Heat release from tectonic friction

If slip friction was reduced to zero, the plates would be sliding all over the planet willyniily!But slip friction is what it is, why would it change? (Except for magic of course.)

I calculated the energy dissipated by reducing the velocity of the lithosphere assuming all of it goes into heat. Where this heat is dissipated depends on where the resisting forces are. We could consider this resisting force to be friction along interfaces, but heat dissipated will quickly generate melt, reducing friction and thus the resistance to slip. Thus, you can't dissipate this much heat along thrust faults that quick. The most 'reasonable' expectation would be that mantle convection and subduction loses power and is stopped by the increasing rigidity of the mantle (e.g., Baumgardner's runaway model). Thus the 'frictional interface' wouldn't be localized and could be distributed throughout much of the lithosphere and asthenosphere.

Those are al resistive forces.
You are trying to calculate all the possible Forces that resist the motion.The energy that it takes to move the weight of the plates through the distance of whatever is the case, over a period of unit time ought give us the answer, right?E = 1/2mv^2?

I think apart from that the cannier among them try to deny reality as little as possible. They don't need to deny that continental drift happened, they just need to deny how long it took.

Nor do I. it's only rabid anti-creationists who think that. You too seem like a nice person and I'm not going to deny that you are also a believer, I'm sure you are, but it's very sad to me when people choose what they think is reality over the word of God. It's like you'd rather be forced to deny God's word than -- not reality, but your fallible mind's fallible assessment of reality. The only pillar of faith HAS to be the word of God and I can't get anything more than 6000 years out of it for the age of the earth myself though others claim to be able to find room for more. Yes indeed He did, and they cannot and they do not contradict each other. But scientific conclusions MAY contradict the Bible. They aren't. The true sciences are clearly in accord with the Bible, there is no conflict at all. What can truly be observed is not hard to affirm by the Bible. The sciences that are the problem are those that deal with the unobservable unmeasurable untestable past. But this is an illusion HBD, you can not in fact OBSERVE anything that has to do with the unwitnessed past. You can only make inferences from what you see now. They may be very convincing inferences, a lot of good calculations about what might have happened because of what you know about heat and friction and all that, but no, HBD, you can not in fact OBSERVE anything about the past and you really cannot say you KNOW anything about the age of the earth, it's all untestable inference and assumption.Hutton's analysis of Siccar Point convinced many of an old earth but all it was was his subjective untestable speculations. He assumed an angular unconformity occurred before the upper strata were built upon it. There's no reason to assume that, tectonic force most likely displaced the lower layers while a very deep stack of layers was in place overhead. Lyell even has an illustration that gave me the model I was looking for to demonstrate this likelihood although of course he doesn't draw this conclusion from it.Anyway, Hutton assumed that the lower layers were tilted first and then the upper layers were laid over them, which suggested a lot more time than was usually given to the age of the earth in his day. He claimed some millions of years between the upper and lower portions of the Siccar Point formation, but speaking of observation, the two sections to my sight look identical as far as any imaginable aging processes could be involved, weathering, erosion, etc. IDENTICAL. Rather odd for their being millions of years apart in age.So the earth acquired its extreme age by what is really an indefensible bunch of arguments by Hutton. It just SOUNDED right to people and the idea got elaborated more and more as time went on. Now you have radiometric dating, but since the whole idea was so irrationally established in the first place why should I trust radiometric dating? In principle it's understandable, but in reality who knows? It too can't be verified because you have no way to replicate the past, all you can do is assume your measurements apply.But even if some evidence seems to be unanswerable I've got to do what Kurt Wise does, and just say, well I can't answer it, but my allegiance is to the word of God over all fallible human thought. God can't err and He gave us His revelation because we DO err. If His world doesn't seem to correspond with His word, that's our fallible mind's fault, not His fault.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I think the bible is clear that there was 6000 years from the creation of Adam to today, but it certainly isn't clear that the time it took for God to create the universe and the earth adam was only 6 days. If you are going to insist that the first chapter of Genesis means this, then you are going to have to interpret 24 hours everytime you see the word day in the bible. Are you willing to do that?

I don't "have" to do any such thing, FY, I can read "day" in whatever context it occurs to mean what it means in context. I've never seen an argument that convinces me that the days of creation are anything but ordinary days.But let's not drag this thread off topic any further. I waited quite a while before answering HBD, which I finally felt I had to do, but if the topic has any energy to it we ought to move it.

If you are going to claim that an honest reading of the bible demands an earth that is 6000 years old, the onus is on you to back that up. It certainly is on topic. Heat release from tectonic friction doesn't matter if the earth is 4.56 billion years old. It matters one heck of a lot, however, if it is only 6,000 years old. The very least you could do is give some reason as to why anyone should interpret the "days" in Genesis 1 as being 24 hours in length.

