

The plate model is based on a denial of what is plain for all to see - that in recent geological times the Earth appears to have got hugely bigger by the extents of the ocean floors (/mantle). It is assumed that since there is no apparent explanation for this incredible 'biggering' it therefore cannot have happened (/be happening).  It is further assumed therefore that prior to mantle breakthrough there must have existed an ocean floor (/mantle crust) equal in areal extent to the sum of those existing today that has since been destroyed to make way for those present, and that this disappearance has happened down so-called "subduction zones" of which (just by the way) there is only one - that bordering the Pacific extending through Indonesia then along the Himalayan front to the Mediterranean Sea.  

The "just-by-the-way" is to highlight the casual effrontery of Plate Tectonics in proposing that although there is just one subduction zone separating the continental-collective from the oceans today, it has no qualms about proposing a plethora of them that have formed in the past, heaping up mountains willy-nilly wherever any (mountains) occur - even ones that have been eroded to exist now as mere hills - or even, in extremis, those that are represented now by planation surfaces. [x]  

Plate Tectonics' 'master stroke' therefore is to claim the once-existence of something for which there is no evidence (whatsoever), and in the fine Kuhnian tradition of scientific revolutions, further this astonishing claim by declaring it to be based on the assessment of "outsiders who didn't have a geological clue (.. and didn't need one)."

Plate Tectonics is unsupportable even within its own frame of reference, particularly its emphasis on hypothesised gravitational collapse in mantle crust by subduction (that we can't see) rather than gravitational collapse in the continental crust (that we can see) - and by attributing crustal movements generally to (hypothesised) convection rather than to observed gravitational collapse and commensurate Earth rotation.

=>   Nonsenses list

Flat (slab) Subduction

   ..Is the nemesis of Plate Tectonics 
         ( .. and spells its demise .. )

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(From lst edition, archives ~ May, 2008)

The so-called 'cold subducting slab' of the Western Pacific 'slides under' the continental lithosphere and terminates on the asthenosphere, i.e., it is *not* being returned to the deep mantle.  No return to the deep mantle means that subduction (here, the type area of the mechanism) cannot be a driver for Plate Tectonics. " The sinking of vast sheets of oceanic lithosphere back into the mantle is the primary driving force of plate tectonics."

Fig. 1.  Seismic tomography beneath the Japan Trench.  Showing 'FLAT' SUBDUCTION.  No sinking here...   The  'subducting slab' (blue/ cold) is simply being 'pushed' under the continental margin of Japan by so-called "ridge-push".  [Vertical cross-section beneath Japan produced from GAP-P1. This is the same figure as Fig 2(a) in Obayashi et al., 2006.)

Plate Tectonics would probably say,

"Well of course, only a fool would think the cold descending slab sinks into the mantle the way we've been showing it for years and years and years.  *THAT* angle is only the TOP of the going-down part in the upper mantle, ..you know, the lithosphere, ..the brittle bit where you get all the Earthquakes.  Now we know that what *really* happens is that the slab gets pushed flatly under the continents just so far, by the force of ridge-push (..you know, that ten centimetres of dyke that gets intruded at the ridge every year? ...the one forcing the ocean floors apart and pushing it across half the world? ... yes, that one), then it snaps off and sinks (flatly) allowing the part just emplaced to be overridden by the next length of subducting slab.  As it heats up it becomes less rigid (pale blue).   We've been telling you all along about FLAT SUBDUCTION,  haven't we?  So, ..well, ... now it's clear that is what we're dealing with - flat subduction.  We've known all along that the other subduction, the steep one, is really a bum steer.  But this one's a little beauty - because we thought of it."

"But didn't you think of the other one too?"
"Well, ...Not me, ..I didn't think of it.."

.... So that in time we have a whole lot of them (slabs), all stacked neatly one on top of the other descending 'flatly' into the mantle.  You see all those concentric, flatly orientated, pale-blue pixelated layers going right to the core-mantle boundary?  Well, they're all piles of flat slabs, all heaped one on top of the other, going down, zig-zagging into the mantle, ..getting heated up as they go down, which is why they're paler blue.  Not so brittle you see....

