You know, Razd, as much as I actually would like to do that, I am not yet confident of the fairness of the moderators here. If I was, I would take you out behind the woodshed in a heartbeat!
This is in Faith & Belief forum, so you have the most lax level of criteria for providing substantiation and validation for your position.
Well perhaps sorting it out in order might be better. First, deal with the exhibits already raised first by me.
I think the exhibits you mentioned probably did a good job of representing to stories as written in the bible, and I have no quibble with those, just as I have no real quibble with christianity in general. These exhibits would be good for non-YEC's as much as they are for YEC's. THus I'll give them a pass and move on to the ones that deal with YEC information -- ie the age of the earth and a literal flood concept -- which are not necessarily endorsed by all christians: fair enough?
We can take it in easy steps. With breaks for you to reply and rebut on any of this evidence. What we'll be looking at is methods of counting annual layers in different systems, building up the age as we go. First up is the "Methusula Tree"
quote:Methuselah (estimated germination 2832 BC) is a bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California, which was 4,789 years old when sampled in 1957 (when the trees were originally being surveyed by Schulman and Harlan). It is the oldest living organism currently known and documented. It is named after Methuselah, a Biblical figure reputed to have lived 969 years. Located at approximately 11,000 feet above sea level, its exact location is currently undisclosed to the public as a protection against vandalism; the coordinates cited refer to the Methuselah Grove Visitor Center.
Thus by this one tree alone the minimum age of the earth is 4839 years and during that time there was no WW Flood.
This age is determined by counting the tree rings from bored core samples taken by Schulman in 1957.
Any Comment so far?
{ABE} The format we can use is like that of a trial: as "prosecutor" I present "witnessed" evidence, one by one, with time for you to "cross-examine" each one before going on to the next, then when I am done you can provide evidence in defense one by one, while I "cross-examine" followed by closing arguments. {/ABE}
Enjoy
That thread is nearing the point where it will be cut off (around 300 post limit to all threads) so I am proposing a new topic on just this element.
If Keys\Simple wants to keep it out of the science threads (he was pretty firm on the existing thread that it not be science forum) we can do a Great Debate on this or put it in Faith and Belief (with the original thread).
The purpose of this thread for me will to present evidence for the case that the age of the earth as portrayed in the museum is false and that a global flood could not have occurred withing that time (or any reasonable approximation), and for you to defend the age and flood occurrence as portrayed with whatever evidence or argument you wish to make.
Yes! I have no reason to believe that trees did not grow at a much faster rate, as it seems the bible indicates, in the past.
You realize that trees growing at a faster rate would not add tree rings, but would make each of the rings wider? This is demonstrable with a single species growing in different areas and is part of the science of
The rings are caused by the difference between winter and summer growth patterns, not by the actual climate existing in each season. The evidence of the tree rings is that there was some variation, from the little ice age to the medieval warm period, both recorded in the tree rings right on time.
Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the method of scientific dating based on the analysis of tree-ring growth patterns. This technique was invented and developed during the 20th century originally by A. E. Douglass, the founder of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. The technique can date wood to exact calendar years.
Growth rings, also referred to as tree rings or annular rings, can be seen in a horizontal cross section cut through the trunk of a tree. Visible rings result from the change in growth speed through the seasons of the year, thus one ring usually marks the passage of one year in the life of the tree. The rings are more visible in temperate zones, where the seasons differ more markedly.
Many trees in temperate zones make one growth ring each year, with the newest adjacent to the bark. For the entire period of a tree's life, a year-by-year record or ring pattern is formed that reflects the climatic conditions in which the tree grew. Adequate moisture and a long growing season result in a wide ring. A drought year may result in a very narrow one. Trees from the same region will tend to develop the same patterns of ring widths for a given period. These patterns can be compared and matched ring for ring with trees growing in the same geographical zone and under similar climatic conditions. Following these tree-ring patterns from living trees back through time, chronologies can be built up, both for entire regions, and for sub-regions of the world. Thus wood from ancient structures can be matched to known chronologies (a technique called cross-dating) and the age of the wood determined precisely. Cross-dating was originally done by visual inspection. Nowadays, computers are used to do the statistical matching.
Note that the change in speed is contained within each annual ring.
quote:Dendroclimatology is the science of determining past climates from trees (primarily tree rings). Tree rings are wider when conditions favor growth, narrower when times are hard. Using tree rings, scientists have estimated many local climates for hundreds to thousands of years previous. By combining multiple tree-ring studies (sometimes with other climate proxy records), scientists have estimated past regional and global climates (e.g. MBH98, Moberg05).
Second piece of evidence of a second tree is similar, from two sources:
quote:Prometheus (aka WPN-114) is the nickname given to the oldest non-clonal organism ever known, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) tree about 4900 years old growing at treeline on a mountain in eastern Nevada, USA. The tree was cut down on August 6, 1964 by a graduate student and U.S. Forest Service personnel for research purposes, though at the time they did not know of its world-record age. The cutting of the tree remains controversial.
quote:The oldest known living specimen is the "Methuselah" tree, sampled by Schulman and Harlan in the White Mountains of CA, for which 4,789 years are verified by crossdating. An age of 4,844 years was determined post-mortem (after being cut down) for specimen WPM-114 from Wheeler Peak, NV. The age is largely crossdated (6). Naturally, these ages underestimate the true ages of the respective trees (see Tree Age Determination for details), perhaps by hundreds of years in view of the fact that pith dates were not recovered for these trees. It seems likely that trees at least 5000 years old exist.
With an age of 4,789 years in 1964 when the tree was cut down this means that "Prometheus" or WPM-114 has an estimatd germination date of 2,880 BCE, just a little bit older than "Methusula." This is substantiating evidence of this age, and we will get to this below in greater detail.
The tree rings record not only age but climate variations (mild winters, long summers, etc) and that the science of dendrochronology take this into account in matching samples. The two trees - "metusula" and "prometeus" - match for climate data as well as for age, even though they come from different groves on different mountains, thus validating the rings (along with samples from other trees in several groves). Dendrochronologies are not based on single samples but hundreds with a lot of duplication to completely rule out false and missing rings. Finally, the age for "prometheus" is a minimum age because the center of the tree is missing, the tree was so badly weathered that the core was gone. We will come back to the issue of correlations between data more as we go farther.
The climate data from these two trees show that there was no significant change in the rate of growth for these trees during their lives, so IF trees grew at a greater rate in a biblical past period THEN this period has not been reached yet. There was also no global flood in this period as both trees continued to live.
Still, MIMIMUM CONFIRMED AGE OF THE EARTH = 2,880 + 2007 = 4887 years old, with no possible WW flood in that time
This, I noticed is somehow in the science area? I do not plan to limit things to just the limits of natural science.
That is fine, this is a great debate and we can between us agree on the limits of evidence. It does not matter to me what you bring in for evidence at this point, just to note that what ever argument you make must agree with all the evidence in some coherent way.
Now, unless you have some way to show that fast growth also adds extra rings to the growth of trees and can document this effect, this concept is refuted and we can move on to the next level of data.
Are you ready to proceed or do you have some other question?
You assume that they grew in the present conditions, and under the present laws. Why would we assume that? If the bible indicates that light was different, and tree rate growth, why would anyone doubt it for no reason? This was talking about a long time ago, not now.
You still have not provided a reason for growing a different number of tree rings, just a reason for having different width tree rings, a concept that is falsified by the tree rings. We DON'T assume they grew in the present condition, but look at the tree rings to SEE the condition they grew in: some of those were noticeably different from today.
One of these is the "Little Ice Age" and another is the "Medieval Warm Period"
Both of these occurred in historical times and the tree rings show their effect right on time, validating the widths of the rings as climate markers btw. As we go further with the data we will come to other climate changes that extend beyond the historical record, however with these trees we have not gone back to times before recorded history, so there is no need to assume something NOT in recorded history.
quote:Recorded history can be defined as history that has been written down or recorded by the use of language, whereas history is a more general term referring simply to information about the past.[1] It starts in the 4th millennium BC, with the invention of writing.
That's older than these trees eh?
No need to, unless there was some evidence that the past laws and world had to have been under the same laws. Yes, we could even ask if gravity really needed to be the same. Basically, we don't really know. So, why not assume the differences in the bible past were real?
This is just wishful thinking and still fails to address the NUMBER of rings. Propose a theory make a prediction based on it that can be tested for how and why it would be different. It should provide a means then to correct the laws for different behavior in the past: one of these has to do with the orbit of the earth around the sun. Calling "woo" thinking evidence is delusion.
