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Author | Topic: Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
I value your input and ideas, now and future. Works both ways. I am a something of an impasse on my rewrite of Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1 with more emphasis on conscilience ... the problem is that I have only one source for lake varves vs 14C that extends beyond the tree rings (there are some short ones). The varves and 14C levels show that the lower layers cannot be younger than the upper layers and that the trend of 14C from the tree rings continues in a general direction. There is also a second coring set that validates the earlier one, makes some adjustments and corrections, and extends the data slightly ... but it is still data from only one lake. The best comparison I currently have is with marine varves in Cariaco Basin, Venezuela. The problem is that this involves the marine reservoir effect, so (1) there is an additional level of uncertainty with using the marine varves, and (2) I would rather use the differences between them to show the marine reservoir effect (and how it changes with time). My next link is to ice layers for age -- and that means showing consilience between the lake varves Any thoughts how I should handle this? Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
First off thanks,
Message 615: My only comment on conscilience as it related to the varves is that while more sources from a given types are obviously better, even a single source from a divergent type that fits well with other types is of great value. In other words, I find confirming value greater in one set of varves added to the data set that I would find from *another* tree ring set. Indeed, especially when it shows a continued "trendency" so that "all things considered" if there is no reason to posit changes one would expect them the represent reality.
As I understand varves, it's not often finding the needed components and conditions to product them and thus it's not likely that we will find a hundred other locations of use. The best correlation is with a set of marine varves, however this introduces reservoir effect. Now Diamonds: I am more familiar with oil samples, and there is a good discussion on this on PRATT Claim CD011.6, but follow the link to
Kathleen Hunt article Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits quote: The 14C detected levels correlate with radioactivity, varying widely for coals of the same approximate age. There is also information of 14C production in the carbon rods used in nuclear reactors (and spent rods have high radioactivity) And it should be obvious that any effect on one sample of old carbon can be applied to all others such samples (coal, oil, diamonds, etc) So there is a LOT of evidence of radioactivity causing 14C in old carbon. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... But according to my calculations, the amounts are quite small. ... All it needs is to be measurable and you get an age near the limit of 14C dating, which is what is usually reported. Certainly with water concentrating U in carbon\coal this can increase the amounts in coal. And thanks Petro, I had previously wondered what made U precipitate on speleothems. (as in Age of Grand Canyon and Cave Speleothems and Devil's Hole -- an extension to what is in my age correlations thread) Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
I'm thinking of a great visual aid to help get people past the Crocoduck nonsense. I've used it in conversation and it's quite helpful and it seem so obvious that I'm thinking someone surely has put something together to illustrate the concept. Nice concept. Should be some good material in family photo albums. We used to have a portrait of my great grands on my mother's side, and you could see the family resemblances. Unfortunately that and a number of family photos burned in a house fire (house totaled, no one hurt), so I don't have that information anymore (although we may have a photo of it). Another analogy that has been used is taking snapshots of a person walking across the US: each snapshot shows the same person in a different location, the locations are within walking distance of the other locations for the time difference. This also shows the importance of location in space as well as time for connecting fossils. It would be cool to combine the two -- a family that immigrates from one location to another with old photos to document the times and locations. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Does anyone have a copy of the 1946 paper by Willard Libby titled "atmospheric helium three and radiocarbon from cosmic radiation" It apparently is the first work on the C14 topic published by Libby. All I find is paywall. According to The method
quote: I believe you can get a free membership to science at Science | AAAS Curiously they don't list a 1949 reference but do list Arnold, J.R., and W.F. Libby, 1951. Radiocarbon dates. Science, 113:111-120. You could also try to email thomas.higham@archaeology-research.oxford.ac.uk (but I don't think he works there anymore) Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
I'm looking for that particular paper because the YEC folk I am dealing with insist that Libby stubbornly opposed the notion that the atmosphere wasn't in equilibrium. ... I'm not aware of this claim, but what I have heard before is the claim that because 14C is not in equilibrium, that the earth cannot be old. The fact is that the proportion of 14C in the atmosphere oscillates around an average level that is the equilibrium level, due to the fluctuation in production. Whether or not he claimed it was in equilibrium is irrelevant to what we know now to be the reality, and it becomes another case of appeal to authority and quote mining to argue that what he said invalidates what we know now. Also, we know that Libby was in error on his measurement of half-life (it is 5730 instead of 5568) and that little was known then about the variation in cosmic rays. I did some more looking and found these:
