Radiocarbon dates -- young coal and natural gas (things that C14 date too young/old)

I'm no historian of science, and I have no immediate access to old issues of Radiocarbon, but I'll bet that carbon-14 dating in 1966 was done by burning the sample to carbon dioxide (though they perhaps left the natural gas alone) and counting decays of carbon-14 nuclei with a Geiger counter. 30,000 years age is pretty durn good as a limit if that's the case: five half-lives takes us to 1/32 of modern-day CO2, and I don't think Geiger counters exactly go wild over a glass of Coke.The partial attributions and "reverse spin" that these "citations" demonstrate are reminiscent of Kent Hovind and his "living snail dated at 2300 years old!!11!" The paper that actual "date" was extracted from was titled Radiocarbon Dating: Fictitious Results from Mollusk Shells. It explained how river-dwelling snails got lots of ancient carbon in their diets. If Hovind (or his source) ever read either the title or the text, he lied when he misquoted the paper.
ML Keith, GM Anderson, Science, vol 141, pp634-637 (1963)

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"The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe." - Agobard of Lyons, ca. 830 AD

Oh crap, Coyote. Another obstacle to my ever getting any work done....AbE: but I was right - burned to CO2 and decays were counted.Edited by Coragyps, : add comment