Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1

Hi Taq, Not one creationist has been able to do this so far, and it is even worse for them when you note that these continuous records are not interrupted by any purported flood:

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Message 3: Now we have a problem for YEC people, because not only do these different chronologies cover the same time, they also have the same pattern of climate shown in their tree rings even though they come from opposite sides of the earth and are in very different kinds of trees, one evergreen living at high altitudes and one deciduous living near sea levels, and anything that can cause errors in one system has to have a method that can cause exactly the same error in the other at exactly the same time. Positing false rings does not accomplish this. All three sets also show the "little ice age" and other marker events at the same ages. They all come to the same age for the matching climate data. We can be minimalist here, and say that the minimum age covered by the European Oak chronology is 10,429 years BP - 0.5% = 10,377 years BP. "BP" means "Before Present" and is defined as years before 1950(1), so this is really 10,434 years ago (in 2007).

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Minimum age of the earth > 10,434 years based on this data.

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This is now older than most if not all YEC models for the age of the earth.

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This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 10,434 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.

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And this is still just the start: three different dendrochronologies that correlate age with climate and that match - wiggle for wiggle - within 0.5%.

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And another 5 years have passed, making it 10,439 years of continuous data uninterrupted by a purported flood.And

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Message 5: With the continual loss of C-14 with time due to radioactive decay, there is only one period where both the tree-rings and the lake varve fossils will have similar levels of remaining C-14 if they were living, growing and absorbing C-14 from the atmosphere at the same time.

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Samples that get carbon-14 only from the same source while living (and that have not been contaminated by other carbon-14 since then) cannot be the same age and NOT have the same carbon-14 content.

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Anyone wanting to invalidate the lake varves as being annual varves will need to provide a mechanism that produces a continual change in the decay of C-14 so that the curve can be compressed in the horizontal scale and match the curvature of the 5730 half-life curve. This has not been observed.

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The logical conclusion is that this Carbon-14 data (the actual amount of C-14, not the calculated age) confirms the lake varve chronological age.

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Minimum age of the earth > 35,930 years based on this data.

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And we also know that a purported flood did not occur in this area during that time span, as the sediment layers would show debris and sediment from the flood waters.And this does not even begin to address the massive evidence for the age of the earth and the lack of a world wide flood event.Enjoy.

Hi Coyote, And they need to keep in the time-frame as defined in the documented correlations of age already provide unless they can explain all the correlations.These age correlations show that a global flood could not have occurred in over hundreds of thousands of years by several different methods.Kind of puts them between a rock and a hard place.Enjoy.

Hi again Taq See Message 9

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To discuss radioactive decay and dating systems that are based on this concept we need a system not subject to this kind of variation. We also need one that can be correlated over substantial time to validate the system.

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USGS URL Resolution Error Page (2)

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Devils Hole is a tectonically-formed subaqueous cavern in south-central Nevada. Vein calcite, which coats the walls of this cavern, has provided an extremely well-dated 500,000-year record of variations in temperature as well as other paleoclimatic parameters.

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We have correlations between age, climate and temperatures, ...

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At the Devil's Hole we are essentially dealing with one very large stalactite. The calcite was deposited after being dissolved in water, the Th-230 in the calcite could only come from the decay of the parent U-234, giving an accurate measurement of the age of the layers of calcite.

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The U-235 to Pa-231 decay is from a different series than the U-234 to Th-230 decay, so the two are independent of each other. Again, as the Devil's Hole calcite was deposited after being dissolved in water, the Pa-231 in the calcite could only come from the decay of the parent U-235, giving an accurate measurement of the age of the layers of calcite.

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Using the half-lives of thorium-230 (75,380 years) and protactinium-231 (32,760 years), we can now draw the exponential curves for these isotopes (with % on the y-axis and time in k-yrs on the x axis, thorium in blue and protactinium in red):

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This means we have a series of data with three different pieces of information: calcite layer age, Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 content. We also note that Thorium-230 has a half-life of 75,380 years, while Protactinium-231 has a half-life of 32,760 years - less than half the half-life of Thorium-230. This means that layer by layer the ratio of Thorium-230 to Protactinium-231 is different:

   Age   THr=THf/THo PAr=PAf/PAo  THr/PAr
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75,380     0.5000     0.2029        2.46
150,760     0.2500     0.0412        6.07
226,140     0.1250     0.0084       14.96
301,520     0.0625     0.0017       36.86
376,900     0.0313     0.0003       90.82
452,280     0.0156     0.0001      223.77
527,660     0.0078     0.00001     551.35

So for these dates to be invalid there would have to be a mechanism that can layer by layer preferentially change the ratio of these two {elements\isotopes} within the solid calcite vein.

