Florian wrote:

lucek wrote:
And there are reasons we shouldn't see their trail. For one quite a bit of what was then land is now the Continental shelf, Further the rarity of fossilization comes into play..

Do you really believe that biogeographists are not competent enough to recognize a vicariance? Because this is exactly what you are suggesting in the sentence above...

lucek wrote:But if you want could you furnish us with examples of animals cited and their habitats that with the insurmountable barriers in between.

Light storm did already. Why would you ignore the example he cited: The banded iguana from Western America to Fiji was cited earlier. It would have rafted for more than 8000 km. And don't forget that EE explains this vicariance (and all the others) very well.

Biology Online wrote:...So Noonan and Sites tested the possibility that iguanas simply walked to the islands millions of years ago, before the islands broke off from Gondwana -- the ancient supercontinent made up of present-day Africa, Australia, Antarctica and parts of Asia. If that's the case, the island species would need to be old -- very old. Using "molecular clock" analysis of living iguana DNA, Noonan and Sites found that, sure enough, the island lineages have been around for more than 60 million years -- easily old enough to have been in the area when the islands were still connected via land bridges to Asia or Australia.

Fossil evidence backs the finding. Fossils uncovered in Mongolia suggest that iguanid ancestors did once live in Asia. Though there's currently no fossil evidence of iguanas in Australia, that doesn't necessarily mean they were never there. "[T]he fossil record of this continent is surprisingly poor and cannot be taken as evidence of true absence," the authors write.

So if the iguanas simply migrated to Fiji and Tonga from Asia or possibly Australia, why are they not also found on the rest of the Pacific islands? Noonan and Sites say fossil evidence suggests that iguana species did once inhabit other islands, but went extinct right around the time humans colonized those island. That's an indication that iguanas were on the menu for the early islanders. But Fiji and Tonga have a much shorter history of human presence, which may have helped the iguanas living there to escape extinction.

The molecular clock analysis combined with the fossil evidence suggests a "connection via drifting Australasian continental fragments that may have introduced [iguanas] to Fiji and Tonga," Noonan says. "The 'raft' they used may have been the land."

The researchers say that their study can't completely rule out the rafting hypothesis, but it does make the land bridge scenario "far more plausible than previously thought."

Made of Stars wrote:Your denial that iguana could raft across intervening water is just an argument from incredulity. That aside, there are more mundane explanations:

Biology Online wrote:...So Noonan and Sites tested the possibility that iguanas simply walked to the islands millions of years ago, before the islands broke off from Gondwana -- the ancient supercontinent made up of present-day Africa, Australia, Antarctica and parts of Asia. If that's the case, the island species would need to be old -- very old. Using "molecular clock" analysis of living iguana DNA, Noonan and Sites found that, sure enough, the island lineages have been around for more than 60 million years -- easily old enough to have been in the area when the islands were still connected via land bridges to Asia or Australia.

Fossil evidence backs the finding. Fossils uncovered in Mongolia suggest that iguanid ancestors did once live in Asia. Though there's currently no fossil evidence of iguanas in Australia, that doesn't necessarily mean they were never there. "[T]he fossil record of this continent is surprisingly poor and cannot be taken as evidence of true absence," the authors write.

So if the iguanas simply migrated to Fiji and Tonga from Asia or possibly Australia, why are they not also found on the rest of the Pacific islands? Noonan and Sites say fossil evidence suggests that iguana species did once inhabit other islands, but went extinct right around the time humans colonized those island. That's an indication that iguanas were on the menu for the early islanders. But Fiji and Tonga have a much shorter history of human presence, which may have helped the iguanas living there to escape extinction.

The molecular clock analysis combined with the fossil evidence suggests a "connection via drifting Australasian continental fragments that may have introduced [iguanas] to Fiji and Tonga," Noonan says. "The 'raft' they used may have been the land."

The researchers say that their study can't completely rule out the rafting hypothesis, but it does make the land bridge scenario "far more plausible than previously thought."

So, ancient dispersal consistent with PT's Gondwana, followed by local extinction.

Made of Stars wrote:Which brings us back to Neal's (or was it Brain Man's?) argument from incredulity around crocodilian taxa. You can use the search function if you want to review that discussion.

Light Storm wrote:

Made of Stars wrote:Which brings us back to Neal's (or was it Brain Man's?) argument from incredulity around crocodilian taxa. You can use the search function if you want to review that discussion.

