[Thanks to Alan Fox for asking questions about YEC and Elizabeth Liddle for her generosity in hosting this discussion]
YEC part 1 gave some theological and philosophical context to the case for YEC, and part 2 will hopefully focus solely on empirical and scientific considerations. Part 2 challenges the mainstream view that the fossil record is hundreds of millions of years old.
If empirical considerations alone suggest the fossil record is not more than a several million years old, does it matter on balance that the data don’t exactly arrive at 6,000 years old? I think not. As far as I’m concerned, if the fossil record is not anywhere near as old as the mainstream claims, the creationists will have won the essentials of their case independent of whether the universe and Earth are billions of years old. Creationists can afford to lose the issue of the age of the Earth and universe, but Darwinists cannot survive the fossils record being only a few million years old. But as I demonstrated in YEC part 1, time isn’t the friend of evolution anyway, it is an enemy since nature tends to erode complexity, not construct it.
If the age of a skyscraper built with 1 billion year old rocks does not imply the skyscraper was built 1 billion years ago, the age of the fossil record can be formally separated from the age of the universe and age of the Earth and age of rocks. The time of death of someone can be determined forensically and the process doesn’t rely on the age of the Earth or universe or rocks around deceased to make a reasonable inference. The age fossil record is about establishing the time of death of the fossil not the rocks the fossil is buried in. The age of when a strata was formed is independent of the age of the rocks that form the strata.
When I ask geologists how do permineralized or well-preserved fossils form. As a matter of principle, does the entombment happen quickly or slowly? “Quickly” is the usual reply. Why? Rapid burial with minerals and water are the necessary ingredients to effect preservation. If the creature dies and is left out in the open to scavangers and decay processes, it will not fossilize. So as a matter of principle, such fossil bearing formations didn’t take millions of years to form. Thus one can’t argue the fossil record is old because it took millions of years to bury them! In the case of wooly mammoths with undigested tropical vegetation in their stomachs, they’d have to be instantly buried in snow to effect the necessary freezing to preserve the vegetables in their stomachs — not millions of years. That’s the other thing, why are the mammoths in a tropical environment one moment and then buried in a cataclysmic blizzard the next, and then never unfrozen till discovered in Siberia? Hmm…..
So like a detective, we’ve established certain fossils are buried rapidly, not over millions of years. The question remains when it happened, or maybe when it couldn’t have happened.
The mean sea level of the US is here is around 760 meters. Erosion of a mere 10 microns per year would wipe 760 meters into the sea in 76 million years. A sheet of paper, by the way is 100 microns thick. The slowest mean erosion rate I’ve found in literature is 2.5 microns per year, and even that would wipe out the Phanerozoic in many areas.
I point to this empirical study by Princeton geologists Judson and Ritter: Judson and Ritter
Taking the average height of the United States above sea level as 2300 feet and assuming that the rates of erosion reported here are representative, we find that it would take 11 to 12 million years to move to the oceans a volume equivalent to that of the United States lying above sea level. At this rate there has been enough time since the Cretaceous to destroy such a land mass six times. Accepting this figure creates the problem of maintaining a continental mass above high elevations. A problem beyond the intent of this report
Granted, that may only be a mean value for now, but one can’t fight gravity, sediments will tend to move toward the oceans, erasing the fossil record in the process. Even if Judson and Ritter are off by a factor of 50, that would still wipe out the fossil record all the way to the beginning of the Cambrian.
But even more to the point, we have forensic clocks that may put an upper limit to the time of death of the fossil in question. There is the very embarrassing fact that the supposed carboniferous era of 300 million years ago has ubiquitious traces of C14, and this is acknowledged in peer-reviewed literature. 0.1% present day concentration of C14 will yield a presumed age of 57,000 years. That is 1 part in 1000. We have frequent detections of comparable levels, so much so many won’t even try to date with C14 beyond that presumed age because there seems to be a persistent amount in fossils!
Some claim contamination, but this explanation is not as credible as one might suppose.
