1. A subducting plate would experience too much resistance in diving down through just the top of the mantle. The blunt front end alone would stop movement. The unspecified force needed to overcome these resistances would (if a pushing force) crush the plate or (if a pulling force) pull the plate apart.

154, 156–157, 433

2. Sediments, volcanoes, and plateaus have not been scraped off “subducting” plates in trenches.

158

3. Sedimentary layers in trenches are undisturbed. These layers would be mangled if plates subducted.

158

4. No known forces are available to break the crust into plates and separate those plates from their bases.

158

5. One plate cannot even begin its dive under an adjacent plate that is 30–60 miles thick, because cliffs cannot be higher than 5 miles.

158–158

6. Subduction cannot occur along an arc. Subduction is geometrically possible only along a straight line. (The arc-and-cusp pattern of ocean trenches shows subsidence, not subduction.)

157

7. Most volcanoes are on the wrong side of trenches if subducting plates produce volcanoes.

154

8. Below trenches are mass deficiencies, not mass excesses as subduction would produce.

144–145, 151, 157

9. Beneath trenches, earthquakes sometimes occur across a much broader region than the width of a plate.

156

10. Seismic tomography has not shown unambiguous subducted plates in even two dimensions. If plates subducted, seismic tomography could convincingly and dramatically show them in three dimensions.

155

11. Some Benioff zones are nearly horizontal. Subducting plates should always move on a downward slope.

159

12. Thick, buoyant continents would prevent subduction.

159

13. Trenches and ridges do not have corresponding lengths and locations as plate tectonic theory requires.

157, 158

14. At three locations on earth, a trench (and, according to plate tectonics, a descending plate) intersects a ridge (where material is supposedly rising). Material cannot be going up and down at the same time.

158

15. Ancient trenches have never been found.

158