On a side note here, I might ask if you ever actually saw tree rings from the early part of the real old white pines? Could we really say that there may not have come a change in the world there? I have never seen any pictures of that. Never met anyone that did.
Ignorance is bliss eh? Try talking to Dendrochronologists. Try going to the White Pine Mountains: the Prometheus site can be visited and you can look at the tree stump.
This of course is a little rough, cracked and weathered now (cut in 1964) and has not been prepared for lab analysis, but you can clearly see that there is no vast change in the tree rings. Go there and put your fingers on it if you need to.
I think I covered the tree ring issue. That is easy.
So far all you have done is ignored the evidence, not deal with it. Tree rings are annual effects of the orbit of the earth around the sun, not of vast and wonderous mythical climate changes wrought by wonderous woo, concepts that you have absolutely NO evidence for from any source other than wishful thinking. Remember denial of evidence is not faith, it is:
Seeing as you have presented NO reason why tree rings should be different in the past we will proceed with the next bit of evidence, the full dendrochronology based on the bristlecone pines:
quote:Simply put, dendrochronology is the dating of past events (climatic changes) through study of tree ring growth. Botanists, foresters and archaeologists began using this technique during the early part of the 20th century. Discovered by A.E. Douglass from the University of Arizona, who noted that the wide rings of certain species of trees were produced during wet years and, inversely, narrow rings during dry seasons.
Each year a tree adds a layer of wood to its trunk and branches thus creating the pict of cells annual rings we see when viewing a cross section. New wood grows from the cambium layer between the old wood and the bark. In the spring, when moisture is plentiful, the tree devotes its energy to producing new growth cells. These first new cells are large, but as the summer progresses their size decreases until, in the fall, growth stops and cells die, with no new growth appearing until the next spring. The contrast between these smaller old cells and next year's larger new cells is enough to establish a ring, thus making counting possible.
Lets say the sample was taken from a standing 4,000 year-old (but long dead) bristlecone. Its outer growth rings were compared with the inner rings of a living tree. If a pattern of individual ring widths in the two samples prove to be identical at some point, we can carry dating further into the past. With this method of matching overlapping patterns found in different wood samples, bristlecone chronologies have been established almost 9,000 years into the past.
A number of tree samples must be examined and cross dated from any given site to avoid the possibility of all the collected data showing a missing or extra ring. Further checking is done until no inconsistency appears. Often several sample cores are taken from each tree examined. These must be compared not only with samples from other trees at the same location but also with those at other sites in the region. Additionally, the average of all data provides the best estimate of climate averages. A large portion of the effects of nonclimatic factors that occur in the various site data is minimized by this averaging scheme.
The bristlecone pine chronology in the White Mountains currently extends back almost 9,000 years continuously. That's to 7,000 BC! Several pieces of wood have been collected that will extend this date back even further. The hope is to push the date back to at least 8,000 BC. This will be important as the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, and to have a record of this transition period would offer scientists a wealth of information.
The practical limit with this dendrochronology is back to the end of the last ice age (not a flood).
Note three things: the tree rings contain climate data, the chronology is not based on one sample but many overlapping and duplicate (from the same tree) samples, and there are other samples that have not been counted yet or that have a break in the climate data that means they are "floating" in the chronology somewhere beyond the end of the continuous record. Adding up all the time recorded by these tree rings would give us a minimum age of the earth for all those years to have passed that generated the rings. We'll be minimalist here and say:
Minimum age of the earth > 8,000 years based on this data.
This is already older than many YEC models (6,000 years for those using Archbishop Ussher's calculation of a starting date of 4004 BC). This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 8,000 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.
Note that this data ALONE invalidates the age given in the museum and it invalidates the concept that a global flood could have occurred in that time, which was the purpose of this thread: QED.
This is only ONE piece of evidence. I have more if you care to keep playing.
No, you misunderstand. If a tree used to be able to grow in a month, or some such short time, it had all the rings it needed, The rings never represented years, of course.
You still do not get it. Growth has nothing to do with rings, rings are caused by the orbit of the earth around the sun and the change of seasons that result. Having all the resources to grow in one month what normally takes a year now, just means that the one month period of the ring would be as wide as the SUMMER portion of current growth, then next month would ADD to that SUMMER growth and make it twice as wide, the THIRD month the same. You do NOT get a winter portion to make the ring. You do NOT get added rings by this concept, it is a false argument.
You can't just wish it so.
Yet you just did that and nothing else. You have absolutely NO basis for your claim and no reason for it to work, you just WANT it to be so.
Ahh. Correction, you do so assume that. You look to the tree, to see the size and traits of the rings, which you assume mean certain things, based on only how they now grow. Absolutely.
Note that this unbased assumption of the present being the key to the past is not supported in any way.
No we look at the tree rings to see the characteristics that are consistent with the known data, the known behavior of all plants, and the known behavior of the solar system and the known factors of climate and seasons on growth and the development of all plants, and we look to see how those factors are represented in the rings. This is the difference between evidenced based reasoning and woo. We look to see if there are reasons to think that things could change significantly in the past and see none. This is rational thinking.
You however assume a sea change based on a complete lack of data and information, theory and evidence. This is delusion not rational thinking.
Not really that relevant, because this is after the period of the flood. I expect present rates were in effect.
No! Your dates for recorded history are also assumptions. I assume that the recording started after the flood.
Fascinating that these recorded history items also include astronomical observations that match those made today. Amazing that they also record occurrences that match from one society to another between china and egypt. Your dismissal of history is like your dismissal of evidence that condtradicts your belief: delusion.
Seeing as you have yet to establish when any possible mythical woo period of the flood occurred you can't say when something was before or after it either. Thus you can still expect - not "present rates" (the little ice age and the medieval warm period were not "present rates" but significant differences) - that the factors we see at work to still work the way we see them: there is no alteration in the timing of the seasons nor the orbit of the earth around the sun nor the rotation of the earth on it's axis, nor any other factor that would affect the delineation between summer growth and winter growth that make up an annual ring.
Until you provide something substantial and defined for your concept you're still talking woo wishful thinking unfounded on reason.
In other words, as we see similar rings beyond the range of the present growth rates, you assume they are the same. No good. There has to be a reason. Evidence.
As it is, all you offer is a claim that trees grew at the same rate for no apparent good reason but that they do so now.
And the evidence has been presented, you just ignore or misunderstand it. Certainly to think it could be DIFFERENT we would need evidence: where is yours? what is it? how does it work? Wishful thinking woo explanations are not evidence and are not based on reason, they are delusions.
I looked at your link, and saw this. "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name." ??
Gosh, I'm sorry. Looks like you may actually have to do a little work on your own then. Go to a link I've given you before:
Scroll down to the picture of the tree stump (it's at the second sub paragraph titled "The cutting of the tree") and click on it. I know it's asking a lot, but you did want to see it eh?
I don't mean the stump. I mean a close up picture of the earliest rings in that stump. It seems to be that you are also ignorant of these. However blissful you think that may be.
You can save this picture to your computer and zoom in on it to your hearts content. If that is not enough take a hike and go see the real thing. Put your face in the evidence.
Deal with this, present growth does not relate to the past earth growth, unless you have some proof it was the same. Woo can't help you. Try and deal in facts, reality, real relevant evidence, and proof. Making up things like woo does not help your case.
Then stop invoking woo and start looking at the evidence. Tree rings are caused by seasons, not by woo growth pattens. Past earth growth is not assumed, nor is it created in some mythology by woo, it is shown by the evidence.
Why correct laws??? Why must they be here to begin with??? The number of rings is of no concern whatsoever if a tree could grow in maybe a week or so.
Then it would have no rings. Stop making stuff up and start dealing with reality.
Well, I was hoping to move on, and maybe corner you so you would have to call up your brother for advice on space, and physics, etc.
Yes, you've been here before, you are misrepresenting yourself as a new poster, giving false witness about yourself. I've known that for some time. Good luck with the suspension issue on that.
European Oaks
Before moving on to something different, this is some additional data that reinforces and extends the previous data and correlates with it (you know, that correlation issue you've had trouble with before eh? It just keeps popping up). It also reaches back to more climate change than we have seen in recorded history:
My recollection is that dendrochronology started with oak trees in Europe, by setting up a database of oak tree sections from archaeological sites and matching different sections that overlapped in time to build a complete lineage of tree ring dates.
