Originally Posted by billt460
The problem with all of this stuff is that everyone with a degree who ever studied it has a
theory. That's all it is. Theories change because they are not fact. People think they become fact when enough people believe in them. In reality that means nothing. A large percentage of the worlds population believes in religion as well. None of it is based on provable fact.
This is much like astronomers with their black hole theory. 20 years ago most everyone who ever looked through a telescope was on board, as black holes were all the rage in the astronomy world. Where are they? How many? How big? What creates them?..... Now just a couple of decades later, many of those same astronomers doubt their existence.... And claim once again they have "proof". Which in reality means they've come up with another theory.
https://phys.org/news/2014-09-black-holes.html
https://www.iflscience.com/physics/...mathematically-black-holes-do-not-exist/
So while this kind of stuff is always fun to think about and discuss, none of it can really be proven one way or the other with much, if any degree of certainty. (Except here on BITOG). There is always going to be theoretical "evidence" that helps sway opinion one way or the other. But then something else manages to surface "proving" yet another theory that points to something else. Be it Arizona in Antarctica. Or palm trees and plants buried under the North Slope..... Anyway, that's my "theory", and I'm sticking to it.... At least until someone comes up with a better theory of how to get 10,000 barrels of oil out of a dinosaur.
OK, first of off, this is nothing like astronomers and black hole theories. You are conflating astronomy and the physics of the universe, almost all of which we have zero access to and is entirely theory, to what has transpired on the physical earth that we inhabit and indicating that a lack of solid data on some of the former somehow validates what you quipped about regarding there being no trees in Alaska. That's ridiculous.
So let's look at just the facts and completely ignore the theories regarding plate shift for now and see where this takes us:
- As Shannow has pointed out, there are trees inside the lignite seams of coal, supporting that coal is indeed compressed organic matter
- Via drilling and extraction they have pulled organic material, including trees, from Antarctica - See both of Shannow's links for details on that
- We have fossil systems that clearly demonstrate that the world has changed significantly over time in terms of where water was, what kinds of plants grew where...etc. This indicates that the climate has changed significantly as well, to facilitate those being where they are found.
Look at the deserts in the middle east and how they have buried entire cities that we then excavate to expose. The time period between when that city was in full bloom and now is but a blink of an eye in terms of contrasting to the periods where the material being found in the above examples thrived.
So whether you believe that the plates moved or not or whether climate change happens or not, we have physical examples that show that plants an animals that could not inhabit these areas now, at one point did. We have physical evidence that what used to be on the surface is now hundreds, often thousands, of feet deep, which shows that the surface of the planet has changed as well. Yes, there are theories as to how that came to be, but those theories are based on those facts.