Buz's refutation of all radiometric dating methods

Buz,Fair enough, but you have, you must admit, concluded your sentences with "IMO" & no other supporting evidence more than once. I'm not the only one to have noticed, & my comment was based on that observation alone. But do you understand the links you cite? The Berkeley link seems fairly sure the Dinosaurs died out ~65 mya, I'm left wondering why you cited it when it agrees with me & disagrees with you. See my last post for more.If you are interested in science, start simple & build up. I also recommend finding a subject you enjoy & concentrating on that. I've bought books that have gone so high over my head they must have been in orbit, it's took a couple of simpler tomes to prime me for the first one. Don't bite off more than one mouthful at a time.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Buz, But it doesn't, not one little tiny bit!The point is that the resolution that can be achieved spans hundreds of millions of years to a million years (worst case). If you'd read post 18 you would see that the age range of the four dating methods spans 700,000 years. 0.7 my. If you were under the impression that radiometric dating could tell the date & time of the Alvarez event to 65,102,301 years, june 22nd, just after tea time, then you are constructing a straw man. Nobody said radiometric dating was that accurate, & post 18 supports the general accuracy of your Berkeley cite.[Added by edit: Interestingly the Alvarez event has tentatively been placed in spring summertime, the source quoted june. There are lily pad type leaf fossils on the K-T boundary that show damage consistent with freezing. An effect caused by dust blocking out sunlight? Irrelevant to the discussion, but interesting nonetheless]The point is, to within certain tolerances, radiometric dating gives excellent concordant results. Dalrymple & Berkeley agree. That the dinosaurs were already in decline, & the resolution of dated rocks cannot be accurate enough to truly & reliably (at this time) answer the question; did the dinosaurs die out slowly over hundreds of thousands of years, or was it in a blink? Has been known for yonks, it's nothing new, & does not in any way call into question that the dinosaurs died out ~65 mya.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.[This message has been edited by mark24, 06-25-2003]

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At a moderated site such as this the role of moderators is to facilitate discussion and keep things moving along. Sometime next week I'll probably start enforcing the guidelines a little more strictly in the threads where it seems called for. This is only because of available time. Other moderators can step in as they deem appropriate. Perhaps they don't agree with me. If you think it might help you might try contacting Adminnemooseus or AdminTC via email.

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Some of the K/T boundary discussion came about by my being pressured to respond to posts dealing with that. My apologies. I'll try to keep it more on topic from here.

So far Buzsaw has not engaged in genuine debate. He has quote mined and misrepresented those quotes. I see no further purpose in continuing the discussion.

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The above from a Berkley scientist which offers some, I say some, credence to certain statements I've made in my posts regarding the reliability of these dating methods.

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It would lend you some credence if the methods could be shown to be off by several million percent. Cite your evidence....

Mark, my whole purpose in the Berkley quote was not to focus on the dinosaurs, but to show that some scientific folks are willing to admit that the dating methods are not as down pat as some of you people seem to insist. his whole statement, after all, either directly or indirectly aludes to dating methods to a greater or lesser degree.BTW, no more IMO's -- no, not even any IMHO's. I'm beginning to see that's not cool in this town. Let me know if the BTW's begin to be a problem.

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It would lend you some credence if the methods could be shown to be off by several million percent. Cite your evidence....

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The statement speaks for itself. Take it for what it's worth. I didn't say it debunks dating methods, did I? I said it shows it's not all as down pat as some of you seem to insist. Why do we have to continually microanalyze everything I say?? My having to continually deal with this kind of thing has a lot to do with making it hard to keep on topic here.

Buz, Did I not make this clear in my last post? The scientific folks you refer to agree with me, not you.

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The point is that the resolution that can be achieved spans hundreds of millions of years to a million years (worst case). If you'd read post 18 you would see that the age range of the four dating methods spans 700,000 years. 0.7 my. If you were under the impression that radiometric dating could tell the date & time of the Alvarez event to 65,102,301 years, june 22nd, just after tea time, then you are constructing a straw man. Nobody said radiometric dating was that accurate, & post 18 supports the general accuracy of your Berkeley cite.

