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SAM CAREY AND HIS MEDAL
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more
uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in a new order of things - Machiavelli
In establishing the SW Carey Medal, the GSA has acknowledged the stature of a great
Australian geologist though it is a pity that it dispenses such an honor without paying
much attention to - or lending any credence to - the work for which he is famous.
Remarkably, "The Expanding Earth" was first published in 1976, a full decade before the
oceanographic magnetic data release by the US National Geophysical data Center. In his
work Sam Carey wrote that the continental drift theory was wrong and he maintained that
view for the remainder of his life. He was before his time, because there remain
fundamental observations on global tectonics that need to be addressed, among them:

Why is there no oceanic crust older than ~200 my?

Given that oceanic crust is ~5 km thick and continental crust is mostly ~40 km
thick, what has happened to the huge amount of rock supposedly subducted over
the remaining 95% of Earth's 4.3 billion year history?

With the model of oceanic crust being subducted beneath continental crust, it
would be expected that the loose pelagic sediment and erosional rubble riding on
top of that crust would be scraped off and hence accumulate as mountains of
sediment along the edges of continents. There is no evidence whatsoever of such
accumulation.

Why is the "Ring of Fire" uniquely located along the periphery of the Pacific
Ocean?

The subduction model cannot explain why the spreading from the mid-Atlantic
ridge does not produce any evidence of subduction along the eastern edge of the
North American continent or the eastern edge of the South American continent, or
the western edge of the Eurasian continent or the western edge of the African
continent.

The subduction model cannot explain why the spreading from the mid-Indian
Ocean ridge does not produce any evidence of subduction along the western edge
of the Australian continent or the eastern coast of the African continent, where the
African rift valley is suggestive of spreading rather than compression.

The subduction model cannot explain why the spreading from the mid-Arctic
Ocean does not produce any evidence of subduction along the entire coast of the
Arctic Ocean.

Why is there no mid-ocean ridge in the northern half of the Pacific Ocean?

How does continental drift explain deep crustal depressions such as the
Mediterranean, Black, Caspian and Aral Seas, the Tarim Basin and Lake Baikal?
Simple physics would suggest that holes in continental crust are more likely to be
made by pulling things apart as opposed to pushing things together.

The bone densities of dinosaurs were akin to those of present-day land animals,
the largest of which (the elephant) cannot run or jump because of the limitation of
gravity. This implies that terrestrial dinosaur giants could exist only because
lower gravity made the mechanics of their movement viable. A lower gravity
implies a much smaller, less-dense globe.

The fossil record contains abundant evidence of giant insects and plants, their
absence nowadays suggesting that they developed at a time of lower gravity. As
the earth expanded and attained more mass, their descendants shrank in order to
accommodate the increase in Earth's gravity.
If Carey could not explain why the earth is expanding, we might pause and reflect that
Newton could not explain the cause of gravity. It is well documented that Sam Carey
took a lot of shtick for his research into the topic of the expanding earth - the fact that
mountains of scorn were heaped upon him during his lifetime is at odds with the
reverence now displayed by the GSA, and yet the GSA awards his medal to a geologist
whose citation in the September 2014 TAG Newsletter #172 included " … has illustrated
the role of dynamic topography associated with the northward drift of the Australian
continent". Really? Even though Carey disagreed most emphatically about continental
drift?
It is a matter of record that Sam Carey spoke on the 20th January 1992 at the GSA's 11th
Australian Geological Conference held at Ballarat University. Was I the only one
listening when he expressed disappointment in his former students and lambasted them
for nestling comfortably in their academic sinecures, all the while eschewing any vestige
of original thought?
So why did the GSA institute the Sam Carey Medal in the first place? Surely not to laud
his heresy, but perhaps to celebrate his seemingly quixotic quest regarding his work on
the expanding earth? In this age of oxymoronic 'consensus science' the GSA might
seriously consider adopting a new motto - non silex navicula - to reflect its' stance on
scientific method and discourse.
Bohdan (Bob) Burban
Los Angeles
20 September 2014