Your defense has something todo with Neal Adams?

Made of Stars wrote:

Light Storm wrote:

Made of Stars wrote:Which brings us back to Neal's (or was it Brain Man's?) argument from incredulity around crocodilian taxa. You can use the search function if you want to review that discussion.

Your defense has something todo with Neal Adams?

It's not a defense. I'm pointing out that this discussion has been had before, and I've no interest in repeating it (life is short, and my lawns are long). If you want to revisit it, my suggestion is to search this topic for posts on crocodilians.

Florian wrote:You can avoid thinking and rely on what you read in some "science for dummies" magazine. I have no problem with that.
But you can't use an argument of authority to claim that EE is bullshit.

Florian wrote:Do you really believe that biogeographists are not competent enough to recognize a vicariance? Because this is exactly what you are suggesting in the sentence above...

Light storm did already. Why would you ignore the example he cited: The banded iguana from Western America to Fiji was cited earlier. It would have rafted for more than 8000 km. And don't forget that EE explains this vicariance (and all the others) very well.

Light Storm wrote:It bothers me a little bit when they remind us about the continental shelves like we don't even consider them in the rough images of how the Earth could have come back together. McCarth and Maxlow both talk about the narrow oceans as you describe. Maxlow takes it back further with geographical rock ages/samples to justify an enclosed earth with shallow oceans.

In fairness... When I look at the renderings presented by PT Pre Pangea... Not only are the continental shelves completely ignored, they have been re-written into a jumbo clustered mess of what I could only compare to horse crap. The PT crowed says "look, you missed a detail" then we look at what they present and we say "your kidding... Right?"

They seem to put up the argument that iguana roamed "all over pangea" and then I guess they all decided to just settle into those regions that could only be connected by an expanding earth hypothesis. I don't understand why they can't stop and think about this long enough to not have to come up with a crazy and insane idea to justify it.

Light Storm wrote:After reading your quote by biology online, I couldn't help but notice it didn't mention anything about how or why there is connecting sister taxa in California/Mexico as pointed out by McCarthy. So... I put it to you. I guess it... "Rafted" accross an ocean that at the time would have accounted for 70% of the surface (guessing to percentage)

ginckgo wrote:

Light Storm wrote:After reading your quote by biology online, I couldn't help but notice it didn't mention anything about how or why there is connecting sister taxa in California/Mexico as pointed out by McCarthy. So... I put it to you. I guess it... "Rafted" accross an ocean that at the time would have accounted for 70% of the surface (guessing to percentage)

And how was it supposed to get to Fiji in an expanding earth? Considering that the oldest volcanic rocks that comprise the Fiji archipelago are about 40 million years old, and by that time the region was already well separated from South America by at least 2000-3000km according to EE. If you think rafting is unlikely, where was the land-bridge?

EDIT: just realised that lucek has already asked this.

sathearn wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

sathearn wrote:
I agree with Weaver's statements which precede and follow Florian's. However, Florian's questions are highly apropos of some statements that have been made on this forum (though I don't recall authorship offhand) to the effect that expanding Earth proponents must now "put up or shut up" in the wake of this study, and to others which express an uncritical attitude toward the calculated error margins. These questions are highly relevant to the question of the study's validity.

Let me slightly amend that: "expanding Earth proponents should now "put up or shut up" in the wake of this study" - there is no 'must' - people are entirely free to be stupidly wrong and to publicise it.

Amendment accepted. May I take it as an unstated corollary that they should not be asking questions about the study's validity, such as those posed by Florian?

Florian wrote:What stations did they use to make the measurement? all? a subset? what guided their choice? Is their choice adapted to measure a growth? What kind of growth do they expect? homogenous? heterogenous? by bulging? Why? Was vertical displacements separated from horizontal displacements in the data treatment? Why? What model was used to model horizontal displacement? Why? Is the methodology appropriate to measure a growth?
These are the questions you should answer before jumping to conclusions.

Spearthrower wrote:

sathearn wrote:

lucek wrote:
For note that is unnecessarily speculation. The data is available. If Florian is so shore that the measurements are sued by error then he can look and find it.