First consider in-site contamination. To maintain a background persistent concentration of C14, one needs to keep adding more carbon from atmospheric sources into the fossil to maintain 0.1% concentraion. The problem with this scenario however is that the added C14 will decay away, and one needs to add even more carbon contaminants the next iteration to maintain a background C14 level of 0.1%. One ends up with something analogous to the compounding interest rate problem. Say I added a mere 0.1% contaminant every 50,000 years, over 300,000,000 years, the fossil will either gain 402 times in mass or be diluted from the original material by that factor. Maybe in-site contamination might work as an explanation for isolated cases, but not for repeated discoveries in diverse geographical locations, otherwise one would have to argue nature conspired to fool us by contaminating the entire world recently for no good reason.
Consider contamination during processing of the fossil. 1 part in 1000 might seem like very little, but consider contaminating a hard piece of fossil marble or shell or bone. Just to illustrate, take a 1 gallon (not quite 4 liters) sample of something hard. A little less than a small teaspoon (4 milliliters) of contaminant to 1 gallon would be 1 part in 1000. Do you think you can force that much contaminant into something relatively hard? 🙂 Even 1 teaspoon into 10 gallons wouldn’t exactly be easy (1 part in 10,000). So this is not as credible an explanation as would be supposed either. Are experiments and analysis actually done to determine the source of contamination? No, because the fossils C14 is primarily due to contamination, it is due to the fact the fossils are young. And few are willing to stick there neck out to point out they can’t demonstrate the source of supposed contamination.
Radioactive decay chains have be also ruled out unless of course one assumes 99% Uranium and less than 1% of fossil!
See:
Problems using Coal as a C14 free source
Lowe points out:
Many (super 14) C dating laboratories have established that coal samples exhibit a finite (super 14) C age, apparently caused by contamination of the specimens before any laboratory preparation is undertaken.
He then points out the contamination cannot be due to radioactive decay of other products:
Because coal is formed over geological time scales at depths providing excellent shielding from cosmic rays, its 14C content should be insignificant in comparison to the 14C introduced by even the most careful sample preparation techniques used in 14C dating laboratories. How is it then, that a material, which should show a14C age indistinguishable from that produced by a combination of machine background and contamination during careful sample preparation, routinely produces a finite 14C age?
One suggestion is that radium, which is present in some coals at the sub pm level, as a decay product of the uranium/thorium series, may produce 4C during an extremely rare decay event (Rose & Jones, 1984). Jull,Barker and Donahue (1987) have detected 14C from this process in uranium/ thorium ores. Blendowski, Fliessbach and Walliser (1987) however, have shown that the 14( decay mode of 226Ra is only of the order of 10-11 of the preferred a decay channel to 222Rn. Thus, the amount of 14C produced by such events derived from radium in coal must be considered as insignificant.
and finally capitulation at the ubiquity of the problem
There are many other unpublished accounts by 14C laboratories in which the use of coal as a background test material has been investigated. In many cases, the samples were found to contain 14C, and further studies were discontinued. The AMS and gas counting facilities, DSIR, in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, eg, have observed apparent ages for coal specimens ranging from 25-40 kyr, and the NSF Accelerator Facility at Tucson, Arizona has determined ages of anthracite samples ranging from 30-40 kyr (AJT Jull, pers commun, 1988).
Lowe invokes bacterial contamination, but I pointed out why such in site contamination is contradicted by the “compounding interest” problem, not to mention, bacteria in deep parts of the Earth would be feasting off C14 depleted carbon, not atmospheric carbon!
Next is the fact of biological materials with half-lives that preclude their persistence in fossils. DNA has a half life 521 years give or take, homochiral amino acids have half-lives on the order of hundreds or a few thousand years. The state of these biological materials in fossils is inconsistent with the time of death hundreds of millions of years ago.
Additionally, we have ancient fossil DNA that looks like modern DNA, breaking the biological molecular clock hypothesis. See: Pardox of Ancient Bacterium. But detractors bring up the contamination complaint yet again.