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Two different curves need to be explained by any creationist who want to challenge these methods: how did just the right amounts of each element get deposited if this is not a record of annual deposition over hundreds of thousands of years?How did just the right amounts of dissolved oxygen isotopes get deposited to match the annual layers for the antarctic ice cores for age and climate?oh, and a flood in this area would have destroyed the stalactite ...Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : No reason given.Edited by RAZD, : table spacing

Hi Pollux, welcome to the fray, So this is a floating chronology, similar to Lake Suigetsu. How is it anchored? It would be nice to see some links and graphs.Enjoy.

Hi again Pollux Thanks, I'll read through that this weekend and see what I can extract to add to the thread. The correlations with climate change are of interest to me for several reasons, one of which is the persistent YEC claim that climate could\would be different before the flood, so being able to show long term climate trends without extreme alterations would be evidence against this argument.Enjoy.

Hi Pollux and NoNukes, This would make a great topic for a new thread. I would start with a discussion ofCognitive Dissonance This is a powerful psychological block to accepting any information that contradicts firmly held beliefs.Enjoy.

Hi Pollux I'll look into that tomorrow (my study day this week) as well as your other reference. One thing I will be looking for is a good start to the core and well defined annual layers.Enjoy.

Hi Pollux, I'll have to go back and recheck the ice core information, thanks.A similar problem occurs with the Lake Suigetsu layers, and that is why I cut off the annual layers where I do, even though the core data extends much further.One thing we can say about those extended cores is that they do not show a discontinuity in that data, a disruption of the process of layer formation, the introduction of completely foreign objects into the layer process (such as piles of dinosaur fossils).Enjoy.

Hi Coyote, Indeed, think what doing more samples on the tree rings and other samples from annual varves etc would do for the calibration curves as well.

Hi again Pollux,I've read through the Hughen et al paper on the Cariaco Basin varves, and it looks like it helps confirm the other data as suggested. I do still need to check with the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core data to see how it is anchored and correlated.I would like to use this as another example with the other annual systems if I can, but if not then it certainly serves as a further correlation that needs to be explained -- ie how come does this set of data only match the other curves if the dates are correct, and why does it match the other data so completely if the dates are not correct.Enjoy.

From foreveryoung in Message 25 on the Whether to leave this forum or not thread: First off, I recognize that it is difficult to accept concepts that run counter to what you have been taught, this is called cognitive dissonance in psychology, and we are all susceptible to it, no matter your education or experience or opinions.What is important is to keep an open, if skeptical, mind, and not react to reject new information. That is what the evidence shows. We either accept that the objective evidence represents reality or that reality is an illusion.It is a fact that the correlations between different age measuring systems result in virtually identical results, not just for age but for climate and other aspects within the evidence. It is a fact that the levels of 14C measured in the tree rings and the Lake Suigetsu varves are the same levels for the same ages in 4 different sets of data measured by annual counted layers, and that these precisely measured levels correlate with the decay curve for 14C, thus showing that such radiometric hanky panky did not occur within the last 35,000 years, minimum. They don't need to be accurate proxies of the actual climate in the past, what is important is that the same proxies are measured in the arctic and antarctic ice cores, which are correlated with annual counted layers.As with 14C evidence used, the oxygen and carbon isotope ratios originated in the earths atmosphere at the time that they were trapped, and as the earths atmosphere is well mixed there cannot be major differences in concentrations for different parts of the globe: the level of 14C in one area will be very close to the level of 14C in an area on the other side of the earth, and the same applies to the oxygen and carbon isotope ratios measured.The objective measured evidence is the isotope quantities and their ratios, and these are facts. The changes in their levels from year to year are explained by climate changes, in the same way we see this change today, but climate per se is not the evidence.There is additional evidence of climate changes in pollen counts and types that also correlate, and these give us a better idea of what those paleoclimates were like.I can provide you with the link to the tables of data that show the correlations between the ice cores and the stalactite if you want to look at the actual numbers.Your problem is not to provide an alternate explanation for each system of age measurement by any single hypothetical system (such as your comment on radiometric dating), but to explain why they correlate with the annual counting systems and with the other measurements. Why do I get the same age from 14C as I do from tree rings?An open skeptical mind says yes, it is possible that the earth is young, but then how do I explain all these correlations.An open skeptical mind says yes, it is possible that all this evidence is correct, and the earth is very old, but how do I know that there isn't something that causes all these systems to be wrong in the same places and in the same ways.Science is about explaining the evidence, and it assumes that the evidence represents reality.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : r

