Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1

Hi RAZD. Thanks. I hope you're doing well too. Thanks RAZD. I'll take a look at it.

Some woods can survive decades in water, as shown by piers, drowned trees in dams, or wooden ships. This of course does not invalidate dendrochronology. Most Flood models I have seen involve massive movements of water which would be expected to rip up trees and remove fallen wood, interrupting any tree-ring chronology.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I am saying that a global flood would rip up the bristlecone pines and have them floating for a year. Whether they rot or not is irrelevant. It would be impossible for them to start growing again once all the water dried up.

I agree foreveryoung. I was just nit-picking on your saying any plant in water for a year would be mush. : )

Hi JzyehoshuaI've reposted part of your new thread here to debate the dating methodology you are challenging. Your challenge here is to explain the correlations between these methodologies and why -- if the methods are so weak -- they correlate so well. Please read from Message 1 through the various methods before replying.from Message 2 of thread Climategate Email Quotes on Dendrochronology, Ice Cores, and Coral Dating in the Proposed New Topics forum

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From the Climategate emails, it appears evident the multiproxy dating approach actually involves methods which all have serious methodology issues. Dendrochronology, coral, and ice core dating are all admitted by those at the heart of the Climategate scandal to be weak, unreliable methods. They were deliberately reconstructed through bias to try and achieve results supportive of liberal evolution and global warming agendas as clearly seen in the emails. It is very obvious from reading the emails how shoddy the research behind such methods, as performed by the same clique responsible for Climategate, really has been.

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I realize certain people on this forum believe very strongly in these methods, so I thought I'd see what thoughts are about the obvious flaws as witnessed from the Climategate emails.

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Curiously, those methods are discussed in detail in this thread, where no creationist has yet been able to explain the correlations between the methodologies -- perhaps you can be the first in over 963 posts to do this.

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Message 1: Correlations Correlations Correlations

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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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Note that to date no creationist has been able to address this issue: the previous version has run to 779 posts on the previous threads (Version 1, numbers 1, 2 and 3) closed due to the length of the threads or to terminal off topic rants.

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Very few of the responses actually address the issue of correlations, and none have been able to explain even two correlations being validations for the dating methods.

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It's your move.Enjoy.