The actual forensic clocks refute old age fossils in the fossils themselves (C14, DNA, homochiral amino acids, inconsistency with biological molecular clock). The well preserved variety of fossils could not have been buried in a process taking millions of years as a matter of principle, and there should be serious doubt the fossil record would still be around after hundred million years, maybe not even 11 million years.
Finally, I keep hearing assertions about all the mounds of data that prove the fossils are old. Actually it’s mounds of publication not mounds of actual facts. The amount of words dumped out does not necessarily make claims any more credible than Kairos Focus being verbose proves Kairos Focus’ FYI/FTR are correct. It’s the physical facts that count. The tons of fossilized material themselves do not indicate an age that is as old as most presume.
stcordova,
The Evidence for an old earth is way more than fossils.
Sal is just doing what Sal always does. C&Ps some amazing YEC stupidity from a religious apologetics site, quote mine a few legitimate sources, ignore the huge amount of contradictory evidence, run like a scalded cat when questioned. Deja vu all over, again.
Sal, these “problematic” ages have been explained thoroughly years ago. The coal that dates “young” with C14 dating is found in close proximity to natural Uranium and Thorium deposits where it is exposed to radiation that converts C12 into C14 through sequential neutron capture.
That’s why they find indigenous C14 “inside” the coal where it “shouldn’t” be, because radiation can actually get there and hit the atoms and convert it. This also explains why coals from the same overall location still dates wildly different C14 ages, since distance from the radiation source has a huge impact on the rate of neutron capture(because as you know, the radiation intensity drops offquickly with distance, so coals at one end of the site close to the source will “date” significantly “younger” than coal at the other end further away from the radiation source).
From Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences 2007:
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/1/44.full
2 orders of magnitude smaller is some where in the ball park of 100 times smaller! The language is very guarded, and not a lot of papers want to discuss this.
The presumption the Earth was molten and mixed all the radioactive stuff evenly is refuted by this finding.
If the Earth were molten and mixed the uranium and thorium, there really isn’t much reason the sea floor should be missing uranium and the continents contain it by a factor 100 times greater unless there is a different mechanism for the origin of uranium isotopes than stellar nucleosynthesis.
If there is a different mechanism for uranium synthesis than stellar origin, then all bets are off for uranium being a reliable marker for long term radiometric ages of rocks.
I found out work at the Proton-21 laboratory in Ukraine demonstrated origin of Uranium and other isotopes by electrical means. If there was a global cataclysm that was associated with novel uranium production, then the supposed ages of rocks could be all wrong.
A testable hypothesis? Any experiment that could produce a rock with isotopic ratios that make it look like those claimed to be old would be a nice place to start.
The Proton 21 lab at least shows some of the conditions for Uranium Synthesis. The propose the origin of Uranium is other than standard theory from supernova. They’ve successfully performed the equivalent of alchemy through nuclear transmutation and remediation via electrical means.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211379715000145
Some comments on the OP:
You are quite confused here. In many cases (fossiliferous limestones, chalks), fossils are the rocks. Apart from that, ‘Strata’ are the layers that make up certain rock types such as sandstones and limestones. The sediments are deposited layer by layer, and subsequent compaction and cementation hardens them from soft sediment into hard rock, preserving the layering structure. This process is called ‘lithification’. In a very real sense you have it exactly backwards, the strata are actually older than the rocks. Moreover, it is painfully obvious that a dead animal or plant cannot be inserted retrospectively into lithified sediments that are being buried below younger deposits. Ergo, the dead organisms were deposited at the same time as the surrounding sediments, and therefore in geological terms the age of the matrix and the age of the fossils are the same.
It is not argued that in takes millions of years to bury individual fossils, it is argued that it took millions of years to form the totality of all of the fossil bearing sedimentary rocks. The arguments go well beyond burial rates of fossils.
Which was never under dispute.
Read up on Eustacy and Orogeny. Erosion grates down the land surface, tectonic forces raise it. These processes play out simultaneously. Sometimes the one wins, other times the other. Over time spans of millions of years the Earth is very dynamic.