"But some of them are paler than others, and they're *above* darker blue ones.  In fact the one right at the bottom is the darkest blue of the lot."
"Well obviously that's because it was even darker blue to begin with.  You're obviously not getting what this science is about, are you."
"But it's even darker blue than the ones at the top.  Well, the ones underneath the asthenosphere."
"Obviously you need to read a book."

That's what's good about Plate Tectonics, it can be bent any way at all.  It's as bendable as whoever bending it is bent enough to be bent on making up bent explanations.  It is no more than sheer invention - a bent invention unto whomever is bent takes it upon themselves to bend. ..

Rubber numbers.

But how did we ever get the picture of steep "subducting slabs" in the first place, when tomography shows them to be so obviously flat?  Why? Because only ever shown was the broken lithospheric edge-effect down to about 600km, i.e., what happens at the edge between the continental lithosphere and the oceanic lithosphere, i.e., the upper mantle effect. Usually the bottom part is carefully trimmed off in case it spoils things.  There was a story going around, you see ...about how subducting slabs drive Plate Tectonics via the deep mantle and convection, so only ever shown was the data to support it (the steep bit), .. looking like it was returning to the mantle.

Bent, you see?

But now, with the spin-related, concentric structure of the mantle (=>) becoming ever more obvious through mantle tomography, this concentric, non-descending structure of mantle slabs is becoming something of a celebrity.

[ Celeb Tectonics (may need quoted text shown) (Celebtonics.) ('Coz it looks good.)]

Of course,  'flat' slab subduction is a contradiction of the spirit of original agreement as to the meaning of the term,  but what does that matter when there's a whole new gravy train of publication opportunity revving up, just waiting to leave the station?

 All Plate Tectonics has to explain now is how the subducted slab (flat subducted or no) gets colder (bluer) as it goes down, as in the figure.  And why the non-oceanic/ continental lithosphere is all hot on the landward side.  Well, we could say that's easy, is it not?  The friction of the slab going down and getting pushed along heats everything up and makes it rise, just like at the ridge, ...even melts it and gives volcanoes.  But the slab of course must stay cold because it has to sink to drive everything, but there are surely research opportunities there too, to pad out this gravy train.

I wonder if this flat slab grinding away underneath the continents, melting everything and making it rise, rises with the rise too...   Or does the slab stay cold while the friction it generates heats everything else up?

You can see from the figure it only gets cold when it meets a continental margin.   If there were no continental lithosphere to force the mantle down (=>) there would be no convection and no Plate Tectonics.  It wouldn't matter how hot the Earth was inside, with no continental lithosphere to push the mantle slabs down there would be no Plate Tectonics. (Got it?... the logic of the subducting slab against a continent? .... just by sitting there doing nothing the continental lithosphere is driving Plate
Tectonics.)

Now, ..that's the Western Pacific.  It's the same in the Eastern Pacific where the Americas are overriding the Pacific plates.  And it's the same under the Tonga trench.  And it's the same for India, now that it's not India colliding with Asia and crumpling up the Himalayas, but the Himalayas that are being bodily uplifted by India being driven (flatly) underneath causing the collapse of the Himalayas southwards over the Indian Craton.

So with all this so-called "flat subduction" going on (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) where's the subduction that returns stuff to the mantle to drive Plate Tectonics actually happening?  (Hey, ..More research!  Who said this Plate Tectonics stuff was boring??  Don't you just  luv-vit?)

"Flat subduction"  Googles about 2,860  (0.44 seconds)   June 3rd, 2008
"Flat subduction"  Googles about 7,840  (0.30 seconds) March 08, 2010.

