The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

of rock is supposed to have eroded away from underneath, they still are where they fell! Woodmorappe’s (2003a, 2003b) studies convinced him that dead trunks did not exceed more than about 3,000 growth rings, with most having considerably fewer rings than the oldest livings trees. Woodmorappe (2003a) argues that cross-matching techniques appear to be valid. Thus, he developed a novel hypothesis that ring correspondence is due not to climatic, synchronous perturbations but to wave-like sequential localized soil perturbations. That is, rock and soil shifts during substrate creep over several year periods due to erosion and earthquake tremors would stress trees on a fault first, then the creep would spread to other trees over multiyear periods. Thus, trees of the same age would have time-staggered ring patterns making them appear to be of different ages. Using them for developing chronology would then greatly inflate the number of years measured. These types of perturbation would be expected to occur during the years of the Flood recovery. 6. Critiques of calibrating radiocarbon dating with dendrochronology The physics and math of radiocarbon dating are beyond the scope of this paper, but this section attempts to provide the context of radiocarbon dating as it relates to dendrochronology. As one of the earliest creationists to attempt to correlate carbon-14 dates with a biblical chronology, Brown (1968, see also 1986, 1990, and Brown in Aardsma 1990), reviewed the basis of radiocarbon chronology. To calibrate the C-14 curve with the master chronology, wood segments for every 10 rings in the ring series are dated using radiocarbon dating. He concluded that the University of Arizona Dendrochronology Lab’s BCP master chronology would require a 10% increase in C-14 flux before 3500 BP, which has largely been accepted by conventional science, or alternatively, as cited above, that the master chronology overestimates tree ages by 10%. Less than 10 years after Brown’s initial assessment, Sorenson (1976) suggested that cross-matching is not valid because the dead tree segments are dated by C-14 before cross-matching even begins because the dead segments would cross-match with so many recent ring patterns in living trees. In a similar vein, Hebert et al. (2016) and Snelling (2017) recently argued that a common feature of dendrochronology is circular reasoning by assuming tree dates to calibrate C-14 dates, which are then used to advise the selection of cross-matched alternate correlations to obtain master chronologies. Two other early authors working with Egyptian artifacts expressed concerns about the impact dendrochronology calibration of C-14 dating had on archeological dating. Long (1973) lists a long series of specific artifacts along with their C-14 dates, archeological dates, tree-ring calibration of the C-14 date, and the biblical chronology date. In most cases the C-14 date is the youngest, the archeological often close to 1,000 years older, and the calibration date intermediate between the other two or sometimes the oldest by a few years. The biblical chronology often was closest to or younger than the raw C-14 date. Tyler (1977) did not list dates of specific items, but did provide a chart summarizing the C-14 curve, the tree-ring ages plotted against the C-14 curve, and plotted artifacts dated by C-14. He found that the carbon-dated tree rings and carbon-dated artifacts were significantly different for the years 600 BC to 1900 BC, and, hence, the dates were incompatible. Long’s (1973) main argument was that C-14 concentrations vary geographically due to 1) erratic changes in the atmosphere, 2) changes of intensity of the cosmic ray flux, 3) higher altitudes receiving less protection from cosmic rays, and 4) and absorption of C-14 in “dead” rings because the tree is still alive. Therefore he concluded that the BCP calibration curve was not valid for other locations, and that a separate curve would have to be calibrated with different species occurring at low elevation and as close to Egypt as possible. Setterfield’s (1986) perspective is colored by his model of the decay of the speed of light since Creation. In his model, cosmic radiation has varied widely, which in turn would cause wide deviations in the C-14 flux before, during and after the Flood. Thus, he suggests that calibration of C-14 by dendrochronology prior to AD 500 is spurious. Tyler (1977) challenged the validity of the dendrochronology calibration of radiocarbon dates. He did accept conventional reports that C-14 equilibrates in the troposphere in weeks longitudinally and in a few years latitudinally. Even though the greater ocean surface flux in the Southern Hemisphere removes enough C-14 to make the ages there about 40 years “older,” one would still expect the C-14 to be in equilibrium across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. To explain the discrepancies he, like Long (1973), suggested contamination on existing rings. He thought this could be due to food transport across sapwood or in situ conversion of cellular N to C-14 in these high altitude plants. He also suggested unusual climatic conditions about 600 BC and the possibility of chronological errors. He thought these more likely due to errors in the archeological methods than in the dendrochronology assumption as cross-matching appears to be valid for the time frame involved. 7. Creationist models harmonizing radiocarbon dating with dendrochronology Most of the remaining creationist literature on C-14 calibration by dendrochronology centers on two competing creationist models by Brown and Aardsma and an extensive exchange between them. Brown (1986, 1990, see also Brown in Aardsma 1990) developed a mathematical model on the constant rate increase of C-14 post- Flood. Based on radiocarbon content in organic Flood deposits such as coal, he estimated the ratio of C-14 to C-12 as about 1/100 th of that after 3500 BP. He (Brown 1986) suggested that C-14 flux was near zero at the time of the Flood due to low magnetic field intensity, shielding by a water vapor canopy, extraction of C-14 from the biosphere by fossil and carbonate deposits during the Flood. He supports the agreement of C-14 and real time from the present (i.e., pre-nuclear testing) back to 3500 BP, before which C-14 ages increase exponentially to a real-time asymptote of 5000 years BP (an approximate LXX date for the Flood). In a response exchange (Aardsma and Brown 1991;Aardsma 1992), Aardsma pointed out that Brown’s conversion would require a BCP living about 6000 BP to make 580 rings in 80 years, or 7 rings/ year. Other cases would require up to 20 rings/year in ring series predating 3500 BP. He also said this would require 26 rebuildings of Jericho in 70 years instead of 1,000 years. Brown replied that Jericho at that time had much higher rainfall and the rebuildings were just 26 repairings. To this, Aardsma (1992) replied that he could not find any reference to the high rainfall, which Brown did not document. Aardsma (1990) also developed his own C-14 conversion model based on dendrochronology. He accepted the University of Arizona BCP dendrochronology calibration as valid. The differential equation he used allowed him to match a constant rate buildup of C-14 after the Flood to the conventional calibration curve, which terminated at approximately 9500 BP. The formula generated a parabolic curve peaking about 8000 BP and dropping to near zero Sanders ◀ Tree-ring data ▶ 2018 ICC 519