We find Cambrian rocks at the surface of the Earth at present because at some time in their history they were raised back to the surface from the depths of their burial. For example, the Cambrian Burgess Shale in the Rocky Mountains was uplifted during the Laramide orogeny, 80 – 55 million years ago. The reason the Burgess Shale is a shale is that before that time it was buried deep below younger sediments, where pressure and temperature compacted the original mudstone into shale. During uplift the younger cover was eroded off and now the shales are outcropping, thousands of meters higher then where they were oriinally deposited.
Fossils are not dated directly. They are dated by the rocks they are included in (see above). These rocks are generally not dated directly either, but by their relation to surrounding igneous and metamorphic rocks that contain minerals suitable for radiometric dating. If a sedimetary rock is cut through or overlain by volcanic intrusions, as is the case in many places worldwide, it cannot be younger than those intrusions, especially not where there is clear evidence of ‘cooking’ of the sedimentary formation at the contact with the volcanics. The literature is replete with examples of this.
Sal, all I am saying here is Geology 101. Based on worldwide data and analyses of thousands of workers over hundreds of years. The mounds of data are all out there in the literature, and nothing stops you from going on field trips and collecting some more yourself. Have a go, it is fun!
It is the totality of the geological record, the fossils, the rocks, the minerals and their interrelations that indicate and age just about as old as most presume. The consilience of the data is what gives us a very strong signal. As I expected, all you are doing is focus on a few bits of noise whilst turning a blind eye to the signal.
faded_Glory,
Much appreciate the trouble you took in writing this, faded_Glory.
stcordova,
Oh, for God’s sake! All of ’em! But try Uranium 238, uranium 235, thorium 232, rubidium 87, and potassium 40.
I’m sure you’re not unaware of them, and no doubt you have a detailed refutation of every single one of ’em, because there will be at least one anomaly, and that seems to be your MO. Anomalies outweigh consilience by a factor of thousands to one. All geologists are misguided. Fact.
stcordova,
You’ve mixed up crust/mantle and continental/oceanic crust. But still, there are mechanisms that concentrate/dilute isotopes. How do you think they enrich uranium in power stations and bomb factories?
Sal, once again your ignorance is shining brightly. Nobody presumes that all the ‘radioactive stuff’ in the Earth was molten and mixed at the same time (except for YECs of course who think this was the case 6000 years ago).
What is actually happening is that oceanic crust gets continuously recycled via subduction, with a cycle time of around 200 my. In contrast, much of the crystalline continental crust has been stable over much longer times than that (look up ‘cratons’), with localised melting and mixing through tectonics in unstable orogenic belts during different times in history.
Continental crust, oceanic crust and mantle are all very different in chemical composition, and it is no surprise that these differences extend to U and Th concentrations.
Your suggestion that somehow this is a ‘dirty secret’ is absurd.
fG
faded_Glory,
I think Sal misread the paper anyway. The midoceanic sites are not regarded as representing the thin oceanic crust, but the much thicker mantle beneath.
IMHO that’s the only YEC position. Sal’s just more up-front about it.
AFAIK nobody thinks that the radioactive elements mixed throughout the earth when it was molten. Are you aware of the fact that heavy stuff sinks in liquid?
[citation needed]
Gee, why did you cite one source and not the other?
Why, it’s easy to force contaminant into solids that are perrmeable, such as coal. So much uranium gets deposited into coal by groundwater that some of the seams in the was are mined for uranium. E.g. http://tinyurl.com/nwqpdng. Which would produce what?…
Contamination does not refer solely to in situ, as Dr. Bertsche hs made clear contamination can happen at any step in the process.
You made a claim, and several people pointed out why that claim is false. No response, huh, just repetition?
Sal,
You can demonstrate your commitment to the truth by addressing the points made on this thread as to why you are simply incorrect about many of your claims.
What are you more interested in, the truth or keeping your fantasy in the realm of the possible? Your next couple of posts will no doubt demonstrate the latter, but we will see.
