Request for Carbon-14 Dating explanation

You are aware that the production rate of C14 is not a constant and depends on the cosmic ray flux ?Scientists have dealt with this issue by investigating objects of known date (such as the investigation of varves at Lake Suigetsu).How do you propose to deal with this issue in your model ?

I think we really need to have at least an outline of the model you intend to use. Obviously time to reach equilibrium won't work because it relies on a constant production rate. Using current figures is especially bad because nuclear weapons tests have produced an elevated level of C14 and because C02 emissions from fossil fuels contain almost no C14 (both these factors should be causing an unusually high decline in the ratio of C14 to C12).It seems to me that the only way to do this is to forget modelling and instead investigate the C14 levels in samples that can be independantly dated - but this has already been done in a number of cases and I do not see that we are in a position to replicate that work.

I think people are being critical of Bob becuase he hasn't done enough reading before trying to go beyond it. It is no good going off and producing a model that doesn't take all the relevant facts into account. A model has to accurately model the relevant processes to be of any use.

I'm pretty sure that Bob's method is based on the time required to reach equilibrium (that is the obvious method to try). But any such method will be very sensitive to changes in production rate - a recent peak or trough in production will make it look as if equilibrium has not yet been reached no matter how old the Earth.If that is the method that Bob is using then there is no helping it. It just cannot work. If Bob has an appoach which could work then at this stage it is up to him to outline it so we can see if it could possibly work. I don't see any point in attempting to gather data unless we have a model that it is worth plugging it into.

This really doesn't seem to be saying very much.They don't demonstrate any serious general problems - they don't even quantify most of the problems they do raise (any scientific article would be required to indicate the size of the likely error). Many look as if they can be easily avoided by careful selection of material. The problems from the Industrial Revolution and later are well-known and obviously apply only to things a few hundred years old. The effects of nuclear weapons obviously apply only to things a no more than a few decades old.There is not even anything necessarily wrong with the use of carbon-dating to help assemble dendrochronogical records. If the date falls within a ramge already calibrated from other dendrochronological records then obviously there is no problem. The article says nothing about that - it just insinuates that there is a problem but gives no details at all.Given the obvious bias, and the lack of details I am afraid that I do not find this article to be worthwhile reading. If you can follow up on some of the claims and find evidence that there is a real and severe problem that affects carbon dating in general - not occasional contamination, not problems limited to a few materials, not problems with relatively recent dates - then you might have something worth discussing.

That's what I thought you were using.It cannot produce a valid date.If the input was constant and the atmosphere was not in equilibrium then you could conclude that the age of the atmosphere was less than the time taken to reach equilibrium.However if there were an event that significantly affected the amount of C14 then that would upset the equilibrium - and we know that such an event has happened in the last few decades. Nuclear weapons tests have produced extra C14.Worse, if the input is not constant then there is no reason to expect the C14 to settle down to an equilibrium - or to stay there if it does. And if it did it would be disturbed as soon as the input level changed again. We know that this is the case, too. C14 is normally produced by cosmic rays - and therefore depend on the cosmic ray flux arrivng at Earth. And that is not constant.So - whether the atmosphere is in equilibrium with regard to C14 has nothing to do with its age.