cow

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

" This is the cow with the crumpled horn .."
( .."That skewered the dog of subduction'.")

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A single mountain belt encircling the Earth

Mantle breakout focussed initially on Tibet progressed to develop the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans, increasing the size of the Pangaean Earth by these extents.

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

"This is the rat that ate the malt .. "

House  malt  rat  cat  dog  cow  maiden  man  judge  rooster  farmer  HHH
But first, we're going to have to talk about Clive ..
( .. then come back  .. )

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"Plates have plates and smaller plates and smaller plates upon them.And plates have plates and more plates And so ad infinitum."

Fig.1.  Clive's doublethink .. is locked by the limitations of a spherical Earth, continents that somehow morph into plates that "move" (crash-bang-wallop as well as a whole lot of other locomotions) "independently" (but are at the same time fixed), .. and is penalised with a 'Pinnochio' for inventing subduction zones to ameliorate the contradiction.  (a) Earth's rocky crust (/'lithosphere'; yellow).  (b) Continents assembled (green).  (c) Plate Tectonics' best dressed version of 'plates'; variation in colour tones distinguish continental lithosphere (light tone) from oceanic lithosphere (darker tone). ["Continents shrinking" + "subduction" = Plate Tectonics]

"Oh! How much? Are you sure you're not overcharging?"
"No Ma'am, we charge by the plate here."
"But, ..but, ...I only had noodles, ..one plate of noodles."
"No Madam. You had five plates. You see? This is one plate and here's another."
"Well I saw that when you served it. ..a crack running right down the middle and at least two others. .What sort of establishment is this, I thought to myself, ..serving cracked plates.. "
"Madam, I can assure you this establishment is of the highest integrity. You had five plates."
"But how can you possibly insist, .. when it is clearly one? The five you are insisting are merely cracks in one plate. It is One Plate."
"No Madam, I must insist. ...five plates."
<.....>
"I say, .. over there, ..How many plates am I holding in my hand?
"One plate, Ma'am."
"One plate. Thank you. And you over there?"
"One plate, Darl., ...Wanna root?"
"No thank you. ..There, you see? One Plate."
"No Madam, ..we disagree.  Five plates."
"Well, I never! How are we to resolve this?"
"It's very simple really. May I?"
"Oh dear! Now you've broken it."
"Yes, Madam, ..unfortunately we always have to do this. You see? Two plates. Now, you see? ..three plates, ..and four, ..and five.."
"B..but.. "
"No 'butts', .. unless you would care to take up that gentleman's offer. This establishment ensures Value for Money."
"But I only had one... I'm sure. "
"Madam, ..if you insist on not availing yourself of the extras... well, ..you can hardly say you are not getting value for money."
"I say, ..what can you possibly mean, sir? That I should be literally *screwed* as well?"
"Exactly Madam. Now, if you would be so kind, .. the Bill."

One plate? ... or several? Unity ( or not) is the question that underpins the dichotomy between Earth expansion and Plate Tectonics. ( "A plate with a crack in it is still one plate.") (Especially if that crack is growing.)

(Links to *bill/*semantics.)

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

"This is the malt ..

House  malt  rat  cat  dog  cow  maiden  man  judge  rooster  farmer  HHH
..that lay in the house that Jack built .. "

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 Synoptic Simplicity

"What-you-see-is-what-you-get" - an Earth getting bigger.
Crustal dislocation, spreading by extension and mantle growth.

Fig.1.  Three axes of Earth rotation result from Pacific extrusion (/mantle growth) and pivoting apart of Earth's hemispheres. Further complication results from crustal dislocation, differential rotation of northern and southern hemispheres, and Atlantic dilation (not shown).

( "Reading the Runes" => 'Cow' )

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

This is the house that Jack built

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

"What you see is what you get .."
( .. an elephant that cannot speak its name .. )

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The Elephant in the room
Blind men and an elephant 
"It's a scale thing"

Fig.1.  The Elephant in The Room -  Planet Earth, getting bigger than it used to be.  [Mechanism unknown - so nobody talks.]