For example, you could start by naming names about who is it that presumes that all the ‘radioactive stuff’ in the Earth was molten and mixed at the same time? If you can’t then retract and admit you were in error!
stcordova,
So you don’t think there are opportunities for contamination at any stage? If there is beta decay coming out of a coal sample, it can only be due to beta-converted N14 in the upper atmosphere and fixed in the living vegetation giving up its electrons? There are no earth-bound sources of beta radiation, and no possibility of recent atmospheric contamination? I think you are wrong.
But since you have such confidence in C14, do you accept that it shows humanity to be at least 48,000 years old? Or does the method suddenly not work?
Sal, which radiometric dating methods do you accept as reliable in determining the ages of geologic strata?
Fourth time asking,
During processing after extraction form the dig site? I’m not talking about contamination by water (which doesn’t have carbon), but similar carbon bearing substances. But if the world really cared to be skeptical and know the truth, they’d go the extra mile to confirm it was contamination during the journey from the mines to the lab. That said, most peer-reviewed papers conclude at some point, this is an insufficient mechanism.
There is a reason as was explained in the Talk Origin’s website carboniferous coal wasn’t chosen by physicist to do their experiments, it seemed there was no avenue to improve the mining process so as to eliminate the “contaminant”. The concluded erroneously the contamination was due to radioactive decay of other substances.
And as you reinforced, the linked website failed to specify the concentration of Uranium necessary to sustain trace amounts of C14. The reason it is left unspecified is one would need around 99%+ Uranium and 1%- of specimen! The paper by Lowe even points out the absurdity of such a mechanism.
Lowe however erroneously presumes bacteria can be the means of contamination, and I pointed out the error there because of the “compounding interest” problem in addition to the fact the bacteria way below the surface would only have access to C14 free carbon!
Well Sal?
Bertsche was successfully refuted by Baumgardner, I went the extra mile to show how much contaminant has to be forced into solid substances like say marble and shells.
Bertsche posted once on UncommonDescent on an unrelated matter. He can post here at TSZ I suppose, but I don’t think he’ll refute Buamgardner’s counter nor Paul Giem’s counter.
Undecided because initial conditions not well defined, all relevant physics not yet clear such as nucleosynthesis (as shown by the work of Proton-21 labs).
Sal has been peddling this mess for decades. He’s been making the same stupid claims, and been getting the same refutations each time. If he was interested in learning, i.e., updating his actual knowledge base, he would have done so many, many years ago.
It’s been a long time since you could have classified Sal’s approach as “ignorant”. Un-teachably stupid is what he’s graduated to.
It shows the fossil record is not more than 50,000 years old on the assumption C14 atmospheric concentrations and sources are the same as today, which may not be true. What I have demonstrated is a contradiction in the mainstream viewpoints because of the C14 levels. If the C14 environment had less C14, like say because of a stronger Earth’s magnetic field (which may be decreasing), then that explains why the C14 traces are lower than would be expected from 50,000 years and present day atmospheric C14 levels.
But as I pointed, out, even with 50,000 years, the evolutionists lose big time. They’re off by 300 million years. Being off by a 44,000 years by comparison is nothing…
So? If it rules out YEC then it rules out YEC. And it does, by your own words.
It does not matter what else is ruled out – you don’t believe in any of those things.
Actually it’s everything. You have just demonstrated that you are a YEC despite and not because of the evidence.
Write a paper. Publish it. Then perhaps your “demonstration” will have value.
He made several comments in this thread addressing the issue of contamination starting here. It seems to me Paul Giem ducked out of that discussion. Bertsche makes mincemeat of Giem and points out gently that Baumgartner did not respond to his attempts to contact him about his findings.
stcordova,
Really? How on earth does it ever get fixed, then?
stcordova,
What proportion of coal samples show anomalous C14 levels?
