Mainstream plate tectonics model is nowhere near quantitatively correct

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
I'm getting a lot of flak from mainstream geologists here about creationist models of rapid continental drift. They've led me to believe that the mainstream model is as solid as quantum mechanics or something. Interesting what this mainstreamer said about it in New Scientist this month (admittedly he has his own new theory):

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As a physicist who has recently got into geology as a hobby this actually was the impression I had got myself. On this BBS people would get a far different impression.

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My point isn't that the current model is wrong but that the current model is basically a possible answer. It is nowhere near as quantiatitive that you all think it is! It's not pythogorus yet!

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JM: You know, for a 'Phded' scientist, you sure play fast and loose with information. This is almost irresponsible on your part trying to change the meaning of Anderson's words. His point is that the plates drive convection rather than convection driving the plates. Why don't you take some time to learn about a subject before posting misinformation on it. I suggest you read what Anderson is really talking about here: http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~dla/occam's_razor_simplicity_final_draft.pdfGet your facts straight! Geologists disagree on many things, a mobile outer layer does not seem to be one of them. Interestingly, what Anderson is arguing most vehemently against is what Baumgardner is arguing for.CheersJoe Meert

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[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 05-16-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
^I don't agree Joe. I understood exactly what you said from the New Scientist article. I understood Anderson's new theory of convection due to the cold crust - makes a lot of sense and I found it scientifically interesting.

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But I happened to read the article in the train on the way home last night and he also goes on record in the artcile that the current theory does not reproduce the data - that is my point. I know he didn't say it for creationists to quote but he said it! His statement is there in black and white for anyone to read and in the article itself (admittedly written by a science journalist) it goes on to say:

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"Efforts to model convection based on heat from below have failed". Betsy Mason NS, 4th May 2002.

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All I'm trying to say is that the current model does not reproduce the data very well! Why do you have to rubbish everything I say just because you know my creationist bias?

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JM: Look at your first post. Anyone not familiar with Anderson's work might easily assume that he is arguing against plate tectonics. He most certainly is not. What he is arguing about is whether or not convection drives the plates or if the plates drive convection. Your quote was irresponsible in that your provided only a snippet intended to convey an alternative meaning. For someone who claims to be a "Phded' scientist 'working in the mainstream' you sure as hell don't seem to know how it works. There is disagreement in science, but it is not about whether a Noachian global flood has occurred. That issue was long ago settled. Take some time when you post and realize that not everyone on here will know the full context of a particular scientist's view! To do otherwise is playing fast and loose. By the way, Anderson's ideas are not new. Many scientists have written about and know that there is a feedback between the lithosphere and the mantle. Many of us see it as a 2-way street. Plates change convection patterns and those changes result in plate reorganization. Anderson is saying this as well. I am not sure exactly what you think is so damning of modern geology in Anderson's article.CheersJoe Meert

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[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 05-16-2002]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Percipient:
[B]I'm not familiar with Anderson's work, but is it really true that he has "his own new theory" of continental drift, as TB claims in the first paragraph of post 1.The Anderson quote is pretty short, so there's little context, but he appears to be commenting on the lack of success in developing a mathematical model for plate tectonics. Is that right, Joe? If so, then this simply seems analogous to weather. We have observational evidence for weather to the point where we can characterize it's behavior in great detail, but it is so complicated that we cannot develop mathematical models that predict weather more than a few days out.I imagine the same difficulties exist for mantle convection currents and plate tectonics. We have tons of data on the motion of continents over time, so much so that you can watch animated movies showing the dance of the continents from Gondawanaland to today, but we have yet to develop a successful mathematical model replicating that behavior over a billion years.[/QUOTE]JM: That is correct! One of the issues that Anderson discusses in his article is the problem with describing a plate driving mechanism that explains all the observations. Scientists advocate mantle plumes, true polar wander and other mechanisms to enhance the limiting 'power' of mantle convection in mathematical models (myself included!). However, Anderson supposes that plates drive the convection patterns in the upper mantle and those changes result in changes in plate motion patterns in a dynamic feedback. Anderson HATES plumes, but some of the recent geodynamic models suggest that plumes are a natural consequence of surface plate organization. Once again, it is the lithosphere causing the plumes, which in turn, feedback to help move the plates. I have an article under review on this topic that you can download here (it's kind of big so phone dialups may take a while to download). It is called 'The HOG hypothesis' where HOG= Hand 'o God.CheersJoe Meert

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[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 05-16-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Thanks Percy that's all I'm trying to say. My only addition is that this means we can't assume that the mainstream model is correct in detail. Of course our model morphs into your model over time - as things cool down our model becomes your model.

