Radiocarbon in Coal?

Conversation
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jammycakes (C16),

Total contamination, Paul. Total contamination.

We’re getting there. Just wait. My first response was simply to say that it cannot reasonably all be written off to laboratory contamination. Some (e.g. RonSewell in C17) are not ready to concede that yet:

I would maintain the laboratory contamination, or more broadly, overall laboratory and instrument limitations, could in itself plausibly account for end results indicating 14C.
The fact that two of the experts most acquainted with the data find laboratory contamination and instrument background not an adequate explanation for all the C-14 in coal doesn’t seem to matter to him. But whatever.

Now I would make a point that may help T_aquaticus (C18). The proper way to discuss contamination is by citing pMC, percent modern carbon, or its relative fMC or fraction modern carbon. which is just pMC/100%. First, pMC is closer to what is actually measured, which is the ratio of carbon-14 to ordinary carbon, and if one compares it to a reliable modern sample, the pMC is the measured ratio of the C-14 concentration of the two samples, converted to percentage. Radiocarbon years involves plugging another factor in, and makes the process of comparison less intuitive (quick: what level of contamination will give one 50,000 radiocarbon years?), whereas pMC is much more straightforward. To get 0.1 pMC in a specimen which would otherwise be at infinite age, one must contaminate it with 1 part in a thousand of modern carbon. It is really that straightforward.

So how much contamination must we have either underground, in transit to the laboratory, or as carbon-14 produced by neutrons, to explain what we see without recourse to residual carbon? Baumgardner’s data suggests an excess of 0.10 ± 0.03 pMC for their sample with the least radiocarbon, and 0.46 ± 0.03 pMC for the sample with the most radiocarbon. All these amounts are with an assumed background of 0.077 pMC already subtracted out. So the amount of carbon-14 to be explained is roughly 0.1-0.46 pMC. That is over 1 part in a thousand, which means that if one has a 1 kg sample, one must contaminate it with at least 1 g of modern carbon (some of the samples were obtained in 180 kg quantities).

We may differ over whether that is probable or not. But surely there should be experiments that could make that distinction. We should be able to test coal from different sites in a mine, more or less compact, with greater or lesser bacterial populations, with greater or lesser amounts of fungal elements, and perhaps even test the fungal elements themselves for radiocarbon. It does seem that with the appropriate tests, we could assess the magnitude of in situ contamination and assess how adequate an explanation it was for the carbon-14 found in coal, over and above the contamination that is found in the laboratory. Maybe it is adequate, maybe not. That’s the fun part of science—testing one’s hypotheses.

I could argue that this massive amount of contamination with modern carbon is unlikely. In a coal seam 1 m x 1 km x 1 km (not a particularly massive seam), we have perhaps 5 x 10^5 metric tons of carbon (assuming some water and a density of carbon of <1, so that the concentration of carbon in coal is assumed to be 0.5 g/cm^3). The contamination required is then 500 metric tons, over, say, 5000 years, or close to 1 half-life, or 100 kg/year.

This is, of course, assuming that the efficiency of extraction of modern carbon from the air or water, or whatever vehicle is carrying the carbon, is close to 100%. If it is more like 50%, the requirement doubles. If it is more like 1%, we need 100 times as much as we thought. At that rate, we would replace the entire coalfield in 50,000 years. In fact, even in the best case scenario, we would replace the coal every half a million years. It’s a wonder we have any coal left.

Of course, that assumes that the coal is being evenly replaced. It would seem that this assumption could be challenged. How does one replace coal at the same rate everywhere in an entire seam? So it would be helpful to take coal from various areas, perhaps more or less fractured, or closer or farther from an underground stream, and see whether the C-14 content varies. If it does, we have evidence for underground contamination. If it does not (or does not do so significantly), we have evidence that underground contamination is not the whole story.

Perhaps considerations such as these led Harry Gove, reportedly, to opt for the hypothesis that carbon-14 was being made by neutrons underground. We can discuss that hypothesis next.

Mr_Wilford (C19),

Grootes’ data form the basis for the best argument against carbon-14 being in coal that I know. It is not clear how reproducible his data were, and the method has since been abandoned, but the numbers he got were 0.0072±0.0096 pMC, and 0.0062±0.0038 pMC. If those two results are combined statistically, they give 0.0064±0.0035 pMC, which is not statistically different from zero.
It would be fair to report this as <0.0134 pMC, or >71,600 uncalibrated radiocarbon years.