The common name for this species is "Post Oak" due to its natural resistance to rot thus making a good material for posts in ancient constructions. This also means that there are a lot of samples that are referenced to and associated with archaeological finds, finds that can be dated by other means, including historical documents as far back as the history goes.
quote:Oak is a highly preferred species to use in dendrochronology - in fact, the longest continuous tree-ring chronology anywhere in the world was developed in Europe and is currently about 10,000 year in length. This chronology is providing scientists new insights on climate over the past 10,000 years, especially at the end of the last Glacial Maximum.
Because ring-porous species almost always begin annual growth with this initial flush, missing rings are rare in such species as oak and elm. In fact, the only recorded instance of a missing ring in oak trees occurred in the year 1816, also known as the Year Without a Summer. A volcanic eruption in the year 1815 caused much cooler temperatures globally, thus causing oak trees to remain dormant. Therefore, no clear annual ring was formed in 1816 for certain locations in Europe.
Occasionally, offsets in oak tree rings can be problematic when trying to crossdate the rings. Dendrochronologists therefore must be careful when working with oak species, as these rays can cause a misdate of one year.
Note that sources of error are identified and accounted for. Crossdating is one method to check for errors. Another is to build two independent chronologies from the same species in two different locations. For an idea of the accuracy of the data and the amount of error involved we have this:
quote:The Holocene part of the 14C calibration is based on several millennia-long tree-ring chronologies, providing an annual, absolute time frame within the possible error of the dendrochronology, which was rigorously tested by internal replication of many overlapping sections. Whenever possible, they were cross-checked with independently established chronologies of adjacent regions. The German and Irish oak chronologies were cross-dated until back into the 3rd millennium BC (Pilcher et al. 1984), and the German oak chronologies from the Main River, built independently in the Gttingen and Hohenheim tree-ring laboratories, cross-date back to 9147 cal BP (Spurk et al. 1998).
Due to periodic narrow rings caused by cockchafer beetles, some German oak samples were excluded from IntCal98. Analysis of these tree rings, with an understanding of the response of trees to the cockchafer damage, allowed some of these measurements to be re-instated in the chronology (Friedrich et al., this issue).
The relation between North American and European wood has been studied using bristlecone pine (BCP) and European oak (German oak and Irish oak), respectively. Discrepancies have become evident over the years, in particular when the German oak was corrected by a dendro-shift of 41 yr towards older ages (Kromer et al. 1996). Attempts were made to resolve the discrepancies by remeasuring BCP samples, measured earlier in Tucson (Linick et al. 1986). The University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research provided dendrochronologically dated bristlecone pine samples to Heidelberg (wood from around 4700 and 7600 cal BP), Groningen (around 7500 cal BP), Pretoria (around 4900 cal BP), and Seattle (around 7600 cal BP). The replicate measurements have a mean offset of 37 6 14C yr (n = 21) from the Tucson measurements.
There was not a large difference in the calculated k values between early and recent measurements in the Belfast lab for the Irish oak samples when the previously applied laboratory error multiplier on the more recent data set is considered; however, the early measurements of German oak were more variable than those of Irish oak. The recent Heidelberg data sets had smaller k values than older measurements. The reason for the early variation is partly due to the fact that these samples were measured to help place a tree in the dendrochronology as it was being built instead of measured consecutively, and also because many of these samples contain only a few tree rings but are being compared to decadal samples.
Uncertainty in single-ring cal ages for dendrochronologically-dated wood is on the order of 1 yr for highly replicated and cross-checked chronologies and is therefore ignored in the analysis.
There are several things to note here. First, is that there are three (3) main chronologies: one of Bristlecone Pine and two of European Oak, one German and one Irish. Second, is that originally one oak chronology was "not good enough" to be included in the IntCal98 - because it was off by 41 years in (then) ~8,000 years, an error of 0.5%. Third, is that when one oak chronology was corrected, it was not the odd one out, but the one that previously agreed with the Bristlecone Pine chronology. Fourth, now the Bristlecone Pine chronology is now considered "not good enough" - because it is off by 37 years in ~7600 years, an error of 0.5%. Fifth, that where some German Oak samples had been placed by carbon-14 levels in the earlier chronology (used in IntCal98) these are now placed by additional tree samples that fill in the consecutive chronology (and these initial carbon-14 levels are not now used to place those samples). Finally, that the European Oak absolute chronology now extends back to 9,147 years BP with cross dating and including all three in one data set means that the error involved is on the order of 0.5% - over the whole period of time covered. The IntCal04 discussion doesn't give the breakdown on the actual ages of each chronology, but it refers to a paper that does.
The combined oak and pine tree-ring chronologies of Hohenheim University are the backbone of the Holocene radiocarbon calibration for central Europe. Here, we present the revised Holocene oak chronology (HOC) and the Preboreal pine chronology (PPC) with respect to revisions, critical links, and extensions. Since 1998, the HOC has been strengthened by new trees starting at 10,429 BP (8480 BC). Oaks affected by cockchafer have been identified and discarded from the chronology.
These are just three examples of dendrochronologies, the three that happen to be the longest absolute chronologies. There are many species of trees used for dendrochronology, and many different chronologies. Several chronologies are "floating" - do not have a fixed begin date - and many of those are older than the dates discussed here. All the species show the same trends in world climate whenever they overlap. The climatological trends correlate the ages from one species to the others, thus any errors that would invalidate dendrochronology would need to apply to each (and all) species in each (and all) locations at the same time. Here we need only discuss the three long absolute chronologies and how they validate each other.
Now we have a problem for YEC people, because not only do these different chronologies cover the same time, they also have the same pattern of climate shown in their tree rings even though they come from opposite sides of the earth and are in very different kinds of trees, one evergreen living at high altitudes and one deciduous living near sea levels, and anything that can cause errors in one system has to have a method that can cause exactly the same error in the other at exactly the same time. Positing false rings does not accomplish this. All three sets also show the "little ice age" and other marker events at the same ages. They all come to the same age for the matching climate data. We can be minimalist here, and say that the minimum age covered by the European Oak chronology is 10,429 years BP - 0.5% = 10,377 years BP. "BP" means "Before Present" and is defined as years before 1950(1), so this is really 10,434 years ago (in 2007).
Minimum age of the earth > 10,434 years based on this data.
This is now older than most if not all YEC models for the age of the earth.
This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 10,434 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.
And this is still just the start: three different dendrochronologies that correlate age with climate and that match - wiggle for wiggle - within 0.5%.
Enjoy.
References
Anonymous "Before Present" Wikipedia. Updated 28 Dec 2006. accessed 17 Jan, 2007 from Before Present - Wikipedia
Friedrich, Michael et al, "The 12,460-Year Hohenheim Oak and Pine Tree-Ring Chronology from Central Europe”a Unique Annual Record for Radiocarbon Calibration and Paleoenvironment Reconstructions" Radiocarbon, Volume 46, Issue 3, Pages v-1334 (March 2004), pp. 1111-1122(12) accessed 17 Jan 2007 from Content Not Found: Ingenta Connect (abstract)
Martinez, Lori, "Useful Tree Species for Tree-Ring Dating" Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona. Updated Oct 2001. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Useful Tree Species for Tree-Ring Dating
Reimer, Paula J. et al, "INTCAL04 Terrestrial Radiocarbon Age Calibration, 0-26 CAL KYR BP" Radiocarbon, Volume 46, Issue 3, Pages v-1334 (March 2004), pp. 1029-1058(30). accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Not Found
I realize that this again seems like a lot of information, but it is really quite simple:
there are three long fixed dendrochronologies, two developed from oak trees in different parts of the Europe and the bristlecone pine we started with from the USof (N)A.
the tree rings of deciduous species (oaks) are more marked than those of evergreens (pines) due to the shedding of leaves during the winter months.
a failure to shed leaves (change in behavior of the oaks at some woo time in the past) would be marked by a change in the type of ring from deciduous to evergreen: this does not occur in the data, therefor both leaves continued to be shed in the winter and winter continued to be the cause for the slowed growth than marks an annual ring.
the three chronologies correlate for climate data as well as age except for minor differences.
the minor differences in age of these chronologies are on the order of 41 (before one correction) and 37 years over a period of over 8,000 years, an error of 0.5% in the overall correlation of all three.
this confirms that all three trees grew under the same astronomical, seasonal and world climate conditions, that the rings are in fact annual.
the data now extend back to near the end of the last ice age.