quote: Those free links are just data lists with little discussion and no mention of equilibrium. Science 3 March 1961:Vol. 133 no. 3453 pp. 621-629 DOI: 10.1126/science.133.3453.621 (extract): Radiocarbon Dating Science 19 April 1963:Vol. 140 no. 3564 pp. 278-280 DOI: 10.1126/science.140.3564.278 (extract): Accuracy of Radiocarbon Dates Hope that helps narrow the search. btw -- check with your library to see if they have access to paywall articles. Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : btwby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Oh, I promise you that it isn't any sort of reasoned claim, it's just built on nonsense passed around our SDA community as fact. Here is a quote from the highly regarded (in SDA circles) SDA evangelist Doug Batchelor Yep that's the claim I have seen before. Because Libby said it then it must be true ... Here's some information on equilibrium, where I picked the case that would come closest to 14C decay because the production is relatively constant:
quote: And 7 times 5568 = ~38,976 years. (Change that to 5730 and you get ~40,110 years ...) But now we know that 14C production is not steady, and the variation is enough to cause the disequilibrium we see. Another interesting take is this (from John Mackay, Creation Research):
quote: Notice the palming of the pea to extend the level down to 15.3 disintegrations per gram per minute in order to get the theoretical age from constant 14C production down to ~13,000 years ... and that even then this is still significantly older that the standard ~6500 YEC age by a factor of 2. And the logic is :: gosh it's not 16,000 years old, so therefore it must be 6500 years old? It gets more amusing as he explains old 14C dates by assuming that the preflood 14C was minimal:
quote: So now we must have 16,000 years back to the flood (circa 4500 years ago?) to reach todays atmospheric levels ... It would be interesting to take the 14C atmospheric levels known from the tree ring ages and integrate what the current atmosphere level should be. Experiment You can discuss this aspect with an experiment. One of the ways to visually model radioactive decay is with a leaky bucket ... lets start with this image:
quote: (Of course we know the level is NOT constant, but this show that the more 14C you have (inflow) the more decay you have (outflow), and when decay = production you would have equilibrium.) Use a rain barrel and meter the flow through a drain hole, use constant inflow at several different rates and see how full the barrel gets. Then change it to half on and half off inflow and see how that affects the output. The output is ∝ depth, so this would model the change in decay with atmospheric concentration. You can show what equilibrium is, that it is different for different inflow rates, and that it tends to average fluctuations -- the fuller the barrel is the less the effect of variation has.
Message 675: Kbertsche writes: I wouldn't be surprised if Libby decided, based in the data, that it really WAS in equilibrium, and then became somewhat stubborn in this conclusion. Yeah, I'm sorta seeing that. If the results coming back were within the expected error rate of the testing methods, it would initially be hard to show that it wasn't in equilibrium. Note that Sewel states:
quote: Is "atoms per gram of total carbon per minute" the same as "disintegrations per gram per minute" - they would appear to be: one 14C atom produce from 14N + cosmic ray and one atom 14N produced from 14C with beta decay. You will note that sources for these numbers are not given. Is 18.8 the level in 1950? today? Carbon-14 - Wikipedia
quote: (Note they also talk about other sources) Curiously I have difficulty translating "atoms/m^2/s^1" to "atoms per gram of total carbon per minute" -- might want to talk to Los Alamos Nuclear Physicist Dr Tom Hayward (or others) Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : clrtyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
This situation absolutely does not apply to C12-C14. C14 is NOT produced by a decay chain, and I find it difficult to believe that Libby thought any such thing. Surely when Libby discussed equilibrium he did not mean secular equilibrium. On what basis could he even have calculated such a thing? What decay is claimed to be producing C-14? There is of course no decay producing 14C in our atmosphere. What I was looking at was the situation where a radioactive isotope is produced at an assumed constant rate, and the lower curve would match that situation. We know that production is not constant but varies over a (iirc) 19 year cycle and some longer cycles due to variations in solar activity and variations in the earth magnetic field. We also know that a lot of old 12C has been released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel use since the dawn of the coal age, which would depress the current concentration level of 14C/12C in the atmosphere. And we know that current production of 14C is above pre-atomic age numbers. So if you skew which data you use with this situation you can have a current concentration level below what an assumed constant level high input production should give for equilibrium.