Hi Pollux Milutin Milankovi - WikipediaLeaving out the cause and effect issues of the cyclic patterns originally discussed by Milankovich in 1912 and formalized in 1920, we can certainly see markers of these cycles in each of the dating systems where we have indications of paleoclimates and their correlations with the dates in each of these systems.We can add correlations with these cycles to the long list of additional correlations between data from various different areas of science, and ask the question why a cyclic pattern would exist if the ages are all wrong.Enjoy

Hi dwise1, Actually this is version 2.1, with previous versions 1.1 (297 posts), 1.2 (306 posts), and 1.3 (357 posts) reaching a total of 960 posts without a single correlation being explained by a single creationist.Notably, it seems, creationists avoid this thread (the information is too dangerous?) or they just don't have a clue (information, education, etc) how to respond. And because there is a wide variety of systems, that each would need a different kind of tweaking to squeeze in a young earth concept, the likelihood of a single process explaining all the data shrinks down to one: they correlate because they represent the actual age of the earth.Or god-did-it-all and all the evidence is illusion.Enjoy.

From Message 1:

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We see many creationists saying that dating methods are not accurate and are prone to errors. The problem is that these methods all correlate with each other in many rather astounding ways, given that they are based on very different mechanisms.

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To address this issue of correlations, and to bring this issue to the fore, this topic starts with ones that have direct methods of counting ages due to annual layers, how those annual layers validate each other and how several radiometric methods enter into the mix -- correlations not just with age but with climate and certain known instances that occurred in the past and which show up in these records just where they should be.

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The challenge for the creationist is not just to describe how a single method can be wrong, but how they can all be wrong at the same time and yet produce identical results - when the errors in different systems should produce different random results.

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Either explain the correlations or accept that the evidence shows the earth is old.Enjoy.

ScottyDouglas dStart with Message 1 and Message 2: Bristlecone Pines:

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By counting tree rings and matching the overlapping patterns of growth from live to dead trees, scientists have developed a tree-ring chronology of nearly 10,000 years using wood from the Schulman Grove area, California (one tree still living is 4,839 years old).

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Note three things: the tree rings contain climate data, the chronology is not based on one sample but many overlapping and duplicate (from the same tree) samples, and there are other samples that have not been counted yet or that have a break in the climate data that means they are "floating" in the chronology somewhere beyond the end of the continuous record. Adding up all the time recorded by these tree rings would give us a minimum age of the earth for all those years to have passed that generated the rings. We'll be minimalist here and say:

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Minimum age of the earth > 8,000 years based on this data.

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This is already older than many YEC models (6,000 years for those using Archbishop Ussher's calculation of a starting date of 4004 BC). This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 8,000 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.

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Then consider Message 3: European Oaks:

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The common name for this species is "Post Oak" due to its natural resistance to rot thus making a good material for posts in ancient constructions. This also means that there are a lot of samples that are referenced to and associated with archaeological finds, finds that can be dated by other means, including historical documents as far back as the history goes.

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Now we have a problem for YEC people, because not only do these different chronologies cover the same time, they also have the same pattern of climate shown in their tree rings even though they come from opposite sides of the earth and are in very different kinds of trees, one evergreen living at high altitudes and one deciduous living near sea levels, and anything that can cause errors in one system has to have a method that can cause exactly the same error in the other at exactly the same time. Positing false rings does not accomplish this. All three sets also show the "little ice age" and other marker events at the same ages. They all come to the same age for the matching climate data. We can be minimalist here, and say that the minimum age covered by the European Oak chronology is 10,429 years BP - 0.5% = 10,377 years BP. "BP" means "Before Present" and is defined as years before 1950(1), so this is really 10,434 years ago (in 2007).

​

Minimum age of the earth > 10,434 years based on this data.

​

This is now older than most if not all YEC models for the age of the earth.

​

This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 10,434 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.

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And this is still just the start: three different dendrochronologies that correlate age with climate and that match - wiggle for wiggle - within 0.5%.

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Most people consider accuracy within 0.5% to be highly accurate.Remember that correlations are the key here. This means that you need to explain how these dates could be wrong and yet still produce the correlations listed. Or you should accept that these dates are an accurate of age.Enjoy.