JonF
Posts: 634
Joined: Feb. 2005
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Hey, Davie-doodles, how many dates did Dalrymple "throw out" in his GC paper?
Are discordant dates published, or is the observed concordance between methods an artifact of hiding all the discordant dates? If the discordant dates are hidden, how come the program managers and accountants haven't noticed?
How's that inquiry to the Menlo Park dating lab coming along?
Setting aside for the moment the issue of how many K-Ar dates are correct, how many correct K-Ar dates are required to disprove a young Earth? Does one correct K-Ar date disprove a 6,000 year old Earth? If not, why not?
Exactly how many of the dates given to you by deadman (for far more than four of the layers of the Grand Staircase) are argon dates?
| Quote (afdave @ Sep. 12 2006,13:43) | | Quote | | On-line and text-searchable by Google Scholar? You're on. $100. Produce your proof. |
Not so easy, big guy. YOU made the statement. YOU prove to me that you are right and I am wrong and I will gladly pay you $100. |
Your statement:
| Quote | | I would bet large money that 95% of all published studies back to the 40's have been indexed. |
You offered a bet, I accepted:
| Quote | | On-line and text-searchable by Google Scholar? You're on. $100. Produce your proof. |
Weaseling out?
| Quote | | Quote | | You attempted to refute that claim by searching for Pb-Pb and no other uranium-realated topic. Obviously you didn't know the difference. |
I DO know the difference ... wanna go another $100 to prove me wrong? I searched Pb-Pb because I know it is an important method and was one of the methods used in the Snelling 2003 paper. I did fail to notice that your claim was about U-Pb, not Pb-Pb. I obviously had Pb-Pb on the brain since reading Snelling's paper. In any case, what's your point? I think you just try to jump on any little thing you can think of to try to somehow show that I am stupid. |
Maybe you do know the difference. The evidence to date indicates pretty strongly that you don't. Your assertions are obviously untrustworthy.
| Quote | | You tried to do that with the KBS Tuff also, trying to somehow say that I think volcanic tuffs are sedimentary, when the truth is that if ANYONE said anything close to that it was you. |
Funny, you brought up the KBS Tuff in a discussion of dating sedimentary rocks (and nothing else); why was that again? Oh, yeah, you've never even tried to produce a reason. You have accused me of saying that lava and/or tuffs are sedimentary several times .. but no evidence, just assertions.
| Quote | | Quote | | Snelling is a fraudster. Proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Frauds like Snelling cannot be trusted in any area. |
So let's pretend Snelling's a fraud (since most ATBCers live in a pretend world anyway, why not step into that world for a moment?) How does this help you trust Argon dating? |
Well, for one thing, it totally discredits his Ngauruhoe studies, decreasing by at least one the number of studies that show errors. But it says far more about YECs than it says about K-Ar. All his "publications" should be reviewed for fraud (and many of them have been; guess what's been found?). It also demonstrates the lack of appropriate review in YEC "publications"; that fraud should have been detected before publication. Finally, it illustrates lack of integrity in the entire YEC movement; if someone got caught doing that in a real university or research group, his career would be over. Then and there, no questions asked, out on the street with no reference.
| Quote | | Do you discount all the other studies? Is it not a problem for you that only 20 - 40% of the Argon dates are "right"? |
You have not demonstrated 20-40% errors. You have demonstrated around 20% excess argon in a few studies; 20% excess argon does not translate to 20% error, since in older rocks excess argon is swamped by radiogenic argon.
The error rate in Dalrymple's paper is not necessarily typical; rocks as young as those in the GC, and with such a fairly complex history, are notoriously difficult to date. But Dalrymple's GC paper does not demonstrate an error rate of 20-40%. I demonstrated that 20% of Dalrymple's dates in the GC paper were not considered reliable, but that's not the same as error; some of the tests in those dates may well be correct, but the scatter hides them. I demonstrated that 20% of the dates in Dalrymple's paper were not considered reliable because of insufficient confirmation; "we don't know how reliable this date is" is not the same as "this date is an error".
But all that pales in regard to the major point, which you don't dare even acknowledge: even if the error rate is 20-40%, no, I have no problem with that when the question is "Is the Earth 6,000 years old?". He11, when asking if the Earth is 6,000 years old I wouldn't have a problem with an error rate of 99%. All K-Ar dates contradict your claim about the age of the Earth ... if just one out of the many thousands is correct yuour claim is falsified. We don't even need to know whcih one is right!
| Quote | | Have you ever investigated the other methods critically to see if they serve as a good yardstick for verifying Argon dating accuracy? |
Yes. Extensively. I've been writing a FAQ on concordia-discordia dating for years, on and off, and maybe one day I'll put it on the Web. I'm very conversant with the major methods and their pitfalls and limitations. I've corresponded with leaders in the field and discussed these issues with them.
One of the reasons that YECs love Ar-Ar dating so much is that it is more susceptible to error than pretty much all the other methods. That doesn't mean that a lot of the dates are in error; with rational sample selection (e.g. excluding xenoliths) and appropriate procedures and cross-checking, K-Ar dating is very reliable.
| Quote | | Quote | Pretty obvious and basic, Davie-moron, and the required information has been ignored by you many times in this thread. It is widely known that the isotopic composition of zircons, when they form, do not reflect "the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". In particular, the U/Pb ratio is very very high, no mater what the U/Pb ratio of the source was. (This sort of thing is comon for many relevant radioisotopes, but it's most extreme and obvious for zircons). Snelling has acknowledged this, in HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY: "The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth "at today's rates" of nuclear decay occurred."
Therefore the U/Pb radioisotope ratios in zircons found throughout the geologic record do not "only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". They reflect radioactive decay in-situ. And, if Snelling wants to claim that this does not indicate age, it's up to him to provide far more evidence than a few zircons with complex thermal histories and some apparently anomolous helium. |
You are correct that Humphreys and Co. acknowledge significant radioactive decay has occurred. But this has nothing to do with Snelling's conclusion. Snelling was not focusing on zircons in the 2003 study. He simply points out that the overall geochemistry of recent lava flows is merely an indication of their origin--it is not reliable date indicator. He proposes that this is quite likely for ancient flows as well. Real simple. This does not negate what you are pointing out about zircons, and what you are saying does not negate Snelling's conclusion. |
Of course, it's not likely at all for ancient flows, because we know that radioactive decay changes the isotopic ratios; unless you assume your conclusion that the Earth is young.
But zircons negate his conclusion. He may not have been focusing on them, but he made a universal claim that includes them; if it's false for zircons, his entire claim is false. Same logic as "if one K-Ar date is correct, the Earth is olderr than 6,000 years", and pretty basic logic at that. One counterexample disproves any universal claim.
He didn't say overall geochemistry, and he's not talking about overall geochemisty; nobody uses overall geochemistry of lava flows as an age indicator, and often we use chemistry of tiny components of lava flows as an age indicator. If indeed he's talking about overall geochemistry; then his conclusion is vacuous and there's no point to the paper.
| Quote | | As for the mixing issue, I merely mentioned that in passing because Snelling did. I do not know what his specific claim is and I'm not sure it warrants my time to investigate it, since I have thoroughly established (if no other place than in my own mind :-) ) the unreliability of Argon dating. I am only interested in investigating things which are central to my purpose. You probably know better than I do what Snelling said in regard to this ... go ahead and refute him if you would like to and you need a good laugh. |
Ah, Davie, you looked up mixing and realized that not even you could try to carry that one off. I'm disappointed.
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