....The Trouble with Plate Tectonics is..
            (...the crux of the whole thing...)

And that's not me saying it.  Read what Shauna Vogel has to say.  Her considered words make for a much more effective sledge than mine. She met a lot of the people in the process of researching her book and got the inside story from a number of people directly involved:-

What she's saying here in a more polite way than me, is that whilst geologists stick as best they can to the geological reality written in the rock, geophysicists being essentially restricted to interpretation of what happens at the end of a scribbling, shaky pen, .. a seismograph, .. consider themselves having a licence to invent constructions with an unfettered disregard for geological reality.

 "Poor Buggers they", you could say, "..restricted by such limitation", except that in their extravance they show absolutely no respect for the essence of science - falsification.  The whole of Plate Tectonics is a litany of contradictions, which after half a century they still show no inclination to rationalise.  Why?  Well, firstly, they can't, because there *is* no logical reconciliation.  And secondly they probably think it doesn't matter since the more furfies they can successfully strew around the place and  bamboozle everybody, the more they can justify their existence.  And physics being what it is (the key to understanding the ghostly quantum world with its wherewithall to destroy the natural material one) (... and recalcitrant neighbours), attracts the major part of funding.  Get on the back of that one and you're on a winner, professionally speaking.

And so we have dubious suppositions assumptions and speculations tricked out in rubbery arithmetic as their support, and promoted by a media cheer squad with its own separate agenda - the more 'ideas' out there, no matter how nutty, the more there is to write about and the more secure is their financial base.  Provided people buy, that is.

The whole schemmozzle is essentially supported by disinformation.  There is huge capital in being wrong, provided it is coloured with the kudos of learned institutions .  Being wrong underwrites the chance to try again ("more research is needed"), and gets rid of the problem that being right presents - which is what to do for an encore.  To the career research scientist "more research needed" is virtually a catch phrase for 'money in the bank'.   There is no reward in being right, ..not in the short term anyway, when it has the potential to put everybody offside and upset the applecart.  Like here.  And put you out of a job into the bargain.

But models sourced in falsehood and speculative imagination at the expense of hard geological reality are valueless, no matter how inventive the arithmetic used to support it.

And that is why there is no inclination from geophysicists to include geological reality.  The 'geology' that they do attempt to include is a half-formed, flung-about, dissonant caccophany, a Heath-Robinson contraption whose purpose seems solely to bamboozle the onlooker in a morasse of gratuitous construction, to pull wool over eyes whilst trying to attract funding for their misbegotten enterprise -  Plate Tectonics.

So that's where it begins, .. and where it stops.  Were they to include geological reality instead of the fiction of hypothesis and theory, typically represented as 'fact', they would have no story other than Earth Expansion with all its acknowledged problems of mechanism for Earth enlargement, ..and that would incur the wrath of their fellow physicists.   Physics - the big money spinner -  would become controversial, introduce schism, divide funding and put people out of a job.  As things are, its easy.  Why make things hard for yourself, a cross for your own back?

It's all about jobs and careers.  There is of course, nothing wrong with jobs and careers, except that in this case the science itself (with its essence of falsification, that no-one is interested in other than whistleblowers like here) - is clearly of secondary importance.  To the career scientist, the creed is,  "We are a community of scientists", whose dictate, by the very exigencies of its organisation, is that it must be unconditionaly obeyed, and woe betide any who cross it.

So why do geologists put up with it if they recognise the problem with geophysics?  They put up with it because they recognise realities, and the imperative to publish for the sake of career.  A consensus allows this to happen.  And according to Shawna Vogel above, in adopting Plate Tectonics' assumption of a Panthalassa Scotese is leading the way, with his throwaway:  "...There probably  has been an ocean in the present-day position of the Pacific Ocean for nearly a billion years..."

"Probably"?  Really?  Why?  ... How much uncertainty is tied up in that 'probably'?  How much 'more research' is going into the validity of that "billion years"?  I submit none, because if it were, then the supposed pairing of ridge creation and mantle destruction would be more closely examined than it is, and that would risk upsetting the applecart.  As it stands, it is silent homage to the axiom that underpins plate tectonics and which everyone understands is the 'ghost that dare not speak its name' - the assumption that the Earth must remain a constant size.

Even geologists need to face the realities of a job and a career, ..and in the academic world if you don't publish you don't have one.  And as noted above rubbish can be argued to have more validity and attract more prestige than veracity. It underwrites the chance for more research, more publications, and therefore (whether right or wrong) more standing.  Being right on the other hand arouses all sorts of indignation from vested interests ensconced in the comfort of "more research needed".

Sites such as these arguing a transparent deficit between the theory and the facts might be hoped to engender a more considered assessment of Plate Tectonic theory, but almost certainly the reverse will be true as authors and peer review alike close ranks and conspire to shore it up.  Almost certainly a more strident, more muscular exposition may be expected, as well as an increasing and intentional drop in the standard of peer review, and increasing attempts to present interpretation and theory as fact .  But in the end, given enough rope it will hang itself, as it becomes increasingly and transparently less credible, ..even to the frontline footsoldiers, ..the Hill-Buildies.

Wherever there is power, corruption poisons even the cleanest of cleanskin newbie slates.  Eventually.