The edifice of the mind and its structuring of common sense (or rather its 'un-structuring') - the way it goes round-and-round in circles talking around something that everybody knows is there to be talked about, but because we don't know exactly what it is we don't know (or refuse to admit or recognise it), we can't properly talk about it - .. has form of course .



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

Sumo wrestlers - India and China

 Mountain 'building' in the Himalayas 
( .. Continental collision - suffused in the golden glow of wishful thinking .. )

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"... Among the most dramatic and visible creations of plate-tectonic forces are the lofty Himalayas, which stretch 2,900 km along the border between India and Tibet. This immense mountain range began to form between 40 and 50 million years ago, when two large landmasses, India and Eurasia, driven by plate movement, collided. Because both these continental landmasses have about the same rock density, one plate could not be subducted under the other. The pressure of the impinging plates could only be relieved by thrusting skyward, contorting the collision zone, and forming the jagged Himalayan peaks...." (link)

Fig.1.  Mount Everest. This is the image offered by the USGS to illustrate the point  of "thrusting skyward, .. contorting the collision zone". (Image from the website of the USGS) (20170927). [Nice pic., but not very informative re."thrusting skyward".]

"Contorting"? "thrusting skyward"? - indeed, .. Just in case you would like to see what is meant by 'contortions' and 'skyward thrusting', the USGS show them suffused in the golden glow of sunset.  Nice pic., but not very informative re. "contorting".  Here is better.  You really have to hand it to them, don't you, ..for sheer unadulterated nonsense. (I always thought the jagged peaks were a result of erosion.  You? ..  And just see that flat horizon!) (smooth Earth) ("flatter than it used to be.")

T.L. Morton (1996) spices it up a bit, likening it to gladiatorial combat:-

Fig.2.  Continents in collision at a convergent plate boundary.  "Like the meeting of two Sumo wrestlers, continental collision stands the crust straight up, slowly giving rise to high mountains.  As the crust is forced upwards it bends, buckles and twists..."

"The two sumo wrestlers enter the ring. Crouching, they watch each other like strange dogs meeting in an alley. Slowly they circle, grunting and flexing, beads of sweat glistening on their broad, oiled shoulders. In a sudden explosion of muscle they charge forward, flesh collides with flesh and the Earth shakes. The impact stands both wrestlers straight up. Straining and pushing they jockey for leverage and position - bulk against bulk = huge and proud. 

 "India and Asia met in this manner. Buckling, bending and twisting the crust the collision stood the two continents straight up and the Himalayas slowly rose. Continent colliding with continent forms mountains of buckled, bent and twisted rock; the Appalachians are mere remnants of such a collision, whereas the Alps, still tall, speak proudly of the collision between Africa and Europe."(Extract from T.L. Morton, 1996, Music of the Earth, Plenum Press, 312pps)

Well, ..you know, ... What can you say? The point is that publishers actually publish this stuff, in the interest of educating the public, and then scientists complain about Christian fundamentalism taking hold in our schools (footnote*). Why shouldn't it (take hold), with rubbish like the above being peddled to appeal to the public, and prepare schoolies for the real deal once they go to uni to 'study' how. There's probably a case for a kindergarten 'activity' in there too, given the "clashing" and "trashing" that masquerades as 'sport' these days. 

This is every bit as ludicrous as the ten centimetres of dyke intruding the ridges every year moving the continents, or helping to push the ocean floors down subduction zones, ..and would be funny if it were not firmly ensconced in the sanction of academia, and were it not factually incorrect: the mountains of the Himalyan front are as much flat or slightly tilted as is much of the Alpine region of Europe, as they are bent, buckled and twisted.  Moreover the pull-apart of the Mediterranean lying between Africa and Europe mark this as as a zone of extension, not compression, ...as does the Persian Gulf lying between Saudi Arabia the Zagros Mountain chain - and the Ganges Basin in front of the Himalayas.

The Himalayas are collapsing from a once-curvature of the Earth that was tighter than that of the present day.


Mountain *building* by plate collision is a *MYTH*