And there is still no evidence that anything would have been different during the period covered by the data, different enough to make some kind of woo possible. You need evidence to base a different pattern on and you have none. It's time to stop hiding behind the woodshed and start facing reality.
No, you misunderstand. If a tree used to be able to grow in a month, or some such short time, it had all the rings it needed, The rings never represented years, of course.
You need a system that mimics years with additional seasons to start and stop the growth. Something that would be observed as an year for growth.
This leaves you with a problem: either they had more seasons before the flood - which is nowhere recorded nor remarked on when it changed that I am aware of - OR they were actually counted as years when they were partial years - and the age of the earth is younger in your voodoo woo world than you imagine, a length change ALSO nowhere recorded nor remarked on when it changed that I am aware of (although it could explain the "age" of some people eh?)
This just does not work, even in voodoo woo land.
Do you want to try again or do you want to move on to Carbon-14 evidence?
Your point is that the tree rings are laid down a certain way now, seasonally. If the trees did grow in a different past world, where things were fundamentally different, there would be no summer rings, or winter. If we, for example had a tree grow in 2 weeks, with, say, 336 rings, each ring, of course does not represent a summer. It represents an hour. In that early earth, we may have had a cool of the day, an windy part of the day, a nighttime, a daytime, a time when the waters came up from below to water the earth. In fact, for all we know, the water could have come up every 3 hours. Etc. In other words, we still could have rings, and variations in a pattern, that later would be replaced by a pattern taking more time.
LOL your voodoo woo answer keeps changing. The big problem for you is that the tree ring record is continuous. There is no point at which all the trees died then a gap and then trees that lived before the gap.
You need a gap for the flood to have rings from before the flood and you just do not have that. Of course having the trees in the same places before and after is also a problem for flood geology rearranging the world with massive changes too, but that is a different voodoo woo answer to different problems with reality. The fact that the answers contradict each other means at least one is wrong.
So where is your gap in time in the tree rings for the flood? THere is none, therefore there is no ring record of before flood and we do not even need to consider your latest voodoo woo fantasy. All the tree rings come from this side of the flood, they are annual rings (you've run out of excuses) and there was no flood for over 10,000 years.
A "sea" change?? What is that about?
About an abrupt and totally different kind of behavior yet it looks exactly like it always did: voodoo woo wishing.
The only thing I question are the dates. Yes, we can, the flood dates are pretty well known. About 4500 years ago.
And there is no gap in the tree ring data. It shows life continues without break growing on mountains in the Sierra Nevada the Ireland to Germany. Looks like you need to question those dates and who came up with them: they are falsified by the evidence.
The rings do not stop at 4400 years ago, if you notice. Let's try and stick with the facts.
As I said, the change was after the flood, again, no problem at all!
LOL. Exactly. And all the data we have is "after the flood" because it is continuous. There is no gap in the data for the flood, so no "before the flood" data is involved.
Time to face reality Keys\simple. {abe} You may think you have "dismissed the refutations firmly", but all you have done is deny the evidence and engaged in a series of unsubstiated everchanging wishes that the evidence show something else than they do. Denial is not refutation, it is "dismissal" but for the wrong reasons:
It is dismissal of reality that conflicts with your fixed false beliefs. It is not reasoned. {/abe}
Therefore, if we assume this no decay in the past, all dates and carbon dating is null and void. And, assume it many will, until you prove that it was some other way.
I'm not talking about dating with carbon-14 yet. Just about the amounts of carbon-14 in the samples. Because the C-14 comes from the atmosphere for trees (respiration), no tree ring can be the same age as another tree ring and not have the same level of C-14 in it. This means that all your voodoo woo tree rings formed in a week or a month would have the same level of C-14 in them.
{abe} Note that I throw you a bone with Don Batten and false rings. These are a well known phenomenon in dendrochronology and they are removed from the chronologies through techniques that determine them from real tree rings based on their differences. Don Batten uses these techniques to determine the false rings in his example, and thereby confirms their effectiveness (even though he then misrepresents the issue to his gullible readers). What you have been suggesting is massive false rings, and this has not been the case.{/abe}
Adding German Pines to the Mix
Tree rings (and other systems of independent measurements of actual age of items) are used to calibrate the Carbon 14 dating method to make it more accurate than it is uncalibrated. The scientists doing this are very concerned with the accuracy of the data.
NOTE: we are NOT discussing carbon 14 dating yet, just the evidence from tree-ring chronologies and the accuracy of the data. Some of this has already been discussed above, in regards to the two oak chronologies. Here we are concerned with the last of the tree-ring chronologies that we can fix to an absolute time frame.
quote:The 2 parts of the German Preboreal pine chronology (PPC), which were formerly floating, have been linked and cross-matched dendrochronologically to the absolutely-dated Holocene oak chronology. Including additional new finds, the south German part of the PPC is prolonged into the Younger Dryas and now starts at 11,993 cal BP. New pine chronologies from Switzerland and eastern Germany extend the PPC to 12,410 cal BP (Friedrich et al., this issue).
Note that "floating" chronologies are ones where the end is not known. There are many other floating dendrochronologies that extend further into the past, but they are not discussed here as they can't be tied by climate correlations to the existing absolute dendrochronologies. Note further that the absolute European (German & Irish) Oak chronologies were discussed above, and that the accuracy of those with the Bristlecone Pine chronology was found to have an error of ~0.5% and that the Bristlecone Pine was excluded to bring the error down - there was less error between the German Oak, the Irish Oak and the German Pine chronologies. The IntCal04 discussion doesn't give the breakdown on the actual ages of each chronology.
The combined oak and pine tree-ring chronologies of Hohenheim University are the backbone of the Holocene radiocarbon calibration for central Europe. Here, we present the revised Holocene oak chronology (HOC) and the Preboreal pine chronology (PPC) with respect to revisions, critical links, and extensions. Since 1998, the HOC has been strengthened by new trees starting at 10,429 BP (8480 BC). Oaks affected by cockchafer have been identified and discarded from the chronology. The formerly floating PPC has been cross-matched dendrochronologically to the absolutely dated oak chronology, which revealed a difference of only 8 yr to the published 14C wiggle-match position used for IntCal98. The 2 parts of the PPC, which were linked tentatively at 11,250 BP, have been revised and strengthened by new trees, which enabled us to link both parts of the PPC dendrochronologically. Including the 8-yr shift of the oak-pine link, the older part of the PPC (pre-11,250 BP) needs to be shifted 70 yr to older ages with respect to the published data (Spurk 1998). The southern German part of the PPC now covers 2103 yr from 11,993–9891 BP (10,044–7942 BC). In addition, the PPC was extended significantly by new pine chronologies from other regions. A pine chronology from Avenches and Zürich, Switzerland, and another from the Younger Dryas forest of Cottbus, eastern Germany, could be crossdated and dendrochronologically matched to the PPC. The absolutely dated tree-ring chronology now extends back to 12,410 cal BP (10,461 BC). Therefore, the tree-ring-based 14C calibration now reaches back into the Central Younger Dryas. With respect to the Younger Dryas-Preboreal transition identified in the ring width of our pines at 11,590 BP, the absolute tree-ring chronology now covers the entire Holocene and 820 yr of the Younger Dryas.
Note that the "Younger Dryas" - a period of significant climate change bigger than the "Little Ice Age" (and named for the pollen from the Dryas octopetala plant showing up in various sediments)(1) - now shows up in the tree-ring chronology, marked by the width of the rings.
What they are essentially doing with all these dendrochronologies is building an overall dendrochronology independant of genus or species. The method for matching elements of some species dendrochronologies is the same as it is for matching sample elements within species dendrochronologies: they match up the patterns of climate with annual rings. So we have the German Oak running to10,429 BP and the German Pine running from 9891 BP to 12,410 BP and it overlaps the German Oak for 538 years. We can again be {minimalist\parsimonious\generous} and say that the error in this date is 0.5% (to include the Bristlecone Pine) and the minimum age then is 12,410 BP - 0.5% + (2007-1950) = 12,405 years.
