Creationists, Flat-Earthers, Anti-Vaxxers.... People who reject science.

Do you feel better now Max?

Except when it directly or indirectly causes a person or persons to literally die from the consequences of their beliefs. Thankfully, only one of these groups who this thread is targeting falls under this category. Here's a fun game. You figure which group I am referring to.

It was "settled science" that preached that our landmasses aboard the planet were fixed in position and just rose and fell because of "Loading by sedimentary material"> We were taught that "geosynclines" controlled mountain ranges, mid oceanic ridges etc. MANY MANY scientists were taught that and , we began to look at each other like we jut heard the words of "IM A LUMBERJACK AND IM OK".
Geologic data collected in the 1930s (plant fossils of the same species found in Africa, South America, Europe, and N America were just explained by "floating seeds".)

In almost a flash , starting by "Settled science" arguing that a defrocked weatherman wouldnt know a thing about the complexities of tectonics. Yet, after hearing his words an by collecting geophysical data in WWII sub hunting trips, It became a point of " interesting possibility in a science fictional sense". Then, in the early 1960's a few geologists began testing this new idea and only found that their tests were useful in showing that "Settled science" was wrong and the concept of Continental Drift became more and more underpinned.

The Continental Drift "denialists" of the 1960's were every bit as vehement as many of our science denialists of today. They were full of passion to the extent that many of the "Geosynclinists" made impassioned speeches at geologyconferences about how they would ultimately be vindicated and that all the data supporting Continental drift was bogus. These guys then resigned their positions in Universities and the GSA just as the data that slammed the door in support of the "New Global Tctonics" became available.

Careeers were made (and lost) and we were sailing a whole new boat of facts such that todays "settled science" is being slowly stirred in favor of global "Shape shifting"

It made a neat story, but I dont think itll ever rise to a level of a first run movie

It was also settled science that rocks couldn't fall from the sky.

I am curious about this. Was the theory of fixed landmasses considered "settled science" in the way that we now consider evolution to be settled?

There aren't that many examples in modern science where this happened.

it was "settled and taught. I hve a hobby of cllecting old science books used in secondary schools and colleges. There was a HUUGE STructural GeologyText by a Guy name Eardley and was used as "the Bible" for global tectonics (This book was only interested in North America but there were several others.)
I came into the field just as the Continntal Drift Age was in its youth an lotsa pople were having thir careers made or ended.

Facsinting times because it involved so many associate disciplines that Im associated with, like minerals exploration and "hooking up" various slabs of earth that lay across vast ocean. Like the Emerald and Gold deposits of Africa an South America. I said here that I made my first big batch of income in claiming disconnected deposits of rare earths and silver, simply by transerring findings in one side of an ocean with the other (Spreading) side .
In the 70' it was like the Calif gold rush except there was a lotta money to be mde on the mineral and not in selling food and supplies to the miners.
The Calif and Yukon "Gold Rushes" were pretty much over by the time the giant herds of eastern "miners" showed up. So he guys who mde millions were the Trumps and other European milliners and hat makers .


Theres a "settled science" refinement about things like "Limited genomes " and "Junk genes" and epigenetics" going on right now. Its pretty much a refinement but its still and interesting base of knowledge because it even affects some of the early stuff of Watson and Crick.

how a bout a tri-partite theory of gravity???

Typical, you'll take FM's point, but not mine.



http://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com/2010/08/meteor-man-from-fortean-times-265.html

I am skeptical about what you are saying.

It seems like the idea that continents moved started in the 16th century (Ortelius) and never went away since then. There were textbooks that mentioned it (as well as textbooks that didn't) and there were accomplished scientists who were "mobilists" throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

Almost all scientists accept that the Earth orbits the Sun. 97% of scientists accept that human beings evolved from earlier primates. These are examples of settled science.

I see no evidence that the "anti-mobilists" (the people who reject continental drift) ever had this level of certainty.

There were lotsa folks who made their opinions known. Ortelius had very little knowledge about the story because he ahd no ideas about mechanisms , the geological map, mid ocean ridges . His, as well as Those before Wegner were all pretty much non-scientists anyway. Even Lyells was based on one or two data points from the Glossopteris fossil.
As far as seeing NO_EVIDENCE for land mass stasis, you need to read EArdley and some of the ways that geosynclinal THEORY was ignored and resented.
Continental Drift was denied by just avoiding any discussion. Trust me as someone who was there and in conferences while I was a grad student. The argument for and against "New Global Tectonics" was massive and rancorous. The "settled science" had for years been all about severl different types of geosynclines.
EARDLEY's last book was 1962 and one can see from the Foreword to ed 4 was as if a whole new science were just discovered. EArdley managed to survive and was one of those who was invited to talk about how we went from one "Fact base" to one so totally counter.



Look at Big Bang, gravity, surface chemistry, chemistry ORBITAL theory.