Gee, this flat subduction is just crying out for research. That's more than thirty years ago since subduction (the genuine article) started. There's a wiki entry on the web too for just about everything to do with Plate Tectonics, but still no Wiki Entry for flat subduction (as at June, 2010). [seems to begin May, 2016 as 'Flat Slab Subduction' - I can hardly believe this!! df-20171004).]  How come?

[ Addendum 20171005 :- Well, .. it could have something to do with my objection to Flat (/Slab) Subduction (along with a whole lot of others being compiled having been up on the web from about 2001/2 till this year (2017) when I had to change service providers because the one I'm with was not part of the National Broadband Network - up until which point (thanks to google) it enjoyed virtually top-of-the-web status for any rationally conjoined search terms to do with Plate Tectonics / Earth expansion, since which time there has been the most muscular effort from the academic community to reinforce the idea of flat subduction. But how can I know?. Academics are obviously the last people to put a reference to their nemesis. And the public don't much like their holy cows being painted black.  Anyone thinking they can go against such a solid consensus as Plate Tectonics offers (and the hype that goes with it ; [1; 500,000 returns today)] [2]) without serious repercussions, is kidding themselves. [P.S. - Checking first link above, looks like it's been edited out too.]

The tomography depicting flat subduction is becoming more and more apparent, and has the potential to torpedo Plate Tectonics in its entirety.  (=>)  [see also.]  Could this possibly be the reason nobody wants to deal with it (except here)?  Subduction in its various guises is the central pillar of Plate Tectonics after all, .. and 'flat subduction' is its nemesis. [No convection = no Plate Tectonics.]

GeoFix apology for Plate Tectonics' subduction, .. from the University of Arizona:-

"Plate tectonics, a theory which revolutionized our understanding of the earth. The theory however, failed to fully explain the formation of the Rocky Mountains, until the "flat subduction" model was developed. Dickinson and Snyder (1978) proposed that shallow-slab subduction could have transmitted tectonic stresses into the foreland and caused the Laramide-style block uplifts. Bird (1988) suggested that shear traction of the shallowly subducting plate stripped away the mantle lithosphere beneath the North American crust and transmitted shear stress capable of causing the foreland uplifts..." (http://www.geo.arizona.edu/geo5xx/geo527/Rockies/flatsub.html)

 "Flat subduction" ... Sounds good when it's backed with the www.*.edu respectability that's been paid for, but it's really another failed root'n-toot'n, shoot'n the foot'n goalpost shift... because if subduction is flat then there is no return to the deep mantle as there is with the conceptualised steep variety, which is the lynchpin of Plate Tectonics. Flat subduction is the overriding of gravitationally collapsing, equilibrating Pangaean crust  ..of Earth expansion.  As Hugo of the Benioff zone had it.

In Plate Tectonics the message is the concept, .. not the facts.

And they call this ("bending") science??   You gotta laugh!   Some football!  The biggest con-job in Earth science.  But nobody wants to believe it. 

Or are they just dumb?  No.  They are hamstrung by the sterility of consensus politics, .. by keep trying to position the goalposts according to the pressures of funding.  And doing it without upsetting that $$$-applecart.  How about for the price of a beer (/a couple of apples just about) together we can keep this thing on the road -  (how simplicity trumps complexity) - and maintain some rage while we're at it, .. if you're bothered by the way experts keep bending the facts and leading people up the garden path by pulling dominoes out from off the bottom of the pack and deliberately putting them in the wrong order, so they can turn them around at will (or trying to do jigsaws without looking at the picture on the front of the box).

Fig.2. Flat subduction.  The picture on the front of the box ["Lithospheric boudinage".  1 = continental lithosphere + collapsing edge;  2 = 'out-from-under mantle growth; + = earthquakes;  3= oceanic crust. (From Earth expansion 1st edition)]

=> (links)

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Holding page

Yes it does. It's just been returned to 'draft' for some small edits, or  or I think about where it goes in the road map.  Pages are constantly being edited (mostly in just small ways), and re-arranged, .. so just call back in a day or two if you see this message.  (Maybe longer if the 'road map' is the issue.)

