Age Correlations and an Old Earth

You have to help them here. They don't get that the dates and count match up very well, without the adjustments. It sound circular when you don't know the numbers and sizes of the C14 level variation adjustments. This is a classic problem when the absolute and relative sizes of the numbers involved are not known.whatever, one more time correlations. You can not sensibly discuss this without understanding what that means.Do you?[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 04-10-2004]

Coragyps, I don't know much about the lake in question, but would think that storms would stir up the clays including whatever diatoms your talking about, causing an illusion of multiple algae layers, which you probably are mistakening for more than one year, etc...as they resettle quickly, with the pollens, and different particles of clay seal above, etc...P.S. Where I live rainstorms stirs up the waters, might only need a good wind, to stir up the algae blooms, and the silty shallows containing dead algae & silty clays, to create more varves, if the shallower waters gets suspended, with watershed additions of pollens, suspended clays, washing into the lake, the storms winds mixing this all together, the algaes would re-settle first with the pollen, with the clays settling after, many storms a year creating your illusion that many years have passed, it might well be that C-14 is getting diluted proportionally the deeper into the sediments, creating the illusion that C-14 is accurate, that it correlates, etc...

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Coragyps, I don't know much about the lake in question, but would think that storms would stir up the clays including whatever diatoms your talking about, causing an illusion of multiple algae layers, which you probably are mistakening for more than one year, etc...as they resettle quickly, with the pollens, and different particles of clay seal above, etc...

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This does not explain the correlation between radiometric ages and varve layers. Why is it so close if every storm 'stirs up' the sediments? Do you have the same number of storms every year? Do you have evidence of sediment transport? Why are there any varves at all if the sediments are so easily disrupted?I would also like to hear your mechanism for 'stirring' lake-bottom sediments by storms.

edge, I would think you would agree the shallows would be stirred up, due to how choppy the waters get, due to the wind, you really don't need rain, though that would bring fresh pollen, clays from the watershed, the water itself could be part of transport, where I live the wind presses the level up on the southside when the north wind blows, depending on which way the wind blows affects water levels, one side lower than the other side, it probably doesn't stir the deeper silts, creating your illusion, is not this C-14 water soluable, if so, leaning dilution leaching factors are creating your other illusion, that lower varves are quite old, kinda like how seals
will date older than land animals, but because water solutes equalize over time, its creating your proportional illusion, how I'm not exactly sure, perhaps the clays are playing a factor, in capillary solute water movements between the varves, as different solutes are equalizing, with all the other mineral solutes, because the water above would be fresh water, would not solutes equalize upward, creating your illusion, etc...

If the lake were stirred up there would not be any layers.If the lake were stirred up there would not be the correlation of the climates for each of the annual years with the same climate patterns for the other annual layers in the list -- the dendrochronological layers at the beginning, and the ice cap layers and the calcite devil's hole layers at the end ... correlations of matching global climate patterns for each different system in all the different locations on earth.re your message #41: others have talked about some of your issues. The half life is the time period for one half of the atoms to decay. After another half life half of the remaining atoms have decayed (leaving 1/4) after 3 there is 1/8th ... etc. -- theoretically it never gets to zero, but in practice it gets to such a low level that it is not detectable against the effect of background radiation ... that point is about 50,000 years for C-14. Finding minute trace quantities of C-14 in really old fossils or coal or whatever does not mean there is a problem, as this is predicted by the model -- just that the quantities are too small to establish a reliable date from the information available.C-14 dating of old bones is generally not done because of material used to preserve the bones contaminating the C-14 base.Walt is engaging in deliberately bad science knowing full well that the results will seem bogus to people unaware of proper procedures.For real information on the accuracy of C-14 dating read
Dr Weins at Radiometric Dating
a christian scientist with "a PhD in Physics, with a minor in Geology. His PhD thesis was on isotope ratios in meteorites, including surface exposure dating. He was employed at Caltech's Division of Geological & Planetary Sciences at the time of writing the first edition. He is presently employed in the Space & Atmospheric Sciences Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory."In short a scientist in the actual field of radiometric dating.
go to page 13 if you want to read only the C-14 information, but you should also look at the introduction.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

That is a complete non-answer. It says, in a paragraph, what you could have said in a couple of sentences.1) I have no clue how this could happen.
2) I don't understand the issue in the first place.I'm sure you don't know this but the above is obvious from your post.