Hey, how are ya, Dave, long time! Had lots of fun debating you in 2004 in ARN. Thanks for joining in the fun.
stcordova,
God, it’s like pulling teeth! No, it shows that human artefacts are at least 50,000 years old. Since C14’s half life is about 5,730 years, it’s at the limit of the method – there remains too little to stand out above the background of cosmic and other beta sources (eg potassium 40, which you may find in … er … coal).
Alan,
Bertche did not succeed, Bertche conceded if there was contamination:
Does that mean he thinks coal samples by non-RATE scientists were also “contaminated” in situ? Which means the extraction method from mine to lab was adequate.
How does Bertche propose contamination happens in situ and when would it have to happen, like 50,000 years ago world wide for no good reason?
Water won’t elevate the level of C14 in a carbon sample will it, the contaminant in question has to elevate the level of C14. So why do you think water contamination again has relevance to elevating C14 levels? And even supposing it carried new carbon into the sample at some time, remember C14 has a half life, and because of the “compounding interest” problem, this is not a believable mechanism of contamination.
Come on Sal, the source of
is cosmic rays acting on atmospheric nitrogen. The 
oxidizes to 
, which dissolves (being soluble) in water, and arrives in precipitation which ends up as ground water.
Oops on
errors!
Yes, and gold is far more common in the core than in the crust. Potassium and barium are two elements that are highly enriched in the crust. much like U and Th are.
A number of processes are responsible. With gold and a lot of other transition metals, it has primarily to do with how easily they dissolve in molten iron. Practically all of the gold sank into the core during the “iron catastrophe,” and the little bit of gold in the crust today is thought to have come from later meteorite strikes, notably the late heavy bombardment.
Uranium, thorium, and barium all do not dissolve into iron at all well, so did not sink into the core with most of the iron, the gold, platinum, and nickel. In addition, chemically they are rather incompatible with the mantle. I’m not exactly sure why, but I suspect that there is a size problem for all three–they don’t fit well into magnesium-silicates would be my guess. As melts formed in the mantle, uranium, thorium, and barium were all expelled into the those melts, because probably the higher silicate rocks bind them all tighter. Uranium, thorium, and barium are all quite heavy, but because they’re more chemically compatible with lighter silicates, they rose with the lighter silicates into the continental crust. This happened over and over again, notably at converging boundaries where plutons of silicates rose, enriched in alkali metals, U, Th, and Ba. Once in the crust, these elements were stuck there, unless they eroded into the oceans. If they eroded into the oceans they would eventually get into the mantle again in various ways, where they would again be differentiated into rhyolitic melts, and rise either to be stuck in plutons that never erupted (and became granite), or to erupt onto the surface at a volcano like Mt. St. Helens.
Stellar nucleosynthesis is indeed what gave rise to most of the elements, although there is some controversy over where heavy elements like gold and uranium arose–there is a chance that neutron stars were somehow responsible, since they don’t seem to appear in many supernovae II calculations, at least not in the smaller and mid-sized ones. Possibly the biggest supernovae II are different, and can sythesize Au, Th, U, and Ba. But chemistry happens, and especially on a planet with plate tectonics, continental crust becomes quite different from the core, but also even the mantle. Ocean floors are low in U, Th, and Ba because ocean floors are largely just mantle rock that rose, and the mantle has been depleted of these elements by continental crust formation.
Glen Davidson
If you had an outdoor liner pool where rainfall is significant, you’d know that pH will shift low after fresh rain.
Sal, you still haven’t told us how you propose that all those millions and millions of young fossils managed to find their way into those thick piles of old sedimentary rocks, all over the world and to depths of many kilometers below the earth’s surface (as witnessed for instance by tens of thousands of oil and gas wells).
fG
stcordova,
Why not?
Allan Miller,
@ Sal,
Wow! Allan has found an interesting example how the presence of
ions in ground water can be used to indicate over-pumping and contamination from surface water. It seems wherever we look, the evidence is against you.
You didn’t read my message.
We know that uranium can generate 14C in coal from nitrogen.
We know that significant, even mineable, uranium content is found is many coal seams.
We can conclude that there is some 14C in some coal seams generated by in-situ uranium and nitrogen.
