Dating Fossils

MARGARET

Helen, I do not understand the point you are trying to make below.
There is abundant evidence that the Oklo reactor did go critical. So
do you want to use that as evidence that the speed of light was not
faster as you have claimed? Or do you deny that Oklo went critical?

Can you show us, using statisical means, how the longer half
life is "statistically important" in accurately determining the
half-life? This is a question for which there is no need for any
ambiguity, since statistics can be quite plain. In other words,
I am asking you to prove your assertation using statitics. What is
the uncertainty in the calculated half-life and why does the long
half-life make the uncertainty large? The devil is in the details.

 

JOE MEERT

JM: No, this is not a red-herring. If we observe one event over 100 years, then it is insufficient to call it constant. If we observe billions and billions of events occurring at the same rate for over 100 years, then the statistical probability of that event can be determined fairly accurately. Furthermore, if we have also tested how decay responds to external forcing and found it to be invariant, then we can be more confident. When we cross-calibrate back through time we also have good confidence that our assumptions are based on solid observation and science. No red-herring at all merely a misunderstanding on your part of nuclear decay and radiometric dating.

JM: Well, now here is a red-herring. Radioactive decay gives off heat (ask anyone at a nuclear reactor why they pay the water bill). Your example is fundamentally flawed both in terms of its analogy to radioactive decay and in terms of fundamental physics.

JM: This was accounted for in my example. Did you read it?

JM: No you don't have a mechanism for increasing rates. You have an unpublished idea. I could selectively choose speed of light measurements that show that the speed of light is increasing thereby making decay slower in the past. Simple.

JM: Yes, if one posits that decay rates are variable, then they could vary again. You are implying that I think they are variable and I do not. I am merely playing along with you in that by making assertions that decay rates can and do change means they may do so again. No red-herring, I am merely answering your own assertions.

JM: Is this a personal attack? I showed (a) the amount of heat released by radioactive decay and the problem it causes for the young earth crowd. This 'excess heat problem' is acknowledged by creationists at ICR. It's not a made-up problem. Quoting from one ICR publication:

"One major obstacle to accelerated decay is an explanation for the disposal of the great quantities of heat which would be generated by radioactive decay over short periods of time. For example, if most of the radioactive decay implied by fission tracks or quantities of daughter products occurred over the year of the Flood, the amount of heat generated would have been excessive, given present conditions.
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-290.htm

So while you may attempt to deflect attention to this problem by positing a poor analogy, other creationists have at least recognized the problem associated with rapid decay. You should focus more on the science and less on personal attacks.

JM: Ok, glad Barry recognizes that c-decay does not fit the Oklo model.

 

HELEN

First to Margaret and Joe both: All Mark Kluge and Barry Setterfield both are indicating is that Oklo is not incompatible with a speed of light variation. PLEASE don’t take it beyond that, OK?

And no, Margaret, I’m not going to play with any statistics. I had a couple of years of it in college and learned then that ANYTHING can be ‘proved’ statistically depending on where you start and how you treat the data. However, IF the earth is 4.5 billion years old and since we have been measuring radioactivity for about a hundred years now, that means that, regardless, Joe, of how many individual events are checked during that hundred years, only 1 / 45,000,000 of the time has been under consideration and that is not statistically significant by anyone’s calculations. This would be especially true if any outside force, such as a changing speed of light, were affecting ALL rates of decay simultaneously and not individually. The rates of decay now would give us NO indication of their past rates.

To Joe – the tub thing was only half a herring…

The point is that the diffusion of heat is what makes all the difference, right? In a reactor there is no diffusion except through the circulating water, which is why it is there. What about the center of the earth? It is not simply the heating mechanism, but the rate of diffusion, the materials through which it diffuses, and the effect on those materials which makes an enormous difference. The Bible indicates the earth started out cold, not hot. I go with that. If you don’t then there is no way I can ask you what heated it up and get anything that fits Bible from you, is there? The idea that is started out hot is man’s idea based on some pretty limited knowledge. Both the Old and the New Testaments indicate a cool beginning, though.

You asked if I read your webpage. No, and I won’t. You have twisted my own words and meaning publicly on your webpage and so I have no way of knowing what you have done with everything else.

When you said we don’t have a mechanism for increasing rates of decay, are you denying that c is effectively in the numerator of radio decay rate equations? Clue: hc is invariable. If h is in the denominator, that means it can be cancelled out if c is put in the numerator. And that means that if c changes, the rate of decay changes proportionately.

Now, what is your method by which to explain a possible speeding up of the rate of radio decay through time?

Are you saying the speed of light has increased through time? Yes, I know you can take TWO measurements and say, “Yes, it has.” But do what Barry did: take EVERY known measurement and see what you come up with. In particular, to double check, take each set of measurements made by the same method and see what they say as individual groups. There is a one-way trend – down.

Was I attacking you personally? No. I was, however, questioning the logic and applicability of your post to the discussion at hand.