Earth, Billiard Balls and Mountains

 A question of scale ..
( .. Getting the message?) (Nope, .. not yet .. )

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Fig.1.  Wikipedia entry.  After many years of me sledging Plate Tectonics - the logic being irrefutable (don's blog + sci.geo.geology),  this article finally folded.

 
Considering further the Zen Of  Mountains and the possible enlightenment to be had from realising that we will probably have to go at least twice around the w.w.w. dot of Google's earth and a whole lot of stuff from misfits of institutional note like Nasa, Noaa, USGS, Unesco, National Geographic etc., who have still to scale the glass mountain, rescue the beautiful maiden (and therefore to our very considerable dismay also make it clear that they have not updated their definitions according to the semantics of the wikipedia), we discover to our very considerable surprise that not only is there no such thing as "mountain building", but also that there is logically (therefore) no such thing as mountains either (except for volcanoes, ".. the only mountains that get built.")

I mean, stands to reason, .. dunnit?

(more? .. =>) 

The Zen of Mountain Building

"First there is a mountain ..
( .. then there is no mountain then there is .." )

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" .. Before I had studied Chan (Zen) for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers." (link)

Fig 1.  The Holy Mountain - Mount Kailash (alt view) (remind you of anywhere?)  with Everest (slightly tilted) in the background.   Both being pointy and steep show them once  to have been higher.  [So are these mountains ("tossed high by the collision of plates") .. or valleys due to erosion?  [Crust crumpling /"building" up due to 'tectonics'?  Or wearing down due to erosion?]   (Source : google images)

[More? .. ]  =>

Spacedust

( ... is not an option ... )
(from the archives ~1985)

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Earth enlargement by the accumulation of spacedust won't work. It's a tempting idea if we think of the planet accreting from planetisimals and that infall is just a continuation of the same process that got the planet together in the first place, but it fails on simple mass considerations.

If we could roll the entire crust up like a carpet (or a cigarette), including the crust of the ocean floors, and shove it down into the mantle, it wouldn't make one whit of difference to the size of the planet. That is, everything that ever fell, together with all redistributed sediments, as well as carbonate precipitates, volcanic extrusions and intrusions, and granites derived from the Earth's interior (which really shouldn't be counted at all) , ..the whole lot, .. from the Archaean to the present day, it would hardly make any difference to the size of the Earth. Even if all of it were cosmic dust it would make no significant difference whatsoever to the size of the Earth. So there's no way dust accumulation from cosmic infall could have anything to do with the growth of the planet. Case closed.

Unless...

Unless the base of the crust is being resorbed into the mantle at the same time as stuff is falling on the top. But that can't be either, or stratigraphic sequence as we know it (right back to the Archean) would not exist. As things are, we do have continuity of stratigraphic sequence to the Archaean.

Nevertheless there's a certain logic in it that's appealing. Stuff needs to come from somewhere. And it needs to be added. So, what if we're just looking at the wrong scale? 

Could it be that cosmic infall is in the form of elementary atomic particles that are somehow swept up directly into the core of the earth, possibly via the magnetic field ? 

The Earth with its iron core rotating in the electromagnetic field of the sun's radiation is like a big electromagnet after all. And the atom comprises mostly space. And it is said that the size of particles to the size of the atom is something like the size of peas to a football park, ..or like the size of planets compared to the space between them. So the Earth is not as solid as it appears. At that scale there is plenty of space (theoretically) for particles to find their way through the Earth's interior even though matter seems impenetrable to us.

What is the interface that the stuff of matter must cross in order to have mass? What if once it has crossed it, mass is created out of mass? In other words, if mass 'grows', by a kind of cell division? We have seen how mantle material is added at the (=>) spreading ridges by cell division, ..So..?  [added 20170821- Or, .. created with time.]

