Greinar (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.01.1977, Page 121

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them, as in the case of the Rocky geosyncline. We wonder why
fullfledged orogenic belts are not found along these coasts.
The answers must in the drifter’s case be: subsidence. Hence,
subsidence may then lead to fit of opposite continental coasts,
depriving it of its postulated significance and leading to a
vicious circle.
In the Tertiary, drainage in S-America seems to have been
towards the west, to form the Andes geosyncline. But in the
Mesozoic and Hercynian we find orogenic zones along the
Andes, until in the south, these older trends turn to the east
across the continent, and also cross the south corner of Africa.
The latter demand a broader backland than the present one
to furnish the sediments, and that land would have stretched
some distance towards America, if not the whole way. In
any case: What does that mean for the fit? Just that the
present fit of opposite coasts must be created by subsidence
of even large areas, which ought never to have been a surprise,
nor significant for the question of drift.
BuIIard was right in working out by way of kinematics, what
geometry per se would tell. But it is depressing to read his
“war memoirs” (83), in which he proudly relates how his
stress on a single factor, viz. geometry, so bewildered the
opposition to drift that its members, at two decisive confer-
ences, became blind to the fact that kinematics alone tell in
reality nothing of geoscientific importance. Of course it was
the obligation of a mathematically trained scientist, like
Bullard, to stress that geometry was only a single factor in
geoscience, and to urge geologists and geophysicists to test
its possible significance for the matter under consideration.1)
1) A short remark on Plate Tectonics. Our geological proof in Part I
that there has been no drift in the Median Active Zone south of Lake
Þingvallavatn for about the last one million years, is but an example of
the clash of Plate Tectonics with observational facts.
Our theoretical remark on Plate Tectonics must, naturally, be more funda-
mental. It is the following self-evident remark: Plate Tectonics is based on
the fatal error that kinematic movements, most accurately performed by
a computer, and being a part of the attempt to test a geometrical fit of