And, finally, the quote from the Impact article you mentioned is talking about the year of the Flood, not creation week. Major difference… You will also notice the proviso “given present conditions”. The fact is that by the time of the Flood the speed of light had decreased enormously from the moment of creation and thus the rate of decay, also. The ICR group is positing there a possible increase in the decay rate FOR THAT YEAR. That is what they know won’t fly. It has nothing to do with Barry’s model.

I think you knew that.

 

PASTOR LARRY

JM says: If we observe one event over 100 years, then it is insufficient to call it constant. If we observe billions and billions of events occurring at the same rate for over 100 years, then the statistical probability of that
event can be determined fairly accurately.

I can't see how any statistician worth his salt is going to let you get by with declaring a "constant" on a statistically non-existent sample. Even if it is billions and billions of events over 100 years -- which 100 years is a
large exaggeration isn't it? I used it merely as a round number. Radiometric dating is probably less than 50 years old which won't change the percentage much -- YOu are dealing with 13-15 billions years or 13x10^9 (???). In your
testing you have controlled conditions, constants, and known variables. In 13-15 billion years, you have no idea what teh constants and variables, the condition, and the like are.

Even if you look at the number of events over x period of time, you still have not helped yourself but it is an exponential equation to arrive at the number of total events under consideration, once again, events that are outside the controlled environment.

Furthermore, what about the assumption of parent material vs. daughter material. If we say that we can argue the age of something by the amount of
radioactive material left, do we not have to assume how much was there to begin with? We can assume a base of "X" and figure from the half-life. But what is the base was "X-1/2" or "X-1/3"?

I simply cannot see how your assumptions can account for the unknown without prejudicing your conclusions beyond repair.

 

MARBARET

[Reponse to Pator Larry]
The sample IS NOT "statistically non-existent" as you say. If you have
a few grams of uranium, there are millions of atoms that decay in a
very
short time, say an hour or two. Since we know accurately the number of
atoms and know within 1 or 2 percent the number of atoms decaying,
then
the half life can be determined quite accurately. It does not matter
in the slightest that the half life is very long. This is duck soup.
The half life is merely determined by the relationship between the
number of atoms, and the number of atoms decaying per unit time. We
have a large number of atoms decaying per unit time, so that leads
to good statistics. The half life itself does not enter into the
calculations, in the sense that you are thinking.

 

JOE MEERT

JM: No, this is incorrect. Diffusion, convection and conduction are
all important and whether or not the diffusivity term favors
convection
or conduction.

JM: It has to do with diffusion, convection and conduction rather than
just diffusion and how the diffusivity term affects convection versus
conduction.

JM: This is irrelevant since modern science also posits a cold
beginning to the earth.

JM: That's not what I said. What I said was that anyone can come up
with anything to 'hypothetically' change decay rates. Recent findings
on the decay of c early in the evolution of the Universe are
irrelevant
to the last 4.5 billion years of earth history. I maintain that rates
are constant and there has been no scientific evidence forwarded to
support that they are not.

[/quote]And, finally, the quote from the Impact article you mentioned
is talking about the year of the Flood, not creation week. Major
difference. You will also notice the proviso "given present
conditions". The fact is that by the time of the Flood the speed of
light had decreased enormously from the moment of creation and thus
the
rate of
decay, also. The ICR group is positing there a possible increase in
the
decay rate FOR THAT YEAR. That is what they know won't fly. It has
nothing to do with Barry's model.[/quote]

JM: No there is no difference. Rapid decay produces heat. There is
no
evidence in the published scientific literature for c-decay of the
magnitude needed to 'solve the heat problem'. Again, I don't blame
you
for your misunderstandings about heat and radioactive decay since you
are not a geophysicist. However, the reference I gave you
http://www.gondwanaresearch.com/hp/adam.htm will take you through the
math and show you what the problem is.

 

PAUL OF EUGENE

For Pastor Larry:

You asked about daughter material from the radioactive decay series, and how that can influence the interpretation because it might be confused with the material already present; for example, if we see lead in the rock, how much lead came from Uranium decay might be confused with how much lead was already there anyway.

The answer is, we can tell by the isotope ratios involved. All natural lead in the planet has one set of isotope ratios. This is determined by extensive analysis of many ore samples. The decay series from Uranium has another. The isotope ratios we find in the rock tell us both how much of the lead there was before decay started and how much came from the radioactive decay series.

Additionally, in the case of alpha particles, which become helium gas, it is safe to say that a rock formed by melting essentially drove out all the helium, and any accumulated helium trapped in the solid rock came only from radioactive decay since the solidification of the rock.