It's pretty easy to explain why there are "correlations" between the methodologies - because the biased Climategate scientists reconstructing the data did so to achieve the conclusions they wanted. To quote just a few of the emails sourced here:Climategate emails - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science-They eliminated negative correlations and admitted problems exist with all methods:"We actually eliminate records with negative correlations (this is mentioned breifly in the GRL article,), and we investigated a variety of weighting schemes to assure the basic robustness of the composite--but I certainly endorse your broader point here. Many of these records have some significant uncertainties or possible sources of bias, and this isn't the place to get into that. [Michael Mann]... It was a majority decision to leave the Mann and Jones 2000-year series in the Figure 1 (as it was to remove the Briffa and Osborn tree-ring based one) , and the details of the logic used to derive the Mann and Jones series is to be found in the (cited) text of their paper. Signing on to this letter , in my mind. implies agreement with the text and not individual endorsement of all curves by each author. I too have expressed my concern to Phil (and Ray) over the logic that you leave all series you want in but just weight them according to some (sometimes low) correlation (in this case based on decadal values). I also believe some of the series that make up the Chinese record are dubious or obscure , but the same is true of other records Mann and Jones have used (e.g. how do you handle a series in New Zealand that has a -0.25 correlation?) . Further serious problems are still (see my and Tim's Science comment on the Mann 1999 paper) lurking with the correction applied to the Western US tree-ring PC amplitude series used (and shown in Figure 2). There are problems (and limitations ) with ALL series used. At this stage , singling out individual records for added (and unavoidably cursory added description) is not practical. [Keith Briffa]"-They admitted ice cores are "no good" and Mann's work is poor, to put it mildly:"[Met Office/Hadley's Simon Tett] 1) Didn't see a justification for use of tree-rings and not using ice cores -- the obvious one is that ice cores are no good -- see Jones et al, 1998. 2) No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don't think we can say we didn't do Mann et al because we think it is crap!)"-They admitted all proxies have potential problems including ice cores and corals:"The underlying assumption of our own work has always been that each of the proxies have their own potential problems, and multiproxy approaches are probably the most robust. I don’t have a particular axe to grind about any particular proxy, and recognize that there are some pretty serious potential problems with all proxies, including ice core delta o18 (as you’re aware, these are not clean paleotemperature proxies at all), and Sr/Ca or o18 from corals. There is a good discussion of the strengths and weaknesses in all of the proxies in Jones and Mann (2004): Jones, P.D., Mann, M.E., Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002, doi: 10.1029/2003RG000143, 2004. Agreed completely on value of multiproxy. And yes, a lot of my earlier work was on figuring out how much of the isotopic signal in ice cores is temperature and not other things. The reassuring result was that all the big stuff is temperature, although with a rather bizarrely unexpected calibration. Of the little stuff, stack several cores and you get up toward order of half of the variance being temperature with the rest left for something else. The devil is in the details of when big meets little, as well as what calibration to use."-They spoke of the uncertainty in ice core dating caused by a "fudge factor":"In any simple global formula, there should be at least two clearly identifiable sources of uncertainty. One is the sensitivity (d(melt)/dT) and the other is the total available ice. In the TAR, the latter never comes into it in their analysis (i.e., the 'derivation' of the GSIC formula) -- but my point is that it *does* come in by accident due to the quadratic fudge factor. The total volume range is 5-32cm, which is, at the very least, inconsistent with other material in the chapter (see below). 5cm is clearly utterly ridiculous.[Tom Wigley, 2004] "-They spoke about the "trick" to hide negative information for dendrochronology:"Keith, I now found the time to read the paper more carefully, together with the figures. I think except of my basic critics (no regard of replication) the results are astonishing good. The trick to substract pdsi-values and to calculate significance in comparison to the previous year does pretty nice hide the information how many of the negative signature years in the 20th century had really been dry years - at least in 1956 the opposite is true. However astonishing interesting results, especially for me the 3-4 years ring widt suppressions following cold winters which you explain by climatic reasons and which I see as medium term reaction on damage in cold winters. So - from my side no hints for changes in the hurry (this week I am overbusy with an everyday course in Dendrochronology for students) but the hope that we will one day find the time to repeat the study a bit more carefully. Cheers Hubert Dr. Hanns Hubert Leuschner Univ. Goettingen -Labor f. Dendrochronologie u. Dendroklimatologie- Von-Siebold-Str. 3a D-37075 Goettingen Phone: +49-551-3912153"-They admitted the tree ring reconstructions are in trouble along with dendrochronology:".. I do think that if Richard is suspect, dendro has a real problem [overpeck] ""I fear that the tree-ring reconstructions really are in bad shape, and that the IPCC and chapter 6 have a big problem coming up. I'll be in the office tomorrow if you want to call--814???--but I want to notify Susan soon.--Richard"- They used biased data and selected data that would show only what they wanted:"ANOTHER THING THAT IS A REAL ISSUE IS SHOWING SOME OF THE TREE-RING DATA FOR THE PERIOD AFTER 1950. BASED ON THE LITERATURE, WE KNOW THESE ARE BIASED - RIGHT? SO SHOULD WE SAY THAT'S THE REASON THEY ARE NOT SHOWN? OF COURSE, IF WE ONLY PLOT THE FIG FROM CA 800 TO 1400 AD, IT WOULD DO WHAT WE WANT, FOCUS ON THE MWP ONLY [overpeck]"- They admitted the tree ring record doesn't show the recent warming and causes trouble for the paleo record:"It sounded like it is an embarrassment to the tree ring community that their indicator does not seem to be responding to the pronounced warming of the past 50 years. Ed Cook of the Lamont Tree-Ring Lab tells me that there is some speculation that stratospheric ozone depletion may have affected the trees, in which case the pre-1950 record is OK. But alternatively, he says it is possible that the trees have exceeded the linear part of their temperature-sensitive range, and they no longer are stimulated by temperature. In this case there is trouble for the paleo record. Kieth Briffa first documented this late 20th century loss of response.Personally, I think that the tree ring records should be able to reproduce the instrumental record, as a first test of the validity of this proxy. To me it casts doubt on the integrity of this proxy that it fails this test.Sincerely, Jeff [Severinghaus]"Edited by Jzyehoshua, : No reason given.Edited by Jzyehoshua, : No reason given.

As seen from the other emails, they used a variety of other dishonest tactics too. They had those with opposing views targeted for firing. They helped one another gain promotions. They tried to avoid the Freedom of Information Act by conspiring with members of the UEA and Department of Energy, deleting emails, and lobbying to remove their research activities from FOIA.They cherry-picked data that would prove the conclusions they wanted:"Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean -- but we'd still have to explain the land blip. I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips -- higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with "why the blip". [Tom Wigley, to Phil Jones and Ben Santer]""With 243 stations needing adjustments, and 728 used, I presume the other 485 were considered to be OK without adjustment.[Phil Jones]""The odd periods are the 1920s and the period from 1940-60. For the latter if the SSTs were adjusted they would look much better. The 1900s, 1910s for some reason look amazingly good.""That the data are so unreliable between the 30s and 60s means we don't know for sure what happened in terms of global-mean temperatures during that period. In fact, if you blank out the data from the 30s to the 60s, you can actually imagine the globe warming weakly but continuously during that period... Hence, the only real evidence we have of a midcentury about-turn in global warming comes from the land data.""Mike, Good. I doubt if any of them will notice. Cheers Phil At 16:44 27/03/2008, you wrote:Hi Phil, [1]Temperature data (HadCRUT, CRUTEM,, HadCRUT5, CRUTEM5) Climatic Research Unit global temperature now has the final year removed if incomplete. Batten hatches and prepare for Skeptix! Mike ""Sorry for sounding a bit testy here. I've been fielding a whole raft of questions, comments, and criticisms from Mike Mann, Tom Crowley, and Malcolm Hughes. Some of them useful, many of them tiresome or besides the point. I never wanted to get involved in this quixotic game of producing the next great NH temperature reconstruction because of the professional politics and sensitivities involved...I should also say that the amount of ignorance about tree rings in the global change/paleo/modeling community is staggering given what has been published. Like it or not, they simply don't read our papers.).... This all reinforces my determination to leave this NH/global temperature reconstruction junk behind me once I get this paper submitted. It's not worth the aggravation. [Ed Cook]"