From just that we can’t make any predictions about how much 14C should be found in which coal samples due to this process, but it could happen in any coal sample not known to be sufficiently uranium-free from an appropriate source..
What research or tests were performed to exclude this possibility on the coal in which allegedly significant 14C was found?
The after-mining question is a different one. As Dr. Bertsche demonstrated (in a non-peer-reviewed post) post-mining contamination seems quite likely to an expert in the field due to Baumgardner’s ignorance of the pitfalls in 14C dating RATE’s Radiocarbon: Intrinsic or Contamination?. I don’t acknowledge the RATE publications as peer-reviewed, they were not reviewed by experts in the appropriate fields.
Got any links to papers reviewed by experts in the appropriate fields that support your contention?
Richard Hughes alluded to the issue of consilience of data. C14 is not even the major marker of youth, the lack of racemization in the protein amino acids is extremely serious. Objections of contamination are moot since the fossil is made of proteins!
The homochirality of an amino acid polymer after formation degrades over time if not actively policed. It is the natural chemical evolution of the material much like starting out with a set of fair coins100% heads, and then occasionally flipping each coin. The ratio of Left to Right amino acids will evolve from 100% left to the expected value of 50% left. Proteins in a living organism are often policed for deviations from the L form, hence while alive an organism retains it 100% L amino acid form.
Even though the exponential decay rate constant of racemization can change via temperature and some environmental factors, it cannot be sufficiently arrested to prevent racemization over tens of millions of years. This is a well known issue in chemical kinetics.
Amusingly, papers have come out claiming some unknown mysterious physical and chemical law that violates all known chemical kinetics in order to preserve the homochirality of fossils we “absolutely know” are tens of millions of years old.
Actually, there is nothing wrong with our knowledge of chemical kinetics, there is plenty wrong with the assumption that the time of death happened tens of millions of years ago.
What concentration of uranium is needed in to be mixed in with coal to give a C14 age of 50,000 years. 0.1%, 1%, 2%,…. 99%?
The requisite concentration was examined here and it was in the ball park of 99%:
Please help poor Thornton
That conclusion agrees with Lowe’s paper cited in the OP.
Any scientific objections to that analysis?
Where are we off to now? Are you conceding on
“contamination” now, in addition to dropping the claim of a young Earth?
I’d say that was a poor choice for a link, if you seek to persuade us that your primary objective is arguing the evidence. 🙂
[citation needed].
Are the RATE Radiocarbon (14C) Results Caused by Contamination? sure ain’t it; he makes lots of claims based on his misunderstandings:
Bersche: “The second contribution, laboratory contamination, is largely due to sample chemistry (pretreatment, hydrolysis or combustion to CO2, and reduction to graphite), which generally introduces a small amount of modern carbon, typically at least 1 microgram … Different sample chemistry techniques and processing equipment and variations in chemical batches can result in significantly more sample chemistry contamination.”
Baumgardner: “He invokes the fact that over the years many AMS labs have established that their procedures routinely introduce tiny amounts of modern carbon (with today’s level of 14C), typically on the order of 1 µg, into the samples they process. This level of contamination becomes serious for tiny sample sizes, say, 1 mg or less, especially if the sample is old. On the other hand, 1 µg of contamination has negligible consequences when the sample size is on the order of 100 mg, as was the case for the samples we tested and reported.”
So Bertsche’s point that a typical minimum contamination of 1 µg could be much larger than that depending on processing parameters, while Baumgardner ignores the possibility of greater amounts of contamination and looks only at the 1 µg possibility. that ain’t debunking.
There’s lots more examples but I’m not going to bother with them because you won’t respond.
In 2105 Giem wrote at UD (as recorded at Comment on What is Intelligent Design? by Paul Giem:
“This is one area where I mostly agree with Bertsche; much of the data is not provably different from zero, and I think that although Baumgardner et al. may prove to be right in the end, there is not enough data to prove they are right now. I would tend to make the weaker claim that carbon-14 levels in some fossil material are provably different from zero.