 

MARGARET

[To Pastor Larry:]
I can assure you that all of the objections I have seen, including
yours, are taken into account by those who develop the dating methods.
In addition, before a method is put into general use, it is thoroughly
tested to see if it works properly. For example, the objection you raise
above is one of the first things to be taken into account. The way
this is handled varies according to the method. For example in C-14
dating, wood of known age can be checked to see how much C-14 is
present now and how much was present thousands of years ago. It is
a simple calculation to calculate how much was present 10,000 years
ago, if we know the amount present today. There is also stable
carbon in the wood, so it is possible to calculate how much C-14
was present originally in a 5,000 year old tree ring. Then it is
possible to use that calculated amount, to determine the overall
ratio of radioactive carbon to stable carbon at any point in time.
Using this technique, the method can be extended to other carbon
containing objects other than tree rings. Tree rings are thus used
as a calibration method.

 

HELEN

Margaret, of all the radioactive decay dating techniques, C14 is the most fraught with problems. It presumes too many things, such as a constant rate of C14 formation in the atmosphere. We have no way of knowing that. We have no way of testing that for the past.

There are a number of other faulty assumptions where this one is concerned. If you are going to present a defense of radio decay methods I would suggest you stay away from C14 and anything to do with argon...

 

JOE MEERT

It is easy to say 'avoid these methods'
and quite
another to explain why you think these methods are flawed. I have
considerable experience using the 40Ar-39Ar system and it does quite
a nice
job in producing concordant ages. As with all radiometric dating
methods
(and all of science) care must be exercised at all stages of the
analysis
from collection to final analysis.

 

EARL DETRA

Helen says:
Margaret, of all the radioactive decay dating techniques, C14 is the most fraught with problems.

I agree. That is why I only trust professionals to do the sampling and analysis. Building bridges is fraught with problems, too. Does that mean we shouldn't do it?

It presumes too many things, ...

Define 'too many'. Is that one thing, two or seven things? Do you ever make any assumptions when you get up each day? My point is that perhaps assumptions are not necessarily so bad.

...such as a constant rate of C14 formation in the atmosphere.

It does? Then why are there C14 generation curves going back in time.

We have no way of knowing that. We have no way of testing that for the past.

Actually, we DO have a way of knowing this. It is called 'calibration.'

There are a number of other faulty assumptions where this one is concerned.

A matter of opinion. There seem to be plenty of people using this method.

If you are going to present a defense of radio decay methods I would suggest you stay away from C14...

Why?

... and anything to do with argon...

Why not argon? Don't leave us dangling here, Helen.

 

MARGARET

MARGARET

Helen claims that the carbon-14 method assumes the constant production
of C-14 in the past. In fact, there is no assumption of constant production of C-14
in the past. Everyone in the field knows that it has not been constant
in the past, and no assumption to that effect is made. I am giving
below a link that explains how corrections and calibrations are made
for the variations in the C-14 production rate.

http://www.radiocarbon.com/calendar.htm

 

PAUL OF EUGENE

With reference to Helen cautioning margaret against using carbon dating:

Helen, you assertion is that carbon dating is inaccurate. However, you need to face up to the fact that the accuracy of carbon dating has been checked scientifically, and adjusted accordingly.

When Carbon Dating was first proposed as a method of dating ancient wood and such, it was necessary to develop the theory by assuming the production of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere is constant. The carbon 14 is, of course, self-removing, as it decays. It is produced in the atmosphere by the actions of cosmic rays, which we presume to be incoming in a fairly regular manner. The dating method was not just dreamed up and tried without testing! The first originators of the method tested it against wood taken from pharonic tombs and other known age sources. They found that the assumption of uniformity was a workable assumption, and therefore people began using the method.

Then came tree ring dating. Everybody knows that trees grow a new ring every year, and you can count the years backwards from the date of cutting it down and see how old it is. One can even discern good years from bad years by the width of the ring. Well, guess what. By matching up patterns of good years from bad years across many trees, we can work a chronology backwards for a good 10 thousand years! And this means we have an absolute yearly reference going back. Sure, sometimes a tree here and there will skip a year and there are such things as double rings once in a great while, but such events are rare and the odd tree here and there with such an anomoly can be corrected for because they don't just check one tree. They check hundreds of trees and they check them all over the world in different climate zones and they keep checking all the time, because they found something out . . .

Cosmic ray conversion of nitrogen to carbon 14 was NOT absolutely constant over the millenia!

So how far did the tree rings reveal they were off? Something like about 10 or 12 percent, that's all, not enough to save young earth belivers, indeed, they found that they had to push the ages they had determined before checking against tree rings further back! And the line was not a straight line of correction, there were WIGGLES in the line, apparantly the production of carbon 14 in our atmosphere cycles both up and down a bit over the centuries.

So did this invalidate the older work? For the purpose of our discussion, it did not. It merely represents a fine tuning of the previously sound work.

BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE!

In Japan, Lake Suigetsu has been extensively investigated because it has annually accumulating material in the lake bottom going back over 40,000 years. The twigs and leaves that accumulated there as well are also dated by the carbon dating method.

Here's a link to one of the scientific reports from such investigations: http://www.cio.phys.rug.nl/HTML-docs/Verslag/97/PE-04.htm

If any of you will take the time to read this article, you will find that they also count annual layers, only this time it's not tree ring growth, it's sediment accumlating in the bottom of the lake, more or less constantly. How can they tell an annual layer? By the SPRING POLLENS that come and go with the years. And they have tens of thousands of layers to work with.

