http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christianevidences/message/105

From: Rick Hartzog
Date: 5/2/2007 4:01 pm
Subject: Moon recession

--- In christianevidences, Dennis (Skip) Francis wrote:
> I want to mention that many of the sites
> that Rick is using as "proof" have already
> been debunked.

And your evidence for that assertion is where?

> In his previous discussion on moon recession,
> he cites a website with a 1996 post from Tim
> Thompson.

I don't think I did reference Tim Thompson's paper on this, but here is the link:

The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth-Moon System
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html

> In 2000, Thompson's article was proven to contain
> a number of flaws by Malcolm Bowden. See
> http://www.trueorigin.org/moonmb.asp

Bowden's paper contains nothing more than a bunch of dismissive rhetoric. He offers no new science, nor does he deal with Thompson's mathematics.

I am working on a more detailed response to Bowden's "rebuttal", if that's what you want to call it, now.

For the time being I just wanted to provide the link to the Thompson paper that Bowden is talking about, so readers will be able to judge for themselves the quality of Bowden's reply.

Skip is surely over-reaching to claim that Bowden has "proved" anything at all. Don't let Bowden's (or Skip's) rhetoric fool you.

---

From Malcolm Bowden's supposed disproof of Tim Thompson's article that debunks the young-earth "moon recession" argument:

Bowden begins:

To begin with, let me remind everyone that the entire "moon recession" argument as it is presented by the young-earthers is a logical fallacy from the very outset: showing that the Earth may have had a moon for only the past 1.4 billion years does not limit the age of the Earth nor does it constrain the length of time that life may have existed on the Earth.

Bowden:

---

Bowden quotes Thompson's paper:

(1) "The ocean runs into the continents and has to wash around them (so how they are distributed around the Earth makes a difference)."

Bowden's remark:

Common sense ought to tell you that the way the continents are distributed around the globe will have a profound effect in braking the tidal currents. Bowden seems to want to downplay this importance here, but he gets critical later on as to how the continents are arranged in the model simulations.

Thompson's paper:

(2) "Jeffreys uses an estimate of tidal friction to derive a maximum age for the Earth-moon system of 4 billion years."

(3) "Although they do not offer an age, Munk & McDonald (1960) said that Jeffreys had the oceanic dissipation wrong by a factor of 100. It soon became apparent that the pendulum had swung the other way, and that there was a fundamental problem. Slichter (1963) reanalyzed the Earth-moon torque by devising a new way to use the entire ellipsoid of Earth rather than treating it as a series of approximations. He decided that, depending on the specifics of the model, the moon would have started out very close to Earth anywhere from 1.4 billion to 2.3 billion years ago, rather than 4.5 billion years ago. Slichter remarked that if "for some unknown reason" the tidal torque was much less in the past than in the present (where "present" means roughly the last 100 million years), this would solve the problem. But he could not supply the reason, and concluded his paper by saying that the time scale of the Earth-moon system "still presents a major problem"; I call this "Slichter's dilemma".

Bowden's remarks:

Notice here that Bowden attaches inaccurate prejudicial rhetoric to saying the same thing Thompson has just said, implying that the age of the Earth-Moon system is somehow crucial to the theory of biological evolution.

Some models today still yield ages similar to those of Slichter's (although they do not start with the Moon being "very close to Earth".) As I keep stressing, this does not present a problem for the age of the Earth, or the length of time that life has been here.

Thompson's paper:

(4) "...for by this time it was well realized that tidal dissipation in shallow seas dominated the interaction between Earth and the moon."

Bowden's remarks:

This importance is again emphasized in one of the most recent papers on the subject, by Eugene Poliakow (2004), linked below. I recommend Poliakow's paper — it does not offer an actual age for the system but it does explain the implications of different age estimates. It also has maps of the results of Poliakow's model showing the arrangement of the continents over the last 600 million years.

Thompson's paper:

(5) "It is important to remember that by 1980, Lambeck had pointed out the essential solution to Slichter's dilemma - moving continents have a strong effect on tidal dissipation in shallow seas, which in turn dominate the tidal relationship between Earth and the moon."

Bowden's remarks:

One might also say that it is Bowden who is being misleading here, because it is the positions they were in in the past that has a much greater bearing on the history of the Earth-Moon system than the positions that they are in now. Their movement, because of plate tectonics, is a very important part of the overall equation.

Thompson's paper:

(6) "Hansen's models assumed an Earth with one single continent, placed at the pole for one set of models, and at the equator for another (the location is chosen to simplify the computations, but the basic idea of a one-continent Earth may not be all that bad; Piper, 1982 suggests that our current multi-continent Earth is actually abnormal, and that one continent is the norm)..."

Bowden's remarks:

Yes, and I am later going to point out exactly how Bowden goes about "dealing with it". Remember his remark here, please, that this model of a single-continent Earth is a "weak point".

Thompson's paper:

"His continent doesn't move around as a model of plate tectonics would do it..."