False Rings and Missing Rings
Creationists try to discredit the whole field of dendrochronology as a means to deny the massive evidence that it has compiled. Remember that this is not one tree or one species but thousands of dendrochronologies that all correlate to the same climate and annual data. A typical creationist attempt is one by Don Batten's article:
quote:Tree ring dating (dendrochronology) has been used in an attempt to extend the calibration of carbon-14 dating earlier than historical records allow. The oldest living trees, such as the Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva) of the White Mountains of Eastern California, were dated in 1957 by counting tree rings at 4,723 years old. This would mean they pre-dated the Flood which occurred around 4,350 years ago, taking a straightforward approach to Biblical chronology.
Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings.
This article is discussed in greater detail in another thread (Dendrochronology Fact and Creationist Fraud), however he is (a) talking about a tree selected and bred by the timber industry for fast growth, that is (b) in a different subgenus (all pines are in the genus Pinus, so this is like comparing a car with a bus as modes of transportation), (c) he doesn't discuss other sources of error that can mean the tree is older than the ring data, and finally (d) he can - and did - distinguish every one of the false rings from the annual ones, just as dendrochronologists do ("up to five rings per year"). Suffice it to say, the argument from Don Batten is false and misleading and does not answer the question of how all the different dendrochronologies end up with the same climate and annual ring patterns when the scientists have accounted for the known sources of errors in the different tree lines, errors that would occur at different times in different species in different locations, for different reasons, errors that add up to only 37 years in differences between the Bristlecone Pine and the European Oak chronologies.
Note: False rings are what your extra rings would look like no matter how you wave the voodoo woo wand, and they are different from real rings and are distinguished from real rings by dendrochronologists. There were also no periods with massive numbers of false rings in any one of these three chronologies.
Carbon-14 Levels
Furthermore, the ages of the tree-ring data are validated by the carbon-14 levels in the samples. The "carbon-14 age" of a sample is really a measurement of the quantity of carbon-14 in the sample compared to the total carbon in the sample. This quantity measurement is then transformed by a mathematical formula based on radioactive decay into a theoretical "age," but this "age" is really just a mathematical scale for displaying the actual amount of carbon-14 in the sample. The point here is that it does not matter what creationists think about the validity of carbon-14 dating in particular, radiometric dating in general, or radioactive decay, because two samples of the same age - that lived in the same atmospheric environment and absorbed the then existing levels of atmospheric carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14 (the three common isotopes) - will have the same levels of carbon-14 in the samples today. No fantastic scheme invented to change the way radioactivity works will change that simple fact, for whatever is changed in one sample is changed in all the others of the same time. Thus, when sample {A} is dated to {X} years by dendrochronology and it has level {Y} carbon-14 content, and when sample {B} is also dated to {X} years by dendrochronology and it has level {Y} carbon-14 content, the carbon-14 content validates the age - because, growing in the same environment, they could not be the same age and NOT have the same carbon-14 content.
The Carbon-14 Environment and Tree Ring Data Correlations
quote:Carbon has 13 known isotopes, which have from 2 to 14 neutrons in the nucleus and mass numbers from 8 to 20. Carbon-12 was chosen by IUPAC in 1961 as the basis for atomic weights; it is assigned an atomic mass of exactly 12 atomic mass units. Carbon-13 absorbs radio waves and is used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry to study organic compounds. Carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,730 years, is a naturally occurring isotope that can also be produced in a nuclear reactor.
quote:Three principal isotopes of carbon occur naturally - C-12, C-13 (both stable) and C-14 (unstable or radioactive). These isotopes are present in the following amounts C12 - 98.89%, C13 - 1.11% and C14 - 0.00000000010%.
quote:Cosmic rays enter the earth's atmosphere in large numbers every day. For example, every person is hit by about half a million cosmic rays every hour. It is not uncommon for a cosmic ray to collide with an atom in the atmosphere, creating a secondary cosmic ray in the form of an energetic neutron, and for these energetic neutrons to collide with nitrogen atoms. When the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons). Carbon-14 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years.
This takes energy to accomplish, and the decay releases this energy: Carbon-14 decays back to Nitrogen-14 by beta- decay:
During beta-minus decay, a neutron in an atom's nucleus turns into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. The electron and antineutrino fly away from the nucleus, which now has one more proton than it started with. Since an atom gains a proton during beta-minus decay, it changes from one element to another. For example, after undergoing beta-minus decay, an atom of carbon (with 6 protons) becomes an atom of nitrogen (with 7 protons).
Thus cosmic ray activity produces a "Carbon-14 environment" in the atmosphere, where Carbon-14 is being produced or replenished while also being removed by radioactive decay due to a short half-life. This results is a variable but fairly stable proportion of atmospheric Carbon-14 for absorption from the atmosphere by plants during photosynthesis in the proportions of C-12 and C-14 existing in the atmosphere at the time.
The level of Carbon-14 has not been constant in the past, as it is known to vary with the amount of cosmic ray bombardment and climate change. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5730 years and this can be used to calculate an apparent "C-14 age" from the proportion of C-14 to C-12 in an organic sample (that derives its carbon from the atmosphere) and this "date" can be checked against known dates to determine the amount of C-14 that was in the atmosphere:
(Image based on calibration curve from Wikipedia(2) - Both images are in the public domain.)
Note that the "C-14 age" is really a measurement of the actual ratio of C-14 to C-12 isotopes in the sample, and a comparison of that to modern day proportions.
quote:A formula to calculate how old a sample is by carbon-14 dating is:
t = {ln (Nf/No)/ln (1/2)} x t1/2
where t is the "C-14 age", ln is the natural logarithm, Nf/No is the percent of carbon-14 in the sample compared to the amount in living tissue, and t1/2 is the half-life of carbon-14.
These calibration curves have been extended now to the limits of Carbon-14 dating, but it is also of interest to look at just the Carbon-14 calibration curve for dendrochronology - the results of matching tree-rings to Carbon-14 levels and their implied "C-14 age":
This means we can look at the "C-14 age" as a measurement of the Carbon-14 actually remaining in the samples from what was absorbed from the atmosphere at the time that the tree-rings were formed and note the following:
If there were numerous errors in the tree-ring data caused by false rings (as proposed by Dr. Don Batten), then this would show up as a steep rising "C-14 age" that would be much younger than the recorded tree-ring age. This is not the case.
The false rings would also have to be perfectly matched for each of the species used for the overall dendrochronology ages or the "C-14 age" for each one would be different and the line of calibration would be extremely blurred. This is not the case.
The age derived from Carbon-14 analysis is consistently younger than the actual age measured by the numerous tree-ring chronologies in pre-historical times, meaning that C-14 dating underestimates the ages of objects.
Conclusions
The actual amount of C-14 in the tree-ring samples match from species to species for the same ages as the tree-rings, regardless of the radioactive decay rate for carbon-14, and this validates that they formed in the same "carbon-14 environment" regardless of radioactive decay afterwards.
Samples that get carbon-14 only from atmospheric sources while living cannot be the same age and NOT have the same carbon-14 content.
{abe} While it is possible for samples of slightly different ages to have the same C-14 levels, {/abe} samples with different carbon-14 content cannot be the same age.
False tree-rings for each and every one of the different species that were used on the calibrations curve would have to have occurred at the same time in several different habitats, in every tree used in teh chronology, in locations and environments around the world to produce simultaneous false results. {abe} They would still be identifiable as false rings (particularly in the oak trees) due to their differences in growth patterns from annual rings. {/abe}
Anyone wanting to invalidate tree-rings as a viable age measurement method need to simultaneously explain the correlation of tree-rings to climate between each species and the correlation of tree-rings to carbon-14 levels absorbed in each of the tree-rings in each of the species at the same tree-ring age. This is three different systems having matching data on a year by year basis. This is highly unlikely to be done.
The logical conclusion is that this confirms the dendrochronology age for the Bristlecone Pines, the German Oaks, the Irish Oaks and the German Pines.
Minimum age of the earth > 12,405 years based on this data.
This is now older than ALL YEC models for the age of the earth that I am aware of, meaning that the YEC concept is invalidated based on tree-ring data alone.
This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 12,405 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.
And we haven't even gotten to the tip of the iceberg.