Chnging scientific bases of FACT , has also been a major opportunity for entirely new businesses back in the late 70's through the 90's. I made part of my career as one who did archival reconstructions of
1what did we know during a past period of time( in mining practices)

2What were we teaching to mining engineers in those time periods

3What laws existed that governed our environmental practices during those times

4 when these changed, did the science suddenly come up to better understandings

The opportunities I had was that several mining companies had spent fortunes in acquiring environmental impairment insurance and, when they were found responsible for massive contamination, they wanted to be able to collect on their insurance policies and the insurance companies Almost ALWAYS denied coverage because they stated that my clients shoulda known better.

Wed have cases that were in the hundreds of millions nd even a few Billion dollars of coverage liability.

It was an xample of how insurance companies love to take your money but will never give it up on a claim.

BTW, evolution is considered settled science by only those who work in the fields. Many religious beliefs still push special creation or Intelligent Design . WHY? I dont know but as far as some geoups, e can follow the money on both sides

It's wrong for any scientist to think of science as a unified collective and look down on dissent.

Anyone who studies science or anything else should formulate their own understanding of things based on what they read and/or observe.

I have heard people here who claim to be part of the mainstream science collective say that tectonic plates push up mountains without expending energy because of lateral momentum.

Just because you have studied science doesn't mean you have thought critically enough about it to question your assumption that lateral momentum of a floating tectonic plate can push up a mountain range without converting kinetic energy into potential energy.

You can't assume that just because someone has studied science, even gaining degrees and academic positions, that they haven't just climbed onto the shoulders of giants without fully understanding and/or critically questioning received knowledge.

People will argue that they trust peer-review because they can't be experts in everything themselves; and then simultaneously attack others who question their knowledge and understanding of science.

The bottom line is that anyone can be wrong. You can have a PhD and be wrong/mistaken. You can be a genius in math and be wrong/mistaken. You can have more faith in peer-review than in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and still be wrong/mistaken.

Humans are not perfect, scientists or otherwise.

If Im the one then youve certainly misunderstood wht was said. We are talking pretty much vector analyses using spherical geometry. Noone hs ver denied energy expended, thats silly. I think that your just tap dancing. When you understand how global tectonics has been modeled and the data used to calibrate and verify, perhaps then you will understand how the main bulk of the expended energy is with the mantle forces upon which plates lie like slices of pizza on a conveyor oven. Imagine a terminus of pizza slices at one end and a slice comes bearing down on them atop the conveyor. The slices will meet and , like on the earth, if the rock mass is ductile, it will fold up like a rug or else one slice will override the other and a "mini mountain" is built. Thats how a fairly thick layer of clam shells contained in the sediment of the Indian basin got deposited atop Mt Everest as a marine sedimentary layer atop a meta dacite layer.

Me? I'm using clear language and not hiding in complex math terms.


The bottom line is that however the mechanisms work, the material gets pushed uphill and kinetic energy is converted to potential energy.

Whenever kinetic energy is converted into potential energy, it gets lost as kinetic energy. An ascending ball slows down and stops before turning around to fall. Likewise, energy expended on pushing earth uphill must be lost as heat and thus cooling should occur when mountains are pushed upward against gravity.

The geology that says all that tectonic power comes from the primordial heat and/or nuclear decay is a convenient way of ignoring all the energy that's getting absorbed from the sun and converted into biomass sediments year after year, turns into fossil fuel, and then . . .

What happens to fossil fuel underground if humans don't use it? Nature incorporates it into geological/tectonic processes. Why would you think otherwise?

The Earth is bathed in sunlight, just like Venus. It radiates heat away because greenhouse gases like CO2 and water condense and get out of the way of escaping infrared waves. But as the CO2 and water condense and go through their cycles, along with nitrogen, etc. they absorb energy and cause it to accrue as sediments, which end up underground and ultimately get compressed and/or moved around so that growing volcanoes and mountains covert the energy into potential energy.

If solar energy didn't build up as fossil fuels over time and contribute to geological processes, weathering and erosion would gradually level off all the land and deposit it into the oceans, which would rise up to cover the entire surface of the planet as a result.

Earth would just cool and solidify and then there would be no more molten core and magnetic field to protect the atmosphere and water. That's not going to happen, however, because the sun continues to supply Earth with new energy (along with maybe some meteors containing nuclear fuel).

If you are skeptical, please consider the alternative hypothesis, which is that Earth just happens to have fallen into orbit around the sun and cooled to its current state, which is going to continue cooling until it is as cold as Mars? If that was the case, then why wouldn't Venus have already cooled that much as well? I.e. if planets were only in the phase state they are in due to innate/primordial core heat that is gradually leaking away, then why would Venus be so hot at a closer orbit to the sun and Mars so cold at a further distance?

