Many readers may not realize, that no one has drilled down very far at all. The deepest drilling has only been about 14 miles down. From the surface to the Earth’s core is almost 4000 miles. We have barely scratched the surface, and we really don’t know what’s down there. On the picture below, the deepest we’ve drilled could hardly even be seen on the picture!

The demise of the mantle plume hypothesis will improve the chances of various YEC geologies, particularly Walter Brown’s hydroplate theory. If lava flow and plate techtonics can be refuted, then there is room for YEC geology to succeed. Hydroplate theory ties current volcanic activity and lava flow to the mechanisms that caused the great flood. Plate techtonics have a passing relation to mantle plume theory, and thus the demise of plumes furthers the chances of Brown’s hydroplate theory prevailing over old Earth, plate techtonics.

Scientists are unable to abandon a paradigm simply because its empiric base has crumbled. Denial …then anger ….is evident, just as in other bereavements [acceptance usually comes with the next generation, after a period of bargaining (ad hoc adjustments, rationalisations ….,changes in the protective shield of auxiliary hypotheses…

According to philosophers of science a research program is progressing if it displays the power to anticipate and accommodate additional data . Otherwise the program is called degenerating. A sign of an impending crisis in a paradigm is the number of times the words anomaly, paradox, unexpected, dilemma, counterintuitive, not understood, and problem appear in papers defending a hypothesis, or the number of rationalizations and additional assumptions made for failed predictions.

in 2002 several hundred papers about them are listed by the Science Citation Index, so the subject is paying a lot of mortgages.

Are we talking about Darwinian evolution? Well, not quite, but we are talking about bad ideas that have crept into science textbooks for the last 30 years. The issue is the origin of lava and mantle plumes.

Here is an example of a theory that should have been torpedoed on basic thermodynamic principles long ago, but was allowed to persist. The idea is that lave orginates from the Earth’s core and takes 30 million years to migrate to the surface. 30 MILLION YEARS!!!! Bury a hot or ice cold brick in the ground and tell me how long do you think it will maintain a temperature differential. Not 30 million years, not even a 1000 years, maybe not even 1 year!

Plumes or no plumes, that is the question Scientists having hot debate over how islands are formed

For more than three decades, scientists have offered a charmingly simple explanation for the Hawaiian Islands. They say the islands formed millions of years ago as the Pacific plate — a huge, slowly moving chunk of Earth’s crust, washed over by the Pacific Ocean — moved over a rising column of super-hot rock from Earth’s innards. The rising plume melted just below the plate as it passed overhead, forming a line of volcanoes that rose above the waves.

The theory is appealing partly because it’s so simple. Many high-school science students have watched their teacher simulate the formation of the Hawaiian Islands by moving a sheet of plastic, which mimics the moving Pacific plate, over the hot flame of a Bunsen burner, which mimics the plume. Result: The plastic develops a chain of blisters — which mimic the Hawaiian Islands.

Quick acceptance in 1970s

Plume theory won quick acceptance in the 1970s, when it seemed to jibe perfectly with plate tectonics theory, the then-trendiest idea in Earth science. According to that now widely accepted theory, Earth’s crust is broken into crustal plates that move about steadily, like slabs of ice in an ice floe, but very slowly, at rates of millimeters to centimeters per year.

The coolest implication of plume theory is that plumes bring us scientific treasures from the center, or near center, of the Earth. Geoscientists can’t travel to the center of the Earth a la Jules Verne to recover its contents. Rather, they rely on plumes to push those inner-Earth treasures from the edge of Earth’s core through its overlying mantle to the surface, where they gush from volcanoes.

Geoscientists also invoke plumes to explain so-called swells where Earth’s crust bulges upward, like the surface of a piping-hot souffle. Such bulges surround many volcanic regions, such as Iceland and the Hawaiian Islands.

For these and other reasons, “if there were no plumes, it would be a great disappointment,” says geoscientist Donald J. DePaolo of UC Berkeley.

And that’s the rub, for now some experts are starting to question the whole plume hypothesis. A showdown may come late next summer, when geoscientists plan to hold what they call the great plume debate at a conference in Scotland. A sort of dress rehearsal for that debate was held last month in San Francisco, at the annual gathering of the American Geophysical Union.

The Smoking Gun September 16, 2003

The Great Plumes Debate

Notes:

1. This is something I was perparing to post at Uncommon Descent some months back, but decided would have been too provacative since it argues for special creation. Bill Dembski, Denyse O’Leary, DaveScot, Patrick, and about half of the UD authors and admins accept Old Earth. Out of respect for them, I post this essay here. DaveScot was focused on issues related to exterior Global Warming, I’m focused on interior Global Warming (or cooling depending on how one looks at the issue).