Friedrich, Michael et al, "The 12,460-Year Hohenheim Oak and Pine Tree-Ring Chronology from Central Europe—a Unique Annual Record for Radiocarbon Calibration and Paleoenvironment Reconstructions" Radiocarbon, Volume 46, Issue 3, Pages v-1334 (March 2004), pp. 1111-1122(12) accessed 17 Jan 2007 from http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/arizona/.../art00008 (abstract)
Gagnon, Steve, "Glossary: Beta Decay" Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education. undated. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Glossary Term - Beta Decay
Higham, Thomas, "The 14C Method" Info Radiocarbon Web. undated. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from The method
Hajdas-Skowronek, Irka, "Extension of the radiocarbon calibration curve by AMS dating of laminated sediments of lake Soppensee and lake Holzmaar" PhD Thesis, 1993, Institute of Particle Physics, Zurich, Switzerland. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.ipp.phys.ethz.ch/.../radiocarbon/HajdasPhDthesis1993.pdf
Reimer, Paula J. et al, "INTCAL04 Terrestrial Radiocarbon Age Calibration, 0–26 CAL KYR BP" Radiocarbon, Volume 46, Issue 3, Pages v-1334 (March 2004), pp. 1029-1058(30). accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Not Found
You are still missing a gap in the tree ring data that would allow for a flood to have occurred, so the flood cannot have occurred after these tree rings were formed. Voodoo woo for changes in climate etc before the flood do not and cannot apply if the data is after the flood. THe flood cannot have occurred for 12,405 years. This is a factor of 3 on your date, so the interpretation or the source for this date is in error.
{ABE} stands for "added by edit" and marks the beginning of section so added, while {/ABE} marks the end of the section added by edit. This is to let you know where I have added stuff when I edited it to reduce confusion if you started with a pre-edited version.
False. Not if all the trees on earth grew only after the flood. Sorry you seemed to have missed that. So, absolutely no problem at all. Being alive still, there are some things that go on. The changes would not reflect in the rings much, if at all. They would simply now use another light, and altered molecular and atomic level changes, and life process. That doesn't matter when the living trees all were after the flood.
Okay we'll start with this premise...
Message 19 Then it is not an issue. If a tree could grow in a week, no overlapping is a problem. In fact, even raising things like false rings is a strawman.
And accept this as another working premise...
Moot point! How the carbon comes is not an issue at all. How it used to come is. Try and focus. Unless you claim that it used to come the same way, in which case, --prove it! You assume a same past state where the carbon only got there as it now does. FIRST you need a same state, then I will believe you. Meanwhile, you are simply talking a myth. Now, yes. But not in a different state past. For all we know, the results of the life processes of trees could have produced carbon, and simply not worked as it now does, with this state, this light, these physical universe laws, etc. Establishing that carbon was present. Now, we need to ask why, in the past, that was so. Not sit there assuming the present workings can be projected to infinity, and beyond! Done! The carbon was a part of the past process, not produced as it now is.
And this ... assuming you mean carbon-14 (14C) and not all forms of carbon (the normal carbon-12, the other common isotope carbon-13, and rarer rest of the 13 known isotopes): we are after all talking about the proportion of 14C to 12C in the samples and not the presence of carbon itself in the structure of all organic molecules, right?
So what, we are talking about the past, and if there was no decay, why would there even be these rays entering anywhere?
And this concept ... we'll accept these premises for the purpose of the argument and with no judgment at this time on their possible validity and without substantiation on your part to claims of having "biblical evidence" in support of your position.
When it does come down to you actually providing some of this long promised "biblical evidence" we need an acceptable criteria for what is actual "biblical evidence" and what is interpretation of "biblical evidence" --
Criteria for biblical evidence:
it is in the King James Version (KJV) or is similar to the KJV that is online, as this is a fairly universally accepted translation and interpretation of the actual hebrew and greek texts used in the original compilation, and of the latin bible that originated from the compilation of those texts: http://www.genesis.net.au/%7Ebible/kjv/
it is clearly spelled out in the KJV on line such that no interpretation of the text is needed -- interpretation being subject to human error and bias.
If you do not have that, then you do not have "biblical" evidence, but evidence of some human interpretation of "biblical" evidence. What you have is an interpretation that is not necessarily universal and which is certainly subject to human error, pride and delusion. Interpretation is not evidence. There is no argument on this - you either have it or you don't.
Back to the evidence:
Now, assuming that all this happened after the flood -- as you now claim -- means we need to compress all the data into a very brief period of time.
quote:The history of Egypt is the longest continuous history, as a unified state, of any country in the world. The Nile valley forms a natural geographic and economic unit, bounded to the east and west by deserts, to the north by the sea and to the south by the Cataracts of the Nile. The need to have a single authority to manage the waters of the Nile led to the creation of the world's first state in Egypt in about 3000 BC.
We'll be generous and set the end of your speculation period as 3000 BC: certainly there is no record of changed growth patterns in the historical record of Egypt. So the period under discussion is from your flood date (assumed for now) of "About 4500 years ago" (Message 14) to about 3000 BC, or 5,000 years ago. OOPS?
Message 14 ... the flood dates are pretty well known. About 4500 years ago
Looks like you need to review your sources and provide the information that it is based on, as there is a severe conflict in the information here. You say you have biblical evidence: let's see it. Not some interpretation, the actual KJV citation. Otherwise I call voodoo woo doodoo delusion.
Until then, we have a negative time interval for your period of voodoo woo magic growth and physics defying suspension of molecular behavior.
To proceed one needs to assume, based not on a complete lack of evidence, but in the face of contradictory evidence, that some period of {X} years ending at some point {Y} in the past involved your voodoo woo magic time.
Entering into this delusional world of growth and behavior for the sake of continuing the argument, we have a couple of possibilities for 14C in proportion to 12C in the growth of all organic organisms:
(1) the ratio 14C/12C was fixed at some ratio level {R} during this period, with 14C being neither added (by any means) to the atmosphere, ground or whatever, nor removed (the no-decay period is in effect) by any means, and the proportion had always been at ratio level {R} until decay was introduced (and with it the production of 14C by solar activity as we see today, seeing as this is a reversed decay process),
(2) the ratio 14C/12C started at zero either at creation or at some time {T}, such as the end of the flood, and then rose steadily to ratio level {R} by time {Y} when normal decay and production process took over,
(3) there was no 14C before the flood, that the flood caused the production of 14C to start or released 14C at level {F} so that by the time {Y} we are at level {R} by either (1) where {F}={R}, or (2) where {F} + (d14C/dt)({Y}-{T} = {R}
In any event we have ratio level {R} at time {Y} and we have a process that produces 14C that should show up in the evidence of the ring layers of the trees formed by the successive layers of growth of new living tissue around the previous ring layers:
If the whole tree grew in a week then all the ring layers should have the same ratio of 14C/12C.
If all the ring layers are getting new carbon during the growth of the tree then all the ring layers should have the same ratio of 14C/12C.
If the new ring layers are getting their carbon from the environment, and the old ring layers have the carbon ratios that were in effect when they grew, then we should see a progression of carbon ratio with ring layers that matches the above scenarios for the generation of the 14C/12C ratios.
IE: either
all rings will have the same ratio {R} at time (Y) - OR
the rings will progress from {F} to {R} over the time {T} to {Y} by either (1), which has the same result as above, (2) which shows a progression or (3) which shows a sudden appearance of ratio {F} and then the same effect as (1) or (2) - OR
if the trees don't start growing until after time {T}, the same as above with only (1) or (2) possibilities.
At the time {Y} when the decay of 14C (and all other radioactivity processes) begins, then all the 14C will begin to decay at the same rate. It does not matter whether this rate is the same as currently observed or not, as all the 14C in the world will be affected equally by this commencement of decay. Because decay would affect all 14C equally it would also preserve the results of the incorporation of 14C into the tree rings as listed above, with {R} being reduced over time by the decay and everything else being proportional to {R}t/{R}Y: the level at time t to the level at time {Y}. This would then show up in the data as such: either a horizontal line or a linear progression from {F} or zero to a transition point on the decay curve (either tangent or not).
The actual data
The actual data shows an exponential decay curve with some variation up and down due to the flux in 14C/12C ratio or some other effect. When we correct the data according to the climate information from the tree rings (variations in width of the fast growth portion of the rings) then these up and down variations are markedly reduced. According to the current science of dendrochronology, dendroclimatology, the physics of 14C production and radioactive decay, most of the variation would be accounted for by such climate changes (some other factors affect 14C production, such as sun cycles, but these are longer term effects).
Thus the actual 14C ratio levels existing in all the dendrochronology data support the scientific model as being valid. Notice that we are talking about time within the first half-life period of 14C, the first tic mark on the horizontal scale in this diagram:
This continues to hold for the duration of time that the tree rings represent based on the current sciences, which is about two tic marks on the horizontal scale shown above.
