YEC Challenge: Hawaiian Islands

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The 2.2 mm a year is a that a standard sinking rate for the entire chain as well?

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As I understand it there are two different stages of subsidence. The first stage occurs just after the island moves off of the hotspot. This is due to the mass that make up the islands. As they increase in size they start to push down on the lithosphere below causing them to fall at a certain rate. After they move a certain distance away from the hotspot then the shrink through contraction from lost heat as the lithosphere ages. I got my information here: Not Found (404) | IT Services .

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Is the whole floor of the ocean sinking or just the island. Does it stop sinking after it goes below sea level?

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I think the site above should answer your questions. If not, let me know.

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Is this sinking rate effected in anyway with the rising ocean?

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I don't think so. Given that sea level changes have been minor compared to overall depth I wouldn't expect a large effect from historical differences in sea levels. Also, the distances from the coral to the sea surface have been adjusted for previous sea levels determined by independent data.This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 08-18-2004 03:00 PM

Hey Loudmouth,As a side-note: Genetic studies have been done on Hawaiian cricket species, and the "molecular clock" indicates that the age of species radiating to newly formed islands matches the geological data: An interesting tidbit not meant to derail the geological discussion...

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As a side-note: Genetic studies have been done on Hawaiian cricket species, and the "molecular clock" indicates that the age of species radiating to newly formed islands matches the geological data:

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This is a very good point. I was thinking of including this as well, but I wanted it to keep things simple to start out with and add to it as things progressed. However, since YEC's seem to be absent so far (except for one post by whatever) it might be fun to add as many correlations as we can find.After looking through the paper very briefly, I find it interesting that mitochondrial DNA is less reliable than nuclear DNA for constructing phylogenies because of persistant hybridization. Interesting article on it's own.

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The 2.2 mm a year is a that a standard sinking rate for the entire chain as well?
Is the whole floor of the ocean sinking or just the island. Does it stop sinking after it goes below sea level?

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Is this sinking rate effected in anyway with the rising ocean?

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edited to add a question.

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--The subsidance of volcanic islands like from the Hawaiian hotspot is largely a result of the subsidance of the whole oceanic lithosphere on which it stands. Oceanic lithosphere is created at spreading ridges and as it ages and moves away the lithosphere cools and thickens. Because the lithosphere and crust is cooler than the underlying mantle, thermal expansion dictates that the material will be denser and heavier than when it was at a higher temperature. And thus, the depth to sea floor is a result of isostatic adjustments in the oceanic lithosphere.The 2.2 mm a year subsidance rate I can't verify at the moment, However that probably is not a constant rate because the thickening of oceanic lithosphere gradually approaches an asymptotic barrier. True that observation is deduced from a global average of ocean depth data, but I don't see any need to go into the details.The subsidance of islands goes with the increasing subsidance of oceanic lithosphere. Just imagine a lump of material sliding down (and up over bulges and ridges since the whole lithosphere and crust moves as a rigid unit) from a seafloor spreading ridge to a corresponding subduction zone or whatever else it runs into.The sinking rate isn't really effected with the rising ocean as is caused by the varied amount of water in polar ice caps.If you need any clarification, ask.Added by edit -->Sea level changes can be categorized on short and long term scales. Where short term changes in sea level can be attributed to non-tectonic activity such as the melting and building of polar ice caps. Long term fluctuations in the sealevel can be attributed to changes in tectonic behaviour like the rate of spreading. Basically, as the average age of the worlds oceanic lithosphere varies, sealevel can be effected proportionally.This can be envisioned by looking at extremes; If seafloor spreading were much faster than currently, the oceanic lithosphere would be much thinner because of less time for the lithosphere to cool (please note, the bulk of the oceanic lithosphere [discluding the crust nearest to the seafloor] is cooled by conduction). Thus the depth to the seafloor would be displaced upwards because there would be less of a burden on the underlying mantle (note the principal of isostasy). Now if seafloor spreading were much slower, there would be much more time for the seafloor to cool, resulting in the oceanic lithosphere being much thicker and depth to seafloor being greater.For more information:isostatic balance cooling oceanic lithosphere - Google SearchVery good: http://topex.ucsd.edu/geodynamics/07cooling.pdfThis message has been edited by TrueCreation, 08-18-2004 04:23 PM