However, I would be a little more cautious about your other data. If we look at the “raw” data, we see something strange. Some of the data on table 5 give negative pMC, which is not supposed to happen with unfiltered data. If we read the protocols more carefully, we find that a correction has been indeed applied. For the Oxford samples, “First, an AMS blank correction is applied to all samples measured on the accelerator based on measurements of gas derived from pure anthracite.“ (There are two more corrections) For the SUERC samples,

The 14C/13C ratios of the graphitized samples were measured on the SUERC single-stage accelerator mass spectrometer (Freeman et al. 2010; Naysmith et al. 2010) and 14C ages calculated using the background subtraction method (using an average background value of Fm = 0.0034, which was based on 6 targets prepared from our background bone sample). The bone background sample (Bos primigenis) derives from a placer mine site near Fairbanks, Alaska, and is at least Marine Isotope Stage 5 in age.

So what is really being said is that for most specimens, the radiocarbon measurements match, to within statistical error, those from anthracite coal or other ancient bone specimens. If one takes the intrinsic radiocarbon of the reference anthracite or bone specimens as zero, then subtracting out their measured radiocarbon content makes sense. But if the question is whether there is radiocarbon on the reference specimens, the mathematical procedure is of no help. Don’t forget that according to Lowe (1989), radiocarbon in coal is rather ubiquitous. And there are now several reports of radiocarbon found in old mammoth bone and even dinosaur bone. So if the question is whether the bones in the article you cited contain radiocarbon, the data that were published do not help answer that question. More specifically designed experiments would be of more help.

RonSewell (C20),

That video is unbelievable. Some parts are reasonably accurate, but others, not so much. Perhaps the best example of unreliability is her video clip of Maddie at Science Side Up, apparently approving of Maddie’s analysis. Maddie is discussing radiocarbon in geologically old fossils, and at 22:02 of the (Gutsick Gibbon) video, Maddie says,

… but what’s much more damning here is the way that those carbon-14 ratios are measured. If you guys wondered what I did with my weekend, it was reading papers on this. Okay, so how do y’all think, how do y’all think that radiocarbon, carbon-14 is measured in these samples? You think it was Mass Spec? You think they used, they actually identified number of atoms? ‘Cause that’s what I thought when I took the dear doctor here at his word. That is not how they measure it, team. That is not how they measure it. The way they measure it is by the radiation. So they measure the beta particles coming off, right. They measure, they measure how much beta radiation is being emitted by the sample.
This appears to be a clear denial that AMS dates are used in the paper that Snelling references.

I am familiar with the underlying papers, both the Baumgardner paper and the other papers that formed the basis for the graph that is being displayed in the video at this point. Baumgardner’s data was definitely from a facility that used AMS, as is stated in the paper (“The 14C analysis at the AMS laboratory we selected …“—p.606), and the very first reference in the table was

Aerts-Bijma, A. T., H. A. J. Meijer, and J. van der Plicht, AMS sample handling in Groningen, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B, 123, 221–225, 1997. [bold added]

The reference is available on Google Scholar, if anyone wants to check it out. The title of the next reference was “14C dating with the Gif-sur-Yvette Tandetron accelerator: status report”. Maddie’s weekend research leaves something to be desired, as does the research of Gutsick Gibbon. I hope we can give that video a rest.

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I will reply to the matters of your overall post later, but up front, it is abundantly clear that the 14C carbon analysis for the coal sample study was performed using AMS. The paper linked on the @GutsickGibbon video header dealing with fossilized wood also utilized AMS. I have no idea how this could have been misunderstood.

Fine by me. Gutsick has been tagged so she can speak to it if she wishes.

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Hey, good to hear from you. For the record you may wish to learn to use the sites quote function, so people you respond too get notified when you do so. That way conversation wont die off for lack of someone manually checking the thread.

In any case, regarding the data from Cook et al (2012), since you are claiming their reference materials may have had intrinsic radiocarbon that was falsely identified as background (be it from the machine or sample processing), I’ve reached out to Cook for their thoughts on this claim. They’d be in the best position to analyze that claim, as I have no formal training in 14C dating, and I do not wish to speculate on their behalf. If I get a response, I will share it, provided Im given permission to do so.