But to a point, let's look at the speed that earth would be growing under current continental drift. For the moment we'll just look at the South Atlantic as Africa and south america are easy to use. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/ZhenHuang.shtml so we can see a net movement of 3.6CM/yr At this point all we need do is divide by pi to get the increase in diameter that would result in the increasing circumference here. 1.15CM/yr or an error in the paper of 11,465%. Now this is a gross underestimation as we still have the proposed expansion in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

To move on however, If we assume that the .01cm/yr figure is an actual measure of expansion then we are left to see that most of continental drift (99.14%) is due to subjection.

Thanks for the calculations, which bear out the point you made previously and which I accept. However, I think there are rational grounds for skepticism toward the data in its published form, and toward the real significance of the supposed error margins, and the post I have just submitted gives some of my reasons why.

I still wonder whether Spearthrower thinks the study's findings should be uncritically accepted, and whether he thinks questions like the ones Florian posed should not be asked.

Why are you invoking my name? On what possible grounds does the rest of the sentence sit? I think you should do some explaining with reference to a post of mine that a) shows that I suggest uncritically accepting *anything*, and b) that I think questions shouldn't be posed.

sathearn wrote: It is claimed that the Wu et al. (2011) study does finally resolve the question, but that study did not address any of the basic criticisms of space geodetic results expressed by expansionist scientists (Blinov, 1987, Carey, 1988, Chudinov, 2001, or Koziar, 2011, 2011b) - particularly the matter of "fictitious contractions" (which, as I am prepared to explain, concern indeterminacies which are quite independent of calculated levels of "precision"). Nor did that study make any reference to Robaudo and Harrison's result, or to the larger body of space geodetic results which scientists working in the expansionist paradigm adduce as providing indirect evidence of expansion of the order of 1-2 cm/yr. So reasonable suspicions remain.

sathearn wrote:

sathearn wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

Let me slightly amend that: "expanding Earth proponents should now "put up or shut up" in the wake of this study" - there is no 'must' - people are entirely free to be stupidly wrong and to publicise it.

Amendment accepted. May I take it as an unstated corollary that they should not be asking questions about the study's validity, such as those posed by Florian?

Florian wrote:What stations did they use to make the measurement? all? a subset? what guided their choice? Is their choice adapted to measure a growth? What kind of growth do they expect? homogenous? heterogenous? by bulging? Why? Was vertical displacements separated from horizontal displacements in the data treatment? Why? What model was used to model horizontal displacement? Why? Is the methodology appropriate to measure a growth?
These are the questions you should answer before jumping to conclusions.

Spearthrower wrote:

sathearn wrote:

Thanks for the calculations, which bear out the point you made previously and which I accept. However, I think there are rational grounds for skepticism toward the data in its published form, and toward the real significance of the supposed error margins, and the post I have just submitted gives some of my reasons why.

I still wonder whether Spearthrower thinks the study's findings should be uncritically accepted, and whether he thinks questions like the ones Florian posed should not be asked.

Why are you invoking my name? On what possible grounds does the rest of the sentence sit? I think you should do some explaining with reference to a post of mine that a) shows that I suggest uncritically accepting *anything*, and b) that I think questions shouldn't be posed.

I'm very sorry that "Spearthrower wrote" remained at the top of my response to lucek, since none of your words remained in the parts of the previous post which I included. That part was entirely inadvertent.

Nevertheless, it is true that the final sentence was directed to you, and it related to a question I had previously posed to you. You had endorsed the statement that "Expanding Earth proponents should now 'put up or shut up' in the wake of this study" by Wu et al. (the word 'should' substituted and stressed by you in a paraphrase that originated with me).

Your words directly followed my quoted words in which I said, of the questions Florian suggested needed to be asked of the Wu et al. study, that "These questions are highly relevant to the question of the study's validity."

They also followed closely upon another post in which I stated what seemed to me were other reasonable grounds for not regarding the study as determinative:

sathearn wrote: It is claimed that the Wu et al. (2011) study does finally resolve the question, but that study did not address any of the basic criticisms of space geodetic results expressed by expansionist scientists (Blinov, 1987, Carey, 1988, Chudinov, 2001, or Koziar, 2011, 2011b) - particularly the matter of "fictitious contractions" (which, as I am prepared to explain, concern indeterminacies which are quite independent of calculated levels of "precision"). Nor did that study make any reference to Robaudo and Harrison's result, or to the larger body of space geodetic results which scientists working in the expansionist paradigm adduce as providing indirect evidence of expansion of the order of 1-2 cm/yr. So reasonable suspicions remain.