Nothing like reading the article linked to actually finding out information rather than blowing smoke eh? That is over 100 feet deep, too deep to be stirred up by storms, as wave termoil does not penetrate that far.enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Abbyleever, I just don't see how the wind would stir up the deeper silts, would seem to me that the wind would blow the upper levels to and fro, redepositing silts from the shallows over the deeper waters, explaining many varves per year, theorizing that the clays play a factor in how the C-14 is leaching upward, through the clays as solutes seek to equalize, to the fresher waters above, etc...P.S. Is the varves taken from cores of the deeper waters, or the shallows, etc...

Hi, Whatever!One point that keeps getting repeated is the correlations of ¹⁴C dating. Your possibility of storms causing multiple varve layers has at least a couple of problems. One is that we already know that storms in modern times do not cause additional layers, so you must figure out why that might have been different in the past. Another is that the layers have been correlated (there's that word again) with climate patterns and seasons, things that storms cannot imitate. But your biggest problem is explaining how a storm on a lake in Japan causes additional tree rings in trees halfway around the world, because that's part of the correlating data, too.--Percy

And another problem or two for you to address, whatever:*the varves, as you've been told, consist of a dark clay layer along with a light diatom-shell layer. How does stirred-up shallow sediment form 45,000+ pairs of layers like that, when modern-day sediment is clay in the winter/spring and diatoms in the summer?*The 14C used for dating, as you've been told, is from leaves, insect parts, and the like. It's not in a water-soluble form, or it wouldn't be there.* The cores were from out in the middle of the lake.*Answer Percy and Ned. Why the correlation?

I suspected the cores was taken from the deeper silts, that most of the insect parts would of come from the shallows as the wind stirs up the silts in the shallows, transporting to the deeper silts, these insect parts, pollen, which would then settle out first before the finer suspended clays, giving the false illusion of another annual seasonal layering, its also a known fact that trees don't always give one annual tree ring per year, tree rings appear to be related more on rain fluctualtions, where your varves are probably laid down by settling seasonally, and after not only by storms but by windy days, as the surface waters flow to and fro, carrying silts and insect parts over the deeper waters and the particles suspended resettling, on the other note some trees in the tropic don't have annual tree rings, so its all kinda interpretative, how you determine the actual age of the tree by counting the tree rings, meaning some trees with 2,000 annual tree rings could be either 2,000 years old or 1,000 years old, or somewhere in between, meaning it more about the rainfall in the past, so if you calibrate the C-14 methods after trees believed to be older than they actually are, based of what your assuming was the C-14 levels in the atmosphere in the past, and the tree rings counts, all affecting the levels your calculating off these assumptions in the present, though find it interesting you don't feel that dilution affects the concentrations of what you call non soluable, which if true supports Snellings mineralized fossil is actually much younger than the basalt sediments it was found between, proving the dating methods bogus, I was trying to be on your side a bit, that your varves are affected by leaching out of C-14 proportionally affecting your varve dates, but kinda find it interesting how Snellings fossil supports your contention you can not date the sediments and correlate the fossils are old, if you believe insect parts, leaves are not affected by mineralization (non-soluable), meaning not affected by leaching, then your supporting Snellings mineralized wood fossil being young, too, that it had C-14 levels saying it couldn't be as old as the sediments it was found, this is all I'm saying is your varves are affected by dilution, too, but it does all support the fossils are not millions of years old, it all depends I suppose how your correlating the data, if you don't believe in mineralization, leaching, then your varves appear to correlate with tree rings, of certain habitats in certain select, other parts of the world, etc...P.S. Don't get too bent, I'm not a scientists, just theorizing a bit, that your all agreeing with Snellings mineralized wood fossil that its correlated its young too, similar in age to some of your varves, it was just found in sediments, but the organic carbons apparently tells that it correlates to it too being quite young, too, not millions of years old, etc...Where is it documented that storms and windy days not creating new varves, it would be interesting to see these studies, what do they use markers, on the bottom to show its not happening in the now, or are they just assuming its not, etc...[This message has been edited by whatever, 04-11-2004]