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Carbon dating is based on measurement of three variables, the ratio of 14C to isotopes 12C and 13C. The full scale ratio is referenced to an accepted value for the atmospheric ratio of 1950, where the abundance of 14C is on the order of one atom in a trillion. One has to register a lot of stable Carbon to count the 14C atoms. A sample around 40000 BP would have less than one 14C atom in one hundred trillion, at 80000 BP less than one in ten quadrillion. At these ratios, precise measurement of both numerator and denominator is vital, and it takes very little variability to invalidate the result.

The late R E Taylor, director of the Riverside radiocarbon laboratory at University of California to 2003 and author of numerous papers and a standard textbook on Carbon-14 dating, took the unusual step of leading an article specifically to correct the notion that AMS background studies supported intrinsic carbon-14 in ancient sources. Joint authors included John R. Southan, who co-founded the Keck-Carbon Cycle AMS facility and is one of the authors of the IntCal20 calibration curve, and Guaciara Santos, also with the Keck-Carbon facility as lab manager and research scientist, who did her post-doc at the Australian National University AMS lab, which was singled out in an ICR article as a facility with consistently low backgrounds and “at one time the best laboratory for measuring very low levels of 14C.”

Contrary to assertions otherwise, there is a significant difference between running empty sample holders and actual depleted samples, as empty holders background checks will produce trickle currents for 13C or 12C, whereas graphite will produce full load. Background is a QC check and not a static number, and a run with an empty sample holder is far from the same condition as the instrument running under load. MC is after all a ratio, and pMC is a measured ratio. An assumed current does not yield an actual pMC measurement. Uncertainty is just that.

Three University of Glasgow researchers with the SUERC Radiocarbon Laboratory, and who are involved with both IntCal and the International Radiocarbon Intercomparisons projects, published a paper Error and Uncertainty in Radiocarbon Measurements. In it, they state:

Every time that a 14C measurement is repeated under identical conditions on an identical sample (even if this were possible), a different result is obtained.

The real world is messier than the ideal world. The University of Groningen adds a factor of up to 1.6 uncertainty to bring their reported single sample results into line with the actual variation they observe from running duplicate samples.

Instrumentation error is generally a dominant function of scale and rangeability, with only a contributing proportionality to signal. The ratio of error to signal increases in significance towards the bottom of the scale. It is because of validation exercises such as the International Radiocarbon Intercomparisons, the limitations of the instrument and sample preparation - and nothing to do with supporting philosophical constructs of uniformitarianism - that the current Groningen policy is not to report ages greater than 48,000 years BP, and Beta Analytic will only report to 43500 BP. These thresholds are typical.

Beta Analytic’s own research has shown that such reports on a single analysis can be very misleading. In the past, Beta Analytic has sent graphite splits of the same exact graphite produced from Miocene-aged coal to as many as seven different AMS labs and obtained finite quotes of ages between 42000 to 53000…Beta Analytic has set a real and conservative limit of greater than 43500 BP when the activity of the material is statistically the same as the background. This is a credible number based on the lab’s own internal AMS limits. As such, Beta Analytic does not quote finite ages in excess of 43500 BP. Samples that yield an activity at or below this are reported as “greater than” 43500 BP.

Adding to measurement uncertainty from the instrument itself is laboratory contamination due to sample preparation. This 2016 paper by Dipayan Paul, associated with the University of Groningen Isotope Research AMS facility, is bluntly titled Contamination on AMS Sample Targets by Modern Carbon is Inevitable. He demonstrates that while contamination can be minimized, it cannot be eliminated and can have a massive impact on old samples. The air you just inhaled is rich in 14C, and even briefly exposed materials will acquire surface adventitious carbon contamination. As can be observed in these figures, a trace amount of contamination can easily yield finite age on an infinitely old sample.

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So it is plausible that instrument limitations and contamination accounts for the assignment of finite dates for coal in the referenced study. But as per the body of my post above, contamination [not “replacement”] in situ and during extraction and handling is a given, and the many steps to the detector offer opportunity for progressively more. That contamination was likely was the real point of my prior post. In that I concur with the experts most acquainted with the technology. I think that matters, would you agree? The low pMC results for coal are in actuality a confirmation that the intrinsic carbon is long depleted of 14C.

