Radiometric Dating is Accurate

This is has been a good debate. I've gotten to revisit many aspects of the science. If radiometric dating were inaccurate, it would be easy to show it. Anyone could have samples dated by various different techniques using different laboratories. Labs performing radiometric dating are on the Internet, and they will provide services to anyone. A double-blind technique could be used to prevent any bias in evaluation. If the dates are inconsistent, then the dating is inaccurate. Scientists have done this many times, and the dates are very consistent. Critics claim the scientists are just pretending there is consistency. If so, critics could run the experiments themselves and show the results they obtained. Critics don't do that. Critics do not even try the simple tests. The technique they use exclusively is to search for uncommon cases of problems in the methods of dating, then claim that the methods have no validity whatsoever in spite of the close agreement achieved 99% of the time. The method critics employ is like searching for broken wrist watches, and upon finding a dozen, then claiming that wrist watches are utterly useless for telling time. Con must prove that radiometric dating produces errors of more than 10% in more than 5% of its uses. Con has provided no statistics whatsoever to counter the statistics in the presented scientific literature showing a general accuracy of 3% and an accuracy approaching 1% using the latest technology. If the methods were not accurate, it would be easy for critics to present contradictory statistical data, but there is none. It is impossible for a flood to produce varve sediments with layers having pollen grains sorted by season in the layers. Sediments in floods may appear in layers, but the layers depend upon materials settling out of the water at different rates. Mixing a solution and having it settle in repeating patterns of spring-summer-fall-winter pollen, each in discrete layers, is an impossibility. No physical mechanism for that has been suggested and none demonstrated. Pollen types and fish scale types in varve columns are used to study past climates. The species of plant or fish present indicates the climate at the time the sediment was deposited. Periods of climate warming and cooling are thus tracked. A great flood would produce a sample of only one climate condition, when the flood occurred. Spectral analysis of sediment layers is also used to count solar cycles, lunar cycles, sunspot cycles, and Milankovitch bands, independently confirming the age of the layers. http://www.jstor.org... Varve columns produce the same number of layers, corresponding to the years, at dozens of independent sequences around the world. [1] The number of sediment layers produced by a flood would depend upon the number of different materials available locally to settle into different layers. There is no reason to suppose the number of layers would match globally, as in fact observed. Also, if all the water on earth were added to the oceans it would only make them rise by 220 feet. Many sediments columns have been measured in lake areas more than 220 ft above sea level. Con wrongly claims that the individual layers of ice cores are not counted. The layers are in fact individually counted. "Comparison of visible stratigraphy, electrical conductivity measurements (ecm), laser light scattering of dust and oxygen isotopes (only in the top 300 m) revealed an excellent correlation between these annual signals to a minimum depth of 2500 m." http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu... The religious-inspired counterargument is that maybe the layers are formed by individual snow storms so that there are fewer years than layers. In that way, they hope to get a record of hundred of thousands of years reduced to just a few thousand, as they require. (These didn't melt it get Flood waters?) The way that scientists distinguish years is to measure isotopes that vary with the seasons. Water having one isotope of oxygen evaporates faster than water having another isotope, so the ratio is a proxy for seasonal temperature. Also isotopes of beryllium and chlorine vary with sunspot cycle, but that is a secondary confirmation. http://www.talkorigins.org... The reason we know that the Institute for Creation Research and their allied journals are religious is that their motto is "Biblical - Accurate - Certain" as shown in the header of the Snelling paper http://www.icr.org... No scientific journal can claim papers are required to conform with the Bible or that results are certain. Sientists crosscheck. TalkOrigins.org does not rely upon its own authority, but references the refereed scientific literature. In counting tree rings, very rarely, two growth rings can occur in one season. When this happens it is obvious, so accurate counting is not a problem. [1] Con asks why there are no trees older than about 5000 years. The reason is that trees die, of course, and ultimately the remains decay. However, the pattern of yearly growth can be correlated between trees in overlapping generations, like matching bar codes. Using that method, tree rings can be used for dating back about 7,000 years in North America http://sonic.net... and more than 10,000 year in Europe. [1] The problems with K/Ar and Ar/Ar dating are discussed at http://www.icr.org... The allegations that there are widespread problems is simply false, and nothing other than a few particular problems is offered. Recent lava flows producing ancient dates is traced to the recent flows having incorporated old olivine. If Snell's critiques were valid general criticisms he would publish them in the peer-reviewed literature rather than unreviewed religious tracts. Snell makes a list of problems with K/Ar and Ar/Ar dating, which everyone knows, and then makes the improper implication that the problems are widespread and typical. He could not get away with the generalization in a scientific journal. Con claims "Fission tracks and electron spin resonance is dependent on the rate of decay of isotopes. So of course they match the radiometric dating. If decay had been accelerated in the past so would have fission tracks and electron spin resonance." There are four different mechanisms for radioactive decay. http://math.ucr.edu... So if the decay rates changed, they would have to change in exactly the same way in each. But there is no known mechanism by which any of them can be changed, and there is no theory that supports even one changing. There is ample experimental verification that decay rates are not affected by environmental factors. Fission tracks are formed after a mineral crystallizes from the molten state, and it measures times up to about two billion years past. http://en.wikipedia.org... If the time scale were dramatically in error, all the volcanism in two billion years would have to be compressed into a few years. That is not possible under all the rates of heating and cooling have also changed, implying the basic physical laws had changed along with that, but improbably remain consistent with respect to crosschecking. Con ridicules crosschecking, but it is both logical and valid. He offers no scientific alternative. Con quotes one article from 1970 in which a scientist says he throws away data he doesn't like. Con then claims that all scientists always do the same. That claim is unsupported. Scientists are renowned for showing errors in previous results, not by confirming them. Showing a serious error would win a Nobel prize. The geological time scale is confirmed by dozens of independent methods employed by many thousands of scientists from around the world. The resolution is affirmed.