Nowhere in the data is there any linear effect such as noted above that would be needed to support your voodoo woo concepts as provided by you without substantiation of any kind (in spite of numerous claims).
That is ONLY as logical as the assumption that the state of the past was the same, and also only as evidenced.
Without some kind of substantiation for your numerous claims of "biblical evidence" to actually show reference in the bible to these kinds of claims I am calling deep doodoo on your voodoo woo magic concepts. Certainly the only myth I am aware of that involves extraordinary growth of plant material is the Jack-and-the-Beanstalk story. If this is your evidence then there are geese that lay golden eggs and harps that sing and giants that live in clouds, as well as a number of other child folk-tale myths that would have equal validity.
Time to put up or shut up: stop cowering behind the woodshed and start facing reality.
Enjoy.
ps (abe)
Message 9 No need to, I never doubted for a moment. I simply asked if we had a close up of the early part of the ring record. No is the answer. Thanks.
quote:Naturally, these ages underestimate the true ages of the respective trees (see Tree Age Determination for details), perhaps by hundreds of years in view of the fact that pith dates were not recovered for these trees. It seems likely that trees at least 5000 years old exist.
As noted previously, the Prometheus tree is missing the early growth section because that has been worn away by the weathering of the tree over time. This is why they know the tree is actually older than the count of the rings. You still lose. (/abe)
Edited by RAZD, : added "{F} or" to "linear progression from zero to a transition point on the decay curve"
I would vote not -- as long as you play by the rules of this thread. You may be wise to refrain from other threads until this is finished (you're call), and you may want to start providing some of that evidence you claim and promise:
Message 14 But I do have some basis for my idea, the documentation of the bible. The change I have in mind, was after the flood. It is founded on bible. And the bible evidence is available.
ALso note:
The present state of the universe the bible call a temporary one. Soon to be no more as is.
Does NOT say that past times were any different, just that an unspecified future will be.
Also note specification regarding your use of "biblical evidence"
quote:Criteria for biblical evidence:
it is in the King James Version (KJV) or is similar to the KJV that is online, as this is a fairly universally accepted translation and interpretation of the actual hebrew and greek texts used in the original compilation, and of the latin bible that originated from the compilation of those texts: http://www.genesis.net.au/%7Ebible/kjv/
it is clearly spelled out in the KJV on line such that no interpretation of the text is needed -- interpretation being subject to human error and bias.
I don't concede anything, just the criteria that you must pass to claim biblical evidence. It must be clear and non-ambiguous to me.
... the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
ie not of this earth.
This tree had a known growth rate of bearing fruit every single month of the year. That means that it does not match the present at all. Since the tree was in Eden, one can assume it matched the past.
We can assume nothing: this is your interpretation, the interpretation of a human which can be faulty.
All it means was that the tree was in Eden, which we have no clue where it was: could have been in "gods paradise" yes? Same place as in the future, hasn't moved.
If we want to get into it, we can confirm a different past growth rate from a few other indications as well.
Again, this involves your interpretations. Subject to mistakes.
Well, how different isotopes of carbon are now produced amount to the same issue. A fundamental forces change, remember affects the strong and weak nuclear forces, and possibly the charges, and balance of many things atomic. WE must establish whether the state of the universe first was the same, to go ahead and start assuming all over the place it all worked the same as now. "Some processes, such as photosynthesis for instance, favour one isotope over another, so after photosynthesis, the isotope C13 is depleted by 1.8% in comparison to its natural ratios in the atmosphere (Harkness, 1979). Conversly the inorganic carbon dissolved in the oceans is generally 0.7% enriched in 13C relative to atmospheric carbon dioxide. The extent of isotopic fractionation on the 14C/12C ratio which radiocarbon daters are seeking to measure accurately, is approximately double that for the measured 13C/12C ratio.." Isotopic Fractionation So, how do we determine the ratio of carbon levels, based only on the present system? In other words, you try and use climate changes to smooth out the wrinkles of what is expected. So far, I haven't really even seen you sample only rings that are beyond say, 4500!! That would only be some hundreds of rings in the early growt of the old trees. And, why not? Since that is the focus and crux of the matter of your claim.
Actually I've covered that: we looked at the tree ring data and then predicted what the carbon 14 levels would be given that the rings are annual rings and that the laws of physics holds for molecular behavior in general and the decay of radioactive molecules in particular, and how climate as we know it today would affect the initial carbon 14 levels to then adjust the data according to the climate markers in the tree rings -- this all predicts an exponential decay curve for the 14C/12C ratio in the samples that was then born out in the data. Prediction verified. State of universal laws today applicable to the length of the tree ring data is entirely consistent with those laws being in effect.
As just explained the ratios they were getting can't be measured by present ratios.
Doesn't say that at all. That is just your interpretation of the article, and your interpretation is subject to error, mistake, etcetera. What it says is that 13C/12C ratios (both non-radioactive) can be used to fine tune the 14C/12C data for today and other times. With the ratio of fractioning being the same now and in the past though, the relation of 14C/12C today compared to 14C/12C in the past still retains the same mathematical relationship to age.
In other words, you try and use climate changes to smooth out the wrinkles of what is expected. So far, I haven't really even seen you sample only rings that are beyond say, 4500!! That would only be some hundreds of rings in the early growt of the old trees. And, why not? Since that is the focus and crux of the matter of your claim.
This is just an admission of denial of the evidence. The tree ring data extends to 12,405 years, ignoring the rest of the data is denial, not refutation, not dealing with the evidence, not belief, not interpretation, just denial. So far you have done nothing to refute the data or the fact that they represent annual tree rings that measure a portion of the actual physical age of the real world. Denial is not refutation it is
Well, no need to cross that bridge until someone came to it. Since I don't think you much care what the bible says anyhow, I don't see how it really matters. That may be a bridge too far. Don't worry about the bible, and the things it says happened in the past yet. You would do well to simply either admit you have no science for your same past and future, or prove it now herewith. If you mean tree growth, yes, I think a lot of it would have been after the flood. We have the different past till 100 years after the flood, if that is what you mean. I'll have to go to Haiti and hire a translator if you keep this up. Look up the Usher chronology. I agree with it, by and large. Even if there was som room for opinion, it really isn't that much room.
Not only no evidence, a refusal to present evidence. Your position goes from weak to untenable. Whether you agree with the Usher chronology or not is irrelevant: it is an interpretation of the data and not the data. Interpretations are human constructs and subject to error, mistake, pride, ignorance and misrepresentations. All it is amounts to opinion. When opinion is at odds with reality it is not reality that suffers by comparison.
Y =4400 years. Well, a whole different growth process, and use of different light, and etc of the day would have left carbon in place. That means we don't need to produce it from the atmosphere, or decay. (Only since the time of Y) Well, a whole different growth process, and use of different light, and etc of the day would have left carbon in place. That means we don't need to produce it from the atmosphere, or decay. (Only since the time of Y) First of all, we can't start hypothesizing about the pre Y growth process, as if it should have done this and that, unless we knew something about it. For example, do we even know that plants used to use photosynthesis? And if they did for sure, did the former light produce the same levels of certain kinds of carbon? That means we also had about 4400 years of present decay at work! That is something like 75% of the decay half life gone already since the change.
Glad you agree that you cannot claim anything about what it was like "pre Y" after spending so much time doing just that. Those premises of yours were what were evaluated. Based on your premises decay would affect all pre-Y levels exactly the same (as decay did not exist pre-Y), reducing them in proportion from that time, and NOT from the time of their being "set" in the samples. This is what is predicted by your premises and it is falsified by the data: the data is totally inconsistent with the premises. Hence your premises are shot down:
Prove the dates, show us what they are based on. They are wrong. Simple, your dates are wrong, Egypt was after Babel, which was the time I think the big change happened. Just look at the dates, and what they are based on.
Looks like denial is not just a river in Egypt ... The dates are based on the written history, the written record, one that invokes no change in historical times of any biological, chemical, physical or astronomical behavior from what we know today. These histories also include records of pre-recorded times that also do not invoke any such changes. The dates for Egyptian tombs are also verified by comparison of wood to dendrochronology and dendroclimatology data and by other methods that only confirm the historical dates.
Time for you to do the research rather than just deny the evidence. A library would be a good start. The topic is easy: Egyptian history.
Hey, so far I have just been letting you punch yourself out here. Soon, the games may begin.
