I wonder if continental drift is being totally accepted or if there still are some doubting Thomases around. I remember having read some serious objections published some 35 years ago in a scientific journal, by a Russian scientist I believe. It seems he’s been run over…
Yes there are. I read a creation science book written by a guy who didn’t believe it. other than creation scientists, I don’t know where to look.
Well, when you can go to a place like the San Andreas Fault and mount measuring equipment on either side to actually see the drift occurring, it makes it a little hard to say it doesn’t exist. 
This is pretty much what I read. References might help you.
We call it “Plate Tectonics” these days, by the way. Continental Drift is archaic, referring to Wegner’s hypothesis that the contients used to be all joined (based on evidence from maps, stratigraphy, etc.) and had since moved from this original configuration. Plate Tectonics is a much more comprehensive model that encompasses Wegner’s concept of Continental Drift, joins it with Harry Hess’ model of Sea Floor Spreading, and further advances it with data from relatively new technologies such as sesimic tomography, paleomagnetism, and (better) geochronology that enables us to describe the Earth in a much more complete way than CD ever could. For instance, CD pretty much just takes you back to Pangea (assembled ~250 Ma) to the present which leads many laypersons (supporters and opponents both) to the erroneous idea that first there was Pangea, then it broke up and the new continents “drifted” to their present configuration. The full model of Plate Tectonics describes first how continents have grown with time, from esentially small island arcs in the Archean to the “true” continents we know today, and second how these smaller continents have been acting throughout history–annealing to create new, large continents, and splitting apart to create new, smaller continents–in cycles (the “Wilson Cycle”, to be more precise). (Pangea is just the most recent “supercontinent”–at least two more existed before it.)
In other words, the answer to your query is “Yes, there are doubters, but none of these doubters (of Plate Tectonic theory*) are taken seriously.”
(*There is, of course, still substantial debate on much of the exact mechnics of Plate Teconics, how/why continents break up, how/why hot spots exist, and so on. I’ll further note that not all who regect Plate Teconics are crackpots–there yet remain former Soviet geologists who remain unconvinced (PT being a UK-USA creation, after all) based on studies of Venus and the Moon, as well as old timers that still think geosynclinal theory works out perfectly well!)
**Geodude, ** thanks for letting me know that Continental Drift is archaic and that Plate Tectonics is replacing it although it’s less clear to the layman. I appreciate your clarification.
**Go You Big Red Fire Engine ** It seems that creationists are again everything that evolves, not only living beings.
You’re all trying to convince me that continents are drifting… You didn’t have to. I do believe it’s a real. Just wanted to know about the possible existence of serious objectors. I have a certain admiration for those who dare stand against the established theories (apart from crackpots, and creationists of course). Do you by any chance know of any publications by such objectors?
One some creationist forum, I bumped into a guy called Glenn W Laird who posts under the handle of novagaea; he has claimed (at various times):
-That the Earth is hollow - the core having burst out of it to form the moon at some point in human history - the Pacific ocean is the hole it made on the way out.
-That, despite the absence of the core, the Earth is very much larger today than it was before and that this is evidenced by the way (he claims) the continents fit together seamlessly to cover a much smaller globe.
-That the expansion of the Earth occurred by means of enormous plates or layers separating along horizontal planes and sliding over one another and this is why (again, in his version of reality) an imprint of the topography of the British Isles can be found wherever you look on the surface of the Earth.
He pretty much dismisses plate tectonics - the mid-ocean ridges etc are, to him, scars where things burst out of the Earth.
S. Warren Carey was a fairly well-respected Australian geologist who was fairly relentless in promoting variations of the Expanding Earth hypothesis for about 50 years, up until his death a couple of years ago. Having read some of his stuff, I’d hesitate to call him a crackpot, since he was earnest and thorough in his presentation of ideas, and didn’t come across as having a persecution complex, or believing that there was a vast conspiracy to hide the truth. He simply thought he had found evidence that existing models were quite wrong - he seemed sincerely interested in establishing the reality and cause of the supposed anomalies he beliegved he’d found in accepted plate tectonic theory.
So he could be someone you’d enjoy reading, as long as you don’t keep so open a mind as to let your brain fall out etc. etc.
Incidentally, I’d love to read a detailed rebuttal to Carey’s ideas from a mainstream geologist, aimed at an interested layperson (i.e. me). His work seemed to be largely ignored, but the few rebuttals I’ve seen have been along the lines of “the very idea of an expanding earth is wrong because of x y z” (all very well, but not directly addressing Carey’s points as he wrote them, and often ignoring that he anticipated that the problem with x y z would be brought up, and had pre-emptively responded to such criticism).
Here’s a sample. Note the following: all are either (1) non-peer reviewed abstracts presented at meetings, or (2) papers presented at a very specific confernce on the expanding Earth hypothesis (in 2003!), all of which would be reviewed by the expanding-Earth-friendly editors. There are dozens more (my search found 118, I think), most like these, many more in Russian.
Author: St. John, V. P. ; Blake, Roger
Series/Source/Book Author: McPhie, Jocelyn; McGoldrick, Peter ; editor; editor
Author Affiliation(s): University of Melbourne, School of Earth Sciences, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; University of Tasmania, School of Earth Sciences, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Title: A mechanism for Earth and planetary expansion
Series/Source: Dynamic Earth; past, present and future
Abstracts - Geological Society of Australia
73 (2004): 188
Publisher: Host Item Publisher: Geological Society of Australia, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia
Country of Publication: Australia
Author: Vassiliev, Boris
Series/Source/Book Author: Anonymous
Author Affiliation(s): Pacific Oceanological Institute, Vladivostok, Russian Federation
Title: Some fundamental problems of the Earth’s structure and evolution
Series/Source: Brazil 2000; 31st international geological congress; abstract volume
International Geological Congress, Abstracts = Congres Geologique International, Resumes
31 (200008) unpaginated
Publisher: Host Item Publisher: [International Geological Congress], [location varies], International
Country of Publication: International
Author: Ufimtsev, G. F.
Series/Source/Book Author: Anonymous
Author Affiliation(s): Institute of Earth Crust, Irkutsk, Russian Federation
Title: The anisotropic expansional-compressional Earth; evidences from a global morphotectonics
Series/Source: 30th international geological congress; abstracts
International Geological Congress, Abstracts = Congres Geologique International, Resumes
30 (1996): 336
Publisher: Host Item Publisher: [International Geological Congress], [location varies], International
Country of Publication: International
Author: Scalera, Giancarlo
Series/Source/Book Author: Scalera, Giancarlo; Jacob, Karl-Heinz ; editor; editor
Author Affiliation(s): Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome, Italy; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome, Italy; Technical University Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany
Title: Bibliographical sources for the expanding Earth
Series/Source: Enriched: Why expanding Earth? A book in honour of Ott Christoph Hilgenbert; proceedings of the Lautenthal colloquium
Proceedings - Lautenthaler Montanistisches Colloquium
3 (2003): 419-421
Publisher: Host Item Publisher: INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia), Rome, Italy
Country of Publication: Italy
Author: Pickford, Martin
Series/Source/Book Author: Scalera, Giancarlo; Jacob, Karl-Heinz ; editor; editor
Author Affiliation(s): Laboratoire de Paleontologie, Paris, France; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome, Italy; Technical University Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany
Title: The expanding Earth hypothesis; a challenge to plate tectonics
Series/Source: Enriched: Why expanding Earth? A book in honour of Ott Christoph Hilgenbert; proceedings of the Lautenthal colloquium
Proceedings - Lautenthaler Montanistisches Colloquium
3 (2003): 233-242
Publisher: Host Item Publisher: INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia), Rome, Italy
Country of Publication: Italy
Object? Do I object!!!
Every morning when I get up I find my continent has slid a few more millionths of a centimeter.
I’m doing everything I can to stop it, I tell you.
Just curious…what did scientists think was the explanation for such formations (obvious faults/rifts) before plate tectonics was seriously proposed? Were faults recognized and land known to move, but no one put 2 & 2 together?
Here’s a pro-expanding earth article from 2003.
McCarthy, Dennis (2003). ‘The trans-Pacific zipper effect: disjunct sister taxa and matching geological outlines that link the Pacific margins’. Journal of Biogeography, 30, 1545–1561.
El Zagna has found his new cause!
Zagna – a friend has a “Reunite Gondwanaland!” bumper sticker. Ya’ll have a movement, now.
Join the Society!
Yeah, but the objection is always overruled.
You laugh, but I’m currently wearing a “STOP PLATE TECTONICS” t-shirt.
Um, isn’t that contrary?
It’s a movement to be stationary!
You just made me aware that the little jolt I felt every morning at 3:47 AM (I’m hypersensitive) was due to plate tectonics: the Alps are being uplifted ! :smack: