La contraction thermique peut-elle expliquer les déformations tectoniques?

The amount of energy used in tectonic processes is computed, and estimated as 2.10⁸ kw. It is shown that thermal contraction can yield only much smaller amounts of energy, and must be discarded. Tectonic energy is believed to come, either from convection currents in the mantle, either from gravitational differentiation, or both.