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

identify the most convincing segment/overhang results, in terms of the gateway statistics and in terms of the numbers of high-level pair-crossmatches in the resulting matrix. As a final step, the computer would take these convincing segment/ overhang results, trial-attach them to all possible remaining segments, and then identify the best final results, again in terms of the gateway statistics and in terms of the numbers of high-level pair- crossmatches in the resulting matrix. As a hypothetical illustrative example, imagine one segment (4463 BC—4364 BC) satisfactorily connected by a “bridge” to another segment (2135 BC—2036 BC), thereby forming a robust but faux submaster chronology. As an extension, the computer could take an even more broad-based approach. It could forego the FIN segments and try to satisfactorily “bridge” the many variously-sophisticated previously-discussed disturbed series that the computer had made earlier. 5. Factoring Carbon-14 Dating and the Supra-Long Tree-Ring Chronologies Consider, first of all, the construction of the long chronologies themselves. C-14 dating typically was used first to place the subfossil trees in approximate chronological sequence before the attempt was made to crossmatch their tree rings (Baillie 1995, Brown and Baillie 2015, Eronen et al. 2002, Stambaugh and Guyette 2009). The ability of tree ring chronologies to “stand alone” on the merits of dendrochonological procedures, argues that this was not an exercise in circular reasoning. Carbon 14 dates much older than the 3000 BC Noachian Deluge are common, and this implies, from a Biblical perspective, that C-14 dates older than about 3000 BC have fictitious “built-in” years. Explanations for this have centered upon the buildup of C-14 in the atmosphere after the Flood (see Sanders 2018 for review). An additional, albeit neglected mechanism, is that of “infinitely old” carbon dioxide percolating from the depths, and becoming admixed with the atmospheric carbon dioxide that was breathed-in by trees that had lived soon after the Flood. (Woodmorappe 2003a). Clearly, both C-14 and dendrologically-based dates had been inflated in the post-Flood world. But just how closely in “lockstep” must the two systems have been during this epoch of fictitiously- long time? Carbon-14 dates on dendrologically-dated samples frequently have inexplicable outliers (e. g, Kuzmin et al. 2004). Their inclusion in the C-14 dating calibration curve, while of course not invalidating the C-14/dendrochronological progression, makes it “looser”, thereby reducing the “lockstep”. If parts of the Belfast long chronology, on which a large part of IntCal* is directly and indirectly based, have been misdated by several years as proposed by Larsson (2003-2018), the “lockstep” becomes even more inexact. In terms of overall detail, IntCal13 (Reimer et al. 2013) contains some segments with low slope (“plateaus”), wherein a significant spread of dendrochronological dates correspond to a relatively small range of values for C-14, and other segments with just the opposite--high slope (“cliffs”), in which a relatively small range of dendrochronological dates correspond to a relatively large range of C-14 dates. Both sets of sites have an especially-unimpressive “lockstep” of the two systems. Now consider the fine detail in C-14 dates (“Suess wiggles”), reproducible in various long tree-ring chronologies from all over the northern hemisphere. Some have argued that the “wiggles” are of such diagnostic specificity (precise “lockstep”) that they compel the acceptance of the C-14/dendrochronological system. Do they? Considering the C-14 “wiggle” record as a whole, one must, as a start, ask about the presumed uniqueness of each set of wiggles. I asked the following of a world-class C-14 expert and statistician, “I have wondered about the potential repetitiveness of patterns of wiggles over long periods of time. Suppose that one were to take the entire dendrologically-constructed 14C curve from today back to 12,000 years BP. If one were to disregard the ages, so that one set of wiggles could be allowed to potentially match with another set centuries or millennia earlier, based solely on Bayesian or other statistics, how often would patterns of wiggles repeat (based on different intervals of time, numbers of measurements, etc.)? Has anyone written a paper on this?” This expert, who has considerable experience working with the “wiggles”, answered very supportively as follows, “I am not aware of any such paper and I think that something of the sort could be really interesting. However, such an experiment would not be exactly analogues to the conventional use of wiggle matching since the master curves are index(*) averages of long sequences and are thus not quite like the raw tree-ring indices. To do a statistically thorough and really interesting job, I think one would need to collaborate direct with the tree-ring lab that put the master sequence together in order to get access to the raw data as well as the preprocessed and smoothed averages.” 6. Integrating Dendrochronology and Evidence From Frost- Damaged Rings, Ice Cores, etc. There have been claims of long-distance “greater-than-chance” correspondences of such things as MWK frost-damaged rings, atypically narrow rings, and volcanogenic acidities in ice cores. (Salzer and Hughes 2007). The latter, to begin with, is fraught with pitfalls and conflicting interpretations (Baillie and McAnney 2015). In addition, statistical tests of significance assume the complete independence of occurrences as the null hypothesis. This implies, for example, that, given sufficiently cold spring temperatures, frost damage can “strike” with equal likelihood during the formation of any tree ring. This is far from reality. For instance, a tree infected by a fungus is more vulnerable to frost damage (Cherubini et al. 2002). Among healthy trees, young and smaller-diameter trees in general (Kidd 2015) are more likely to experience visible frost damage. Most significant of all, the susceptibility of a tree ring to impending frost damage, even within a given tree, is not independent of the impending tree-ring width of that year. (Kidd 2015). REFERENCES Baillie, M. G. L. 1995. A Slice Through Time . London: Batsford, 176p. Baillie, M. G. L. 2009. The radiocarbon calibration from an Irish oak perspective. Radiocarbon 51(1):361-371. Baillie, M. G. L. 2015. Tree-Ring Dating and Archaeology . London & Canberra: Routledge. Baillie, M. G. L., and J. McAneney. 2015. Tree ring effects and ice core acidities clarify the volcanic record of the first millennium. Climate of the Past 11:105-114. Woodmorappe ◀ Tree-ring chronology shortening via disturbances ▶ 2018 ICC 670