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

Woodmorappe, J. 2018. Tree ring disturbance clustering for the collapse of long tree-ring chronologies. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism , ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 652–672. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. TREE RING DISTURBANCE-CLUSTERING FOR THE COLLAPSE OF LONG TREE-RING CHRONOLOGIES John Woodmorappe , Independent scholar, Chicago, Illinois. ABSTRACT The Disturbance-Clustering hypothesis, first introduced here, posits that geographically-demarcated subtly-perturbed tree rings had induced the affected trees to crossmatch not in accordance with climatic signals, as is assumed in conventional dendrochronology. They instead crossmatch only within a geographic cluster of like-perturbed trees, and not with those of other clusters or with any of the remaining unaffected climatically-governed trees. During chronology- building, these clusters became connected with each other, into an artificially-long chronology, by means of rarely- occurring fortuitously-crossmatching “bridge” series. An experiment involving fifteen ostensibly heterochronous ancient trees graphically supports this hypothesis. Merely one-per-decade individual-ring perturbations induce all fifteen series to form a self-clustering, robust false master chronology (common variance), moreover to which each series crossmatches to an almost-entirely-convincing degree (nearly all featuring all the important statistics, and including segment-by-segment correspondence of the curves). Significantly, and as experimentally demonstrated in this paper, at least 3 of every 10 disturbances can be omitted in some series, and a robust master chronology still develops. What’s more, the construction of the master chronology is not dependent upon the presence of any series that has the full complement of disturbances. Clearly, modestly-disturbed series could adequately have served as the “core” of a cluster of disturbed trees, just as required by the Disturbance-Clustering hypothesis. Furthermore, the previously-introduced now-called Migrating-Disturbance Hypothesis does not require a literal repetition of events in time. A lateral movement of disturbances over centuries is sufficient, as is illustrated. The Swedish and Finnish (Lapland) long Scots pine chronologies have a number of internal discontinuities. While not invalidating the chronologies, these discontinuities provide possible clues to their deconstruction. KEY WORDS Dendrochronology, multimillennial chronology, bristlecone pine, Scots pine, old-Earth challenges, carbon 14 dating, dendrogeomorphology, groundwater Copyright 2018 Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA www.creationicc.org 652 GENERAL INTRODUCTION Supra-long tree-ring chronologies, once an experimental curiosity, are now proliferating. There are two long chronologies from the Arctic of the Scandinavian peninsula, both consisting of Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris ): The Finnish Lapland long chronology [hereafter FIN](1484 series*) and the Swedish Lapland Tornetrask long chronology [TRN] (945 series) [sometimes combined together: Larsson and Larsson 2018]. There is also the USA (California) MWK long chronology [MWK] (285 series) of bristlecone pine ( Pinus longaeva) . All three chronologies are close to 8000 years long, according to conventional dendrochronology. Their ring- width measurements, being freely available, are examined in this study. [Those from the Alpine long chronology (Switzerland), the Hohenheim long chronology (Germany), and (in large part), the Belfast long chronology (Ireland), are still unavailable.] Throughout this work, I benefitted from extensive discussions with a Swedish dendrochronologist. The technical matters discussed in this paper are often in response to the “iron sharpens iron” issues raised during these encounters. There is no getting around the fact that dendrochronology is a very specialized subject, and it is impossible to teach it in one paper or speaking engagement. I strongly recommend that the interested reader visit cybis.se and familiarize himself/herself with modern dendrochronology and the CDendro program, in order to better understand my paper. Owing to the interlocking nature of the concepts presented in this work, it is not always possible to avoid using a term until it is specifically elaborated upon. For this reason, the terms pertaining to dendrochronological jargon (or to my informal shorthand), used in this paper, are marked with an asterisk(*) the first time they are used, and are defined in the Nomenclature section. This paper builds on the author’s earlier research on MWK (Woodmorappe 2003a, 2003b; 2009). It reaffirms the hypothesis developed by the author (Woodmorappe 2003a), which is now given a formal name—the Migrating-Disturbance Hypothesis. (Figure 1). In addition, it introduces a new hypothesis—the Disturbance- Clustering hypothesis (Figure 2). The latter depends on the demonstrated sensitivity of multiple perturbed tree-ring series to crossmatch, at high t-values, in a nonclimatic-dependent manner (Table 1); the ability of individual undisturbed series to crossmatch acceptably (Figure 3 and 4); and the ability of multiply-falsely- matched series to match at the same point even in the extreme case of failing nearly all other dendrochronological criteria (Figure 5). The latter inspired experiments that show the ability of falsely- crossmatched ensembles of series to match at the same point and to satisfy all other dendrochronological criteria (Table 2). FIN itself is re-derived in order to get a sense of how far P2Aut* can go, in building the long chronology, before one-series-at-a time manual crossmatching becomes necessary (Figure 6). Finally, TRN/FIN, in a combined master chronology*, is “deconstructed” (Figure 7) in order to identify the ‘weak spots” that likely (but