Wegener and Evidence for Continental Drift

I'm going from memory, but I believe the average time is around a half million years between reversals. I found a diagram in a geology book listing recent reversals:Years Ago
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700,000
1,000,000
1,100,000
1,800,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
3,000,000
3,100,000
3,350,000--Percy

It appears we should be expecting one anytime. That would be interesting!

The field is decreasing. From memory I think the reversal is less than a 1,000 years out.edited to add
found this
Magnetic Reversal of the Earth's Poles2,000 years is the curent estimate.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 06-11-2003]

Yes it would! All: As of tomorrow I will be in california until about the 19th. I will answer all relevant posts and go on another posting rampage when I get back.Cheers,
-TC------------------

Most of the replies to you say basically the same thing, so there's no need to go on a "posting rampage" upon your return. A single post addressing the significant points would be fine.--Percy

Fast cooling rates have nothing to do with it - there simply isn't enough time for so many reversals to happen. You're talking about one every ten minutes in CPT - and how is TC supposed to explain that?I wonder if Dr. Baumgardner thought about this - ah, but he doesn't have a geology degree, and might never have even heard of magnetic reversals. What a shame. The Rock Hound------------------
"Science constantly poses questions, where religion can only shout about answers."

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I wonder if Dr. Baumgardner thought about this - ah, but he doesn't have a geology degree, and might never have even heard of magnetic reversals. What a shame.

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Aw, details, shmetails...

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Fast cooling rates have nothing to do with it - there simply isn't enough time for so many reversals to happen. You're talking about one every ten minutes in CPT - and how is TC supposed to explain that?

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My guess is that he will say that that is how fast they occurred, despite all the time constraints, and were recorded on an oceanic crust traveling at, oh what?, about 60 mph(probably faster if the 10 minute figure is correct)? Ridiculous really. But this has never deterred TC in any way. He just needs more time!!!

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I wonder if Dr. Baumgardner thought about this - ah, but he doesn't have a geology degree, and might never have even heard of magnetic reversals. What a shame.

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I would guess that he knows of them but ignores or rationalizes them away. I like geophysicists, but, as you indicate, they need to have an occasional reality check.

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I can't seem to make heads or tails of what TC is trying to say most times. I figured I haven't been following long enough... but maybe not...

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I've watched TC go from sincere and fairly rational, but utterly wrong, to what you see here-- a really good creationist, complete with all the misdirection, self-imposed ignorance, and denial. I find it very sad actually.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Hello? TC? You out there?C'mon, I want to keep this thread going. It's fun The Rock Hound------------------
"Science constantly poses questions, where religion can only shout about answers."

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Hello? TC? You out there?

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Well, he's not going to be back until the 19th. I'm sure that once he returns.... oh, wait a minute... Is it really the 22nd already? Gee...------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

"The problem is not that anyone is trying to use you as an example."
--Lol, really? Well I've been on this board long enough to know that as long as I remain an advocate of the Young Earth, there will always be something to pick on TC about! I can't tell you how much money I would put on what I would think would happen if I were to make the public transition toward an Old Earther--that would be quite a weight lifted off me when it comes to discussion of these issues."What we are trying to do is1) get you to answer the point this topic was originally started to deal with."
--Well I dunno, maybe you are, but you may not have also noticed that your 'original point of this topic' has branched into numerous specific topics which has become more difficult to follow."2) support some of the other claims that you have made in the course of this thread"
--Ok, but is it also ok if I do the same with the rest of you?"In response we get a lot of evasion and unsupported assertions - some of which are then denied, sometimess even in the same post. "
--No, I never made an assertion and then denied it subsequently. I'm sure if you read my posts in context, this will be revealed."For example insisted that it was ridiculous to say that Wegenr's evidence did not support conventional plate tectonics over CPT - and denied ever having said it."
--I don't think I ever denied having said that specific thing."And in the next SENTENCE insisted that the evidence available to Wegener did not differntiate between the two !"
--Yup I did say this. Here is the segment I think you are talking about again:

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2) Your "explanation" insists of repeatign the same assertion you are supposed to be defending. Rather than explaining how the evidence can be explained in terms of CPT you merely assert that CPT must produce exactly the same evidence as conventional plate tectonics despite the clear differences between them

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--Wrong, all I am saying is that the evidence Wegener had is just as consistent with CPT as it is with mainstream PT. Since I already explained why, you need to tell me why my explanation doesn't cut it (my explanation was that all Wegener showed was that the continents have split and moved, nothing more which would be needed to differentiate PT from CPT).

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Is it your position that I somehow MADE you say that ? That I somehow forced you into self contradiction ?

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Your problem on this thread is not the actions of others - it is your own.