The reason there are correlations, in other words, is that the scientists involved reconstructed them to have correlations.

Hi JzyehoshuaYou don't need to 'yell' (bold everything) - I read it the first time.Simple question: have you read this thread for the posts covering the same methodologies and how they DO correlate? Message 2 to Message 8?If not, you may be using second or third hand information, instead of primary information. Note that I have included in the references links to the primary papers involved.The ones here covering tree rings and varve layers were very skeptically evaluated by the scientists working on carbon 14 dating corrections due to climate\solar effects on 14C production and changes in the past.On the tree chronologies there are three that run over 8,000 years with an error of 0.5%, each independently derived and each from different locations on the earth. This error was considered too much for the 14C correlation people so they discarded the outlier to reduce it. Such is the amount of error that was involved - rather insignificant imho.abe:

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It sounded like it is an embarrassment to the tree ring community that their indicator does not seem to be responding to the pronounced warming of the past 50 years. Ed Cook of the Lamont Tree-Ring Lab tells me that there is some speculation that stratospheric ozone depletion may have affected the trees, in which case the pre-1950 record is OK. But alternatively, he says it is possible that the trees have exceeded the linear part of their temperature-sensitive range, and they no longer are stimulated by temperature. In this case there is trouble for the paleo record. Kieth Briffa first documented this late 20th century loss of response.

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Personally, I think that the tree ring records should be able to reproduce the instrumental record, as a first test of the validity of this proxy. To me it casts doubt on the integrity of this proxy that it fails this test.

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Sincerely, Jeff [Severinghaus]

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If there were a temperature effect, then it should be different between the Bristlecone Pines (top of the Sierra Mountains, high elevation affecting temperatures) and the oaks (~ocean level temperatures), and this is the one discarded for the 0.5% error. Still insignificant imho./abeEnjoy. Edited by RAZD, : added endEdited by RAZD, : clrty

Please read the posts in this thread.There are a lot of good papers by real scientists. It doesn't matter what some climatologists did or didn't say, that doesn't mean anything in terms of what the physical scientists are doing.So, read the posts in this thread and explain why there are so many correlations.

Hi Jzyehoshua,Sorry, I missed this one earlier. There is some discussion on Topic Proposal Issues Message 444 regarding your proposed post and I think\agree that the scam\fraud part should be better addressed on the Global Warming is a Scam as it already addresses the scam issue.If you want to take it there I will be happy to follow.Note we are just trying to sort your issues out to the best threads to address the issues.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : subtitle

I don't think this is fair to poster J. If he thinks there is a refutation of dating here, he ought to have the opportunity to make his case. At the very least he is owed a discussion of why the emails don't really challenge dating.

The simple explanation is that none of the methods mentioned in the emails he posted are dating methods. They are paleoclimatology methods. E.g. 18O is not radioactive, 18O/16O ratios are "used as a measure of the temperature of precipitation, as a measure of groundwater/mineral interactions, as an indicator of processes that show isotopic fractionation, like methanogenesis. In paleosciences, 18O:16O data from corals, foraminifera and ice cores are used as a proxy for temperature." (from Wikipedia).This is the wrong thread. All his references are irrelevant here.

Hi NoNukes, Challenge the dating here yes, pursue the scam aspect no - that is better under the other existing scam thread.They are related but separate issues, and can be treated better on two threads than one, imho.Enjoy.

Hi JonF Agreed, they tell us a bit of what the biology and climate was like, rather than the ages when they were produced\consumed etc by biological processes, but they need to be tied into dates to be of value.And while they are not used for dating per se, they ARE used for correlations on this thread. See Message 9 for examples. These correlations tie the radiometric (thorium-230 and Protactinium-231) methodology dates to the ice core dates, validating those methods.That does make them topical.And, of course, if doubt is cast on the ice core data, then one also needs to explain how the correlations with both of the radiometric methods occur simultaneously to give the exact same errors.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : englshEdited by RAZD, : clrty