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The point is, to within certain tolerances, radiometric dating gives excellent concordant results. Dalrymple & Berkeley agree. That the dinosaurs were already in decline, & the resolution of dated rocks cannot be accurate enough to truly & reliably (at this time) answer the question; did the dinosaurs die out slowly over hundreds of thousands of years, or was it in a blink? Has been known for yonks, it's nothing new, & does not in any way call into question that the dinosaurs died out ~65 mya.

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No one is saying, or has ever said, that radiometric dating is 100% accurate. It does appear to be well over 98% accurate however. I'm sorry if you think this scores you points, but it doesn't. Four different methods got the K-T tektites within 0.7 my. That is an incredibly good result. By that I mean we can be fairly sure that the K-T boundary, & the tektites it contains are around 65 myo. I, nor anyone else is claiming that radiometric dating is any more "pat" than that.I stand by the following statement. Radiometric dating produces results that are consistently above 98% accurate. I have shown it. Your own cite agrees. Period.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

I thought you wanted trench warfare. Rigorous debate. That means making distinctions between small errors (detectable by known techniques) and show-stopping inaccuracy, because the two are drastically different.The consensus among scientists is that there is an acceptable level of inaccuracy to all dating methods. I don't even know what you mean by "down pat," because nobody claims there's no error - but usually it's in the single digits. When we use multiple methods, the likelihood of getting a good number just increases.

Buz, No probs, I'm a big fan of TLA's.Markps That's Three Letter Acronym, btw ------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Fine, that's what you said. Now read the cites you have quoted, and notice that they agree with what Mark, et al., have been telling you: a date of 65,000,000 years might be off by as much as a million, plus or minus!
That is not the same thing as being 6000 years ago instead of 65,000,000 years. It is not remotely the same. It's different. It's as different as "the summer after I was in tenth grade" and "yesterday afternoon."
Now address Mark's post.

Well Buz, your statement speaks for itself.You find it hard to keep on topic - if people press YOU to stay on topic rather than producing articles which offer no real support for your case.Let me put it simply:If radiometric dating methods were typically so unreliable that the error margin was +/- 50% YEC would still be proven wrong. Even ancient Earth/Young life views would be proven wrong by the existence of fossils which can be dated indirectly with the help of radiometric dating.But the concordance between the different radiometric dating methods shows that they are a good deal more reliable than that when properly used.So perhaps you would like to produce something which actually shows that the errors are as bad as you say and that explains the contrary evidence.And please don't accuse people of being irrational or illogical just because they prefer to follow the evidence rather than your personal beliefs.

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And please don't accuse people of being irrational or illogical just because they prefer to follow the evidence rather than your personal beliefs.

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You people need to understand that much of what I have posted in this thread, including some of my "IMOs", is not just my own personal beliefs. For examples:1. I do agree with you people in my statements that the earth itself is likely older than 6000 years and could be very old. Where I go with most creationists is about life on earth.2. My beliefs that dating methods are flawed are shared by numerous educated creationist archeologists and scientists, some who were formerly evos.For example, this link which corroberates statements I've made about C14 dating:

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Many people believe the Bible must be erroneous about the age of the earth because the scientific community claims it is much older. Even young earth creationists will tend to assume the earth is probably older than 6000 years due to radiocarbon dating. Before making such assumptions, lets examine those related to age dating. C-14 or radiocarbon dating is used to date the remains of the carbon-based life forms whose remains can be found on earth. C-14 is produced in the atmosphere, then incorporated into plants during photosynthesis, and passed on through the food chain. Using radiocarbon for dating is reliant upon the assumption that C-14 production in the atmosphere has been constant during the development of life on earth.

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If the earth is billions of years old, then the rate of production and decay should have reached steady-state a long time ago. It is assumed that these rates should be at equilibrium, but today we know that the rate of C-14 production exceeds the rate of decay by as much as 25%. This increase is attributed to the recent industrial revolution, and believed to be primarily due to atmospheric nuclear testing. Again, it is assumed that before the industrial revolution the rates would have been at steady-state. Therefore to correct for the increased rate of C-14 production, a sample is used from early in the 19th century as a standardizing reference.