Ya know LM there is a funny thing in the current literature of Croizatisms that has me restrained, from going too much-further.It was revealed here but for me was an issue about Fibonnaci Numbers, not the difference of Heads from South NZ vs other NZ panbiogeographers as discussed in this e-mail. The issue seems to be the INTERPRETATION of Croizat's Diagram (that included the Galapagoes of what appears to Grehan as plate shifitng in the Carribean). When I first read the text accompanying this illustration in Croizat I was thinking about water being dumped from the Gulf of Mexico -->South with this "movement" of the Earth and (thus) justifying Croizat"s orientation of TRACKS from the Galapagoes he associates withe TESTuDO vs any idea of "rafting" or floating in the turtles. My reading of Louis Aggassiz corroborated this transitiveness of mind. This does not seem to be how the current biogeographic communinity simply "read" the relevant pages. So while I can read, it appears I am not "in sync."So I am back with the issue of what exactly IS STATISTICAL with the tracks (a common criticism that was even expressed in very"" techincal terms).and not necessarily Grehan's issue of censorship (which he discusses elsewhere on Tacxacom)else it would appear that Croizat did nothing beyond call attention to problems. I do think he provided a method however, but this requires a-----longer understanding that what was written over the years in Systematic Zoology which became Systematic Biology,,,but there are just not enough panbiogoegraphers around so far to get to the reading I have done, of it.It should not be an issue if Heads is a panbiogeographer or not. The problem I encountered in Principa Botanica (essentially writen IN REVERSE from Croizat's earlier books as I read him) relative to MATH DOES speak to Kant's "Sphere" but I have not had enough discussion with others about my own thought here, to advance much beyond what Mark25 said.The insistance that Croizat correlated geology and biogeography seems to me a bit idiosyncratic to a need to "transgress" the continent of Africa and so I am left with a colorful understanding but little sense that Grehan has got it just correct, though those who write to him at Taxacom ARE generally mistaken. If Grehan had kept in communication with me, perhaps by working on some of the math of minimal spanning vs Steiner trees, I might have gotton over my little reluctance to simply take Croizat picture of the Caribbean as a prescription of plate tectonics. Croizat disliked Gould. It would be better I think to address Gould's ideas of overlaping strata horizons WITHIN CROIZAT'S METHOD than to methodically enforce an understanding of panbiogeography within the data of geology-I think-biologically.I have not read Grehan's Linnean Journal article so I don't really know how he REALLY read Croizat's chapter on the celebrated island and I havent been actively reading much Croizat since I have been concentrating on Aggassiz instead.Thannks so much for providing me this opportunity to relate to invertebrates my ideas on the Permian background of turtles.>This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 08-26-2004 10:56 AM

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So I am back with the issue of what exactly IS STATISTICAL with the tracks (a common criticism that was even expressed in very"" techincal terms).

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You know much more about panbiogeography than I, so I will try to phrase my statements to reflect that. Take the following comments as questions more than arguments.It would seem to me that the Hawaiian islands pose a transitional model between panbiogeography and allopatric speciation. There is enough distance between the islands that continous interbreeding is not possible. This would seem to follow Croizat's ideas of geographic isolation. However, the distance between the islands does not absolutely prevent invasion from island to island. Think of it not as a track across a chasm, but a track across a high hurdle.Pink Sasquatch's post (#17) links to an article that is very cogent to this discussion. It investigates the importance of allopatric and sympatric speciation and how it relates to the pseudo-isolation that the islands create. By comparing mitDAN and nuclear DNA it is possible to sort out the effects of invasion and subsequent sympatric isolation or interspecific hybridization. The very fact that there interspecific hybridization following allopatric isolation due to subsidence seems to follow Croizat's argument in part.Where the statistics could come in is the DNA make up of the species and how they relate to a molecular clock and proposed scenarios of isolation and subsequent re-invasion. I think the Hawaiian islands could be a rich resource for the exact kind of study that you have proposed, and could really support Croizat's idea of isolation due to geographic movement.I hope this relates to what you were talking about. If this develops into a longer discussion it might warrant a thread of its own.