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--Even if I am confused on some things in this thread, I wouldn't have a hard time forgiving myself. I am still confused on quite a few previous points made in this thread, mainly by yourself.------------------

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--Authigenic sedimentation in the deep sea is majorly dominated by hydrothermal sediments and manganese nodules, at least if mind serves me right.

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"It doesn't. In fact, the term 'authigenic sedimentation' doesn't make much sense, either."
--No, I'm sure it does. Just do a search on google.http://rmocfis.uprm.edu/~morelock/dpseased.htm
Jonathan B. Martin | Department of Geological Sciences
http://www.odp.usyd.edu.au/odp_CD/oceplat/opindex3.html
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/dees/ees/lithosphere/lec5.html------------------

"As I asked, where are the subduction zones and divergent plate boundaries?"
--There arent any? Why would that even be relevant anyways? Havent you done some geological studies on the tectonism and crustal evolution of Venus? If any other object in the solar system, I would think Venus has got to be the first one your going to be researching in your geo courses as an analog of earth tectonism. If you arent evading, why not give me your thoughts on my conclusions exhibited in the cited segment of my paper.

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And it, too, denies any diagnostic evidence for CPT.
--lol, just as I predicted.

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What prediction was that?

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--My(probably more subconceous than expressed) prediction that you will move from 'evidence' to 'diagnostic/unequivocal evidence'. First everybody(well, at least you and percy, et al.) wants just some kind of random even nebulous evidence in favour of my position, then we dismiss it, pretend we were never asked such a thing and become more specific and demanding.

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Good then you can tell us where modern science has refuted any of these.

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--'any of these'? In regards to the cooling of plutons, I'm clueless. Of course I havent done much research in that area either.

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When a principle is used to interpret data, it effectively produces new data. This is a loose usage, but but useful nontheless. If the new data were incorrect we would find out.

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--Perhaps you can provide us(or excuse me.. 'me'. I'm all alone here) with a specific example of such new data which has been shown correct without resort to the assumption of its uniformitarian premise."I am talking about how you ignore geological principles along with historical aspects of geology. You ignore other data such as radiometric dating. "
--I don't ignore radiometric dating. Its just that given the isotope geochemistry of the earths crust, any "scrunching" of the age of the earth date will require great variance in the decay constant at some time. You will, therefore, have to assume that it has occured because if it hasent, the whole thing(a young earth) gets thrown in the trash."No. You have to show that there was no other data than what Wegener himself presented. There was other data available and none of it supported a young earth or a biblical flood."
--Thats because of its interpretation. Anyways, this isn't right. All I need to show to support my assertion that "I wouldn't have had to deal with plenty of the current paradigms of CPT if we were living in Wegener's day" is show that there has been advancement in current geological models and the discovery of some phenomena. I think the geophysical subject of heat transfer is a good example. I wouldn't have had to deal with arguments on the predicted bathymetry of the ocean floor in Wegeners day. Funny, though. I also woulnd't have had a model of global inundation without such knowledge either...------------------

"TC writes:
Right, now what you have to do is get the data, I only have data at 5+ km from the ridge.You're using the wrong pronoun - it is *you* who has to get the data."
--No, because that would be switching the burden of proof. Your the one who started this specific discussion and was the one who initially asserted that there is no discontinuity. I didn't know if there was, but apparently through your confidence, you did. But then you continue by saying:"In my opinion it would be a poor investment of time looking for this non-existent discontinuity."
--lol. Really? Yeah I guess it would be because if you say it is a 'non-existant discontinuity', someone has done the research to show that. Or is that just some unsupported conjecture? If it isn't there, and you know it, please show me if you don't mind."A sedimentary discontinuity within a couple hundred meters of ocean ridges would be big news."
--I sure as hell would be if it were to be as sudden as you seem to be proposing. But I don't think thats how it would be found even if there is one. The discontinuity in itself would most plausibly be gradual and possibly(as I would predict) not sudden at all, spanning into at least the single digits of km. Just as I explained in an earlier post."If it existed it would have been ferreted out long, long ago by those Creationists who follow the technical literature, and would now be trumpeted by every Creationist organization and be common knowledge to all Creationists as the best (and only) evidence available supporting flood theory."
--long ago? It would? You mean long before any YEC ever stopped to think about the flood as a tectonic catastrophe?"If the rapidly moving continents generated little or no sediment, then most of the sediment on the sea floor was deposited after the flood and should have an average depth of 5 cm. This is not what we find."
--Any serious model of CPT would have to produce mass quantities of sediment during the flood. Well 'produced' wouldn't be the right word. But there at least was that much sediment transported to its current location."If the rapidly moving continents generated much sediment, as you're now arguing, it would increase in depth with distance from the ridge as you say, but it would be very coarse-grained since it's origination was catastrophic, and it would therefore be clearly differentiated from the 5 cm of organics and clay deposited above it over the past 5000 years. This is not what we find, either."
--It would be more coarse the closer you are to the continents. I don't see why it would be much different than sedimentation occuring today. Why would it be so much different in granular size?"And it goes beyond that. The organics in the layers laid down during the flood year should all have the same date of 5000 years ago, with only the top 5 cm showing a progression through 5000 years on up till now. This is not what we find, either. What you instead find is sediments increasing gradually in age with increasing depth till they finally exceed the limits of C-14 dating and other radiometric methods have to be employed. "
--Wow, I guess you've found something I have never even stopped to think about<./sarcasm> Have you forgotten the fact that if we are to consider a young earth and global flood, your going to have to consider accelerated decay."And there's more. To the extent you find fossils, you should find a jumble of fossils all mixed up with no organization as organisms meet their end in many ways at many different times during the flood year consistent with a catastrophe. This is not what we find, either. We instead find an organized progression of fossils that correlate with layer and radiometric age."
--Yup, but with few exceptions(eg. I have no idea why we only find humans in such high and recent strata) I don't see why the fossil distribution in the geo column would be much different than we observe. Sure we find many fossil species in specific strata, but 99.9 percent of the time, that stratigraphic range is enormous. Alot of what we see in the cambrian we still see hundreds of millions of years later. I could spend alot of time on this but then we would just get into biogeography which I dont' have a lot of interest in because it involves the study of the interactions of organisms with their environment. The fossil record shows the survivability of species as the global catastrophic event unfolded.

