Flat and Stationary, ..or round and rotating?

Fig.1.  A round, rotating (and expanding) Earth.  Prima facie evidence is presented to the jury that the Earth is round, and that its primary surface architecture embodies the intertwined effects of expansion and rotation. Large red arrows = plate movement according to gps;  red lines = transform faults; white lines = primary global torsions

 

The question, "Does the internal heat of the Earth drive surface tectonics?" must be considered from the viewpoint of the Earth as a whole. In this, the absolutely Number One, primary, definitive aspect is that it is massive, round and rotating.

However there is nothing intrinsic to the Earth's mass, sphericity or its rotation that is critical to Plate Tectonic Theory.  In other words, Plate Tectonics requires nothing of the globe, nor of its primary rotational dynamics.  Heat flow,  'porridge-in-a-pot' theory is seen as the control, and is applied across orders of magnitude of scale to the Earth as a whole.  Plate tectonics sees nothing wrong with this.

Let's say it again.  Here we have the self-declared, grandest theory of global dynamics and yet, says Plate Tectonics, it needs nothing of either the roundness of the Earth, nor of its rotation (the two things that the Earth does best) for it to work.   They can of course be accommodated, but they are not required and necessary..  Convection (the requisite condition for Plate Tectonics) is all about heat flow.   The fact that the Earth is round and rotating matters naught, the Earth could be any shape at all (and size) (and probably mass), ....and spinning, moving in a line, or stopped, ..it wouldn't matter, ...Plate Tectonics would still work.  It could even be flat, and happening in a gigantic celestial beaker heated from below, and it would still work.  Convection requires nothing of the specific qualites of mass, roundness, rotation, or movement, merely that there is a temperature gradient, .. and some sort of medium.

...............................

But the Earth is round, and spins, ..and travels on its path through the solar system, held in its orbit by the force of gravitational attraction of the Sun.  Force upon force.  And the temperature gradient is a direct consequence of this, born (supposedly) of original planetary accretion and differentiation.   So here we have a situation where Plate Tectonics purposely severs the logical and empirical link between heat flow and the Earth's first-order body-parameters - roundness and spin, and then  attempts to explain the surface features of the Earth solely in terms of this ('dismembered') heat flow.  This disconnect marks a logical glitch in plate tectonics and underpins plate tectonicists inability to see the symmetry of spin inscripted in the crust, or its significance, and consequently the difference between overriding and subduction.

Of course roundness and rotation of the Earth has everything to do with heat flow, but in severing this connection Plate Tectonics implicitly negates any necessary relevance of the first order parameters of the Earth to its model.  The theory might as well be describing porridge in a pot, soup, ..balloons rising, or air in a smoke-filled room, which are indeed all analogues used by plate tectonics to illustrate convection in the solid mantle.  But whilst heat flow may have a part to play in mantle dynamics - and certainly does in the Archaean in the plethora of granite intrusions that define this era, it is almost certainly not the first-order control advocated by Plate Tectonics.

Image used by Plate Tectonics to illustrate global dynamics
Courtesy of the USGS

The homocentric construct of Plate Tectonics renders any possible relevance of heat flow to the deformation of the Earth  entirely coincidental.
 

Crazy Platies
 

 

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