whatever, dude, may i make some suggestions. Here is how I would go about looking into a case like this. I would do this if it was a bit important to me to understand the validity of what is being claimed for this lake. I would do it whether I was inclinded to disagree or agree with the conclusions.First I would not jump in making up a bunch of crazy ideas until I understood in a bit of detail just what the situation with this lake was. When you make things up without any knowledge it looks silly and is easily shown to be wrong.Let's try some questions that might be important.1) How are the layers told a part?
This one has already been answered. Have you understood it?
2)Are the layers still being laid down today? For how long has the lake been observed doing this?
3)Are there any discontinuities in the layering? Are they correlated with any known events (major typhon or something)?
4)Are there any other markers in the layers (other than C-14)? For example, can a volcanoes dust be found at about the "right" layer? Is the sudden appearance of nuclear test fallout found?
5)The varves are used to "calibrate" the C-14 dates. This sound circular. How far off is the C-14 dating when no callibration at all is applied?
6)What has been done to control the collection of the cores?You need to ask questions first not make wild speculations. So far you ideas are obviously not relavant at all to the varve dating. Once you understand the nature of the layers it is clear that storm mixing can not explain them in any way. None of what you suggest has any bearing on real life here.PS - you haven't shown that you understand correlatins yet. Could you clarify that?[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 04-11-2004]

Reminds me of the star formation thread a couple of months ago. And not in a good way!

Dude, you're just adding details to a speculation already shown to have serious problems. The process you describe is not observed happening today, and the annual layers being laid down today one per year are pretty much the same as those laid down thousands of years ago. You need to explain why it doesn't happen this way today but is still the same as long ago when this did happen. Pollen is of all different sizes and densities, but the pollen in the varve layers is not stratified according to either one, but according to whether it is spring or not. It's very rare to have more than one tree ring per year. And many per year simply never happens, but that's what you require. But most importantly, you're still failing to address the correlation. Even if you're suppositions were correct (despite all the opposing evidence and complete lack of supporting evidence) and it were possible for many varve levels and many tree rings to happen every year, you still have no way of explaining the correlations. For your scenario to be correct, a storm on a lake in one part of world would have to cause a tree ring to grow in another part of the world.I tried to make sense of the rest of your post, but the lack of sentences and paragraphs made most of it just run together. What you're doing is speculating, not theorizing. And since there is little hard evidence that you're willing to accept, your speculations have little to no correspondence to the real world.--Percy

and Answers to these questions are in the article. If you read it you would see that (1) the lake is "kettle" shaped so your flux of sediment back and forth along the bottom would only affect the shallow edges and drop off with depth towards the center, and (2) that a total of 5 cores were taken from the middle of the lake, only one extending down to a level estimated to have been laid down 100,000 years ago. The five all agree on dates down to 20,000 years ago -- they correlate with each other to that point. (that's a 5% error at 40,000 years)Reading the article will also show you other correlations with the data from the lake ("European sediments (5,6)" and "marine calibrations (7-9)"), the major correlations being the major climate trends, like the Younger Dryas and Oldest Dryas glaciations, and the Allerd/Blling warm period, over and above the minor annual ones.Any explanation of possible sources of errors in counting the layers has to explain how these correlations can occur in exactly these patterns.Enjoy

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}