Now I've read some of your posts where, in the past, Helen, you have asserted that the annual layers of this lake could have, perhaps, been actually more frequent than once per year because of WILD STORMS that bring in surges of layers much more rapidly than yearly, especially at the time of the world wide flood.

At the same time those wild storms you propose were assaulting the lake in Japan, without removing the sediments but instead mimicking annual sediments, what do you suppose was happening to the trees as they tried to grow rings? Stressed out trees that are experiencing wild swings of weather are one of the things that will make a tree SKIP a ring for a year. So if the lake is experiencing extra layers (strangely marked with perfectly even pollen counting, as they form) we would expect trees to react differently, skipping rings where the lake is accumulating layers.

Strangely enough, however, when the scientists investigating the layers in the lake bottom counted them as annual layers (just because of those pesky spring pollens, you know) and then did carbon 14 dating of the layers (not the mud, but the twigs and leaves trapped in the mud) they found the SAME VARIATIONS in the actual production of carbon 14 that was reported by the TREE RING counters! With all the wiggles in the same places!

Now the scientists think this is stunning confirmation that the entirely seperate age determination by the tree ring studies (of which there are many) is on the right track. But for a young earth creationist like yourself, Helen, I don't see how you can possibly explain how two physically distinct mechanisms - tree ring growth versus lake sediment accumulation - can both come up with the same age and the same carbon dating adjustments down to the details of the wiggles in the curve unless they are both actually measuring the real thing, that is, an earth that is older than 6000 years.

Here are a couple of neat links on tree ring dating for the curious:

Trees that rewrote history:
http://www.r5.fs.fed.us/inyo/vvc/bcp/trees.htm

More history of radiocarbon dating:
http://www.c14dating.com/int.html

One last point. Let me point out that carbon 14 dating can be projected back 40 to 50 thousand years ago. We CANNOT CHECK tree rings back that far. We can only go back about 10,000 years with tree rings. But tree rings continue to be investigated all over the world and the years they can be used to verify the the carbon dating scheme will be pushed further and further back. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to see just how far back the lake sediments help us out.

But I submit that with the dates VERIFIED BY ABSOLUTE RING COUNTING (and now, lake sediment counting as well) then we have every reason to accept the longer date ranges for the carbon dating series, albeit with a slightly greater margin of error since we go beyond the absolute dating methods we have at our disposal for confirming such earlier findings.

Other radioactive element series, of course, allow us to verify ages backwards for millions and billions of years.

[Administrator's Note: We received several responses to Helen's claim above which were refused or very edited because they were personal attacks. The above post is a good example of a response which is not a personal attack and not insulting to anyone else. One email used links to present the case. Links may only be used to further explain an argument but not as the argument itself. The above post was not edited.]

 

HELEN

OK, folks, let’s talk dendrochronology first, which is used to ‘support’ and ‘confirm’ C14 dating and which was appealed to in some of the responses to my post:

I have a Japanese black pine in my front yard. It is 15 years old (or 14, I forget which summer I planted it now). Growth spurts on these pines are extremely easy to see as they put on what are called 'candles'. For the first few years when the yard was new and we were using lots of water to help things get established, that tree put on two sets of candles a year, one large one in the spring and a shorter set in the late summer. So for a number of years it was putting on two rings a year.

In the same front yard, we have a small stand of birches. They were all planted as one-gallon saplings within a couple of months of each other. Three on the east have trunks with diameters of a foot to eighteen inches. Planted at the same time, in the middle of the grove, are a couple with trunks that have diameters of less than three inches. Now I presume they would have the same number of rings, however those which have had less sunlight, due to being in the middle, would have rings jammed quite close together which would not correlate at all with the rings on trees within feet of them which were planted at the same time and have received the same amount of water.

In the tropics, however, there are often NO growth rings, as there are no seasonal changes. So, obviously, growth rings are highly dependent on the environment.

One student of mine was very interested in forestry and I got him a volunteer job with the Forestry department near us. At that time I had the opportunity to ask some of the men in the lab where he was working about the growth rings. The man who responded was the senior member of the team and he honestly laughed first and said it was one of the biggest fakes he knew of -- if the weather was decent (i.e. summer rains, which the mountains usually have here on a consistent basis in the afternoons several times a week or at least once a week through the summer), they expected two growth spurts on the young trees per season.

With that under my belt, I began doing a little of my own research into this dendrochronology business. Here:

http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/student/nang/treering.htm

http://www.apologeticspress.org/rr/rr1993/r&r9310a.htm

http://www.grisda.org/origins/22047.htm

from a private email:
"So-called "annual" rings of tree growth is a simplistic 19th century concept (like Darwinism, Marxism and Freudianism). Actual ring growth is seasonal and there can be multiple rings per year and missing rings in some years. Also, the idea that living organisms including trees grow identically under the same environmental conditions as if they were assembly-line machines is also simplistic and another 19th centuryism. When have we ever seen control studies showing tree rings cored from a grid sampling of trees at different sites showing identical or similar patterns due to a supposedly uniform hemispheric "climate"? If such a thing existed we would see it everywhere, in textbooks and popular science mags to "prove" the scientific validity of dendrochronology. It is my understanding that bristlecone pines on different sides of the same mountain near the California-Nevada border have tree ring patterns that do not correlate.