The global flood is placed by most biblical scholars at about 4,350 years ago.The tower of babel is placed by most biblical scholars some hundreds of years later. Estimates vary widely.Let's ignore common sense and demographics and place the tower about 4,000 years ago.The Phoenicians were major seafarers by about 3,200 years ago. (Egyptians may have been seafaring a couple of hundred years earlier, but we'll ignore them for this calculation.)This means you have about 800 years to get the continents from Pangea to roughly their present locations. That span is between 4,000 years ago and 3,200 years ago when the Phoenicians started sailing all over the place. Please adjust all tectonic heat calculations to reflect this shorter time period.Science would suggest that this took more on the order of 200 million years. Anyone supporting the claim that this took place in some 800 years needs to explain the approximately 25,000x speedup and the equally outlandish sudden slowdown to modern rates.And in all of this we're ignoring the pyramids of Egypt, built some 4,600-3,800 years ago. There does not seem to be any record of flood damage in those pyramids, let along disruption of Egyptian society about 4,350 years ago which a global flood would have caused. Neither is there a complete change in language in Egypt about 4,000 years ago.The heat release from tectonic friction is just one of many factors that must be explained in a totally different manner in order for the creationist/young earth belief to be supported. Given the evidence to date, this will involve overturning pretty much all of science.(Oh, and it will involve a considerable amount of evidence also.)

You SEEM to be explaining why the continents have to be at their present locations in 800 years but it makes no sense. You put the tower of Babel at 4000 years ago then you say the Phoenicians were sailing some 800 years later, but none of that means the continents had to have moved to their present locations in the interim that I can see.What does tectonic movement have to do with the tower of babel anyway?I understand it to have started either during or shortly after the Flood. That's 4300 years ago. That's 1100 years until the Phoenicians started sailing according to your timetable. The continents would have separated quite a distance by then though not to the present location. Why do you assume it would have to be that far?ABE: I think I know the answer, it just came to me. You've always pictured the Phoenicians sailing around in the world just as it is today, but the ocean distances could very well have been much less between the destinations of the Phoenicians than they are today.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You don't trust radiometric dating because it shows your beliefs are incorrect. You can come up with all the excuses and what-ifs you want, but unless you can come up with some solid scientific evidence you have nothing but belief based upon myth.RAZD has a couple of nice treads on radiometric dating and correlations to which you could post your evidence. That's the place, and now's your big chance!Show us how all of the dating methods used by science are incorrect and collect your multiple Nobel prizes; or be honest and admit you are acting from belief rather than scientific evidence.

It should be the other way around. You should be insisting that your "scientific evidence" conform to the Bible because the Bible IS God's word. Radiometric dating cannot show that the Bible is incorrect; the Bible shows that radiometric dating is incorrect.Oh I'd love to be able to prove it scientifically, but that isn't going to happen but I hope some creationist will. Or better still, let a believer in the old earth and evolution prove it. That would be great!Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So you believe. Now all you need is evidence to show that that is the case. But evidence is the one thing you don't have, otherwise you, or another creationist, would have presented it by now. Rather what we get from you folks is faith and belief. That is not the case. The only way you could claim that is if you a priori discount all evidence to the contrary and place your head firmly in the sand.I just can't understand you folks. Doesn't evidence mean anything to you or your co-believers? You remind me of Cnut the Great, commanding the tides. Didn't do him any good; reality prevailed in spite of his commands and protestations.

No it doesn't. This is news?

What you call evidence is not the evidence you think it is, not when it comes to evidence for events in the past, it's a lot of guesses and inferences and speculations. Evidence is reliable in the REAL WORLD IN THE PRESENT WHERE I LIVE because it's replicable and testable here, but not in the untestable past. That's why a ridiculous speculation like Hutton's could take hold and drag science after it, because there is no way to test it. It's not even an intelligent inference as I note above, but if you're committed to it you won't see its flaws and I can't prove them to you just because there isn't any way to replicate or prove such things, it's all a matter of persuasion when you're dealing with the past, even if my inference is a more reasonable inference than his. You can't test radiometric dates either, you just decide if they sort of seem to fit your expectations or not.You don't understand "us folks" because you can't grasp that we really are talking about the omnipotent God who made all things, who really did give us a revelation written over more than a thousand years by many different inspired witnesses so that we could believe in Him. That's its purpose. In other words you could say its purpose is EVIDENCE.The evidence in that book is quite sufficient for believing the revelation, but you have a prejudice against it that blinds you to it, and people here have a knack for multiplying silly objections to it. As long as you compare God to fallible creatures and think science is god instead, you'll never get it.Anyway, THAT evidence of His reality should be our standard so that any other source of knowledge cannot contradict it. God made it all, one part can't contradict another part of His creation and revelation. And the bizarre thing is when people decide they must give up one or the other they so often give up the Bible in favor of their own fallible minds. That's really sad because the Bible is the absolutely solid part of God's revelation, anything that comes through human speculation or science HAS to conform to it or it's false.ABE: But shouldn't we be moving on to the untestable speculations about the heat factor under the YEC Flood assumptions?But I wish those who are writing on that subject would not use technical language. Please translate into ordinary narrative English.Oh, and I really did want your answer to my question in Message 40 about your strange notion that the tectonic plates had to cover the entire distance in only 800 years. Certainly they didn't. It would be nice if you would acknowledge that fact.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.