Age of mankind, dating, and the flood

You also might want to bookmark RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination?, Dr. Beertsche's evaluation. This appears at RATE (Radioactivity and the Age of The Earth): Analysis and Evaluation of Radiometric Dating, wherein there's lots of analysis and devastating criticism of RATE's ratty results. Oh, and A Dialogue about RATE.Edited by JonF, : Add last link

Mainstream science has willingly and in unbiased fashion carefully tested the claims of creationists. All of them are BS. Creationists refusing to accept this fact are the reason for all these websites and dialog.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

He's already explained why you are wrong. You are ignoring calibration.

By comparing 14C results to the results of other dating methods (on the same samples) that do not have any link to the Earth's magnetic field. As already explained. in Message 26 and you're ignoring:

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...it ignores the point that they make, which is that the ratio between c-12 and c-14 has been changing and increasing the proportion of c-14, assuming that the ratio has been relatively constant over the last thousands of years causes the samples to appear much older than they really are, what you have to say about that?

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If that were the case, you might have a point. However, the radiocarbon method, as it is currently used, does correct for atmospheric variation. It does so by comparing radiocarbon dates on items of known ages with radiocarbon ages themselves. In this manner the changes in C14 levels in the atmosphere are corrected for.

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The items of known ages include tree-rings, varves, annular rings in corals, etc. Not surprisingly, the calibration curve for these various materials is in close agreement and if I remember correctly, the maximum correction is on the order of 11%.

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This is what the calibration curve looks like:

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Your comment is another example of creationists raising arguments against radiocarbon dating without knowing what they are talking about. The problem of atmospheric fluctuations was identified by scientists over 50 years ago and a calibration curve has been developed to deal with it.

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Here is a good article dealing with the calibration curve (pdf format):

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Radiocarbon calibration curve spanning 0 to 50,000 years BP based on paired 230Th/234U/238U and 14C dates on pristine corals

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Is radiocarbon dating based on assumptions? is a good explanation by a former YEC, formerly withthe ICR but left because he insisted on honesty. I think he still doesn't agree with all of mainstream science but on this subject he's sound.You could also read the Wikipedia article on 14C calibration; it's pretty accurate.

Sounds like a somewhat confused version of R.H. Brown's theory.It doesn't work.If there was essentially zero radiocarbon circa 4500 years ago, then the dynamics of radiocarbon in the atmosphere and ocean and organisms is such that we would still be a long way from secular equilibrium (since we are now less than one half-life of 14C from the supposed zero), and we would have been even farther from secular equilibrium in historic times. This leads immediately to obvious impossibilities. If the 14C/12C ratio in a sample is not almost completely due to decay but is also significantly due to a much lower 14C/12C ratio when the organism died, then everything we have dated is noticeably younger than we think. But we have exceptionally solid evidence that the 14C/12C ratio has been essentially constant for the last 3500 years or so.My favorite example is bread dug up from Pompeii, under the ashes of Vesuvius' eruption in 79 AD. If you are correct, then the wheat from which that bread was baked grew centuries after the bread was buried under Vesuvius' ash.Here's poster Mike PSS's graph based on his spreadsheet, which doesn't seem to be around anymore, but I could probably get it from him in a few days: And, of course, the consilience with other methods is still there. Creationists just can't handle consilience.

Well, he is close to a testable scientific hypothesis. Nothing wrong with exploring the implications of a hypothesis. He's very likely unaware that hypotheses such as that have been formed, tested, and proved false.

.Edited by JonF, : Damn mouse randomly double-clicks and double posted.

A few calibrations against historical dates have been done. Almost all of carbon dating's calibration is done against other methods of dating the same samples, notably dendrochronology, varves, and U-Th dating of corals and speleotherms, δ[sup]18[/sup]O in ice cores. These other methods are all consilient; they give the same results to within a small margin of error. If you want to claim that varves aren't annual, you need to explain why dendrochronology and U-Th dating and δ[sup]18[/sup]O agree with it. And the same for all the methods. Given the consilience the simplest explanation is that the dating methods are all measuring the same thing, real time elapsed.If you want to proffer another explanation, you must explain the consilience.As for the data, you can have as much as you want from Radiocarbon vol 51 no 4 and IntCal09 Supplemental Data.You should also look at Aegean Dendrochronology Project December 1996 Progress Report

Wut?The tree ring dates and the conventional dates agree. (The technical term is "consilience".) That is a verification of both. Are you claiming that Rohl's chronology would have come up with a different date than the conventional one? If so, what would be the significance of the mismatch between dendrochronology and Rohl's chronology? Well, it would mean that Rohl's chronology is wrong. (You've tried to handwave consilience away, but it's still the elephant in the room).There's also Jerusalem Tunnel Linked to Bible. They used 14C to date a leaf embedded in the plaster (obviously older than the plaster) and U-Th disequilibrium (one of the techniques used to calibrarte 15C) to date a plaster stalagmite (obviously younger than the tunnel) and bracketed the date the tunnel was built. You're awfully sure of yourself. Upon what evidence do you make this determination? Yup, that's what we have. Really? Do tell. Explain. In detail. With citations. As far as anyone can tell, no. And WTF are the "less easily understood sequences"? They're all pretty much the same difficulty. True. But there is no doubt on each study. At least no doubt of significance; each might be off by a percent or two. And there's no evidence of scientists discarding studies of any kind.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Showing your ignorance again. No, it was not done because it was not necessary. Fossils from marine organisms that incorporate carbon in their shells have to be re-calibrated to get the correct carbon dates, because their shells are at least partly derived from deep-ocean carbon sources that are not in equilibrium with atmospheric carbon sources. The diatoms in lake Suigetsu are not marine. You need to look up the history of lake Suigetsu. When the varves were formed it had no connection to a source of salt water. If you want to invoke water table seepage, show us the numbers. What you make up doesn't count. What you can demonstrate does.And, of course like all YECs you can't bring yourself to address the consilience of the varve counts with dendrochronology and 14C dating and the relatively recent correlation with Ar-Ar dating of tephras and palaeoclimatology (Tephra).Until you address this consilience you haven't even got a hypothesis.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

He/she thinks that the Lake Suigetsu varve 14C dates are way off because no marine reservoir correction was applied.Can't tell the difference between marine and lacustrine. And consilience with other methods? Pah!And he/she doesn't even know that the Suigetsu diatoms are not dated by 14C. The dating is done in plant material embedded within the varves. I missed that in my previous replies. See Radiocarbon (14C) CalibrationEdited by JonF, : Add last paragraph.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

He/she is proposing that the layers themselves are not annual, but are deposited much faster by some "tidal water table related die-offs". Of course there are holes in this you could drive a truck through. E.g. how do tides affect a lake, that's not connected to the sea, through the water table? How do tides even transmit through the water table? How do tides affect the 14C dates of embedded plant material in exact step with the diatom blooms and die-offs? How do tides cause diatom blooms and then die-offs? How do tides in Japan cause trees all over the world to lay down thousands of rings per year in exact step with the varves in Suigetsu? Why does the tephra layer correlated with a nearby volcano date by Ar-Ar almost exactly the same as the 14C date of that layer?The fact that he/she doesn't know what's being dated by 14C is a separate major error.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : punctuation

You still aren't making any effort to learn enough to be able to discuss the subject.The Suigetsu varves are formed by a constant accumulation of dark sediment that is whitened by a bloom of diatoms in the spring, followed by a die-off when the food supply is nearly exhausted.There's a reasonably non-technical explanation at Lake Suigetsu and the 60,000 Year Varve Chronology. Just another link for you to ignore.In most varve situations, and I bet in Suigetsu as well, any significant salinity in the water stops varve formation by flocculating the clay sediment as it settles. And you have yet to come up with even a fantasy about how tides or anything could affect the varve formation when the varves were forming and Suigetsu was not connected to the sea. Tides don't move saltwater any significant distance through the water table, there's too much friction. Lake Suigetsu's closest approach to the sea is about 1 km, and there is no noticeable salt in the lake (see map and description at Mikata-goko lakes, another one for you to ignore).Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Nope, not a chance. Consilience between varve counts and 14C dates and tree rings and Ar-Ar dating of tephra and U-Th dating of corals is not due to cherry-picking. Unless you can show evidence of such.

I looked at your links. They show tidal salinity effects only in areas within a couple of hundred yards or less from the sea. Not a kilometer from the sea as is Suigetsu. Plus Suigetsu is very still and stratified, and any salinity introduced at the edges would take a long time to diffuse to the center of the lake where the varves have been cored. Your claim doesn't cut the mustard. Ther diatoms bloom at the surface and settle after dying. If seawater intruded at the bottom of the lake it would have no effect. And the two independent overestimates would just happen to agree essentially perfectly? And just happen to agree with dendrochronology, and Ar-Ar dating of tephra, and U-Th dating of corals and speleotherms and Cariaco basin varves (see A high-resolution record of atmospheric 14C based on Hulu Cave speleothem H82 figures 5 and 6) and many others I'm not going to bother to dig up for you to ignore.Yeah, right. Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Consilience between multiple independent dating methods