*

Offline Tron

  • *
  • Posts: 465
    • View Profile
Re: Questions from a glacier guy - not on FAQ or the wiki
« Reply #20 on: August 21, 2020, 11:02:01 PM »
No problem. Good luck with your studies.
From the surface Earth looks flat.  From space Earth looks round.  Now what?

Re: Questions from a glacier guy - not on FAQ or the wiki
« Reply #21 on: September 25, 2020, 10:19:29 AM »
I think Tom nailed it in his answers to you, and I think because you clearly misunderstood, it would be well worth it to read them again if you are earnestly trying to understand.  Because of your training, this process OUGHT to be difficult for you and coupled with the (mostly unnecessary) contentiousness of the subject... Suffice it to say that effective communication is NOT facilitated.

Here is an example :
,
Hi Tom, you did indeed suggest that people weren't making any observations to support theories of geologic processes

"None or few of those processes have been directly verified with direct experimentation. They are theorized to occur based on indirect or observational evidence." [-Tom]

Far be it for me to speak for any other, however I think what Tom said was crystal clear.

Tom did not suggest that theories of geology were unsupported by observational evidence.  Rather he said that they are, more or less, ONLY supported by observation and this is what MAKES them unscientific/pseudoscience.  In the words of planck : the only means of knowledge at our disposal is experiment, all else is poetry and imagination. The process of looking (observing) then concocting fiction (hypothesis/theory) to explain it is called mythology.

As you have asked interesting questions, and appear earnest - I will try to answer them to the best of my knowledge.  Hopefully they will be of some use.  I should clarify that I have many differing ideas than Tom on the subject (though vastly the same), one of which is that there is no FET.  The "shortcomings" you have identified are short of the primary one - there is no flat earth theory to refine (in a scientific context).

1. Not to my knowledge, no.  There are no flat earth conceptions I am aware of that depend on uniformitarian processes over any timescale to appear in any way possible.  Some conclude that the world was created, once they have unburdened themselves with the mythology that suggests otherwise.  Preposterous timescale is only necessary when convincing people of preposterous fiction. Exactly analogous to selling fairy tales to children - "long ago and far away" - an incantation to encourage the suspension of disbelief.

2. Generally, they are not.  Once we cast away much of the pseudoscience mythology masquerading as science, we are often not left with a forthcoming replacement - we are left with curiosity, mystery, and wonder (once more). Roughly, the need for MORE SCIENCE!!! Most all of "earth science" is complete garbage, particularly the geodynamo.  Fiction supported by cartoon and indoctrination from a shamefully tender age.  The deepest we have ever explored is less than 8 miles. We have no idea what is down there, and we never did.  It was a very proud lie to present otherwise to children, no less.  Oh the hubris of it...

3. I find correlation between dendritics, ice cores, and the like very interesting!  However, much like the shape of the world, interpretation of the available data to come to a "favorable conclusion" requires many unvalidated assumptions. For just one example - Our dating methods are complete garbage,  Try it out! Send samples of known age to the radiometric labs and tell them you think they are from wildly different epochs... just see what happens ;). Archeology has always proven that the best dating methods are cultural (pottery mostly), all the rest is bunk.

4.  This question is "veiled". You aren't really asking about Antarctica (which is the focal point of many myths believed about the "flat earth"), you are asking about gravity.  There is no gravity, that's why we can't find it, measure it, or manipulate it. It's not real!!! What a burden lifted - right? (for the physicists anyhow).  Weight is an intrinsic property of all matter, it is not imbued by a fictional "field" that defies all explanation, description, understanding, and manipulation. Matter's tendency to fall or rise is due chiefly to weight and the weight of the surrounding media displaced.  Newton isn't who we were taught he was, and even he knew that gravitation was so stupid and unscientific that he asked that his name NOT be associated with it. We sure showed him!

4a. I think many dome supporters would say, it isn't being replaced (the ice I mean).  Others dome supporters may suggest that there is an ocean surrounding us on the other side of the dome, and the dome has holes/vaults/windows in it - potentially supplying more water (and flooding the whole world that time...). In any case, the factual/scientific answer is - no certain answer, just many disparate speculations currently.  The idea that the ice wall is Antarctica and encircles the known world is itself a speculation with very little data to support it (unlike the shape of water's surface, and hence much of the known world  - which is trivially demonstrated)

4b. The dome is supported by historical sources as well as deduction from scientific law.  If the world is enclosed in this manner, which it must be for the constant air pressure we require, then much of the questions you posed become nonsensical.  However, as the dome is rumored to have openings, perhaps flow in and out is occurring.

4c. My understanding is that all of that is true.  However, how do you confirm/discern where the south pole actually is as opposed to where it is BELIEVED to be (and we build a research station). The token "pole" is decidedly not the south pole, and purely for tourists (many of which fancy themselves researchers, apparently).  There is no magnetic confirmation of any pole to my knowledge that has ever been completed - and this is MIGHTY odd. There is satellite data, but this is untrustworthy for a variety of reasons.

4d&e.  Unless I have misunderstood you, these questions are the same question and have the same answer. Water flows downhill.  This includes the precipitation at the edge of the world derived from the air and possibly the "great ocean" beyond. The continuous slope of water towards the sea is no doubt also ensured by the giant heater it melts towards.  The encircling mountains are said to be impassible, and the west and east ice sheets both face the same direction towards the north pole (IF and I mean IF antarctica is an ice shelf surrounding the world, which again is merely speculation) The 24 hour sun in the antarctic is also a point of contention amongst many flat earth researchers, in case you were not aware.  It is surprising that there does not appear to be any independent or unedited/unmanipulated footage of the phenomenon like we have for the arctic - even with all those ski buddies you mentioned taking trips to the south pole proper!

Let me know if you have more questions / need clarification.  This subject is wild, and the truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is obliged/limited to possibility.
« Last Edit: September 25, 2020, 10:35:50 AM by jack44556677 »

*

Offline Iceman

  • *
  • Posts: 1825
  • where there's smoke there's wires
    • View Profile
Re: Questions from a glacier guy - not on FAQ or the wiki
« Reply #22 on: September 25, 2020, 12:33:16 PM »
Hey Jack,

Thanks for adding to this (I thought the thread had died, so it was good to see another contribution)!

To your first point, you're right I had initially misunderstood Tom's point about pseudoscience, but I do think I clarified some of the issues around the classification of geology as pseudoscience by listing several examples of controlled lab experiments that are devised to constrain the results of the natural experiments and observations that lead to our understanding of earth systems. I might not have done a great job with it, but I'm not a great writer sometimes, so we'll just leave it there.

Thanks for your answers to the Antarctica questions. It's something that has bugged me since I first started familiarizing myself with FE ideas, and learning the diversity of opinions is helping to a degree.

My hopes are that some of these ideas can be used to add some completeness to what's provided in the wiki, as there is generally fairly limited material on major geologic phenomena. Though they don't directly tell us anything about the shape of the earth, my thinking is that the known behaviour of ice sheets, volcanoes, age of geologic events, fossil distributions etc. each add pieces of evidence that constrain the possible interpretations one way or the other. Obviously I lean pretty hard one way, but my main argument is that any model of a flat earth needs to be able to account for all of these things (though the wiki does cover several aspects, like volcano distributions, gravity, earthquakes, mountains).

Thanks again though!