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JM: You've got a number of problems with such an assertion. The data and analysis you claim I have not provided with respect to this will now be given to you again: http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/adam.htm
http://gondwanaresearch.com/oceans.htmPlease note that these links are my own analysis and therefore I do present my own data and analysis contrary to your previous assertion. You have not provided any data to support 'your model'.CheersJoe Meert

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]For now let me just add that your comments on your web page about 'unrealistic viscosities' seems to be important to your argument. Is it unrealistic becasue you wont allow for accelerated decay and associated radiogenic heating or is it intrinsically unrealistic?[/QUOTE]JM: The reason is that it is intrinsically unrealistic. You know those models Anderson is ragging on? This is what Baumgardner does! However, the viscosity of the mantle is totally irrelevant to my argument on that page. I was merely pointing out that this is another issue that Baumgardner does not fully address. By the way, Baumgardner's model (if you look closely) releases more than enough heat to boil away the oceans (by his own calculation!). He did not discuss this much because he was more worried about the interior of the earth, but the amount of heat released would easily cook Noah. A friend of mine notes the following:

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This is an analysis I have posted on several other boards. So far no creationist has had an answer for it. I also emailed it to Ham and Baumgardner before a web cast they did last year but I have not heard back.

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The runaway subduction model of Baumgardner et al. now seems to be the standard creation science model for the flood at least for ICR and AiG. First consider the paper CATASTROPHIC PLATE TECTONICS: A GLOBAL FLOOD MODEL OF EARTH HISTORY, written by a veritable who’s who of creation science.

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Runaway Subduction

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"Because all current ocean lithosphere seems to date from Flood or post-Flood times [88], we feel that essentially all pre-Flood ocean lithosphere was subducted in the course of the Flood. Gravitational potential energy released by the subduction of this lithosphere is on the order of 10^28 J [6]. This alone probably provided the energy necessary to drive Flood dynamics."

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This 10^28 of energy that is released will be converted eventually to heat. The conservation of energy requires this. I think there will be other sources of heat as well such as magma coming up to the surface but the 10^28 they admit to is more than enough.

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And another quote

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"The first is that under any known natural conditions, core/mantle differentiation would destroy all evidence of life on earth completely. The current earth has a core/mantle/crust division according to the successively lower density of its components. If this differentiation had occurred by any natural means, the gravitational potential energy released by the heavier elements relocating to the earth's interior would produce enough heat to melt the earth's crust and vaporize the earth's oceans."

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What they naturally don’t tell you here is that the 10^28 J they admit to is already more than enough energy to vaporize all the water in all the earth’s oceans and convert the entire atmosphere to high pressure steam. There are about 1.4x10^24 grams of water in the oceans of the world (1.4 Billion Cubic Kilometers according to Britannica). It takes about 420 J to heat a gram of water from 0 to 100 C and another 2255 to boil it at 1 atm pressure. Thus it takes about 3.8 x 10^27 J to heat the oceans from 0 C to boiling and boil them at 1 atm. This is less than half of the energy that would be released. It will actually take a little more energy to completely boil the oceans for two reasons. The atmosphere is hydrostatic so the air pressure will increase thus the boiling temperature will increase, however, as the pressure increases the heat of vaporization goes down so the total heat required is not a great deal more. Second as the oceans boil down they will become saturated salts solutions which will require higher temperature to boil. The final result will still be to convert the atmosphere to high-pressure steam. In fact I caculate that less than 4% of the energy is enough to boil a sufficent amount of water to convert the atmosphere to steam at a pressure of about 20 atm and a temperature of at least 220 C.