Finally, Jesse Lasken at the NSF has published several papers showing
that dendrochronologies built up from correlated sections of dead trees are actually based on correlation coefficients that barely exceed random values."

Yes, California and Nevada have distinctly different climates due to the Sierra Nevada mountains which form the border. Here in the north, we get the rain, they get the desert!

A series of emails from someone who has been engaged in this field of study confirmed the unreliability of this method of dating as quoted below:

I spend many hours studying annual growth rings in trees.

1. Yes, sometimes a tree yields more or less rings when cored from different sides of the stem (trunk).

2. In the tropics annual growth rings may be impossible to detect. Or there may be two rings per year. I have seen these effects while inspecting cut timber in Brazil.

3. False annual rings can occur. Very unusual weather, such as an early cold mass followed by very warm temperatures, may cause a false ring.

4. Tree ring people emphasize the trunks. I have found there is considerable data in the branches that is lost to integration in the trunks.

5. Coring trunks, in my opinion, is vastly inferior to studying entire cross sections. The obvious problem is that the latter requires killing the tree. This is another advantage of studying cut branches.

from someone else who has been involved in science:

I bored hundreds of pines here in Arkansas doing a research project on the Southern Pine Beetle a few years back.

Some things that could cause differences include insect attacks which damage some trees and not others, forest fires, which do not damage all trees equally, and tornadoes. Rings are very hard to see sometimes on fresh new cores. I cannot imagine accurate counts, let alone reliably matching cores, being possible in six thousand year old, dead wood.

Tree ring patterns can be expected to match only when the trees are growing in the open in identical conditions. If a pine is suppressed by the shade of a nearby tree for part of its life, or damaged by something that does not affect its neighbors, it will have a different pattern.

As a matter of fact, the pattern can be different on a different core from the same tree, if one side of the tree is damaged and the other is not.

Along this line is something my husband and I saw when we took a walk through the John Muir Redwoods last spring. On rather large tree had fallen, at some time in the past, across the walking path and the section on the path had been sawed off and removed. This left a lovely view of the cross section of the rings which had then been marked by the rangers showing dates.

We saw a problem that we were sure others must have seen as well: the growth patterns on opposite sides of the center were extremely different, with one side bulging WAY out and also containing significantly more rings!

Now, regarding carbon 14 itself, production of 14C influenced by changes in the sun’s activity, supernova explosions, and changes in the earth’s magnetic field – at the least.

Climate changes and the use of fossil fuel are factors changing the content of carbon 12 in the atmosphere.

The reservoir effect, which is also important here, is affected by volcanic outgassing as well as the carbon isotope movement in the oceans themselves.

As someone else put it, “The way 14C content is estimated into the past is by measuring 14C in wood dated by year-rings. Any serious discussion about radiocarbon should soon become a discussion of dendrochronology.”

Only part of which was discussed above.

C14 curves were mentioned. The depend entirely on the same processes going on today as have always gone on, and at known rates. This is a presumption which I do not think can be well-supported. It is a presumption relying on other presumptions.

As far as argon goes, argon migrates easily, is produced in magma flows, and there are other problems as well. There have been a number of published articles about the unreliability of argon dating. One very good one is by Andrew Snelling here:
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-307.htm

I edited an article by a French geochemist last year (which I hope will be in print soon so we can reference it!) which pointed out with details that the argon dating of the Olduvai Gorge material was wildly different from other forms of dating the same material and would really cause a difference in the so-called evolutionary development ideas of man as a result.

The most consistently accurate results I have heard about regarding radiometric dating are from zircon crystals which are unblemished. They do not allow significant migration of elements evidently and their correlation factor is quite high.

What I was trying to tell Margaret, in other words, was that she would do much better to stay away from both C14 dating and anything to do with argon for known reasons in the literature, while arguments for the evolutionist/long-ager dealing with other forms of radiometric dating hold up much better under analysis.

With apologies to Paul of Eugene, I will try to respond in more detail to your post in particular later. Time does not permit right now. Thank you for it, though.

 

JOE MEEERT

Excess argon can be detected and dealt with in most cases. One can also be confident when a variety of radiometric ages yield the same result. I have pointed out examples of these at http://gondwanaresearch.com/radiomet.htm
Furthermore, you seem to be asserting that because a method does not work sometimes, then the method itself is suspect. This is a dangerous
scientific conclusion to make since we are dealing with natural systems and sometimes those systems can be disturbed. Snelling's article does not discredit K-Ar or Ar-Ar. What he has done is to cull the literature for examples of data that fit his conclusion. Many of the studies he describes were also analyzed by the scientists themselves and the reason for excess argon in the samples was quite clear. I have conducted and published many Ar-Ar results and continue to do so. The fact is that the method is very robust both in terms of its application and its consistency. You also should note that the problems with respect to the dating of natural systems are based on studies by conventional scientists. Why does science publish problematic results? In order to perfect the method and help learn when the methods can be applied and when the methods might produce anomalous results. In other words, science proceeds with caution.