In short, there is no secular equilibrium situation for C-14 to be a part of. So when Libby claimed that C-14 was in secular equilibrium, what could he possibly have meant? Was he actually unaware of how C-14 was produced? If you assume a constant production and a decay amount ∝ to the concentration level then you will get an exponential curve. Just like you will get from a rain barrel with a hole in the bottom and constant inflow from a hose. Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : clrtyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Except that the assumption of constant production rate is incorrect. And, as you have indicated the assumption does not account for the depression of C-14 by the release of old carbon. Exactly, so when creationists start talking about this we know they are starting from an invalid position. Like I said it would be interesting to plot our the 14C levels versus time from the tree ring data to show that it is not a smooth curve as these articles (note they were from two creationist sites, except the secular decay curve I posted).
You've only begun to tell the story here. The variations in the earth's magnetic field are not periodic. Neither is the cosmic ray strictly speaking. We do know that sun activity has some periodic behavior, and it shows up like clock ticks on the tree ring data.
What is important is that over the range of time, the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere, when averaged over quite some time, has not fluctuated by huge amounts over 50,000 years. But even over 10,000 year periods, the amount has varied enough to need correcting. ... And we know these ancient levels from artifacts of known age, like tree rings,
... My question is simply what definition of equilibrium did Libby argue for and was he correct or incorrect. Without reading the paper I don't have a clue what he said, all I am doing is pushing back on the creationist claims, where it doesn't really matter what Libby said as equilibrium cannot be expected from a variable input. What I do know is that we don't really appear to have a good idea of the rate of production or it's transportation to surface organisms: I found a number of papers with quite different results.
Why would I want to skew the data? ... We don't. The creationists do, and it is SOP for many of them to do so.
... The truth is that even if you use real data, the production rate of C-14 in the atmosphere often does not match the current rate of depletion. In fact, given the long half life of C-14 compared to say, the solar cycle, the product rate and the removal rate may be different more often than not. Indeed. Sometimes more, sometimes less (once you correct for fossil fuel 12C and atomic reaction 14C, etc).
Henry Morris (and Hovind) argued that the earth could not be old because equilibrium would have been reached long ago. Morris's argument is wrong not because equilibrium has been reached, but because there are good reasons why equilibrium does not exist. Hovind of course is a convicted liar and felon. Morris is wrong because the earth is easily countably older (Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1) than this purported age to equilibrium, as documented by mountains of data. Hovind is a used-car\snake-oil salesman. It's typical creationist hogwash, down to the appeal to old science\authority and misrepresentation of facts. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
You might also find some useful comments on equilibrium from Libby's Nobel lecture: Excellent.
... we can see that a steady-state condition should have been established, in which the rate of formation of carbon-14 would be equal to the rate at which it disappears to reform nitrogen-14. ... And I would assume from this that this is what he means by equilibrium -- a steady state condition where number of 14C atoms formed ≈ number of 14C atoms that decay (within the tolerances of measurements).
quote: And of course only using the quantity of 14C decaying in the atmosphere to compare to the total generation of 14C and ignoring the quantity of 14C that gets deposited in the oceans (and decays there) gives a false low level of decaying 14C. ie - a proper comparison includes all the 14C in all the reservoirs (atmosphere, biological organisms, oceans, etc). Thanks, I think that pretty well demonstrates that the creationist claims are wrong wrong wrong. Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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A theory is a tested hypothesis, 1 test or a thousand.
Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
I'm struggling a bit with what is considered theory, hypothesis, study, etc. (yes, I've read a TON on this) My first response was from my tablet. What you may want to consider is being a tad pedantic to delineate between common usage and scientific usage: A scientific hypothesis is one that can be falsified by objective empirical evidence and it is based on observation to explain a phenomenon, and it should predict something new. A scientific theory is a tested scientific hypothesis - a prediction came true, a falsification test failed (and then you make new predictions and falsification tests). No matter how strong a theory becomes it is still subject to testing and falsification.
