Age Correlations and an Old Earth: Part II.

Now that Craig seems to have taken a break from making stuff up perhaps this conversation can pick up again.Literalist, you were going to have a look at more of the correlations evidence. How's that coming. It would be nice to get back to a rational dicussion.

I don't know enough about the details of the study of Lake Suigetsu to comment much on that.As for the others:You are sceptical of the annual tree rings because there are occasional "false" rings.However, in maintaining this sceptisism you ignore the fact that rings are counted from a number of different species and from a number of different locations spread around the world.In addtion, there are sometimes markers in these ring counts which connect these counts and, sometimes, with historic events.In addtion, the decay rate of C14 can be measured directly. The actual amount being stored in the rings does of course vary but not by more than a few percent; not enough to match up to the doubling of years by false rings.All of these various counts match up rather well, your suggestion of occasional false rings can not begin to account for that. It doesn't account for the reasonably close raw match between the C14 decay rate and the tree ring count. Does C14 suddenly decay twice as fast in a year when false rings are laid down?Ice Layers
You may not have read about it yet but the ice layers are separated by measureing isotopic abundances in the layers. This varies with temperature changes. Again these layers have historically know markers (volcanic eruptions) laid down in them every so often. The counts match up.After all this is set aside on a case by case basis there is still the need to explain the correlations between all of these methods AND many others. Again you haven't touched an explanation of that.Your comment: Is disengenuous I would say or not really spending any time thinking about it at all."and tree-rings are an indicator of age in some way)". False rings are, as you have noted, understood. They do not occur under all circumastance or for all spieces. Therefor they certainly do indicate age "in some way". They are reasonably close to years. They have been check by matching to historic events. They work as a count of years!"Varve depth MIGHT be..." This is absurd. Varve depth is a measure of age! Exactly how accurate a measure is what is being discussed.You have given not the smallest hint how all these (and other) methods could not only correlate by correlate quantitatively.To do that you would have to be suggesting that in the years when a false ring appears it happens in all trees over all the world AND at the same time C14 decays twice as fast AND the varves lay down twice as fast.After all this has happened then the resulting counts and measurements have to somehow match up to know historic events.I await your explanation of how this happens.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 12-31-2004 17:48 AM

Well, there is an explanation. The earth is as old as dated, it is not 6,000 years old.It should make you wonder that this sort of information has been available for years and there are no creationist sites explaining the correlations. It isn't just you that can't explain this. The entire creationist camp can't come up with something that covers all the information available.That leaves only one working explanation for now. That is what science has to teach. There is nothing else to give equal time to in classrooms is there? When a better explanation comes along that is what will be taught in the classrooms. Do not hold your breath waiting on the so-called creation "scientists".

Nice try, TL.If this was a standalone case and we were trying to determine if we could use it as a dating device then we would have to ask all these kind of questions. We'd have to be very, very careful to make sure that the counts were good.We'd have to do this because there would be no other way of cross checking them.Now, of course, care has to be taken in the analysis and counting in any case but since this is not standalone we can reduce the possibility of there being any such introduced error (especially and even ones we can't imagine ) because this correlates with other things.Remember the measured rate of C14 decay matches up to the lake layers rather well without any correction. In addition, if any historic events leave a mark (I know they do elsewhere but don't know if they do here) we have another independent cross check.If those kind of things check out,then you can go on trying to invent sources of error all you want. Your invention has to not only imagine how the error could occur but also how it could occur and maintain the cross checking.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 02-03-2005 02:46 AM

I think you have it right on actually. Let me try to put it in yet another set of words.1) We see anual layers being put down in the lake now
2) We can count the layers with the same kind of pattern back a few 10's of thousands of years.
3) When we C14 date fossils buried in the layers the C14 dates are older for deeper layers and younger for higher ones.
4) We know that C14 production is NOT constant from year to year so we expect the layer dates and the C14 dates to be out a bit based on the inconsistency of the C14 creation in the upper atmosphere.
5) The raw, uncorrected C14 dates are within about 7 or so % of the dates obtained by just counting layers.
6) The layers are an independent method of measureing dates from the C14 dates.
7) But the layers can be used to correct for the inconstant C14 production so that C14 dates taken without something like the layers can be used on their own to date things.
8) The dates obtained from this lake agree with dates taken from other places and by other methods.I think that is the whole story.What seems to be missed my many who don't like the dates obtained is that you can't make up a story as to why one dating method might be wrong without explaining why a totally different dating method gives the same results.I have never seen any creationist site that tackles the correlation problem. If you find one I know we would be all interested in seeing it.

As you learn more about it these things are explained. You should be very careful of all the sources that you read.

RASD has moved a bit quickly I think.The climate isn't the influence on C14 dates that is the concern. We know where C14 comes from (it is created high in the atmosphere from N14 (I think it is) by radiation from space). We also know that the rate of creation of C14 is not constant. So we know that a correction to C14 dates is needed.The lake varves offer a measure of the degree of error caused by the non-constant creation of C14 and a correction for it. The degree of error is less than 10 %. The corrections vary from very much less than that up to about that much.

I have read some material about C14 in diamonds that is generated by local radioactivity and the levels are right for that source. I think it has even come up here before.

Uh, I think we all thought we had said it several times. Sorry it wasn't clear.ABE
I just thought of an analogy! (We all think they are so clever and they usually don't work for anyone else).The lake varves are a bit like a garbage dump out back of a cottage. There is spring and fall cleaning each year and a new layer goes down. Leaves in the fall, brush and stuff in the spring. The layers are pretty clearly marked with not much mixing. The folks there have kept to this habit for decades and right up to now so I can watch them in their twice yearly clean up.Once in awhile some other garbage is mixed up in there. Occasionally an old calendar is dumped in too. They might not get dumped right away so they could be a year or two old before they go in but one can imagine that older calendars would be lower down.When I count all the layers over the 50 years the old folks have lived there and the 40 that their parents were there I find about 35 calendars in there.When I mark the calendar years down next to the number of layers back I dug I find an imperfect match but I do find that 25 of the calendars are within 2 years of the layer count and none of them are more than 4 years out. In only two cases is an "older" calendar higher than any younger ones.Now can I decide that the calendars are "good" ones and that the layers do represent years (approximately)?Yes, I think I can. I can much, much more so that I could if I had just the layer or the calendars. Even if I trusted the layers or the calendars independently for other reasons.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 11-04-2005 06:57 PM

The analogy is weak only because we'd have to have a 2 year old babe and a 2,000,000 year old granny; hell, even I'm not old enough to make the analogy work. (the YEC'rs are out by a bit short of a factor of 1 million)

Christian should read the reviews on Amazon.The book is, it seems, pretty challenging. One would have to decide how much effort one wanted to put in. The reviews also indicate that it is worth the effort.