But even though we might speculate on the process in relation to the mass of the Earth today, it has to begin at the beginning, and if we're going to have a mechanism to make the planet grow, then it has to be at least considered that it could be somehow related to the same process that created the Earth in the first place. And if for one planet, then for others too. This means that planet Earth cannot be considered in isolation, but as part of the family that includes the Sun and the Gas Giants. And we might as well throw in the Moons as well. It really gets to be quite a can of worms, once we start thinking about it.

Not only that, but it leads us into re-considering the way that material organises itself, from sub-atomic particles to atoms to molecules to crystals, and the part played by structured symmetry in growth.

What is the nature of the 'interface', the 'bridge' between electrical force that binds the atom and the force across atomic interface to molecules that organises mass into such huge lumps of stuff as a star? If we're looking for a mechanism for the creation of mass then it makes sense to consider how the particles that make up 'mass' (in whatever form we consider that stuff) come into being, and to clearly recognise and understand the realms of scale of the interfaces at which different sets of processes operate [ = the 'interface' effect - the scale at which stuff stops being what it was before and becomes something else instead, .. like water and ice, .. like some 'electrical plasma soup' called magma + gas (= "rock" when it loses its heat.]

These are not questions that can be answered within the scope of geology, but there is something about the 'immaculate conception' ('creationist') model of planetisimal accummulation/ formation, where an invariant mass of 'stuff' was there in the first place - always was and always will be, imbued with the mass and rotational characteristics we see today, that seems very iffy. The increase in the size of the Earth that is empirically observed yet for which there is no known explanation, is making it clear that some hard questions need to be asked of quantum mechanics and astrophysics if  'science' as promulgated by "real scientists" (with their measuring tapes) can rise above their extraordinary capacity for being masters of the college ( with their view that what they don't know isn't knowledge), and consider the evidence staring them in the face instead of ignoring it - that the Earth is getting bigger. The evidence for, lies in the creation of the ocean floors (and all other Earthly parameters). The evidence against? .... lies in the hubristic assumption by scientists that this cannot possibly happen. Properly stated this should carry the riders "there is no known way," ... and "within the bounds of understanding", because when it comes to answering the really big questions we are still as babes in the wood, goggling with fixed curiosity at our surroundings.

Back to the future, flat Earth, and geocentrism.

Semantics

"Building consensus makes you free .. "

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What is a mountain?  Is easily answered.   What is 'mountain building' is a more difficult question and confronts 'experts' with some serious oxymoronic contradictions, because ("Hello, sailor") there is no such thing.  No 'mountain building', no 'orogeny', and no tectonics (in the sense meant by Plate Tectonics) - only the inexorable, relentless collapse of the crust as it is made to adjust to the changing curvature of the Earth as it gets bigger.

["Mountain *building*?"]

(" Whenever ideas fail, men invent words," ~ Martin Fischer)

 

Figure 1.  Contemplating dandelions and the Gaia principle.  (Not exactly a mountain, .. but ..)    Investigating the Vedas - Earth, water, wind, and fire - and the 'void', .. and finding life. And mountains.  But not 'mountain building')  [Image source [1] [2] ]

 Between the sun and the seed there are many things in the Vedas, including mountains.  But "mountain building" is not one of them - despite the authority of 'experts', ..

USGS "mountain building" = About 140,000 results
NASA "mountain building"  =  About 189,000 results
Google scholar "mountain building" =  About 23,800 results
... and just "mountain building" by itself = About 423,000 results

... thus showing that the general public has more common sense than all the experts put together, .. because as everyone knows (including children if prodded with leading questions by the teacher) mountains are not "built".  They are products of erosion. Nowhere can anyone point to mountains getting 'built' (unless it's a volcano - forged in the fire).

"The only mountains that get built are volcanoes"

 So what's going on?  Why does this meme, this mantra of 'mountain *building*' mesmerise people so, even to the exalted level of the 'expert'?  Well, it's quite simply the 'flat-Earth /round-Earth' thing in another form.  Plate Tectonics is getting its sense of proportion (=/commonsense) screwed up, and (in the fine tradition of "the more you get to know the more you find you don't"), is providing an excellent example to aspiring young scientists how to let all this 'not-knowing' and lack of commonsense hang out.  Unashamedly.

