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Fossil Fuels Are Messing With Carbon Dating
Taco Cowboy writes: The carbon dating method used in determining the age of an artifact is based on the amount of radioactive carbon-14 isotopes it contains. The C-14 within an organism is continually decaying into stable carbon isotopes, but since the organism is absorbing more C-14 during its life, the ratio of C-14 to C-12 remains about the same as the ratio in the atmosphere. When the organism dies, the ratio of C-14 within its carcass begins to gradually decrease. The amount of C-14 drops by half every 5,730 years after death.
The fossil fuels we're burning are old — so old they don't contain any C-14. The more we burn these fossil fuels, the more non-C-14 carbon we pump into the atmosphere. If emissions continue as they have for the past few decades, then by year 2050 a shirt made in that year (2050) will have the same C-14 signature as a shirt worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years earlier.
The fossil fuels we're burning are old — so old they don't contain any C-14. The more we burn these fossil fuels, the more non-C-14 carbon we pump into the atmosphere. If emissions continue as they have for the past few decades, then by year 2050 a shirt made in that year (2050) will have the same C-14 signature as a shirt worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years earlier.
humans would have invented a new "dating" method
If emissions continue as they have for the past few decades, then by year 2050 a shirt made in that year (2050) will have the same C-14 signature as a shirt worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years earlier.
But that's okay, because we have other measures that we can correlate with age. A rock formation with sediment formed in the year 2050 will also have the same C-14 signature as sediment formed 1000 years earlier, and might be able to be compared with a different dating method. Some bright scientist will say, "Aha! These C-14 signatures are the same, so if we have a signature of X, it can be either year A or year B. Which is more likely given the other evidence available?"
Jeezuz was right all along!
It's already having a tremendous effect. Twinkies made 10 years ago have the same C14 signature of Twinkies made right before Vesuvius buried Pompeii.
Wait, what? When were those Twinkies made?
Nevermind.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
just wondering...
http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020814/full/news020812-3.html
From http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nuclear/cardat.html:
"Krane points out that future carbon dating will not be so reliable because of changes in the carbon isotopic mix. Fossil fuels have no carbon-14 content, and the burning of those fuels over the past 100 years has diluted the carbon-14 content. On the other hand, atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s increased the carbon-14 content of the atmosphere. Krane suggests that this might have doubled the concentration compared to the carbon-14 from cosmic ray production."
Just look up radiocarbon dating calibration, this has been known since the discovery of said process.
5, 4, 3...
Huh? No, that this is only due to us burning fuel created millions of years ago and that it offsets results by a few 1000 years tops doesn't mean anything to them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We need to release more radioactive C14 carbon into the air.
Thus solving the problem, once and for all.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
Atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950's and 60's added so much C14 to the atmosphere that Carbon dating is useless already
... or already broken, depending on your viewpoint.
While fossil fuels reduce atmospheric C14, atmospheric nuclear detonations increase it dramatically.
In 1963, C14 levels reached double the earlier level.
But even before any of that, radiocarbon dating needed to be calibrated according the varying level of atmospheric CO2 over the aeons.
And it is already easy to make fake ancient parchment or paper using greenhouses and fossil fuel.
Combining carbon dating with other techniques should be enough to remove ambiguity in dating.
Carbon dating is already unreliable as it depends on a number of unprovable assumptions
My dating life is already badly messed up. But yes, it would be nice to date some carbon-based lifeform for a change. Preferably one that is not too much of a fossil.
While you're wasting time on the Interwebs, they are getting on local school boards and putting shitty biology textbooks that teach other "theories" into classrooms.
While Democrats and Liberals are all looking exclusively at national elections that have been bought and paid or by the billionaires, the Fundie kooks and Conservatives are steadily infiltrating local offices and pushing their superstition and myths onto all of us via legislation and policy.
Half every 5,730 years? What kind of scale is that? The whole universe is barely over 6000 years old, dating scales should cover years or dozens of years, like tree-ring dating or biblical character dating, otherwise they don't make any sense. Carbon dating seems like a scam anyway, they are probably trying to find excuses for why it is not working out.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Or alternatively: if it is not being "made" or acquired (from the Sun, nuclear tests or emissions etc) then, either way, it can be calibrated for. We know, pretty much, how much coal is being dug out of the ground and, indeed, pretty much which and volume of nucleotides that have been released. If we know this all then we can calibrate for this in the future. So what's the problem exactly?
"Other techniques" not only have different ranges of time for which they're accurate, they also have different levels of accuracy. (And not all are applicable to all materials.) They may or may not be sufficient to resolve ambiguity.
You could have googled that in 5 seconds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
. . .you insensitive clod!
And God is messing up the data for the non belivers. If you are against fossil fuels you are against God.
Fossil Fuel can't melt fossils. Checkmate Atheists!
As I am the one who submitted this article I need to point out an error
The radioactive C-14 isotopes do not decay into "stable carbon isotopes" but rather, into stable N-14 isotopes via beta decay !