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Now let’s look at the way that Baumgardner proposes to deal with this. Here is quote from his web page.

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http://www.icr.org/research/jb/largescaletectonics.htm

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"It plausibly leads to intense global rain as hot magma erupted in zones of plate divergence, in direct contact with ocean water, creates bubbles of high pressure steam that emerge from the ocean, rise rapidly through the atmosphere, radiate their heat to space, and precipitate their water as rain. That no air-breathing life could survive such a catastrophe and that most marine life also perished is readily believable."

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Come on now! Is it plausible that high-pressure steam generated in the ocean will rise in bubbles through the atmosphere and radiate its heat into space and fall as cool rain? Is this a scientific explanation? What happens when high-pressure steam is generated in hydrothermal vents? Does it rise out of the ocean and go up into the atmosphere? No, it heats the surrounding water. Suppose there is not much surrounding water. Will high-pressure steam rise in bubbles through the atmosphere? No of course not. First high-pressure steam is more dense than air. According to the Chemical Rubber Handbook, steam at 220 C has a density of 11.6 mg/ml and air at sea level and 0 C has a density of 1.26 mg/ml and the higher the temperature and pressure the greater the difference in density and we are talking about steam a lot hotter than 220 C, at least initially. Second pressures in gases tend to equalize at the speed of sound. Thus steam will expand rapidly until it equalizes pressure. At some point it will tend to rise but it will also radiate a lot of heat into the atmosphere as it rises and any steam that condenses to water must give back its heat of vaporization and the rain will not be cool, as discussed below. However, I do agree with the last sentence, though it should say that no marine life would survive.

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In response to the criticism that the model would boil the oceans, creation scientist Jonathan Sarfati, quotes an email from Baumgardner on his ark defense page on TrueOrigins.

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http://www.trueorigin.org/arkdefen.asp

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Baumgardner: "Indeed I do believe a significant fraction of the volume of the oceans was boiled away during the catastrophe. But since the atmosphere can hold so little moisture, the water quickly returned as cool fresh water to the ocean surface. "

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I was told that in a webcast last year Baumgardner(JB) stated that he expected 18 inches of rain an hour for 40 days so I caculate that the significant fraction he was talking about is 15% as that is the amount of water needed to do this. I didn’t hear it because of technical problems but other who heard it reported that number on OCW.

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What JB doesn’t mention here is that the air also has a very limited heat capacity. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, there are about 3.9x10^21g of Nitrogen and 1.2 x 10^21 g of oxygen in the air, with the other gases being very minor. The heat capacity at constant pressure of either Nitrogen or Oxygen gas is about 30 J/degree-C-mole or about 1 J/C-g (A mole of Oxygen gas weighs 32 g, Nitrogen, 28g). That is, it takes about 1 J to heat a gram of air by 1 degree Celsius at constant pressure(it takes even less at constant volume). For the steam from the boiling oceans to condense to form rain it must release its latent heat of vaporization, 2260 J/g. This means that the condensation of 1 gram of steam to water releases enough heat to raise the temperature of 22.6 grams of air by 100 C. To fall as ‘cool’ rain it must release about another 4.2 J/degree C for each degree it cools. It takes only 5.1x10^23 J to heat the whole atmosphere to 100 C.. It is easy to calculate that boiling less than one quarter of one percent of the ocean (hardly a significant fraction) will release enough heat into the air as the steam condenses to raise the average temperature of the entire atmosphere to 100 degrees Celsius. If a truly significant fraction of the ocean, say the 15% JB apparently postulates, boils the result will be an atmospheric pressure of at least 600lb/square inch and a temperature of at least 250C and only 6% of the total heat released by JB’s model will be used. Models need evidence. Evidence for the Runaway Subduction flood model would be no life on earth.

