thank you coyote for keeping it civil
here a few points of contention for C14 that i have found in print in various places
contamination of the samples tested for instance. Its always possible that a bit of wood, for example, from the heart of an old tree might contain live sap. Or if it was extracted with an organic solvent (often made from petroleum), a trace of the solvent might be left in the portion analyzed. Charcoal could have been penetrated by rootlets from living plants. Any of these senarios could affect the levels of C14
Live shellfish have been found with carbonate from minerals long buried or from seawater upwelling from the deep ocean where it had been for thousands of years. Such things can make a specimen appear either older or younger than it really is.
there is also the assumption that the level of carbon 14 in the atmosphere has always been the same as it is now. But we know that the carbon level has increased a lot since the explosion of neuclar bombs into the atmosphere and since the use of burning fossil fuels. So how do we really know what the levels were thousands of years ago?
volcanic eruptions also add to the stable carbon-dioxide reservoir, thus diluting the radiocarbon....so how do they account for all these possible variences in c14 in the atmosphere??? How can they honestly know how much to make allowance for???