The appropriate scale is not being addressed.  And words are being used to conceal a clueless deficit.  It is a classic example of the hubris that will be around for a long time before it is written out of the history books. It's already inexplicably survived for half a century beyond its use-by  [See note :- 20181105]  which was the date of its birth (~1967).  Geologically speaking, Plate Tectonics was still-born.  An invention /contrivance to milk the trough of government funds. It should never have got up.

In the never-ending story of Plate Tectonics everything is upside-down and round the wrong way, and so back-to-front and inside-out that it makes it very difficult to work out where to begin to fix it.  A bit like those wonky mirrors we look in to see ourselves as we really are.  

On examination we find this has more to do with the language, the 'management-speak', being used than the thinking behind the science.  You have to pull the whole thing apart in order to find a suitable thread to follow, and then, finding all the ones you've already pulled lying all over the floor in disarray, you have to work out how to put it all back together again to make some sort of sense, knowing even when you do that the facts and the logic won't cut it (because they never do).  Because when people,  particularly those thinking they know most have their ideas and beliefs, feel threatened they become even more militant in their views  - exactly as Carey found .  (Paraphrasing here), "Structural geologists were not getting the big picture because they were working at the wrong scale and off flat-map projections, when what was needed was to look at the Earth as a whole - 'in the altogether round' so to speak."  (=>)

But the fact that we don't see much evidence of this 'round' approach in the academic literature says that maybe it's not so easy as it looks. [Pre the launch of Google earth in 2005 I can vouch for it.]

The reasons are firstly that Plate Tectonics is a consensus, and secondly that to go against consensus is academic suicide. 

Robert Dean Clark :- 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. (link)

Sam Carey: "Through the 30s and 40s and 50s if you dared to propose this sort of thing in America you'd be laughed at, you're a ratbag flat-earther. And there was no chance of getting a job if you had that kind of idea." (link)

For Carey, three books on the subject in twenty years didn't cut it.  Even though Earth expansion accommodates more of the facts than Plate Tectonics, and connects all of Plate Tectonics' inventions in more economical ways than P.T. itself does, and demonstrates how P.T. is unsupportable, it makes no difference, leaders in the field hunker down and become more entrenched in their positions and the herd follows, feeling themselves also under attack.  Change has to happen in such a way that will let others see (because experts certainly won't) that the lynchpin of their thinking is only part of the story - then see that it is really quite a minor thing, so minor in fact that it comes to be seen (with time) as insignificant, .. then with more time, as irrelevant.  With more time still, it becomes acceptable to write the 'lynchpin' out of the history books entirely. Thus is the smooth transition of science "by teams of researchers discovering .. for the first time " ("going forward" when it is mostly old hat reworked) assured.

 A concerted enterprise that increases momentum with time is required to combat consensus, which is not a job for one person in the face of a worldful of experts who have learned their rote-lessons well, and have built careers and reputations upon them.  (No small thing in the academic world.)

So (dear newbie, hoping to make your great discovery and mark in the world of science) beware of 'experts', especially when they come at you in "teams" ("for the first time").  They mean business, .. and not of the scientific sort.  

Thus does the lumbering gravy train of 'science' with its knobs bells whistles lanyards and measuring tapes, and bright-and-bushy-eyed rabbit-tails and the advance guardians of media and consensus peer review, work their way towards going forward, contriving as they do so to not notice all the collateral damage of dying and sweeping under the carpet that must happen before any 'progress' can be claimed.  Even so it must recognise and acknowledge that such a claim might well be one leading to stagnation from which there is no chance of further 'advance' at all.

Further (therefore) it must ensure that the back-up point for some possible future system-recovery is clearly defined.  It must clarify the doubt and its underpinnings, as Holmes did with his big "IF" , but as the Big Ship Plate Tectonics (crewed by geologists under the captaincy of geophysics however) did not.