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I said: We can see that sedimentary thickness is highly irregular even on small scales, varying by meters. This will cause problems for any reconstruction of the history of sedimentation/sea-floor spreading rates.

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Then you say: "Your have a tendency to grasp at arguments of convenience without regard to consistency with your prior positions. You yourself have presented information contradicting this claim when you posted the link to your sediment depth map (http://www.promisoft.100megsdns.com/evcforum/sedthick.jpg). It clearly shows sediments increasing in depth with distance from oceanic ridges. Certainly there are irregularities and local conditions, but the trend of increasing depth of sediment with distance from the ridge is well known and is stated clearly in any elementary geology textbook."
--No really!! How in the world are my two information sources and my interpretations of them contradictory!? The sedthick.jpg source is very much simplified in detail because it is a very macro scale. Not only that, it probably arent the direct measurements but the averages of the local sedimentation as is shown in the two graphs I gave. This isn't some petty attempt of mine at "grasp[ing] at arguments of convenience without regard to consistency with your prior positions". My assertion did not dispute in the least the already well substantiated fact of a gradual increase in depth with distance from the ridge."You are once again trying to argue the position of absence of evidence for CPT. You're in effect saying, "It would be nice if ocean currents and local conditions hadn't made such a hash of sedimentary depths that it's impossible to figure anything out." But this is not the case, and you know this because when it suits you argue the other way."
--What are you talking about??? look at the data! its irregular fluctuations speaks for itself."As explained before, the exponential thickening of sediments as you move away from the mid-ocean ridge is because they are originated from continents..."
--Yup, as explained before, in long ago posts by myself."As explained before, the thickening is linear, not exponential."
--Yup, this was merely an inconsistency in my terminology way back then, why have you brought it up again?"And your repeated claim that mid-ocean sediments come largely from continents is incorrect."
--I never never never(must I repeat incessantly) said that mid-ocean sediments come from continents. In fact, wasn't it me who like 50 posts ago attempted to make it more than clear that this was the case. "they just arent going to get there"...

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I said: John didn't know what he was talking about. Nothing I said was nonsense.

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The contradiction in Message 54 is there for anyone to see:

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"This exponential increase in sedimentary thickness is due to runoff from continents and its erosion. The problem is that these sediments do not travel such distances(nearing the mid-ocean ridge) on the time-scale we are talking about."

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--Well I'm sorry if i wasn't talking about the minority of sedimentation. Why else would I go on to say: "The only relevant sediments which will be deposited on the sea-floor at anywhere near our designated 200m mark will be from local flaura and fauna which is also insignificant until your talking about scales of km." I am not confused on this issue, you have merely read me out of context."John picks up on the contradiction in Message 55, so you claim in Message 56 that you meant something different"
--Yup, different from what YOU thought I was talking about.

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but only compound the problem by making further misstatements, such as this now disproven statement about sediments near the ridge being immeasurable in 5000 years:

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"There is sediment, but the sediment which is that near to the ridges is from local palegic sedimentation, and still that is immeasurable. Were talking about less than 200m from the ridge. Do you have some data to present to the contrary? Because the data that I have looked at, I can infer that it isn't giong to even be relevant unless we are talking about km scales, not less than 200m."

