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From: gordon@uw-june (Gordon Davisson)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Radiocarbon errors
Message-ID: <120@uw-june>
Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 22:37:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.120
Posted: Wed Jul 31 22:37:54 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 05:36:53 EDT
References: <386@iham1.UUCP> <14600029@hpfcrs.UUCP>
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 35

>>> [Ron Kukuk]                                                    On the
>>>            other   hand,  measurements  made  at  hundreds  of  sites
>>>            worldwide  [a,b]  indicate  that  the   concentration   of
>>>            radiocarbon  in  the atmosphere rose quite rapidly at some
>>>            time prior to 3,500  years  ago.  If  this  happened,  the
>>>            maximum  possible  radiocarbon  age  obtainable  with  the
>>>            standard techniques  (approximately  50,000  years)  could
>>>            easily correspond to a TRUE age of 5,000 years.

>> [Gordon Davisson]
>> Wrong!  If there used to be more C14 in the atmosphere than there is now,
>> it would make radiocarbon dates come out too *young*, not too old.  At
>> least try to get the direction of the error right!

> [Lief Sorensen]
> Would you please read that again, Gordon?  HE DID NOT STATE THAT THERE USED
> TO BE MORE C14 IN THE ATMOSPHERE THAN THERE IS NOW!  On the contrary, he
> stated that the amount of C14 in the atmosphere has increased sometime
> during the last 3-4 thousand years.  You are the one in error!

Having reread Kukuk's words, I realize that it can be parsed either way.
So which did he mean?  I don't have access to either of his references
(one was unpublished, the other from a creationist journal), so I had to
find my own reference.  The one I picked was "Radiocarbon Dating," edited
by Rainer Berger and Hans E. Suess, published by the University of
California Press, 1979.  The appendix and several of the articles give
plots of C-14 dates versus dendrochronological (tree-ring) dates
indicating that earlier than about 0 BC, carbon dates tend to be *too
young* (as I said earlier).  In fact, a true date of 5,000 BC corresponds
to a carbon date around 4,000 BC, not 50,000 BC as Kukuk suggested.
Either Kukuk's facts or his logic are in error.

--
Human:    Gordon Davisson
ARPA:     gordon@uw-june.ARPA