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Randy

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CheersJoe Meert

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
I'm quite ready to admitt that their model is not up to scratch yet. For me it opens a door to possibilities and I await their comments on you and your friend's points. Things unfortunately move very slowly in the creation community - there are only a handful of guys doing this stuff and they're usually doing two jobs. Given their resources I'm impressed with their output. Thank you for your efforts pointing out their problems. I am prepared to let this iterate a few times before dumping the idea.

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I do have a secret door onto Snellings, Humphries and (Tas) Walkers desktops (I know their secret email addresses) and I'll see if I can get some comment for you on the heat problem. I've never met Baumgardner.

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Well, of those only Snelling is a geologist so I would not really expect Walker or Humphreys (you'd think friends would spell his name right?) to be able to do much in the way of commenting. Baumgardner is one of those creationists who is willing to write on both sides of the fence (like Woodmorappe/Peczkis). His mainstream articles are old earth. I find such a behavior very strange in a scientist. I would never agree to co-author a paper where the conclusions were so diametrically opposed to my stated public religious viewpoint. Apparently, this is not a big deal to people like Baumgardner, Woodmorappe (or Snelling). Just call me one of those atheists with weird morals about scientific integrity In fact, this seems to apply to Humphrey's as well who has misused a figure in Merrill and McElhinny's book to support his rapid reversal model ( http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-242.htm )
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and the real thing:Notice carefully what Humphrey's did! That sort of misuse troubles me as a scientist. Apparently, it is standard OP for creationists.
CheersJoe Meert[Edited to fix width of images, click on images to see full-size versions. --Percy]

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[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 05-17-2002]

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[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 05-17-2002]

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[This message has been edited by Percipient, 05-17-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Come on Joe, Humphreys just drew a Corel Draw sketch to give us some sort of feeling that was in his head. And sure it may be based on that data in a sub-conscious way. He seems to have reverse timed it, shifted the horizontal axis and accelerated the reversals? But he really is just trying to show us what the creationist have in mind empirically. Do you have a diagram on the web somewhere of what the entire time sequence of reversals is from the mainstream POV?

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JM: Not quite true. Notice the reference that Humphreys gives? It is precisely in those pages that we find the graph I posted. None of the other data in those pages comes close to producing what Humphreys drew. Furthermore, the reversals in Humphreys graph are NOWHERE contained in the archeomagnetic record!! Notice the graph I supplied. There is no time within the last 10000 years where the mean dipole changes sign (reversal). This is just plain wrong and very misleading on the part of Humphreys. Go to the source cited by Humphreys and see for yourself. I did not make this up!CheersJoe Meert

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--I think it is a bit obvious with this amount of information to conclude that his graphing are not information based and are vaguely theoretical. IOW, this is not a graph which was taken from something, but has taken one or two pieces of data and the rest was conjured up by some unknown reason or method, whether significant or not.

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JM: Aside from not going to the original sources, your graph also misrepresents the data. The y-axis is not in %, but in field strenght units. There is no zero line, Humphreys has taken the present field strength line and relabled it zero. Humphreys cited exactly this source as the source for data in his graph. You should be careful what you defend when you don't understand it!CheersJoe Meert

Nope, TC. It's best to drop this until you've read through both original works. Humphreys is misleading and misrepresenting data as there is absolutely NO SIGN CHANGE (reversals) in the archeomagnetic data. I don't mind you trying to rationalize it away, but it's obvious you did not go to the original sources. As a budding young scientist, you might as well learn the ropes. Second hand data can be used to make a point (as I did), but my analysis was based on the original references.CheersJoe Meert

TC,Here is a quote from Humphreys paper:

Unfortunately, the archaeomagnetic data do not support that assumption.[b][i][7][/b][/i] Instead, [b][i]the data show[/b][/i] that the field intensity at the earth's surface fluctuated wildly up and down during the third millennium before Christ (see figure 1). A final fluctuation slowly increased the intensity until it reached a peak (50% higher than today) at about the time of Christ. Then it began a slowly accelerating decrease. By about 1000 A.D., the decrease was nearly as fast as it is today.