Bowden's remarks:

And we will see later why Hansen's model, with a single stationary continent at the equator, is a very good approximation after all... ;-)

Thompson's paper:

"...but Hansen was the first to make a fully integrated model for oceanic tidal dissipation directly linked to the evolution of the lunar orbit. As Hansen says, his results are in "sharp contrast" with earlier models, putting the moon at quite a comfortable distance from Earth 4.5 billion years ago."

Bowden's remarks:

Er, Bowden? Don't you have something to say here? Hansen was the first to make a fully integrated model that included tidal dissipation because of the presence of the continents. This was a very important step in solving the problem. Why no comment?

Thompson's paper:

(7) "Although it may seem to the casual reader that the Earth-moon system is fairly simple (after all, it's just Earth and the moon), this is only an illusion. In fact, it is frightfully complicated, and it has taken over 100 years for physicists to generate the mathematical tools, and physical models, necessary to understand the problem. Slichter's dilemma, as I called it, was a theoretical one. He lacked the mathematical tools, and the observational knowledge, to solve his problem. But those who came after got the job done. Slichter's dilemma is today, essentially a solved problem. Once all of the details are included in the physical models of the Earth-moon system, we can see that there is no fundamental conflict between the basic physics and an evolutionary time scale for the Earth-moon system."

Bowden's remarks:

No, that is not what Thompson is trying to tell us at all, Mr. Bowden...

Bowden's remarks continue:

False. The real problem is that although Slichter's math may have been correct, he was essentially working on the wrong problem. He simply did not have the data that Hansen would have 19 years later. When Slichter published his paper, Harry Hess had just published his new theory that integrated the old continental drift theory and the more recent observations of seafloor spreading. The new theory was "plate tectonics".

Bowden's remarks continue:

Slichter was outdated. Slichter did belong in the category with those who had been working on the problem for the past hundred years.

The point of what Thompson is saying here, Mr. Bowden, is that when Slichter wrote his paper, "plate tectonics" was a brand new area of study. It wasn't the mathematics that had changed, it was our understanding of the major role the continents and areas of shallow seas play in "braking" the rotation of the Earth and transferring that energy to the moon's orbit through conservation of angular momentum. The fact that Hansen wrote only 19 years after Slichter is irrelevant, because Hansen had an entirely new data set with which to work.

This is an important point, too, Mr. Bowden, and I think you are very well aware of it, considering something that you do later on in your critique of Tim Thompson's paper. And I am going to expose you! Ha!

(Are you paying attention, Skip? I want you to see this.)

And of course by 1982 there was another new technology that was very useful for such problems: computers.

So the observational data and computational tools that Hansen had available, that Slichter did not have, made for an entirely new ball game.

---

Bowden:

Well, that is truly unfortunate, Mr. Bowden, because here in just a little bit I am going to pull a quote out of Thompson's paper that blows your whole argument out of the water.

Bowden says:

Pardon me, this data is not "extremely flimsy" at all — in fact it is overwhelming, and a "brief examination" of it "elsewhere" is not going to make it go away.

Your failure to take care of the geological/palaeontological evidence here in your "rebuttal" is going to prove to be part of the fatal flaw in the validity of your argument.

And with good reason, Mr. Bowden, as you yourself are going to very adequately demonstrate right here in this very paper!

Ah, yes. Mr. Barnes! He's the one who ignored the last 20 years of research into the Earth's magnetic field when he first produced the old "declining magnetic field" argument! To learn that he is continuing to ignore recent relevant research and present arguments based on outdated data is no surprise at all!

(The general approach to a review of literature is always to start with the most recent and work your way backward. That way you are ensuring that your own research is not merely repeating research that has already been done, and the most recent research will suggest directions for subsequent research to undertake.)

And let's just see if Bowden makes any attempt to "unsolve" it here, other than snide implications such as the one above...

In other words, Bowden is here guilty of promoting the same logical fallacy that the rest of the young-earthers are guilty of promoting, because a billion year old Earth-Moon system does not constrain the age of the Earth or the length of time that life could have existed on the Earth before it acquired the Moon.

And showing the Earth-Moon system could only be a billion years old certainly DOES NOT mean the Earth can only be 10,000 years old, which is less than a billion by a factor of 100,000.

This entire paragraph is meaningless in any kind of attempt to refute Thompson. It is nothing more than an empty generalization, casting aspersions at all "evolutionists" (read as "scientists who do actual research").

So, Bowden, are we supposed to just take your word for it that the papers by Kagan and Maslova, and Ray, et al. were just too flawed to be worth a response?

Or is there perhaps some other reason you don't want to deal with these later papers?

Keep reading. ;-)

And why do you suppose that might be, Mr. Bowden? This "item 6" you refer to is going to come back and haunt you, fella.

After Bowden says that Hansen's paper will be sufficient to examine alone, he then proceeds to criticize Hansen's placement of a single continent in the two models Hansen ran analysis on — one model with a single continent at the pole and one model with a single continent at the equator.

And there really was a time back in the Earth's past when the land mass was all one continent. Since this was the first time such an analysis had been run, Thompson says Hansen got things started down the right road, and that the one-continent model "might not be all that bad."