 

HELEN

Ok, Paul! You are in italics:

Helen, you assertion is that carbon dating is inaccurate. However, you need to face up to the fact that the accuracy of carbon dating has been checked scientifically, and adjusted accordingly.

Paul, Radiocarbon dating is verified using dendrochronology. That is why I spent so much time showing why dendrochronology is faulty.

When Carbon Dating was first proposed as a method of dating ancient wood and such, it was necessary to develop the theory by assuming the production of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere is constant. The carbon 14 is, of course, self-removing, as it decays. It is produced in the atmosphere by the actions of cosmic rays, which we presume to be incoming in a fairly regular manner. The dating method was not just dreamed up and tried without testing! The first originators of the method tested it against wood taken from pharonic tombs and other known age sources. They found that the assumption of uniformity was a workable assumption, and therefore people began using the method.

Paul, there are hundreds of things that can go wrong with C14 dating. For instance, temperature affects rate of absorption. Plants in colder climes absorb it at entirely different rates than plants in warmer areas.

And different plants absorb it at different rates.

If it is animal remains we are trying to date, what did the animal eat? How much of it? When did it stop eating? Did it starve to death or was it killed suddenly? How high up the food chain was it?

As far as atmospheric C14 is concerned, what about local volcanism? What about monsoon type storms (i.e. prolonged heavy cloud cover). And then the air currents carry the different layers of air ….. where? How fast?

There are a number of stories about college students checking for C14 accuracy by sending in something they knew was only a year or two old and having it come back dated several thousand years old. C14 dating may indeed be right some of the time; I’m just wondering if we would know which times it was.

Then came tree ring dating. Everybody knows that trees grow a new ring every year, and you can count the years backwards from the date of cutting it down and see how old it is. One can even discern good years from bad years by the width of the ring. Well, guess what. By matching up patterns of good years from bad years across many trees, we can work a chronology backwards for a good 10 thousand years! And this means we have an absolute yearly reference going back. Sure, sometimes a tree here and there will skip a year and there are such things as double rings once in a great while, but such events are rare and the odd tree here and there with such an anomoly can be corrected for because they don't just check one tree. They check hundreds of trees and they check them all over the world in different climate zones and they keep checking all the time, because they found something out . . .

Paul please read what I wrote above about dendrochronology . Please read the links. Everything you said above is the standard mess the public gets fed and 99% of it is wrong!

[snip more promotion of dendrochronology]

In Japan, Lake Suigetsu has been extensively investigated because it has annually accumulating material in the lake bottom going back over 40,000 years. The twigs and leaves that accumulated there as well are also dated by the carbon dating method.

That would be enough information to make me doubt the age right there!

Here's a link to one of the scientific reports from such investigations:
http://www.cio.phys.rug.nl/HTML-docs/Verslag/97/PE-04.htm

I think the last line in that essay says it best: However, all of these explanations remain hypothetical.

Aside from that, the layers are presumed to be annual due to diatom layers. Diatom growth periods are related to water temperature. This is why they had a hard time with the post-glaciation period and had to recalibrate it.

But Paul, when the speed of lighter was faster, radiodecay rates were also faster. Thus I would expect the ages to be what they are. The layering indicates weather cycles which, NOW are associated with seasonal changes. But after a catastrophe such as the Flood or the volcanism at the times of Babel or Peleg, there would be storms in waves as the cycles settled again. The diatoms would respond to this.

What I also find interesting is that somehow, in Japan, we have these tiny lines of sediments which are supposed to represent yearly diatomic deposits and yet around the world, the white cliffs of Dover don’t show that layering at all! Were there no tides then?

If any of you will take the time to read this article, you will find that they also count annual layers, only this time it's not tree ring growth, it's sediment accumlating in the bottom of the lake, more or less constantly. How can they tell an annual layer? By the SPRING POLLENS that come and go with the years. And they have tens of thousands of layers to work with.

I am wondering if YOU read the article! The word “pollen” is not even in there. I thought maybe my edit search was acting up on me when I checked, so I read the entire thing again and then stuck words I knew were in there in the edit search and yes, they came up. Where do you find pollen mentioned in that article?

Now I've read some of your posts where, in the past, Helen, you have asserted that the annual layers of this lake could have, perhaps, been actually more frequent than once per year because of WILD STORMS that bring in surges of layers much more rapidly than yearly, especially at the time of the world wide flood.

Post flood, please.