If you are able to say something about the following from Salthe page256-7
Evolving Hierarchical Structures
which at least to me is "superficially" at least, similar to what you wrote, then I might be able to delimit in my own words your use of the word "distance" in your post. It might, or might not help to consider this from Gould The structure of Evolutionary Theory p 601-2,"In discussing criteria of individuality, I will focus on species as paradigms of higher-level evolutionary entities for two reasons: (1) because
I believe that a proper theory of macroevolution, the central concern of this book rests upon such a proposition; and (2) because species seem so maximally unlike discrete "things" to many biologists, thus making the correction of this false impression a prerequisite for accepting the full hierarchical model of selection. But species can claim no favored status in the hierarchical model, and I use them here only as an example - so that the argument may the proceed to a full set of levels, each characterized by a valid kind of individual acting in a distinctive way."Compare?

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"Wright, of course, picks up the story there and points out that there is an even larger-scale game going on at the level of the species, since not all the adaptive peaks were equally robust to perturbation by fluctuation of the environments of the associated populations, and furthermore, not all the peaks had been climbed to an equal degree, given population size variability and the consequent differential effects of genetic drift across the demes. There is, indeed, larger scale variance in "fitness" - the "fitness of the population," which can be taken not just as a record of the relative maturity of a population's trajectory in fitness space, but as a measure of its probability of extinction. This can be done in two ways. If we view the adaptive peaks as being fairly directly related to the phenomenon of episodic flooding (which might be reasonable given that this system has operated for a while), then each peak will have some intrinsic adaptive "value" with respect to that; but they will not be all the same, because of chance effects like drift and differential preadaptations on the parts of the original populations - some aptations are better than others with respect to a given problem. Here the probability of survival of the deme in respect to flooding is more or less implicit in its starting initiating conditions. If, on the other hand, the heights of the peaks have little to do with flooding per se because of other overwhelming "day-to-day" problems in the population environments, then the degree to which the demes have scaled their different peaks is inversely related to the probability of survival with respect to flooding because of the loss of variance in fitness attendant upon successful adaptation via natural selection (Fisher 99, Ewens 976)