More empty promises. Time to put some ice on the discussion:
Annual Layers of Ice
Tree-rings are not the only system that build annual layers that can be measured and counted. Snow and ice also follow annual patterns in their formation and deposition that allow a number of ways to determine the annual layers.
To introduce the basic methods we will start with a fairly simple but dramatic set of annual ice layers:
The Quelccaya Ice Cap
This information comes from an on-line slide show:
quote:(Slide 1) The Peruvian altiplano is a high plateau ranging in altitude from 3500 to over 4000 meters above sea level. Though the altiplano is a cold, harsh environment, large herds of hardy llamas such as these hint at the richness of South America's high grasslands. The Quelccaya ice cap rises in the background, 55 km2 of ice that provides important clues on climatic change and variability in the South American tropics. The ice sheet's summit elevation is 5670 m and its maximum summit thickness is 164 m.
(Slide 3) The Quelccaya cap terminates abruptly and spectacularly in a 55 m ice cliff. The annual accumulation layers clearly visible in the photograph are an average of .75 m thick. While snow can fall during any season on the altiplano, most of it (80-90%) arrives between the months of November and April. The distinct seasonality of precipitation at Quelccaya results in the deposition of the dry season dust bands seen in the ice cliff. These layers are extremely useful to the paleoclimatologist because they allow ice core records to be dated very accurately using visual stratigraphyy, which is simply the visual identification of annual dust layers in ice records (in most ice cores, annual layers become indistinct at depth, forcing paleoclimatologists to rely on less-accurate ice-flow models to establish chronologies; at Quelccaya, on the other hand, annual layers are visible throughout the core).
(Slide 6) An array of forty-eight solar panels provided enough electricity to recover two ice cores to bedrock, one 154.8 m long covering the last 1350 years, and the other 163.6 m long and 1500 years old.
(Slide 11) Two of the analyses performed on the cores are presented here, accumulation and the oxygen isotope ratio (known as d18O). Accumulation is a measure of annual layer thickness normalized to account for the compression of ice layers at depth and corrected for ice flow dynamics. The oxygen isotope ratio (a measure of the ratio of heavy oxygen (18O) to light oxygen (16O)) is a proxy measure for paleotemperature, though it also reflects changes in snow surface processes and water-vapor history.
One of the most salient features in the last millennium of climate history is the Little Ice Age, a loosely-defined period of cold temperatures and increased climatic variability that has been documented in many parts of the globe.* As this figure shows, the Little Ice Age is identified in the Quelccaya climate record as a period of 'colder' (more negative) d18O roughly bracketed between 1550 A.D. and 1900 A.D.
Note that they are talking about correlating layers with climate information provided by d18O. We'll also come across this in other measurement systems. This is the proportion of a "heavy" isotope of oxygen in the atmosphere (16O is "normal" weight oxygen)
While this series of layers only date back to ~500AD they are important for a couple of reasons: they show visible layers, and they allow calibration of the oxygen isotope ratio (d18O) as a measure of layers and of climate. These layers also show a period of sever weather that is known from history (the Little Ice Age) and the effects of a volcanic eruption nearby that occurred in 1600 AD. These results can then be applied to other ice cores.
The Dunde Ice Cap
Continuing from the same slide show:
quote:(Slide 14) The Dunde Ice Cap (pronounced Dun-duh) is extremely remote, perched on the mountain range separating China's highest desert, the Qaidam Basin, from its more famous counterpart, the Gobi. For over 40,000 years, snow has been piling up on this 60 km2 ice cap deep in China's sparsely inhabited interior. A team of paleoclimatologists from the United States and China came here in 1987 to uncover the climatic secrets locked in Dunde's icy depths.
(Slide 17) Since Quelccaya is at the edge of the moist Amazon Basin while Dunde is wedged between two deserts, it is not surprising that accumulation rates are much higher at Quelccaya. Indeed, the annual average accumulation at Quelccaya in meters of water equivalent is 1.15 m compared to just .43 m at Dunde. Like Quelccaya, around 80% of Dunde's precipitation falls during the wet season. The dry season is clearly identified in the core record by the layers of dust from surrounding deserts visible in this ice segment.
Since snow accumulates more slowly at Dunde, ice from its ~140 m cores is significantly older than that from Quelccaya. While Quelccaya provides high-resolution clues to the last 1500 years of climate, Dunde stretches back over 40,000 years, well into the last ice age.
The same kind of alternating layers of dust and snow as at Quelccaya, the same kind of climate information from the oxygen isotope ratio (d18O), data that matches known climate markers, including the last ice age. Research on the Dunde Ice Cores is continuing, including analysis of the dust and pollen as markers not just of climate but of environment.
quote:High pollen concentrations between 10 000 and 4800 yr B.P. suggest that the summer monsoon probably extended beyond its present limit to reach Dunde and westernmost Tibet in response to orbital forcing. The summer monsoon retreated time-transgressively across the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau during the middle Holocene. Relatively humid periods occurred at 2700-2200, 1500-800, and 600-80 yr B.P., probably as a result of neoglacial cooling. Prominent pollen changes during the Medieval Warm Period (790-620 yr B.P.) and the Little Ice Age (330-80 yr B.P.) suggest that the vegetation in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau region is sensitive to abrupt, century-scale climatic changes, such as those anticipated in scenarios of greenhouse warming.
quote:The insoluble microparticle concentrations and size distributions and oxygen isotope abundances (d180) in two 1-meter ice cores from the margin of the Dunde ice cap (38° 06 'N; 96° 24 'E; 5325 masl) drilled in 1986 and three ice cores drilled to bedrock at the summit of the ice cap in 1987 suggest the presence of Wisconsin/Würm Glacial Stage (LWGS) ice in the subtropics.
Additionally, the morphological properties of the particles in the LWGS ice are identical to those of the thick, extensive loess deposits of central china which accumulated during the cold, dry glacial stages of the Pleistocene. When the climatic and environmental records are fully extracted from the three deep cores they will provide a very detailed record of variations in particulates (soluble and insoluble), stable isotopes, net balance, pollen and perhaps atmospheric gases of CO2 and methane through the Holocene into the last glacial in the subtropics on the climatically important Tibetan Plateau.
quote:The Wisconsin (in North America), Devensian (in the British Isles), Midlandian (in Ireland), Würm (in the Alps), and Weichsel (in northern central Europe) glaciations are the most recent glaciations of the Pleistocene epoch, which ended around 10,000 BCE. The general glacial advance began about 70,000 BCE, and reached its maximum extent about 18,000 BCE.
The name Devensian glaciation is used by British geologists and archaeologists and refers to what is often popularly meant by the latest Ice Age.
It was the final glacial phase of the Pleistocene and its deposits have been found overlying material from the preceding Ipswichian interglacial and lying beneath those from the following Flandrian stage of the Holocene.
The latter part of the Devensian includes Pollen zones I-IV, the Allerød and Bølling Oscillations and the Older and Younger Dryas climatic stages.
Thus we see evidence of the end of the last glaciation period in the dust and pollen in the layers of ice from the Dunde Ice Cap in addition to the evidence of the d18O ratios. Data that also makes the concept of a world wide flood (WWF) within this period difficult, as the dust every year is of the same type and the thickness of ice and dust layers are the same from year to year indicating that the ice cap has not changed locations nor floated on water at any time in its history.
Minimum age of the earth > 40,000 years based on this data.
And this is but the tip of the iceberg.
Enjoy.
References
Anonymous "Oxygen-16" Wikipedia. updated 7 Dec 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Oxygen-16 - Wikipedia
Anonymous "Oxygen-18" Wikipedia. updated 7 Dec 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from Oxygen-18 - Wikipedia
Kam-biu Liu, et al, "A pollen record of Holocene climatic changes from the Dunde ice cap, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau" Geology; February 1998; v. 26; no. 2; p. 135-138 accessed 19 Jan 2007 from http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/...tent/abstract/26/2/135
Thompson, Lonnie G., "Wisconsin/Wrm glacial stage ice in the subtropical dunde ice cap, China" GeoJournal Vol 17, No 4 Dec 1988 DOI 10.1007/BF00209440 P517-523, SpringerLink Date 20 Oct 2004 accessed 19 Jan 2007 from http://www.springerlink.com/content/wu102k4348572506/
Spring pollen, summer dust, winter snow. Annual layers accumulating for 40,000 years with no break for a flood and no disruption of the data, no change in the timing or kind of dust, which shows that the ice was in the same place for all those 40,000 years, undisturbed.
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