Earth is receiving energy from the sun day after day, year after year, and millennium after millennium, and not all of it is leaving without getting captured and stored. The fact it is getting captured and stored should cause you to think about how it does, i.e. by plants and all the species that consume plant energy and convert it into denser forms, some of which sediment and build up to form fossil fuels underground.

In other words, Earth has evolved a system for taking sunlight and moving the energy underground while controlling the temperature of the biosphere. Maybe Venus and even Mars also have evolved processes for capturing and storing up solar energy and building it up underground, and maybe even gas giants have mechanisms to do so as well.

When you see energy being captured and stored and built up underground at a planetary scale, the next question you should ask is where does that energy go next? Energy must be either liberated as kinetic energy and ultimately heat or it must be stored further and/or converted into new forms of potential. Logically, underground sediments condense into oil and coal and natural gas bubbles up as a result of fermentation-like processes; but when energy is liberated as kinetic energy, it is going to cause convection just as it does in the atmosphere.

Rock convection occurs in the form of volcanism, mantle plumes, etc. There are supposedly several mantle plumes throughout history that correspond with large meteor strikes. That either means that the meteors deposited their kinetic energy and nuclear fuel and thus stimulated the mantle plume and/or that there was chemical potential energy stored up in the ground that got invigorated by the perturbation, causing a heating event that culminated in convection. Such convection events occur very slowly, but just like atmospheric convection, what goes up consumes energy and converts it into potential, and as it presses back downward, it converts potential into kinetic energy and heat.

Overall, these geological processes are dynamic weather events like those that make up atmospheric climate, only they go much slower. So just as we understand the role of solar energy in heating air and water vapor and causing evaporation, convection, and condensation/precipitation; we should also understand its role in adding energy/heat underground and how the biosphere plays an intermediating role in feeding the sunlight through to deeper processes by gradually condensing and sedimenting it over geological time spans.

Lava.

My biggest point is that expertise matters. An expert in science has gone through 12+ years of study in University, has learned the mathematics, has done the problem sets, has done lab work and had feedback from peers and professors, and has worked in the field.

An expert has an understanding of how science is done. They understand the current theories and the way they were developed. An expert understands the mathematics and knows how to ask the right questions... and more importantly how to test the answers for themselves.

Someone with no more than a high school understanding in science simply doesn't have the tools. They answer questions in any real way... they can't even understand the questions.

The idea that anyone can simply do science is simply wrong. It is the same way as if someone could play concert piano with no training, or kick a field goal without having touched a football.

All this training that Yo Yo Ma did to master the cello really matters. I would never in a million years criticize his playing. I could likely draw a bow across the cello strings and get some noise to play.... maybe after a couple of hours I could play a scale. But what I am doing is nothing like what Yo Ya Ma is doing.

These attempts to take scientific phrases picked up from the internet and pretend to invent new understandings aren't science.

Expertise; all that time taken to master a field, matters.

I am curious Farmerman...

Is there any mechanism for energy from the Sun (i.e. currently) to contribute to tectonic motion? I would be surprised if this were the case, but this is not my area of expertise.

That's about par for the course. Anything that challenges your assumptions is dismissed.

What were you trying to say with this thread, that you're the polar opposite of Creationists, Flat-Earthers, Anti-Vaxxers.... People who reject science?

I don't see a lot of difference to tell the truth, I think you're every bit as narrow minded and resistant to the truth as they are. I don't think we could put a fag paper between you.

Im not aqqare ofany. All instrumentation has been able to MAP the energy sources as the upper mantle magma . When two such reas oppose each other (like in mid oceanic ridges or hot spots or thinning areas ofcontinental crusts), the mantle induces some degree of movement above it. Since the overlying plates are of lower density, they actually float.

Im not gonn get into it with LL , I dont know where to even begin wxcept for one observation, where does he understand that NEW plates are being formed.
I think my pizza pie in a conveyor oven is about as simple as I can make it xcept for one thing. EXCESS energy of subduction usually DOES become expended as volcanic vents along our "rings of fire" Where we have andesitic volcanoes we usually see subduction zones and earthquakes.(All means of energy resolution)

Its interesting because this is xactly a small piece of explanation as to how sediment basins used to be explained away in the geosynclinal "theory". Its not correct but its all we had before we understood about the creaation of lower density plates were created at mid ocean ridges and moved as a result of SEA FLOOR SPREADING .
(Its a 2 part mechanism)
The mantle magma spits out plate material that moves in both directions away from the center of spreading (We see this going on today in Iceland and along the Phillipines and in the Afar (Horn of Africa), and in the Northern Andes ). These plates either help push a lndmass along (Like its doing in Western Europe and Eastern North and S America. On the opposite side of a continental mass the plates are in a collision course and here is where CONTINENTAL DRIFT is seen to be most dangerous as far as volcanoes, earthquakes, splitting land masses etc.
We hve good instrumentation to map and investigate the plates, the mantle, the M discontinuity as well as to model the spherical vectors to understand how and where its all moving and times involved.