At http://eearthk.com/Articles03.html … Charles Warren Hunt takes a swipe at the Plate Tectonics consensus theory. He describes it as a hypothesis based on not well tested assumptions. As a result of fawning to one dominant theory alternatives are given the cold shoulder – including the expanding earth hypothesis. This clearly rankles with Hunt but it is worth mentioning the expanding earth idea, and indeed the shrinking earth, were on the table prior to the acceptance of the Plate Tectonics preferred theory of earth dynamics. Hunt's beef is that he can't get his ideas published except on fringe web sites – and we may note the same sort of thing was happening a few years ago when it came to rival ideas in respect of CAGW. Now there are lots of ideas out there, rivals to co2 induced global warming, and presumably it is all a matter of chipping away until a bigger chink is revealed. Unfortunately, geological theory is not something most geologists indulge in – so there is not a reservoir of people, especially retired ones with time on their hands, a brain still active even if their general health may not be up to much activity on the physical side. For those who might like to learn more Hunt suggests going to www.polarpublishing.com in order to get books on a variety of topics from tectonics to hydritics and high energy endogeny etc.
In the article online Hunt proposes a new theory on the nature of the Earth, one that is radically different from mainstream. In the consensus model we have a hot iron core surrounded by a rocky mantle which is likewise surrounded by a hard rocky crust. Interior heat is thought to be residual and dates back to the primordial era when the planets were formed – the sort of idea just waiting for a fall. It is supplemented by a small amount of radioactive decay in the crust. Earthquakes in the upper mantle and lower crustal zones are interpreted as shear stress which release tension or slippage events on pre-existing fractures. Volcanic activity and magma intrusions are attributed to the escape of heat from the interior, or to melting due to pressure. A bit like a boiling kettle getting tired of whistling and blowing the spout off. Hunt's own hypothesis stresses the importance of hydrogen in the primordial solar system – it dominated the gases. He claims the slow escape of hydrogen out of the Earth would have led to an oxydised carapace, the crust or lithosphere, as well as to the oceans and an oxidic atmosphere. Therefore, he argues, the interior of the Earth would still be dominated by hydrogen. When that idea sinks in he carries on to describe hydrogen changes inside the Earth and what triggers them – which brings in catastrophic goodies such as polar shift, rapid erosion, sudden sedimentation, volcanic exhalation, meteoric or other mass shifting events etc.
These ideas go back to the Russian geologist VN Larin, author of Hydridic Earth (1993) and Hunt's own field research at the Gros Brukkaross crater in Africa.