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where do they?Ok Loudmouth lets see if we can find the bedrock in this population.The first thing that I notice is that Shepard in another generation said it was in fact found that unlike prior expectations (ON DARWINS IDEA) that as the population size increases the idea (of the conditions in existence (of) or ENVIRONMENT) as we THEN called them being harsh (red in tooth and claw etc.) get(s) worse, instead was changed to a duplex lexos while he said had, "Noting that variation often appeared when environmental conditions were altered,as in the domestication of wild species, he postulated that a change inconditions brings about the spontaneous production of new variability (now known as mutation, p 46). We know now that this is not true (if we except the results of an increase in ionizing radiation and the presence of certain chemicals), but that the new variation appears as the result of a change in the direction and intensity of the selection itself." P.14 NATURAL SELECTION AND HEREDITY by P.M. Sheppard Hutchinson University Library London 1967.You have to be able to understand this to get back to the individual organism on the sward of any geological horizon that the both of us might have considered when thinking of decreasing population cardinalities. Now I will try to determine if this is a flood stratigraphy or metamorphic vs. igneous habitation.The reason that I CAN think further than Provine is because I do not assume with Darwin that this ecosystem function of population size (aka effective population number) MUST BE BY WEDGING, in effect an economic comparison (via Malthus etc). Any creationist DISPROOF of Darwin's view OR Affirmation of Croizat's method seems to me to be about not the future "generation" as Shepard had it but the future generation's Space and Time. This is the change I am making to any duration of biological change. I do not give up the organismic perspective of current evolutionary theory however as Dawkins say might be want to do. Instead I exploit this expanded grammar of Shepard FROM THE SIGNIFICANCE of intraspecific variation INTO the PLACE OF FORM-MAKING. Macrothermodynamics is now a constituent part of this thinking for me.In stastistical terms we will be able to find, if I am correct, that the "sample" the biological reasoning that Shepard marshaled IS NOT that which occurs probabilistically in phenomenological thermodynamics. Evolutionists who are BS critical have been using a nom-representative sample size to make statements from. The bread and butter of biology is the USE OF population genetics TO CHANGE LINES to be where there IS NOT RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW, i.e. onto deserts, up mountains and through atmosphere to currently inhospitable planets.This vision of the surface of a ground or sward might be divisible outside the solar system but I think that science really only talks so far about our Sun and Planets' thickness for any kind of rock here on Earth.Now the comparison that I had asked you to try as to a flood (sedimentary) barrier vs. any kind of mineral (let me say igneous outcrop or metamorphic substrata) (no matter the surface change on Earth) could be approached IF the chance effects of decreased population size correlate with abiotic changes linearly related to geology. So if some plate had moved and one can say measure the magnetic changes in the underlying rock and the physics of magnetic bacteria has a strong correlation coiefficient with respect to population measures of orientation of matter WITHIN the "cell" then one might indeed find that underwater flooding effects DUE TO DIRECTION OF SELECTION but also by correlation to new variability of chemical and ionizing radiation changes.In other words one could reject Darwin's position as expressed by Shepard that larger populations do not effect the chance effects in smaller populations and this would be due to the barrier in polyvocal use in biogeography that needs a resolution without the notion of vicariance being an absolute. The split that disjunction gives geographically may not be the same temporal one that occurs because of geologically marked differences of space and time.This is not a matter of simply exploring outer spaces but of creating bioengineered objects able to self-replicate in extreme environments. In effect the changes that biologists had thought mutations only interdict might be rather equilibrated responses of dependent events that are removed by such a long chain of cause and effect that no test for their coincidence vs. independence currently exists.Let me try to explain this again. Because the changes (radiation and chemicals in types of mutants) were found INSIDE POPULATIONS there was no possible error in Dariwn’s idea of to many creatures at the marketplace wedging the struggle but instead the RELATION of the SURROUNDINGS to POPULATATION SIZE (not any deme) was constricted from a large chance of getting worse with panmixus to a small chance of alteration when isolated numbers changed during reproduction. That by itself would not allow one to reason if life on mars was any different biologically than here but if instead there is a constitutive relation of the chemical and radiative changeability to the adaptability and selection of such which could reverse flow from a large to small population during fission WHILE the small numbers of individuals maintained biogeographic lines than it might be found that a flood (fluid) better represents the data than a solid (igneous rock) should the data be collected. If Mach’s physical philosophy enters this discussion then it will be easier to support a fluid regression but I tend to think that Croizat’s notion of wing dispersal (where a geographic distribution practically can reach around our globe) precludes most of the solid ideas so far.There is even a chance of figuring out a priori whether the solidity involved was changed (meta) or original (igneous) etc. It would be very difficult to find the words to discuss it though. I see a chance that this is possible with Salthe’s discussion of downward causation(Evolving Hierarchical Systems) and the genetics of twisting bean pods but his ideas rely on the symbolic similarity of equations and as we do not have the needed expertise in the math itself I think it rash at this point to simply use the letter matching as an equivalent of reverse information flow in macrothermodynamics. In these words process and system must be still kept apart in Georgi Gladyshev’s sense even though the energy divisions might be projected as not (so).This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 08-31-2004 06:37 PM