Please accept my sincere apology for the error - it was the fault of no other but me alone, for not noticing that glaring error when I was copy-pasta-ing from articles of three different sites
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
An organism doesn't absorb more C-14 than C-12 during its life as TFS seems to imply. It merely absorbs both at the same ratio as found in the atmosphere, as it cannot distinguish between the two (chemically, there is no distinction).
We're ruining this planet burning fossil fuels and the "victim" here is carbon dating? If we keep ruining this planet, carbon dating won't be a problem since we'll all be dead and not giving a rat's ass about the carbon date of anything.
I suppose though, we are ruining it for whatever comes after us and wants to carbon date our stupid-ass carcasses.
Oh, wait, we already did.
Carbon 14 dating hasn't been reliable (usable) for wood or other biological material formed since 1950, as open air nuclear testing put a lot of C14 into the atmosphere. This C14 has been slowly leaving the atmosphere, but it's not gone yet.
I think that the writers of the original article were just eager to get some attention, as they surely must have known this.
Interestingly this isn't the first time this happened.. When they first started Isotopic dating there seemed to be no lab pure enough to get the lead out. Even water taken from the widdle of the ocean had the wrong lead isotope ratios. Eventually, years, they realized it was in the air from all the lead in gasoline. The gasoline companies had the guy's funding cut off to suppress this, and trotted out a bunch of "tobacco scientists" to ridicule the guy who discovered it. But eventually this too became fact. Now it's used in reverse, the isotopic ratio of lead is used to track gasoline spill origins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
historians whose great, great, great grandparents have yet to be born. And a really easy one to solve. Let's face it, you don't need carbon dating to tell the difference between shirts from the 12th and 21st century. William the Conqueror didn't cross the Channel in a poly-cotton blend.
Carbon Dating unreliable from day one and still unreliable. Nothing new.
Actually, this could have a small positive effect and could lower cancer/mutation rates by decreasing the relative uptake of radioactive C14 wrt stable C12 in living tissues.
Cue AGW alarmists in 1-2-3 waving around peer reviewed contortions.
If our carbon habits continue unabated, much of the earth will be too hot to live in.
All of physics depends on a number of unprovable assumptions, and nothing is 100% reliable. Seriously, if Kahn flew into the Slashdot nebula, Spock would say "analysis shows binary thinking". When are you so-called "science" nerds going to stop viewing everything as Boolean systems? You need to quantify that statement with a non-boolean for it to have any particular relevance. But that comes down to giving error bars on carbon dating estimates which guess what scientists already do because guess what the people who developed carbon dating were just as good as sitting in an armchair and coming up with possible problems as you are. I mean, seriously, I'm a nerd, I know what it's like to ask these questions of teacher and teacher doesn't know. But that just means you're smarter than teacher, not that you're smarter than all the scientists put together. At least read about carbon dating and see if the problems you've identified have already been discussed and solved before you go off telling people it's a load of bollocks.
THIS!
Any time someone tries to pull the "Trust me , I'm an expert" card on me, and there is a problem with their reasoning or they are clinging to an incorrect dogma, and they give me that line about, "what are you an expert?" I respond with the question, " What is the first step of the scientific method?" usually the respond with "Um" or something.. the answer is Formulate a hypothesis and to perform research to see what the current state of knowledge is on the subject you are preparing to perform experiments to examine. Many times you can save a lot of time or not need to even experiment if the previous research stands up to scrutiny.
Why do I have to examine and hold science's feet to the fire instead of just parroting what "experts" say over and over? Simple: "The default position of science is one of skepticism." This is one of the things that differentiates science from religious dogma, because the scientific method has a built in error correcting mechanism.
On the subject of carbon dating, the variations based on increased atmospheric carbon (which is dubious because the uncertainty is limited to things exposed to the atmosphere in areas with heavy air pollution in the last 100 years (most things that are carbon dated have lived in the ground for millions or billions of years, remember that level of magnitude, Millions to Billions, because it is important to my next point.) Even if the sample you are dating has marinated in fossil fuel air pollution, the ratio is going to be skewed by (according to the article) 1000 years, and for most things that are carbon dated, 1000 years is less than change as a dinosaur fossil for instance, is known to be somewhere around 65 million years old and you will not win a Nobel prize for showing that a dinosaur fossil is 64,999,000 years old or 65,001,000 years old. Showing that variation exists does not introduce enough uncertainty into the fossil record to prove that anything the "young earth" or "intelligent design" idiots are trying to say is anywhere near the truth. Like you say, binary thinking would indicate that because scientists do not know the "EXACT" date down to the microsecond, they are 100% wrong... WRONG! Most carbon dated things show a range of accuracy with a certain limited variation, and that variation is within an acceptable range. This range of variation, which on one sample adds uncertainty, together the samples in a given area can allow you to tighten the range by doing the rookie math of determining the median age of the samples in the area and same strata. Scientists don't claim to know everything, that is why they are scientists to try to find out more than what they know. Religious people or people claiming to a dogma have the subtle wording trying to imply that they know everything before they do any research. Intelligent design folks try to do "research" to prove that what the bible says is the literal truth. This means that they short-circuit the scientific me
Yet another "reason" why using fossil fuels will be painted with an evil brush. OMFG, we won't be able to date anything!! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!