JM: There's just no defending this one. Reference 7 is the MErrill and Mac book. First, the data (from Barbetti anyway) show the fluctuations around the time of Christ and not 3 millenia before! Look at what Humphreys says! Here are the ONLY other data from those pagesYears BP Dipole Moment
0-500 8.72
500-1000 10.30
1000-1500 10.90
1500-2000 10.94
2000-2500 11.10
2500-3000 11.28
3000-3500 9.64
3500-4000 9.21
4000-5000 8.87
5000-6000 7.20
6000-7000 6.73
7000-8000 7.08
8000-9000 8.61
9000-10000 8.26Now, try to reproduce Humphreys curve. Here's what I get: Do you know what I think happened? Humphreys estimated values (from the Barbetti curve shown earlier--which is only a single data set) and plugged them into graphing software. Instead of putting 2000 bp in as -2000, he simply put in 2000. When the software produced his curve, the x-axis was reversed.
Here is what I got: He then drew a zero line where the present-day field was and goofed. Whether intentional or careless, it is poor science.CheersJoe MEert

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[This message has been edited by Joe Meert, 05-18-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Look guys I don't know enough about this stuff, so, for the record, I'm willing to agree that Humphreys was probably a bit sloppy. I'll leave it fro TC to refute that! My gut feeling still is that he was trying to show what creationists expect to be the story in a hand wavy sort of way.

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By the way, all of this stuff is giving me an interest in geophysics (most of my previous reading has been sedimentation) and I've started reading some basics. Fascinating stuff about the seismological detective work you guys do.

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JM: Sloppy is one word for it! At any rate, one does not say "the data show", give a reference, and then misrepresent what those data actually show. That's just plain bad science.CheersJoe Meert

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Originally posted by TrueCreation:
I think that this article that he wrote is somewhat allright. Though presenting this type of work as if it were hard data with conclusions as he has is very sloppy. In the least he should have indicated that this was no more than speculation, as well as the means for constructing his graph in some detail. (if the barbetti reference graph were used, why not post that as well in his article for a start?)

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JM: This is where you show your naivete about scientific writing. Nothing wrong with that since you are not yet at that level. One does not cite someone else's data and then misrepresent it in a cartoon or real graph. Rationalizations aside, this is extremely poor science.CheersJoe Meert

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I'm won't comment about underplating nor about ocean plates becoming denser with time, but sea floor formation and subduction is not thought to operate as you describe here. Sea floor is produced at mid-oceanic ridges at the rate of a few inches/year. Where sea floor meets continent it can be subducted beneath the lighter continent. This is what is happening around the Pacific perimeter. For example, the Pacific plate is subducting beneath the west coast of the US.

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This subduction process does not take place along the east coast of the US because the continental US is part of the North Atlantic plate, which includes the west Atlantic. Thus, as sea floor is produced at the mid-Atlantic ridge at the rate of several inches/year, the entire sea floor to the west of the ridge plus both American continents are being pushed west.

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JM: This is partially correct. However, subduction will occur when the plate becomes negatively buoyant as well. How long this takes depends on the viscosity/density contrast between the oceanic plate and the asthenosphere. Thus subduction could, at some point in the future, begin to occur beneath eastern North America even though the oceanic and continental portions of the NAP are now moving the same direction. This may be precipitated by a change in plate motion elsewhere.

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You're probably correct about another supercontinent eventually forming, though. With the Americas being pushed west and with Asia possibly moving east, they may eventually collide.

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JM: Here's my rendition:

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Originally posted by Andor:
Thanks JM.
So, the subduction of the plate could change the direction of the convection currents under the plate?

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JM: Indeed. Think of it as sticking a cold finger down into the mantle. Mantle circulation will change as subduction proceeds.CheersJoe Meert

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Originally posted by Percipient:
Joe, I'm probably asking you to repeat something, but I'd like to know more about subduction that doesn't result from plate collisions. One specific question, is there a contemporary example of this somewhere in the world?

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JM: That's a good question. As far as I know, the Loiusade Plateau (solomon islands) is one place where subduction seems incipient. As edge points out subduction polarity reversal is common in the South Pacific.CheersJoe Meert