I didn't know your intentions, of course, but it seemed reasonable to ask whether your statement that EE "proponents should now 'put up or shut up' in the wake of" Wu et al.'s study, considered as a response to these, implied that it is unreasonable to raise such issues as Florian and I had just raised.

And so I asked you: "May I take it as an unstated corollary that they should not be asking questions about the study's validity, such as those posed by Florian?"

Since you had not answered this question, I thought it reasonable to allude to it again. Though still referring to a question, I do think my words were unfortunately slanted in a manner that is rather commonplace in retellings from memory.

And so I wrote: "I still wonder whether Spearthrower thinks the study's findings should be uncritically accepted, and whether he thinks questions like the ones Florian posed should not be asked."

lucek wrote:In short no you shouldn't be asking question about the studies validity, you should test it. I keep saying if all we do is speculate about the possibility of errors then all we do is to make a nice neat dark hole were EE can hide. If the earth is expanding at 1-2 cm/yr then there must be at least a huge flaw in the paper. Find it calculate the error and if you like wright up a paper and submit it to peer review. Otherwise it is obfuscation and special pleading to maintain you're pet superseded hypothesis.

Light Storm wrote:

lucek wrote:In short no you shouldn't be asking question about the studies validity, you should test it. I keep saying if all we do is speculate about the possibility of errors then all we do is to make a nice neat dark hole were EE can hide. If the earth is expanding at 1-2 cm/yr then there must be at least a huge flaw in the paper. Find it calculate the error and if you like wright up a paper and submit it to peer review. Otherwise it is obfuscation and special pleading to maintain you're pet superseded hypothesis.

I don't consider myself an expert in geology, physics or astrophysics. I would hope anyone seeking publishings would have major expertise in some of the areas that would apply to an expanding earth hypothesis. For example, Maxlow has the highest level of degrees in geology and that to me makes him much more credible then someone who doesn't. Dennis McCarhty is a geoscietist, and I once asked him if he would join in a conversation about EE with me. He responded with a letter saying that discussions on forums are more fun then useful. He was more interested in spending his time getting his papers accepted for real peer review. If you know anything about Maxlow, you quickly learn that this is NOT as easy undertaking. I imagine this is why people like Cary, Maxlow and McCarthy have been more successful with published books then acceptance into scietific journals on the subject.

If I was to give you an example. Previous to recent discovers by CERN, anyone attempting to publish a paper about breaking the speed of light for peer review would be pretty much automatically rejected. Now with findings by CERN, the issue has become a pretty hot commode for speculation.

I write on forums because I have more questions, then answers.

I agree with an earlier comment, I think it was made by Darkchild. If someone could acknowledge that the earth has expanded over the previous 200my, and then was able to conclude a reason for that expansion that could be accepted by the scietific community, they would become famous beyond belief.

Florian wrote:And Dennis based his reconstruction on biogeographical data to make this suggestion. It is not enough.

lucek wrote:
In short no you shouldn't be asking question about the studies validity, you should test it. I keep saying if all we do is speculate about the possibility of errors then all we do is to make a nice neat dark hole were EE can hide. If the earth is expanding at 1-2 cm/yr then there must be at least a huge flaw in the paper. Find it calculate the error and if you like wright up a paper and submit it to peer review. Otherwise it is obfuscation and special pleading to maintain you're pet superseded hypothesis.

Florian wrote:

lucek wrote:
In short no you shouldn't be asking question about the studies validity, you should test it. I keep saying if all we do is speculate about the possibility of errors then all we do is to make a nice neat dark hole were EE can hide. If the earth is expanding at 1-2 cm/yr then there must be at least a huge flaw in the paper. Find it calculate the error and if you like wright up a paper and submit it to peer review. Otherwise it is obfuscation and special pleading to maintain you're pet superseded hypothesis.

One more time, it is a methodology issue and you would understand it if you had taken the time to look at the not so naive questions I asked:

What stations did they use to make the measurement? all? a subset? what guided their choice? Is their choice adapted to measure a growth? What kind of growth do they expect? homogenous? heterogenous? by bulging? Why? Was vertical displacements separated from horizontal displacements in the data treatment? Why? What model was used to model horizontal displacement? Why? Is the methodology appropriate to measure a growth?

A clue: the lower limit of the growth rate according to paleomagnetic data is 19 km/My.