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You are right that 1950 is considered the base year. However, at that point two opposing influences were rapidly changing the 14C/C ratio; the burning of fossil fuels injecting ordinary carbon without (or without significant) carbon-14 into the atmosphere, which dominated until 1945, and the explosions of atomic and hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere, releasing large quantities of neutrons, which mostly slowed to thermal energies and struck nitrogen-14, causing an N-P reaction where nitrogen-14 changes to carbon-14, thus creating relatively large amounts of carbon-14 and roughly doubling the 14C/C ratio. So the actual standard, as I understand it, is what the ratio in 1950 would have been if it were the same in 1950 as it was in 1850. It’s a minor point, but carbon-14 dating is full of surprises.

Regarding the various kinds of background, I am familiar with most of what you said. Erv Taylor was a personal friend of mine. You are right that it is policy at many institutions not to report ages greater than ~50,000 radiocarbon years, and in the case of Beta Analytic greater than 43,500 RC years. The reason why deserves further discussion.

Initially, it was thought that background would be zero, as cosmic rays could not imitate carbon-14 in the accelerator. And in fact background in that sense could be low. Perhaps the most interesting set of experiments was published in 1987 (Schmidt FH, Balsley DR, Leach DD: “Early expectations of AMS: Greater ages and tiny fractions. One failure? – One success.” Nuci Instr and Meth 1987;B29:97-9) In it, they note that running the machine for 30 minutes without carbon, they got no apparent carbon-14. The equivalent in “age” was >90,000 years. When they put carbon in the sample, specifically “geological graphite”, they got ages ranging from 0.0185 pMC (69,030 radiocarbon years), to 0.028 pMC (65,840 RC years) to 0.068 pMC (58,590 RC years). They also put carbon-12 from the Faraday cup of the accelerator in the machine and dated it, and I think we all can agree that this material should date to an infinite date unless there is contamination, and the amount of carbon-14 they got was 0.050 pMC, or 61,000 RC years. That suggests that at this lab, at this time, one should be able with careful technique to get less than 0.07 pMC consistently.

However, their best date for coal was “up to 52,000” RC years (0.154 pMC), and their marble ran up to 49,690 RC years (0.206 pMC). This suggests that a minimum of 0.08 pMC was intrinsic to the samples, or was added during processing. Since they did not process geological graphite, one can argue that it was the processing. However, the work at ANU (which I agree was at one time the best lab for measuring very low levels of 14C) and at Isotrace (previously in Toronto) strongly suggested that one could consistently get less than 0.09 pMC on various forms of carbon. But coal is almost never measured that low. That is what made Bertsche and Gove to make the statements they did. And that is what made the people who filled the Borexino detector with 278 tons of scintillant (mostly benzene) not use coal as their carbon source. It just wasn’t free enough from carbon-14.

None of this deals with the source of carbon-14 in coal. It simply shows that there is some, in measurable amounts. But the evidence for carbon-14 in coal is strong. The question I would raise is, is there any experimental evidence that would be acceptable that would show that there is carbon-14 in coal, or is that an unfalsifiable assumption in your opinion?

BTW, I spoke of both contamination and replacement, as both processes give very close to the same endpoint, with one exception. If one does not have replacement, and one assumes contamination has been relatively constant for geological ages, at some point one has to add massive amounts of carbon. For example, in a conservative case where 0.1 pMC, and therefore 0.1% of the mass is added instead of being replaced in ~5,000 years (or even 10,000 years), then in 5 (0r 10) million years one doubles the weight, not counting compounding. Conservatively, in a 40 million year old coal field, we have just increased the weight and bulk some 4 to 16 times, again depending on whether the process is compounded, and for 300 million year old material this process gets ridiculous. At some point replacement seems a more likely process than simple contamination.

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I believe that coal does in fact contain radiocarbon. It’s not just some statistical fluke introduced by lab protocols and machinery. A few decades ago, coal was thought to be ideally suited for background determination. In situ contamination was not regarded as a huge issue. Coal is buried deeply beneath the surface, so what could possibly contaminate it?