At the same time those wild storms you propose were assaulting the lake in Japan, without removing the sediments but instead mimicking annual sediments, what do you suppose was happening to the trees as they tried to grow rings? Stressed out trees that are experiencing wild swings of weather are one of the things that will make a tree SKIP a ring for a year. So if the lake is experiencing extra layers (strangely marked with perfectly even pollen counting, as they form) we would expect trees to react differently, skipping rings where the lake is accumulating layers.

No pollen in the article.

The sediments do not ‘mimic’ annual sediments; they are presumed to be annual sediments.

Tree ring growth is associated with water abundance, which the storms would provide. This is not a stressful thing for them.


Strangely enough, however, when the scientists investigating the layers in the lake bottom counted them as annual layers (just because of those pesky spring pollens, you know)

no pollen mentioned in the article

and then did carbon 14 dating of the layers (not the mud, but the twigs and leaves trapped in the mud) they found the SAME VARIATIONS in the actual production of carbon 14 that was reported by the TREE RING counters! With all the wiggles in the same places!

You know, when leaves and twigs fall to the bottom of the holding ponds around here, they rot in a few weeks (leaves) or months (twigs). Amazing lake to have preserved them all so perfectly while the ‘annual varves’ were forming!

Now the scientists think this is stunning confirmation that the entirely seperate age determination by the tree ring studies (of which there are many) is on the right track.

Sometimes I wonder if those scientists have ever actually lived around ponds or trees!

But for a young earth creationist like yourself, Helen, I don't see how you can possibly explain how two physically distinct mechanisms - tree ring growth versus lake sediment accumulation - can both come up with the same age and the same carbon dating adjustments down to the details of the wiggles in the curve unless they are both actually measuring the real thing, that is, an earth that is older than 6000 years.

If the measurements were that perfect, the authors would not have put that last sentence in the essay. The tree ring growth and sediment layers are pictures of the same thing – water influx into the region. This is annual now, but was not always. The carbon dating reflects a faster speed of light in the past when all this was happening.

In other words, it is quite easy to correlate all this in another model entirely.

Finally, you wrote: But I submit that with the dates VERIFIED BY ABSOLUTE RING COUNTING (and now, lake sediment counting as well) then we have every reason to accept the longer date ranges for the carbon dating series, albeit with a slightly greater margin of error since we go beyond the absolute dating methods we have at our disposal for confirming such earlier findings.

I am hoping that you have read my material on dendrochronology which came in after your post above. I think that may help you understand why we cannot count on this ‘support’ for C14 dating.

Other radioactive element series, of course, allow us to verify ages backwards for millions and billions of years.

Atomically, yes; orbitally, no.

 

EARL DETRA

Helen: Paul, there are hundreds of things that can go wrong with C14 dating.

Hundreds? Please name them. And then show us how geochronologists have ignored these sources of error.

For instance, temperature affects rate of absorption. Plants in colder climes absorb it at entirely different rates than plants in warmer areas.

Yes, and they also absorb C12 at a lower rate. What is the point here?

And different plants absorb it at different rates.

And they absorb C12 at different rates, too. So this does not affect the radiocarbon method.

If it is animal remains we are trying to date, what did the animal eat?

They probably ate things that absorbed C14 and C12 at the same time.

How much of it?

Whatever amount that absorbed both C12 and C14.

When did it stop eating?

How is this relevant? Usually, things die shortly after their last meal.

Did it starve to death or was it killed suddenly? How high up the food chain was it?

Not relevant as far as I can see. Please explain. Are you saying that an organism that died after 20 years of life might have ingested some C14 earlier, and and this might affect the radiocarbon date of, say, 14,000 years? I don't think so. Unless you want a calendar date of death (is this really the kind of accuracy you expect from a radiometric date?), this error is insignificant.

As far as atmospheric C14 is concerned, what about local volcanism?

Don't know what you mean. So you mean the volcanic gases? They get mixed with the atmosphere.

What about monsoon type storms (i.e. prolonged heavy cloud cover).

Not sure. The atmosphere is generally considered well mixed over time scale of most lifeforms.

And then the air currents carry the different layers of air ….. where? How fast?

Depends on where you are. How is this relevant?

There are a number of stories about college students checking for C14 accuracy by sending in something they knew was only a year or two old and having it come back dated several thousand years old.

Why would anyone date something a year old by radiocarbon methods? We have calendars for that. This sounds suspiciously like a creationist experiment.

C14 dating may indeed be right some of the time; I’m just wondering if we would know which times it was.

I would say that every date is off by some amount of error. The point is that it is the best thing we have for items of the age range which it is operable.

Paul please read what I wrote above about dendrochronology . Please read the links. Everything you said above is the standard mess the public gets fed and 99% of it is wrong!

What is more important is the percentage of error rather than the actual error of measurements. So what if 2% of all tree rings are doubled up in a single year? We get a small error. Big deal. Yes, the date is not correct in an absolutist sense; and 99% of the time, perhaps we have a few percent error. I suppose you might say that the method is wrong 99% of the time, but I would say that 99% of the time we have a negligible error.