O, Dear Reader, have you figured it out yet?

Look, Bowden: You have heard of Pangaea? Gondwanaland? This is almost making me giggle...

The present configuration of the continents is unacceptable because the continents were not in the present configuration in the past. Sheesh!

(Skip, are you paying attention?)

Oh, they don't, huh? And where exactly is your reference for this statement, Mr. Bowden? Is this what you call a "refutation" — "They do not"? Well then, yes they do.

So there you go, Skip: Rick, writing in 2007 has refuted Bowden, writing in 2000. I can certainly understand why Thompson hasn't bothered respond to this nonsense.

All right — this has gone far enough. I might as well let the cat out of the bag. Remember Bowden saying that there was no need to respond to any other than Hansen's article, and then he proceeded to castigate Hansen for his arrangement of the continents in his model? Well, the subsequent researchers had better data to work with, and they did integrate what we have learned about the breakup of Pangaea into their models.

Here is the quote from Thompson's paper, which immediately follows Bowden's selected quote (6) above, where Bowden made no comment and I asked whether he didn't have something to say. Thompson writes:

"Kagan & Maslova (1994) treat the oceanic tidal dissipation with fully mobile and arbitrary continents. Like Hansen, their models show time scales that are not a problem for matching the radiometric age of Earth with the dynamic age of the Earth-moon system. Kagan & Maslova (1994), Kagan (1997), and Ray, Bills & Chao (1999) have continued the study in even more detail, with plate tectonics fully integrated into their models of Earth-moon tidal evolution. Touma & Wisdom (1994) do the calculation in a fully integrated multi-planet chaotically evolving solar system."

So, Mr. Bowden, you are what they call "busted". You deliberately leave out this section of Thompson's article and you then deliberately make no mention of the research done after Hansen, saying it will be "sufficient" to only address Hansen's research, and then you have the gall to criticize Hansen while ignoring that subsequent researchers did exactly what they should have done, modeling the tidal dissipation based on the changing configuration of the continents as they would have been over the past 600 million years.

Your integrity is lacking, Mr. Bowden.

The "hard evidence", of course, is that the position of the continents at the present time is NOT the position they were in even a measly hundred million years ago.

Pangaea was the Earth's single supercontinent, situated across the equator, and didn't begin to break up until about 250 million years ago.

(That is only 25% of 1 billion.)

Yes. That is exactly what the geological (and palaeontological) evidence tells us the situation was, a single continent situated across the equator, for a large part of the history of the Earth-Moon system. It was impossible that Slichter should know that. Although the theory, in rough form, had been introduced in the 1920s, in Slichter's time the evidence was still lacking. By the time of Hansen's writing, much of the evidence for continental drift and a single supercontinent had been gathered, but the mechanisms were still not well understood.

Later geological and palaeontological analyses have given us the evidence for the breakup of the continental plates, and this evidence is now integrated into the simulated models of the history of the Earth-Moon system. Bowden, writing in 2000, has completely ignored all of that research — not only the articles in Thompson's paper but additional articles by the same researchers and others that have been published since Hansen's original work.

In short, like Barnes, above, did with his "declining magnetic field" silliness, Bowden ignores the last twenty years of research to defend Slichter's outdated model.

That is correct. And if you had done more than "briefly examine" the geological and palaeontological evidence, you might have known that until the very recent period (last 100 million years or so) the single continent at the equator "might not be a bad idea" after all, as Thompson pointed out.

This is true. But this is why plate tectonics plays such a vital role in understanding the history of the Earth-Moon system. The present arrangement of the continents is responsible for the current high rate of recession. But you can not use the present configuration to extend that rate of recession back into the past any farther than 100 - 200 million years — which is only 10% of the Earth-Moon history even according to the young-earth calculations (which automatically changes the young-earth calculations).

In the end, the early history of the Earth-Moon system remains unknown. Various models give ages for the system between 1.5 and 4.5 billion years. This is because both the "capture" model and the "accumulation" model can account for the change in the Moon's relationship to the Earth from as it was 600 million years ago (which is where our geological/palaeontological records presently begin) to where it is today.

The rest of Bowden's paper is just senseless rhetoric that has nothing to do with the "moon recession" argument so I'll go ahead and sign off here. For those who want to read it, I have left his remaining paragraphs below, after the links. I could take issue with some of his statements I suppose, but I think sensible readers will be able to see through it on their own. Mostly it seems to be just paranoid ramblings, but Malcolm Bowden is, after all, a geocentrist.

And that is just too funny! Thanks, Skip! I could not have asked for a better opportunity to demonstrate what a paucity of scientific integrity there is among these young-earth "scientists". Ha!

Rick Hartzog
Worldwide Church of Latitudinarianism

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Links:

[Note: there are several other journal articles available online, by the authors cited by Thompson as well as many others. There is no hint anywhere that research into biological evolution has been put on hold until we figure out how old the Earth-Moon system really is...]

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Bowden's remaining paragraphs: