by John Cryan – August 12, 2021
Scary things happen when you combine Moths of the Past with Top-Down Tectonics
Jon Thoreau Scott’s Top-Down Tectonics: The Role of Oceanus and Gaia (2015) explains for the third time in print his Expansion-Contraction Theory, a new theory of plate tectonics Scott derived over thirty years ago. Cryan and Dirig’s Moths of the Past (2020) introduces the Chaon-Convolution Theory, a new theory of fundamental physics combined with a new theory of evolution.
The two sets of theories interlock to form Mothtectonics. This sounds like the butterfly effect, but it is much more insidious. More like the Mothra effect.
The Expansion-Contraction Theory posits that Earth’s plates move using an energy transfer mechanism parallel to that powering ice sheet formation on freshwater lakes. One can imagine the Earth as a giant battery with several linked concentric chambers, charging and discharging. On the outside there is the atmosphere, which absorbs and holds energy from the Sun. Next are the oceans, which derive much of their energy from the Sun as well, transmitted as weather and convection from the air. The same holds for large freshwater bodies. Finally there is the land, which both receives and stores energy from the Sun, via the air, and where covered, water. And then there is the subsurface, which receives energy from the deep interior.
If one imagines lake ice formation as a reverse energy transfer, one can see the parallel with plate tectonics. In this model, the ice is like Earth’s crust, and the water beneath like Earth’s interior mantle. As atmospheric energy is lost with the onset of winter, the water cools first at lake centers where it is most still. Ice forms, and begins to radiate out from that core, forming a sheet. Lines of core ice, thicker and deeper than the rest, extend, usually bilaterally, sometimes trilaterally, from the original core. On either side, new ice is formed which is pushed in both directions perpendicular to each line by water forming new ice constantly along where the original core lines developed.
What powers this model is the day-night cycle of temperature variation, combined with progressive winter seasonal cooling. This takes vertical energy loss and transforms it into a horizontal ratcheting motion which extends the ice sheets farther and farther until they cover the lake. The pulsating cycles of upwelling freshwater at the lines creates ice ridges which run across the lake surface. At the margins of the lake, ice shingle pileups occur as the ice runs ashore in conveyor belt-like fashion.
In Scott’s Expansion-Contraction Theory, there is a three-step energy transfer process of convective heat rather than seasonal cooling: from Sun to Earth’s atmosphere, then from air to ocean water (Oceanus), and finally from the ocean water column to the ocean bottom. This is a year-round (continuous) process with daily and seasonal variations, and longer weather- and climate-induced variation cycles which incorporate the first two. All of these variations in back-and-forth, convective energy (heat) transfer, form patterns which are influenced and modified by Earth’s biosphere (Gaia).
As with lake ice accretion, the action happens along mid-oceanic ridge lines at the sea bottoms in the centers of the oceans. These ridge lines define the plate margins where viscous, flowing hot mantle material is induced to force its way upward by the pulsating expansion-contraction cycles at the ridgelines, and become new crust, which then cools and spreads, like the ice in the lake model. The expansion and contraction, in turn, is caused by the variations in seawater temperatures at the mid-ocean bottoms induced by the variations in Earth’s weather and climate created in time and space by the combination of physical, chemical and biological interactions occurring within the biosphere.
Such a system is exquisitely sensitive to net increases and decreases in convective (heat) energy input. These changes are by definition primarily expressed by the speed of plate movement. The more heat put in, the faster the plates move. Energy increases to dynamic systems result in more work done.
The central aspect of the Chaon Theory is its proposition that gravity is a push force, not a pull force, powered by the fundamental particle of nature, the Chaon. In this scenario, the Earth is both held together and propelled by the moving matrix of repulsive free Chaons, or spacetime, which not only permeates its interior structure to the core, but increases in pressure as it does so. Pressure converts to heat. Much of this energy is what keeps the mantle viscous.
The Coriolis effect is created by the inward spiraling pressure and movement of free Chaons against the substance, or physical structure (atoms, molecules, etc.) of the Earth, which is made of bound Chaons. It causes the rotation of the Earth. This effect is differentially expressed in different layers of the Earth based on their physical state and structure. One important result of this is Subduction Zone Lag. In this phenomenon, the lines where the thinner oceanic parts of tectonic plates disappear under adjacent plates tend to drift westward until they encounter thicker continental land masses, which force them to stop. Another aspect is east-west Subduction Zones close to the Equator, caused by the greater free Chaonic Coriolis action at the fastest-rotating band of the Earth in the equatorial regions. The deep subduction trenches just south of Sumatra and Java are good examples. A related effect is the curling of moving mantle plume hotspots toward the Equator, as displayed under the Hawaiian island chain.
The Convolution Theory proposes that the entire biosphere powers the evolution of individual and groups of lineages of life, and that the entirety of the Earth is required for the biosphere to perform this function – all of its physical, chemical, and biological processes, in one interlocking entity (Gaia). It also proposes that this interlocking entity confers maximum stability and resilience upon itself through reinforcing feedback loops of interacting continuous processes. [See James Lovelock’s original book.]
The sudden introduction, alteration, or removal of continuous energy inputs in such a complex and delicately balanced system will have devastating and irremediable consequences. One of the ways this will happen is through unforeseen cumulative and synergistic impacts (see the near-vertical “hockey stick” graph on Page 40 of Moths of the Past). Human overpopulation, enhanced by technology, and the burning of fossil fuels, has unleashed what is likely the biggest synergistic aspect of rapidly accelerating global warming: Our fossil fuel and other greenhouse emissions are starting to move the tectonic plates faster. This will release far more greenhouse gases at much faster rates than we are currently, through increased volcanic emissions, most of which are invisible beneath the oceans.
If we do not immediately cease burning anything that is not pure hydrogen, we are headed for a brief future of the death of the oceans, followed by massive terrestrial crop failures, the drowning of all coastal plains, the death of humanity, and the loss of almost all life on Earth.
We need to take all of the proscriptions contained in the Ten New Commandments concluding Moths of the Past seriously and literally. They are our only chance for survival. The one billion figure is the largest number of people that can live middle class lives (defined as the 1960 Swiss in Hope Jahren’s 2020 book, The Story of More) at one time on the Earth while still preserving the bulk of our biosphere (7/8 of the land and all water bodies including wetlands) required for future evolution needed to counter free Chaonic effects like Time Inflation and increasing Galactic Chaonic Densification.
Each of the other Commandments is required for us to not only survive, but thrive, in harmony with a restored biosphere and climate. Remember the Triangle of Peace: Population, Climate, Biosphere.