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The problem with C-14 dating: If the rate of C-14 production in the atmosphere was less in the past than it is today, then samples would date excessively old. From Biblical references and current data there is is good evidence that our atmosphere has changed dramatically. The Bible says there was no rainbow before the flood, which must mean the atmosphere was altered by the flood significantly. We also know the atmosphere continues to decay. Today we have evidence of global warming, and holes in the ozone layer, both indicating a change in density that could cause higher rates of C-14 production. Belief in an old earth has led to assumptions that C-14 production and decay should be at stead-state. Radiocarbon is therefore being used for dating when we simply have no way to determine what the rates of C-14 production were in the past, and we know that these rates are simply not at equilibrium today.

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Age Dating the EarthPerhaps we could address this C14 problem, for for us, including scientists who believe there was a global flood, most of us believe in the world climate was different than post flood climate and that carbon atoms were not as prevelant in the atmosphere as they are today.Yes, the flood indicates the supernatural factor, but after all, this is the EvC discussion board, is it not? Isn't this board suppose to be about debate between those who believe in the supernatural (creationists) and those who don't? So to disqualify statements in scientific discussion on the basis of it not being scientific seems to defeat the whole idea of this board. Your title itself suggests the supernatural on the part of your ideological counterparts. If you would recognize that here in these threads, maybe you'd get more participation from creationists here. I find it unusual on a board this size that I have practically no support in this discussion on the problems with dating methods, especially on that of C14 in relation to the pre-flood atmosphere.I'll be outa town today, and company for a couple of days so will get back when I can.[This message has been edited by buzsaw, 06-26-2003]

I don't know that it's stated in any guidelines anywhere but I, and I'm pretty sure others, have posted in other places that we don't care about supernaturual views. You keep those in church and out of schools and we'll be glad to ignore them.Myself, I'm not going to ignore the so-called "scientific" creationists whose goal is to interfere with the teaching of science. That's what underlies the arguments here.If you want to play the magic game then ok, go ahead but it's not science. If you want to talk about evidence and the measurement of ages then the supernatural (by definition out side of nature and unmeasureable) is outside the discussion boundaries.As for the C-14 arguments == I think there is a thread for them. But this one is about radiometric dating in general so I suppose it's on topic. Before you bring that one up perhaps you should finish dealing with a lot of other unfinished business first.Also the statements you posted about C-14 dating problems are all understood and answered. I suggest you can read the material yourself without much trouble.Of course, they muddle in billions of years in a discussion of c-14 dating which is silly. They also ignore the fact that c-14 dating has been calibrated pretty well and checked over a range of dates.So while all the points posted are interesting they have been demonstrated to be wrong and or irrelevant.

Buz, you did state:
"Geologists and physicists mentally locked into the illogical TOE tend to downplay simple logic and common sense in much of what they have become able to swallow, ideologically"It was in post 54 and you have provided no evidence that there is any truth in it at all. It's just a personal attack aimed at discrediting the evidence against you - pure ad hominem.And there is no C14 problem. The facts are well known and your source has no excuse for writing on the subject without being aware of them - or worse ignoring them.The first fact is that the rate of production is variable and depends on cosmic rays hitting the Earth's atmosphere. Scientists take this into account and are investigating it using material where the age can be independantly confirmed. Dendrochronology goes back around 10,000 years and other methods - such as lake varves go back tens of thousands of years more. And yes, they prove that life ahs been around for more than 10,000 years.The second fact is that the Industrial Revolution affected neither the rate of production nor that of decay. By burning fossil fuel humans have released old carbon (therefore not contining significant amounts of C14) into the atmosphere, affecting the ratio of C14 to C12. This effect means that dates over the last few hundred years can be ambiguous. It has no relevance to the really old material at all (indeed we only get "wrong" ages for material from the 20th Century or later - and the latter half of that is also affected by increased C14 production caused by the testing of nuclear weapons).And this is why creationist sources are often not taken seriously. They are frequently wrong.Try this site for some real information : radiocarbon WEB-info