Peanut Gallery for Great debate: radiocarbon dating, Mindspawn and Coyote/RAZD

Hope springs eternal in the human breast, I guess.

Look at the bold text in RAZD's message 64 and squint real hard while clicking your heels. When I do that, I can almost see mindspawn's point.

Of course not. It can only by misinterpretted as calibrating U-Th dating.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

But notice the skillful avoidance of the words "what if". Notice that is belief is of something never expressed until his original idea was trashed. Finally, notice that he has never provided any evidence to a link to rainfall anyway.And then, what about U-Th dating. Absent some explanation for that, aren't these other "I believes" or "what ifs" moot?

Exactly. Why in the world is it legitimate to simply make up stuff about decay rates (or any other fanciful thing) and to then require that your opponent actually serve up contrary references.The debate is over. Who cares whether mindspawn ever admits it.

Is ignoring posts really an acceptable debating tactic? Is it really possible to swamp someone with facts in a written debate? I think not. Sigh. He's already gambling with other people's money.

You aren't wrong about what would make a better presentation. I'd like to see what you suggest too.

You are allowed to laugh. Because the debate is over.Given that U-Th dating overlaps with the mid and upper end of C-14 dating, it is simply not possible that 11-12 years worth of tree rings were accumulated in each year. Until he deals with that, mindspawn is spitting into the wind.And then there are the varves.Yes, you do have to handle more than one topic at a time.

If in fact, mindspawn is as smart as you say, and recognizes that he is not being persuasive, then his ignorance and superficial reading is feigned.I agree that the never ending series of what-ifs is persuasive to his audience, but those what ifs are punctuated by misstatements of science that if deliberate are falsehoods. And being caught in falsehoods does not persuade.And I continue to believe that his most damaging falsehood are his misstatements (I assume based on ignorance) of the basis for U-Th dating. So why not hammer him with that at least to the point that he has to switch tactics.The second thing I would suggest would be summarizing the positions that mindspawn has either explicitly or tacitly given up on. I don't have concerns about his skills or his quiver. A quick search of the internet will show that Creationists who don't like tree ring dating or C-14 dating are a dime a dozen.

As I do my own looking into dendrochronology I come up with the following question.I understand that not all tree rings work as accurate calendars. But that seems to be because they don't show growth rings at all or because some climates do not have interrupted growing seasons.But is there any evidence whatsoever for multiple tree rings over a consistent period of say 10-50 years such that the tree ring data does not correspond within say a small percentage (less than 10%) of 10 to 50 rings?Because I can find absolutely no evidence of trees putting on multiple rings year after year. Mindspawn claims that scientists are lying cherry pickers, but as best as I can tell, there aren't really any cherries to pick.So why should talk about cherry picking or 11 rings in a year even be listened to until at least a minimum amount of supposition has been raised? Where is the 10 year old apple tree with 20 non annual growth rings?

I agree. The outline well organized even if a bit long.That said, never underestimate the ability of this particular creationist to invent 'facts'. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Yes, the 11 to 12 factor seems to be critical to his defense of Noah's Flood year as well. The factor is just long enough to get those French and Spanish cave paintings finished after the Flood rather than before. The factor of 12 would make every single C-14 date post Flood.I believe that factor of 12 was the impetus for his spring tide theory. Mindspawn isn't the first person to make the mistake about the length of the tide cycle. Yes. It is quite clear that Mindspawn's standard for winning is the presentation of scenarios that he can hold onto by sheer denial. And of course RAZD cannot push a mass spectrometer and some Th230 samples through the internet. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I think RAZD is showing that Gish Gallop is not a great strategy for written debates. Gish Gallop, properly used, overwhelms your opponent with a volume of questions that cannot be effectively handled. Whether the questions are off the wall, unanticipated, just rattled of gattling gun style, or whether you just chew up the time to respond, the opponent is made to appear as if he does not know his stuff.In a written debate, patience overcomes volume. Every time. RAZD has not spared the ink in classifying the made up stuff as nonsense, refuting with evidence the stuff that is just plain wrong, and pointing out the irrelevant stuff.In fact, RAZD has returned volume for volume, and I don't see much Gallop in anything he's posted. Not much return on investment for all of mindspawn's typying I think.Okay, maybe some of RAZD's psychoanalysis is a bit over the top...

As I was reflecting on RAZD's work in the great debate, I recalled that JonF posted this. Your link points to a determination of the half life of Thorium 230 which is of particularly interest because it is based on a direct measurement of Th230 disintegration activity.This technique has the advantage over many of the other determinations in that it does not rely on samples reaching secular equilibrium with another isotope. A directly refuting of mindspring's claim that Th230 half life measurements use "evolutionary assumptions".I did not see a similarly suitable U234 measurement in your post, so for completeness, I located a couple of measurements of U234 half life using a similar method to the one described in your citation.See method 2 at the first link:Half-Life of Uranium (234) - NASA/ADS

quote:

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The half-life of U234 has been determined by two independent methods. The first method involves a re-measurement of the relative isotopic abundance of U234 and U238 in normal uranium; from this measurement the half-life of U234 can be obtained in terms of the known half-life of U238. The value obtained by this method is 2.29+/-0.1410^5 years.

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The second method involves the determination of the specific α-activity of U234 from the total specific α-activity and relative isotopic abundances of several enriched uranium samples. The value obtained by this method is 2.35+/-0.1410^5 years. Both values for the half-life are somewhat smaller than the currently accepted value of 2.69+/-0.2710^5 years.

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The Specific Alpha-Activities and Half-Lives of U<SUP>234</SUP>, U<SUP>235</SUP>, and U<SUP>236</SUP> - NASA/ADS

quote:

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The specific alpha-activities and half-lives of U234, U235, and U236 have been determined. The material used for each determination was uranium very highly enriched in the isotope under investigation. Accurate volume aliquots of U235 were electrodeposited quantitatively onto platinum disks and were counted in a medium geometry chamber. Accurate weight aliquots of U234 and of U236 were pipetted onto platinum disks, evaporated to dryness in an induction furnace, and counted in a medium geometry chamber. The specific activities and half-lives found are as follows: Isotope Specific activity (disint/min mg) Half-life (years) U234 (1.370+/-0.009)10^7 (2.475+/-0.016)10^5 U235 (4.74+/-0.10)10^3 (7.13 +/-0.16) 10^8 U236 (1.406+/-0.011)10^5 (2.391+/-0.018)10^7

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Okay. Now I can turn in...

Mindspawn typically does not post on weekends. I think he last posted on the 20th which was only a couple of days prior to the weekend.Too early to tell if he is stymied.