Oh, 'scuse me, I forgot that they conveniently rebranded it as "climate change" to cover their asses...I mean bases.
Checking my Give-O-Fuck meter...... Didn't budge. Still stuck on don't.
My understanding is that the current atmospheric carbon isotope ratio is not used for carbon dating but that from tree rings. Knowing the ratio from tree rings and the decay rate of C-14 should give the atmospheric ratio when the tree ring grew. One problem is that the oldest trees are something like 4,000 to 5,000 years old but then 5,000 years ago was well before the industrial revolution when the huge quantities of fossil fuels began to be used. Assuming the isotope ratio wasn't much different before ~2,000 BCE doesn't seem much of a stretch. I guess some have a problem with that, though. There are other dating methods for radioactive dating for much earlier times particularly for geology. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
There are still people in the world who heat their homes with coal (and are probably breathing in a much larger quantity of coal pollutants than you or I). Can we test their c14 numbers against someone in a less polluted control group and test this out?
It comes from cosmic rays, which are roughly constant over time. They're not completely constant, and so we already have to calibrate our C14 tests. (There's a whole bit of weirdness in the way we report dates as the calibration itself has been refined over time, and when you read an old document you need to know exactly how it was calibrated.)
But the variations in intensities happen over centuries, rather than years. And instead of covering the whole world, it's going to be localized by the varying factors of how much CO2 was emitted (as well as nuclear bomb testing, which has been making dating confusing for quite some time).
It may not be all that important, since it applies mainly to new objects, and we don't really need to date them if we actually know how old they are. And very recent objects are always problematic with respect to carbon dating; it's usually precise to decades, rather than years. But archaeologists from a thousand years from now may find this era very confusing.
What's the problem with selling dead baby parts? I could see there being a problem with killing the baby after it's born to get those parts, but otherwise, what exactly is your problem?
I believe women have the right to choose, however this issue has several problems. History and economics prove that you often get what is rewarded, and what is being reward here is parts. So Planned Parenthood has an incentive to produce parts. Back to the idea of women having a choice, abortion is one of several choices. Now if the people presenting the options to a woman have a financial interest in one of those options then that one option will be presented as the preferred option. In other words there will be a persuasive element by Planned Parenthood for the financially advantageous choice. Planned Parenthood is supposed to be a neutral party fully informing a woman of all her choices.
Plus there is the treatment. There are many ways to perform an abortion. The problem with selling parts is that Planned Parenthood has been choosing methods based on what will best produce sellable parts, to avoid damaging parts. The only considerations in choosing a method should be the woman's safety (avoiding damage that could impair reproduction in the future) and recovery (faster recovery time, fewer side effects). As a matter of fact federal regulations mandate this, selling parts can not be a consideration in choosing a method. Planned Parenthood seems guilty of violating these regulations.
Furthermore the negotiating of prices for parts, maximizing payment, is evidence that there was a profit motive not simply a recovery of harvesting costs. Harvesting costs would be a known cost to state to parts buyers.
Planned Parenthood needs some serious reforms and likely new leadership. To defend them in a case where there is absolutely wrongdoing is political zealotry. Wrong is wrong. Fix the problem, no financial gains for one particular choice.
OK, I'm no expert, but I'm not stupid either, and I do read.
Scientists have been using various methods to track how much carbon (among other things) is in the atmosphere by various methods. We've got a record of this going back quite some time. That's how we know, for example, how much carbon was in the atmosphere 300 years ago compared to now.
So if we know how much carbon is in the atmosphere, and we know how much of that is carbon 14 (we are keeping records, right?), then can't we correct for this? Other people have posted about how nuclear tests have increased the carbon 14 in the atmosphere. I'm sure at least these guys are keeping track of it.
It'll take some tweaking to get right, but I'm sure we can account for the difference. Maybe some grad student will use it for their PhD. When there are cases of overlap (the t-shirt dating as 1000 years older), there might be some issues, but for anything truly old it shouldn't be an issue.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Funny how all "science" now seems to support a very particular liberal/environmentalist ideological agenda. Maybe that has something to do with the new scientific method:
1) Embrace a dogmatic ideological agenda.
2) Form a hypothesis that supports this agenda.
3) Carefully exclude or modify all data that contradicts this hypothesis.
4) Hypothesis confirmed!
5) Call anyone who challenges your conclusion an ignorant denier.
SCIENCE!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
That is not even remotely funny. get lost you troll
Funny how all "science" now seems to support a very particular liberal/environmentalist ideological agenda. Maybe that has something to do with the new scientific method:
Or it is because reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Or it is because reality has a well-known liberal bias.
If it did, maybe all those honeybees that were being killed by global warming would still be dying. Yet, once again, reality failed to conform to the environmentalist agenda.
Time to backtrack on yet another failed prediction for you "reality" types, huh?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The Globe and Mail has no Reality bias. Neither have you.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.