Evolution -- one of the best tested theories in history. Here one needs to be careful to distinguish between the process of evolution (the change in frequency etc), which has been observed and it is a fact, and the theory of evolution (that evolution can explain the diversity of life), which is tested with every fossil find and every DNA comparison. So yes still a theory, a very strong theory.
Big Bang -- some good evidence for it, but evidence is hard to come by that far back. Not sure if theory or hypothesis by science standards. Many consider this still an hypothesis. There are also competing concepts (brane\string theory). The new double ability Hadron collider may give us some answers.
Abiogenesis -- seems to me it's more of a study. I'm not sure I've even seen something as cohesive as a hypothesis. See Self-Replicating Molecules - Life's Building Blocks (Part II), I did a bit of review of the work being done in 2009. I believe the predominant hypothesis is that the first life was based on RNA (the "RNA world" hypothesis)
Am I off here? Do we in science cut slack to fields where data is hard to come by and elevate things to theory status sooner than in areas where data is simply a matter of pounding out the lab work? If you have an hypothesis that is testable (predictions come true, falsification fails) then you can do science, whatever field you are working in. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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Here is a 25 second clip where he makes an amazing claim regarding saline and carbon dating. Normally I can find stuff like this floating around and figure out where it came from, but I'm coming up blank in this regard on this topic. Any suggestions? My first impression is the same as 46&2's and Coyotes's that he is misusing the reservoir effect. My second impression is that, where ever it comes from, this argument can be refuted by comparing the Cariaco Basin varves (laid down under sea water) and the Lake Suigetsu varves (laid down under fresh water) and show that the slopes of the curves for 14C levels are the same. The Cariaco Basin varves are displaced by the reservoir effect, by (iirc) ~100 years apparent older age, and this displacement appears to be fairly constant. If what he said were true then:
This difference in decay is just not seen, as the wiggle-match for these three sets of data shows:
quote: The Cariaco-pine overlap is 1370 years. The consilience of these three sets of data showing the same pattern of variation in 14C levels, with hundreds of points of agreement, is rather hard to explain by purported endemic errors. Finally, his effect would depend on the length of time an artifact was in salt water, rather than the time that the salt water had been away from the ocean surface, and you would not see the apparent 1,300 age of freshly killed seal at McMurdo Sound , so this creationist argument refutes his creationist argument ... (you can't have it both ways ...) they can't both be true (but they can both be false). One wonders what effect he thinks salt water has on carbon molecules and how it can affect different isotopes differentially. Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : . Edited by RAZD, : ..by our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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The website archeologyexpert.co.uk in discussing problems in C14 dating (not arguing against it) says "C14 leaches at an accelerated rate from organic matter saturated in water, especially saline water". Well that looks like one source for the claim.
quote: We already know the McMurdo Pratt. Note that "Organic matter, being porous, can easily be contaminated by organic carbon in groundwater. This increases the C12 content and interferes with the carbon ratio" has it backwards -- it would increase the C14 content more than the C12 content because it is younger. Creationists making stuff up again. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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I assume that ash layers are the best, from a geology dating standpoint, because they can cover much wider areas than lava flows. Indeed, and each volcano has a "signature" mix of minerals and elements so they can be compared and correlated. An ash layer in a peat bog in Japan is from the same volcanic eruption as one in Lake Suigetsu, and this can be used to validate the age of the layers in Lake Suigetsu or vice versa. In addition sometimes artifacts or footprints are found in the tuff (Laetoli being a famous example) or killed by the ash cloud (as occurred at Pompeii) and thus they can be dated directly by the tuff. Major eruptions also leave ash on glaciers or ice fields, and this allows those dates to be correlated. Creationists love to intentionally do science badly because they know that they will get bollixed results which they can then foist on the gullible as "evidence" that the science is wrong. Time and again it is shown that all they have done is gotten the science wrong, as seen in the article TAD posted at the beginning of this subthread. Enjoy Note: you can follow subthreads by using the thread index and searching it for the subtitle (why subtitles are important?) -- click the little icon at the top left -- for this post I have changed it to
and on this thread it takes you to EvC Forum: Earth science curriculum tailored to fit wavering fundamentalists Message Listby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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