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--Yes, that was a mis-statement I will admit. I souldn't have said it was 'immeasurable'. I should have said that if you are looking for a discontinuity within so much irregularity in the sedimentary thickness on such 'micro' scales, you arent going to be able to distinguish any discontinuity."Where is this data you kept claiming you were looking at until someone provided actual data indicating you were once again talking through your hat?"
--Haha! Someone else provided the 'actual data'?? Why is it that a guy going by the name 'TrueCreation' is the only one who provided the sedimentary thickness data in all cases? Hm... so was I just talking out of my hat when I posted good data in post #74? Or was that somebody elses data?

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I say:Arent different animals adapted to an almost endless variation in environmental conditions? Those which couldn't handle the environmental stress, died off first and thats where we find their fossils.

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"You're again choosing an argument of convenience inconsistent with your position. An animal that dies in a catastrophe because he's buried in sediment or a cliff-face collapses on him is not dying from "environmental stress." You're forgetting that you're talking about a catastrophe."

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--Call it what you want. I chose to call it 'environmental stress'."You also appear unfamiliar with what is actually found in the sediments. Near continents where there's copious life on the sea floor we find progressions in the layers of the same animal type changing modestly from layer to layer in a manner consistent with evolution and inconsistent with the randomness of a sudden catastrophe."
--I wouldn't really know, true. I am not all that familiar with the life that is found in the sediments. That isn't as much in the area of my interest. I will agree though, if such successive minute changes are found on small time scales as you and others say, it is indeed a problem for us YEC's!

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Skepticism about, or rejection of, evidence is only justified when there is countervailing evidence, but you've been unable to offer us any evidence for a young earth.

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--I don't recall you ever commenting on the brief cited section of my paper about accelerated decay and its venusian evidence. So what do you think? Your latter reply to my venusian evidence is not sufficient as will be shown.

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When presented specific evidence for an ancient earth, such as radiometric dating, you express completely unjustified skepticism, and then go on to propose additional processes, such as accelerated decay, for which there is also no evidence.

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--See above, what do you think?"You once again explain your CPT flood scenario, for which you have no evidence, by proposing a process, rapid cooling, for which you also have no evidence. "
--Well I have evidence, its vague and alluring to the highest degree, explained in section 3.2 of my article. But until further notice, yup, fully agreed, I have no good evidence for rapid cooling of the oceanic lithosphere. Oh well, at least this is an area where at least one or two people are currently interested in researching. Gas and shock hydrodynamics are completely over my head so I'll let them deal with it."On the contrary, your task is very simple. Based on the extreme differences between the PT and CPT scenarios, postulate what evidence would be present for one and not for the other. Then seek out that evidence. This is very simple, but so far you haven't even identified the evidence you should be looking for."
--You mean just so that I can have all the other 10,000+ geological arguments against a Young Earth thrown right at me? No, it isn't the simplest task.... You are right, however, such a method for producing positive evidence in favour of the YEC is good. I have done a little of this. So what do you think about Venus? Your subsequent response in your post 107 just evades the points made in the article."Your Venusian evidence for rapid decay doesn't even qualify as good science fiction, and you're once again offering arguments of convenience inconsistent with your other arguments since you describe time periods of millions of years rather than the mere thousands of your other CPT arguments.
--I guess that my elaborations that they were uniformitarian assumed mainstream dates was a complete waist of type. The evidence is in favour of accelerated decay, so why not assume accelerated decay..."You have to make up your mind whether you're going to interpret Genesis literally or not. If you really believe Genesis says the universe is only 6000 years old, then you can't offer evidence that's millions of years old."
--What? Where did I offer evidence that its millions of years old??? Where? Besides, I don't believe the "universe" is 6000 years old. I doubt that even the earth is 6000 years old. Sure, maybe adam and eve were created then, but not the earth."I appreciate that you conceded some validity on a couple points, guyots and the equatorial chalk line, but if you accept this evidence then you must place it into a consistent framework that you can describe for others in a way that they can understand and find persuasive. So far all you're doing is convincing people that you hold your views very firmly out of all proportion to supporting evidence."
--No, I am really not trying to convince anybody of much anything here. I don't expect to. And I am not 'holding my views firmly' in the way that you say. All I am doing is holding my view that there is research to be done on these issues and that conclusive answers have not been given. You think that I am just going to forget about the argument with guyots and the equitorial chalk line(and many other arguments against the young earth, mind you)? No. Hopefully I can make one of them a future research initiative of mine, but again, I don't have super-human research skills so I will take my time."It always feels like Christmas when I reply to your posts - when I spell check my reply, your quotes light up in red."
--lol. I would take a screenshot of my spell-checker but I don't want to waist more space on my server for something like that. Sure, there were some spelling errors in my last post. Sorry I wasn't able to spell check it, but even still. This comment isn't really warranted.------------------