This view however has proven to be problematic. Why is it, for example, that graphite sample blanks consistently yield lower C-14 “ages” compared to coal? Although initially perplexing, this conundrum can be easily solved in my opinion if you just consider how differently coal and graphite behave, chemically speaking. Graphite is very inert. Coal on the other hand can be easily replaced or altered. Consider this portion from the Mitchell & Mathews paper (2013):

[F]rom the moment coal is removed from its lithostatic pressure and exposed to atmospheric conditions, it begins to change, i.e., macro-molecules begin to relax, there is a loss of inherent moisture as well as gases (methane and other hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide) in addition to hydrocarbon liquids. Depending upon mining or preparation methods external moisture can be added. Then there are the changes that occur because of exposure to atmospheric oxygen, changes in relative humidity, exposure to violet and ultraviolet wavelengths from sunlight, exposure to plants and animals and etc. These factors are generally involved in the natural weathering of coal and initially result from surface reactions.

Then of course, there’s trouble with fungal and bacterial species which may attach to and deposit metabolic waste products on the coal. As was pointed out earlier in this thread, even the coal samples from the Penn State Premium Coal Sample Bank originate from active mines and have thus certainly been disturbed to some degree. None of these considerations truly matter if we simply use a graphite sample blank instead.

All of this comes down to assumptions. There are, to my mind, only two ways how we could theoretically check whether radiocarbon in coal represents contamination or not. For instance, we could compare the C14 levels of freshly exposed or cored samples (such as those contained in Penn State’s Repository) to those of randomly collected coal samples from open cut mines.

However, there does appear to be an even easier method: The source of contamination is never consistent. In other words, it does not (equally) affect the entire surface area of a sampled object. Thus, we should expect to see large amounts of variation even within samples that originate from the same coal seam. And this is exactly what we find. Piotrowska (2013) used black coal from a Silesian mine as processing blank for her lab. She got an average value of ~47.5 ka BP, with several odd outliers corresponding to ~40 ka BP or 0.6 pMC. She also used marble as a reference material. These samples showed way less scatter and also yielded lower average pMC values.

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It may be falsifiable in principle, but it might well be unresolvable with current practice and technology. Where does the onus fall, to falsify intrinsic carbon, or conversely to falsify contamination? From my perspective, there is a great deal of independent geological, paleontological, and physical support which has accumulated for over the past two centuries for the mainstream account of coal; and therefore the burden rests on the challenger. I affirm that the presupposition of antiquity is valid along two broad lines of evidence; one being the credibility of general geological accounting for the formation of coal, and the other is that 14C dating is linked to other proxies which together extend the horizon of uninterrupted earth chronology well beyond the time required to reduce intrinsic C14 to naught.

On the first score, the recognition that coal is the product of ancient processes has been developed from the early 18th century when William Smith was surveying down coal shafts. Antiquity had been established well before the discovery of radioactivity let alone radiometric dating. Modern study resolves more detail of coal’s age and formation, mostly over the carboniferous era on Pangea, dominated by plants alien to today’s forests and populated by giant insects. There are characteristics which distinguish marine, freshwater swamp, and river fed formations, and these conform to the larger geological mappings for particular locations.

Coal deposits are not homogenous, but are often found in seams separated by deposits of sedimentary rock, and within coal seams themselves are often layers and partings of maceral banding and thin but laterally extensive volcanic ash. In the Drumheller area of Alberta, you can drive along the Red Deer river canyon and follow identifiable multiple coal seam patterns which go on for kilometers. This does not fit with a single event.

Due to its economic and strategic value, over the past couple of hundred years the cumulative work of thousands of geologists has built a general understanding of the depositional environments of coal and applied that to innumerable local formations. Against that, YEC apologists such as Andrew Snelling and Tim Clarey insist that despite being outgunned a thousand to one, that science is not settled by majority. OK then, so what do they have? It is hard to make out a coherent model, but they seem to dislike peat bogs, advocate oceanic floating forests, insist that there was ample biomass available over the 1500 years before the flood - although they do not delve into the atmospheric implications such as we are observing running the tape backwards by burning a miniscule portion of this growth, and other bizarre ideas I would rather not “bog” down in. This is way beyond an affront to science. Where in the world of common wit available to anyone who can pass an eye exam do floods lay down neat layers of sediment below, then upon some cue an assemblage of floating logs take a synchronized dive to the bottom, then sit there while more sediment is ground up and churned over top, then a new mat of yet floating vegetation concentrate precisely above in the open seas, then sink all together, then repeat, and repeat. Just try to visualize this actually happening.

I am satisfied that the conventional scientific narrative of coal formation offers a well supported explanation of the concentration of deposits. As per my post above, this is consistent with an expectation that contamination in situ and in handling would result in trace amounts of 14C being registered which is not intrinsic. As well, 14C dating validates other geochronological methods which extend the horizon for the continuity of life.