I know that to you this is unacceptable, but it is the best method that we have. I know you would like to have a year, date and time stamp on each organism, but it just isn't going to happen. We work with what we've got, and if an item is dated at 10,000 years and it is actually 12,000 years, we will learn to live with it. The point is that there is no evidence that a date from 50ky is actually less than 6ky.

Paul: In Japan, Lake Suigetsu has been extensively investigated because it has annually accumulating material in the lake bottom going back over 40,000 years. The twigs and leaves that accumulated there as well are also dated by the carbon dating method.

Helen: That would be enough information to make me doubt the age right there!

I suppose it is just a coincidence that the dates correlate, eh? According to you, this should be virtually impossible. Same with ice cores. Hmm, maybe there's something there... nah!

Helen: What I also find interesting is that somehow, in Japan, we have these tiny lines of sediments which are supposed to represent yearly diatomic deposits and yet around the world, the white cliffs of Dover don’t show that layering at all! Were there no tides then?

Yes, how do you explain thos layers? All diatomite deposits should look the same, shouldn't they? And what is this about lake tides?

And I will need more time (which doesn't really exist) to look at the 'pollen' business. I know that some varves are identified by pollen 'blooms,' but I am not familiar with the particular case that Paul/you mention.

 

PAUL OF EUGENE

In reply to Helen's post, regarding the calibration of Carbon 14 dating.

I'm sorry, I don't see why this matters. Whether the carbon was absorbed slowly or rapidly, its all the carbon there is in the plant! So it can still be dated accurately. As you know, the carbon in a plant is acquired directly from the air as it splits carbon dioxide with the aid of sunlight. So a ring in a tree is going to be made of carbon the tree "breathed" in during the time that ring was formed.

Of course an animal that eats things is going to have carbon that actually dates the things it ate instead of itself. This is not totally useless but makes animal remains less accurate. A sheepskin parchment is going to contain the carbon from the grass the sheep ate in its lifetime, we're talking about adding a couple of years, maybe, to the date? When the accuracy anyway is plus or minus a hundred years for a middle ages manuscript?

As you point out, there are air currents. The atmosphere is well mixed over single season, let alone a whole year. Extensive vulcanism could affect c14 accuracy in theory, that's another great reason to check it with whatever means we can.

Modern carbon dating samples are messed up by what man has done to the air, including nuclear tests (creating more carbon 14 than was present naturally) and the use of fossil fuels (which puts carbon dioxide in the air with no carbon 14 content) so stories like this with no date attached are not relevant.

Helen, you said it is wrong and inaccurate. But you have no evidence against it except that you can assert how there can be ways one can be misled by tree rings. Do you know just how many people and labs have been involved in counting these rings? Surely you've done a little web searching on the subject, and you realize there are hundreds and hundreds of people doing this, involving what must be a very large number of studies by people working in different nations, using different languages, different climates, You don't have any particular study you point to and say here, these rings are wrong, they are doubled up here. Instead, you just hold out the possiblity they made errors all over the place, never cross checking, always being duped, each of them working independently being duped in the same pattern as they go . . . this is not a credible objection. If they have got it all so blatently wrong, then somebody, somewhere, would blow the whistle and bring the whole house of cards down. Failing that, the YEC community needs to fund a credible invesigation of their own that documents where ambiguous data was accepted and gullibly assimulated into false assertions about reality. An investigation that points to the actual tree ring evidence and shows how all those extra counts - thousand of them - are false and misleading. Otherwise, the evidence stands as submitted, let the jury render its verdict.

Hmmm - no annual layers found in the cliffs of Dover - if that's so, then it isn't relevant to our discussion, is it?

Now I talked about "pollen" in the lake and you replied:

There you got me. I read "diatom" and I thought "pollen" because I'd been reading about pollens somewhere else anyway and I goofed. The way they can tell the layers are annual is by the DIATOMS which are algea with cell walls containing silica, which shows up lighter when it comes down and settles. Algea don't bloom after every storm, however.

Well, the ones that rot away don't get used for dating! Cold lake bottoms that lack oxygen can indeed preserve organic remains. Perhaps your pond isn't deep enough to have an oxygen free bottom.

In your scenario, the water influxes in JAPAN came along and caused ALGAE BLOOMS in a lake in EXACTLY THE SAME NUMBER as it came along and caused EXTRA RINGS to grow in trees in Europe and in America and other places including BRISTLECONE PINES in the DESERT . . . . and you stick to that story.

I'm sure it was very easy. No single keystroke required more than an ounce of pressure as you typed. But that does not mean you've accounted for the evidence!

Your general objection to radioactive decay as a reliable timepiece remains very steadfast. As you summarized it briefly: "Atomically, yes; orbitally, no. "

May I submit that you have no basis for stating the orbital times varied from the atomic times until Barry is able to specify what the acceleration of gravity was on earth during Adam's life on earth. He has not yet done that, and it is a crucial piece of his theory that is sorely lacking.