A very testy post at http://platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.co.uk October 16th 2012, as mister grumpy ladles out angst in 'The Transform Belt: La baliverne incroyable', an otherwise interesting piece of conscensus bashing. The blog author, another guy with the handle Tom Findlay, but nothing to do with the Electric Universe, has been chipping away at Plate Tectonics Theory for many a happy blog hour – but largely to no avail. Thus his testy way of writing. He does seem to be on to something – Plate Tectonics is not all it is cracked up to be (pun intended). However, the idea that the Earth is expanding, as an alternative theory, is not something that has caught the attention of many geologists (as far as I can tell). Neither theory adequately takes into account catastrophism.
In this post Findlay's argument revolves around oceanic crust, which in the consensus model does not behave in the same way as continental crust. Namely, slabs of land are thought to move around and collide with each other, or pull apart from each other – NW Europe from NE America for example. This doesn't happen with oceanic crust and Findlay wonders why that should be so. There are no mountain chains being formed on the sea floor, like the Andes or the Himalayas, as one piece of oceanic crust impinges on another, anywhere within Plate Tectonics theory, he claims. Boundaries are defined by circum Pacific trenches, as an example, but these are really cracks in the plates. Under the consensus definition any transform fault could be defined as a boundary – yet if we took that to the extreme there would be hundreds and hundreds of smallish plates. Yet, this apparent anomaly in the theory and fracturing of the continental crust is thought to have occurred before the ocean floors opened. He also wonders why the African continent, thought to be moving northwards, and having eliminated the so called Tethys Sea has since created the Alps by crunching and folding the European crust, but in contrast Atlantic transform faults are situated in an east to west direction while in the Indian Ocean, also subject to the subcontinent colliding in the north with the Euroasian landmass, has transform faults with a north easterly direction. Plate Tectonics theory does not allow transform faults be have plate significance as it would spoil the party. Findlay's argument is that such faults are no different to the faults arbitrarily awarded plate boundary status. The faults, he says, are chosen to fit the theory rather the theory revolving around what is actually happening in the physical world. It all sounds familiar – a consensus driven paradigm which is repeatedly patched up instead of rethought.
See also www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com