The IntCal20 cross checks carbon dating with the tree ring chronology to over 13 kBP, with the Hulu Cave Stalagmites and the Lake Suigetsu varves in agreement to the full calibration curve of 54 kBP. The 774 AD solar event peak registered 14C signatures in tree rings of Japan, New Zealand, Finland, and together with the lessor 993 AD cosmogenic event has been investigated and found coherent in 44 tree-ring records and five ice-core 10Be records involving Greenland and Antarctic. Ice-core 10Be also north-south synchronizes the 41 kBP Laschamp geomagnetic excursion.

Synchronization events are detected in these disparate independent proxies, including the Laschamp magnetic reversal, volcanic eruptions, and stable isotope pattern matches. These include separate instances of the same type and between proxy types. There are cross checks between various combinations of tree rings, 14C, 10Be, lake varves,13C, 36Cl, 18O, geomagnetism, orbital cycles, volcanic tephra, speleothems, K-Ar and Ar-Ar dating, various U dating, thorium dating, foraminifera, coral, ocean floor sediments, and this list is not exhaustive.

The above is not intended as a Gish gallop, but to emphasize the consilience of dating methods and paleochronological reconstructions. Dating is not circular, although it is iterative, and it is not simply a chain of links, but a web. If there are a few off data points, that does little damage to a robust overall picture. Contests to dating techniques must not only discredit the methods themselves, but explain their agreement. Why should north and south ice cores match if the layers are due to local weather rather than annual snowfalls? Why should tree rings be added in lockstep with varve deposits? Why should 14C dating harmonize with Ar-Ar dating of stalagmites?

Given the YEC enthusiastic endorsement of AMS reliability for detecting trace 14C, one might be a little confused as to why? After all, carbon dates of 50 kBP or 80 kBP are far removed from their flood date of 4.5 kBP. Of course, instead of extending the timeline back to the flood, YEC attempts to radically recalibrate 14C dating. The two main mechanisms given for this are 1) speeded up radioactive decay, which is so fraught with fatal problems that even its advocates have shelved working on it for a rainy day, and 2) some sort of 14C atmospheric depletion due to original creation or plant loading. While the second at least does not mess with the fabric of the universe, it is no better off in terms of dealing with radiocarbon years as confirmed by especially the tree ring chronology and other methods which extend to the distant past. In view of the established understanding of coal formation, and the continuity of earth history as demonstrated by disparate dating methods with coherent results, I think it is justified to ascribe the burden of extraordinary claim to 14C intrinsically present in coal.

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Great post Ron, but have you considered that "by definition, no claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts [AIG’s interpretation of] the scriptural record"?

Checkmate.

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Add this internationally authored preprint which came out just this past week. There were indications of 14C excursions from ice core 10Be and 35Cl, and archeology, but while the resolution there was too broad to positively identify, they provided the researchers with the zone to search. Decadal dating on tree rings is pretty routine given the expense, but here they dated annually and identified two solar proton events which are much further back than any other secure candidates in the record.

Tree rings reveal two strong solar proton events in 7176 and 5259 BCE

The 7176 BCE synchronization ties together Austrian Larch, German Oak, and California Bristlecone dendrochronologies, verifies the ice core signals which sparked the search, and validates the robustness of the 14C calibration curve. I expect more confirmations of these events will be added.

“False rings” have been the standard but nonsensical YEC rebuttal to the tree ring record, and here suffers another blow. It is not plausible that dendrochronologies which have no geographic or species relationship would be distorted by false rings and remain synchronized over a span of over 9,000 years. That is double the distance in the past as allowed for Noah’s flood by AiG, CMI, ICR, and company. Be prepared for deafening silence.

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And it’s baaaack! AiG is once again violating the ninth commandment by regurgitating their director of research Andrew Snelling’s claims of 14C in carbon dead sources, while maintaining the radiocarbon dating supports coal being under 5000 years old and diamonds being 6000 years old.

Currently linked from the AiG main page, and re-featured as of August 15.

Carbon-14 in Fossils, Coal, and Diamonds

@PaulGiem, you name is in the footnotes. Do you still stand behind this?

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What!? They left their passover offering outside overnight??!! Oh the horror!

Or do you mean they’re coveting each other’s wives?

Oh, that 9th commandment. Booooring.

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