And so geologists, under the tutelage of popular media  are only now beginning to waken up to the nonsense of "mountain building" that Nasa, the USGS, and a worldful of scholars have been promulgating, and are now holding wet fingers to the breeze to see which way it is blowing in case there is a 'something in it' (for them).  How long it will take for them to work out that whole concept of so-called crumplecrust, orogenic, tectonic "mountain-building uplift" is simply a non-starter when it comes to contesting erosion, is anyone's guess.  The monsoonal torrents of Cherapunjee mentioned in that video (in case you missed it)  , and the grain of sand that gets bounced on to the side of my bucket whenever it rains (and the Vedas that make both possible), render the whole notion of "colliding plates and mountain building" not implausible, but impossible, .. and Plate Tectonics a derelict cadaver.

(read more? => )  (Why not. It's good deserving fun painting holy cows black.)

(What's that?  .. Show them some love?  Are you kidding?  They need held to account - for half-a-century of deliberate misadventure.)

The meme machine

 A virus-like exploit of common sense
( .. that had its apotheosis in the 1930's - and since the 1970's in the conflation and almost rythmic concatenation of 'plate' and 'tectonics', more recently in 'climate' and 'change' (/'global warming') etc.

---

Meme.   [1]  A unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another. (~ Wikipedia)  [2]  An emergent, virus-like self-replicating piece of 'cultural software' that arises to exploit individual subconsciousness. (~Me.) (Doesn't work on you/you of course, but it does on me/me.)

Shameless name
Nameless shame
Which?

"When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is,"said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - - that's all."   (Alice through the looking glass ~ Lewis Carrol ) 

A meme is an exploit that works us, more than we work it.  All propagandists, advertisers and merchants of spin know this - that certain words, phrases and images have, by people's common experience, communicative power far beyond their literal meaning. They are the tools by which societal sentiments, attitudes and mores may be sculpted and manipulated because of the way they insinuate our consciousness and neutralise our capacity for independent thinking.  Pithy phrases that come to mean all things to all people are best, especially among people who share a common experience.

Science is not immune from these 'Sultans of Spin'.  How else to explain Nasa's succumbing to the term 'Mountain Building' (228,000 results 20171023) .. and people's zombie-like trusting to "global warming" as 'climate change' rather than the El Nino effect,  and geologists' blinkered acceptance of the irrational 'Plate Tectonics'.

'Continental drift' (which became 'sea-floor spreading'), the 'geological cycle' (/'orogenic cycle' /'Wilson cycle') (which are not particularly different), 'plate collision', 'subduction zones', 'spreading ridges', 'slab pull - ridge push', .. 'crumpling crust', .. all of these are terms beyond rationality, pulling on our reason and reducing it to enervated goo, that has no capacity for independent volition.  

And so "Mountain Building" happened to be coined.  But by whom? 

No-one.  It arose by itself, .. like elm die-back, 'bootlace fungus' (so tough it literally can be used to tie your boots), .. pervading both the soil and the structure of general awareness.   Not even by geological awareness did it arise, .. which to call by any other word (like 'thinking') would be an oxymoron.  

Well, .. wouldn't it?  It just seems obvious that mountains are "built" ['tecton' - Gk; 'build']


Like a virus, memes mutate.  With each transfer from one mind to another they change ever so slightly, morphing to accommodate the experience and knowledge of the colonised victim and creating a will o' the wisp that is impossible to pin down.  Everyone knows what the words *are*, but there is no common agreement about what they exactly mean.  When questioned, only the words themselves are found, turning their inscrutable face to understanding like massive steel doors, omnipotent sentinels guarding the subterranean labyrinth of communication.

And so meaning reduces to jargon and the fog of management-speak, .. never explanation.  

Thus a successful meme becomes personalised to mean different things to different people, .. and the less it has real substance, the more successful it is.  Like that tune that goes round and round in your head it is almost impossible to exorcise. Slogans rule. And indeed that is their purpose, with no mandate other than what people care to place on them, and by massage of mutual proclivities, accept.  