I believe that while Baumgardner et al. may have overstated their case, and while you may be right about the lack of an ideal situation here, I agree with Bertsche (your authority) that the coal data are not negligible, or the result of laboratory contamination.”
(Bertsche did not write that the coal data are not the result of laboratory contamination, that’s mischaracterizing his claims). But note “there is not enough data to prove they are right now.”.
While looking this stuff up I found some interesting posts on the 14C in diamonds question).
Less than a month ago, in http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=758331#m758331, Dr. Bertsche wrote”
“BTW, John Baumgardner of the RATE project finally commented on my explanations of “radiocarbon in diamonds” and the Taylor & Southon paper a few months ago. His comments were featured on the Answers In Genesis website just a few weeks back. I encourage you to read his comments next to the Taylor & Southon paper. You’ll see that Baumgardner mischaracterizes and misinterprets what they wrote.”
I don’t know where Baumgardner’s recent comments are, but knowing him it’s certainly likely he’s misrepresenting Taylor & Southon, especially since I dug up some analysis I did at http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=742100#m742132 and http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=page&t=5527&mpp=15&p=25#m742138 showing that Baumgardner was misinterpreting T&S back in 2005.
No, I’m not conceding, I’m piling it on. No one here has offered a rational empirical refutation the level of C14 in fossils.
As far as rainwater and pH, the problem is C14 has a half life, if that water contaminant got down there with coal, it’s going to be C14 free in not too long because of C14 half life. Further the concentration of carbon dioxide that supposedly elevates the pH would not be sufficient to give 50,000 year values.
If you insist we can work through the numbers, or how about I let one of my detractors actually do the calculations and demonstrate sufficient contamination can happen starting with C02 solution saturation levels in water:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gases-solubility-water-d_1148.html
A cursory look says one will need over 50% of C02 saturated water to get the requisite amount of contaminant going.– that is to say 50% fossil, 50% water. Not too believable.
Anyone at TSZ actually want to care out the Molar analysis?
“Since the half-life of C14 is much less than Uranium, we have what is known as secular equilibrium ”
Suggests that you don’t now what secular equilibrium is. But since we are dealing with a dynamic process of uranium depositing from groundwater, secular equilibrium cannot be assumed, it must be demonstrated. Have fun wit dem PDEs.
[ABE} I note that the equations for production of 14C do not involve the number of N atoms. Therefore meaningless.
And for Sal’s benefit, we know that with a particular initial amount of U or Th and no addition or removal of relevant material, it so happens that because the half lives of the initial U or Th is much longer than any of the daughter products in the appropriate chain, the partial differential equations describing the situation converge to a state in which the decay rates and the production rates of all the isotopes in the chain are the same and we can treat the system as if U or Th decayed immediately to the final Pb, convenient as hell for geological dating and disequilibrium dating. But in a situation where relevant material is being added from groundwater, secular equilibrium must be demonstrated for the reaction 1n + 14N → 14C + 1p based on the time-varying neutron flux from the entire chain and he concenrations of U, Th,and N.
I.e. bush league{/ABE}
Next!
Nobody’s talking about rainwater and CO2. I’m talking about in-situ production of 14C via 1n + 14N → 14C + 1p with the neutrons emitted by radioactive decay of U and Th deposited in the coal by groundwater flowing through the coal. I don’t know if it is a realistic possibility, but it heeds to be ruled out. And so far you don’t seem to have figured out what I’m arguing and all your links have been irrelevant and/or incompetent.
Still waiting for lots of other answers, such as a reference for “Proton-21 laboratory in Ukraine demonstrated origin of Uranium and other isotopes by electrical means.” If true, that would be earth-shattering news. How much do you want to bet it’s false?
I did speculate that atmospheric
is incorporated into groundwater and Allan Miller provided a link that showed that its presence can be used to date groundwater.
stcordova,
How long is ‘not too long? 50,000, 100,000 years? How long does it take groundwater to penetrate to coal seam depth?