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

the crossmatches. Apropos to this, Larsson and Larsson (2018) suggest that the higher standard needed for the construction of prehistoric chronologies be realized by first using only individually-crossmatching series at P2YrsL* t≥7.0 (the “ceiling”) for the first “building blocks” of prehistoric chronologies. Lesser- crossmatching series can then be added-in in conformity with the “superstructure” created by the t>7.0 crossmatches (via P2Aut*). One may make an analogy with a complex many-piece cardboard puzzle, for which no guiding “finished puzzle” picture exists. To avoid errors, it is best to first juxtapose the pieces that have very distinctive edge geometries, and then to fit-in the less-distinctively- edged pieces around the pattern created by the first-fitted pieces. Is dendrochronology subjective? No and yes. We can think of dendrochronology as being objective at P2YrsL t≥7.0, increasingly somewhat subjective in the interval 7.0 down to 3.5, and likely intolerably subjective at t<3.5. As elaborated earlier (Woodmorappe 2003a, 2003b, 2009), the overall methodology behind dendrochronology, individual exceptions aside, is unassailable. This is easily illustrated once again. I have assembled a “motley” collection, consisting of 21 different Scots pine collections, each at least several hundred km away from its closest neighbor (916 series in total), from all over Eurasia (except Scandinavia), and allowed CDendro to freely pair-crossmatch all 916 series against each other. Many trees strongly crossmatched (for example, at P2YrsL t≥10.0) within their respective collections. Yet, out of all the 3,604 pair-crossmatches that occur at t≥6.0, only 26 were wrong (geographically impossible), and only 4 of these false crossmatches were at t≥7.0 [up to 7.3; never higher]. Not once did a high t-value (say, t>10.0) crossmatch occur at a position that is not synchronous with the time that the two trees lived, and not once , for example, did a tree from England have anywhere near a t>10.0 crossmatch with a tree from Mongolia. Were such instances to occur sporadically, individual dendrochronological results could legitimately be doubted. Were they (or their visual equivalents) to occur regularly, dendrochronology would have died in its infancy long ago. I have conducted a comprehensive survey of TRN and FIN. Out of 22,684 FIN individual-pair crossmatches at P2YrsL t≥6.0, only 93 series pair-crossmatch others in the wrong place (Again, the correct place defined as the location in which they best crossmatch the master chronology.) Out of the 93, there are 43 having OVL*>99 years, and, of these, only 10 pass all the screening tests (the gateway statistics*: Skel-Chi2*, Besancon*, and wrstblk* 50 lag 10 r≥0.3). The corresponding figures for TRN are 17,110 individual-pair crossmatches, and 35, 10, and 3. As for false individual pair crossmatches at P2YrsL t≥7.0, I find the following: In FIN, 4 out of 11,937 total, and, in FIN/TRN combined, 8 out of 33,484 total. The highest individual-pair false crossmatch I have ever seen, in the Scandinavian long chronologies, out of tens of thousands, is at P2YrsL t=8.2 at a modest 82-year overlap: TRN 0022027A (-916 -834) vs FIN FIL8839 (-3194 -3005). [This false pairing is part of the last false ensemble shown in Table 2.] To put this t-value, and all the foregoing others, in perspective, note that many individual pairs of trees, in all three long chronologies, crossmatch with each other at t=10, 15, and even more, and moreover often do so at Woodmorappe ◀ Tree-ring chronology shortening via disturbances ▶ 2018 ICC 655 Table 1. Data of the Faux Master Chronology Made From Imperfectly Experimentally-Perturbed Subfossil Trees, Each of Which is Conventionally Dated in a Different Era of Time. In the 15 TRN Series, the 5 th , 6 th , 24 th , etc., ring in each original series was reduced by 75% of its original width— except those marked with gray (X). For example, the 63 rd ring in series Z022097A was left alone in its original width.