Polyspeak, .. a triumph of government (another 'House that Jack Built'), is used mercilessly and shamelessly.

In Earth science (it would be unfair to call it 'geo-logy') the term 'Plate Tectonics' has become King of these Reprehensibles.  Each of its pillars ('Plate' and 'Tectonics') is entirely without foundation. There *is* no meaningful 'plate' (repeat link).  And there *are* no 'tectonics' in the 'mountainous' sense meant by that term.   'Tectonics' [from late Latin 'tectonicus', and Greek 'tecton' = building'], and its doppelganger 'orogeny' [Greek oros for 'mountain' plus '-geny' /'genesis' for 'creation' or 'origin'] are without substance (as well as foundation).  Plates do not "collide".  Mountains are not "built". =>

 And erosion, which *is* the origin of mountains, is not orogenesis".   

And now these days, just as way back then, when geology borrowed 'mountains' from people and joined it to 'building' (also from people), so the media machine has allowed itself to be colonised by "tectonics shifts" in this, and "tectonic plates" of that,  thus succumbing to the insidious imperative of the meme to seal the reciprocity between science and mythic societal mores, .. e.g., [1]

So who is going to tell everybody that all this 'respectable kudos' (and the reputations that underpin it) is (and let's not mince words) "*bullshit*" (as well as silly).   Who will tell Nasa, that while they might know what both words 'mountain' and 'building' mean, they are dummies for trying to conflate the two?  Or climate changers, who don't know what climate change on Earth means. 

" We talk about climate change in terms of years, decades, and centuries. Scientists study climate to look for trends or cycles of variability, such as the changes in wind patterns, ocean surface temperatures and precipitation over the equatorial Pacific that result in El Niño and La Niña, and also to place cycles or other phenomena into the bigger picture of possible longer term or more permanent climate changes.  (Link)

Scientists are not the arbiters of what climate is, and the evidence for change is in the geological record.  And one-and-a-half degrees in a century-and-a-half in an open-ended fluctuation of four degrees every ten to fifteen years on an arbitrary and unspecified baseline average is meaningless, especially  when El Nino means different things to all climate monitoring stations anyway.  How long,  for example, might it be reasonable to wait to discover that the climate is not changing at all, and that everything is back on track.  Where I am the Jackaranda trees and the grape vines seem to be getting the hang of it and are tooling up for their usual annual blossoming - though maybe a bit late. 

This is where memes get heavy, .. spilling over, .. working their creepy woe into other fields till we are given to wonder exactly where this emergent 'fenomina' and 'dna convergence', and the power they exert, all stops.   

---

Meanwhile, .. (speaking in memes that all women understand) ... 

"You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir," said Alice. "Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called 'Jabberwocky'?'
"Let's hear it," said Humpty Dumpty. "I can explain all the poems that were ever invented -- and a good many that haven't been invented just yet."
This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe." 

... which had Humpty the Dumpty absolutely stumpty, proving yet again that the femenima of the world are a meme all to themselves without help from any Humpty.

  Memes - and the "everybody knows one", ... (and the "mountain building" one in particular) = repeat link = Gormless gobbledegook!   

"Mountain building is not obvious.. "

 Certainly isn't .. (Hi Andrew).  [*Link death noted 20170919*.]  . 
( .. But what keeps making the Earth flatter (and smoother) than it used to be, is .. )

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"Building"? .... What is it about mountains that gets 'built'? If mountains are really eroded plateaus (link.) and volcanoes, why does the term ["mountain building"] pervade the literature so to describe these landforms?   [56,200 - 20170919]

Fig.  1.  Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa.   A classic example of the way in which rock layers of one sort and another are piled one on top of the other to build mountains. No? That's not how mountains are built? ..

(More? .. )  =>

house  malt  rat  cat  dog  cow  maiden  man  judge  rooster  farmer  hhh