Ice Cores and the Age of the Earth

For sunhouse:

http://www.icr.org/article/ice-cores-age-earth/

Originally posted by RJHinds
For sunhouse:

http://www.icr.org/article/ice-cores-age-earth/

what doofus pseudo-scientist doesn't tell you is that ice from different locations has different accumulation rates and this little tidbit is known by real scientists and they have ways of determining the approximate age (ice core dating is not an exact science and never claimed to be) of the ice.

When I lived in Japan, I once woke up to find 3 metres of snow had fallen overnight. perhaps we can extrapolate from this that the world is only a few hundred years old?

Originally posted by VoidSpirit
what doofus pseudo-scientist doesn't tell you is that ice from different locations has different accumulation rates and this little tidbit is known by real scientists and they have ways of determining the approximate age (ice core dating is not an exact science and never claimed to be) of the ice.

Thanks for this little tidbit:
"(ice core dating is not an exact science and never claimed to be)"

That is what sunhouse needs to understand. So coming from someone
that is not a YEC, perhaps he will believe it. There is no way that they
can know exactly what happened in the distant past, before we have been
gathering weather data, to know what all the layers represent.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Thanks for this little tidbit:
[b]"(ice core dating is not an exact science and never claimed to be)"

That is what sunhouse needs to understand. So coming from someone
that is not a YEC, perhaps he will believe it. There is no way that they
can know exactly what happened in the distant past, before we have been
gathering weather data, to know what all the layers represent.[/b]

Can you not understand the difference between 'approximation' based on the evidence and 'wild guess'? You seem to think the two are mutually exclusive.

Here's a scenario for you -

A human being is presented to you, you have never see this person before in your life and you are asked state what you think their age is. Now of course you're not going to be able able to produce the exact date and time of when they were born, but by looking at the 'evidence' you are going to make a reasonable assumption. For instance if the person is less than 2 feet long as is crawling around on the floor you can assume that person is under the age of 2 years. If the person has not reached puberty yet you can assume they are under the age of 12/13 years and on and on. Claiming that scientists can't distinguish between ice core samples that are a few thousand years and hundreds of thousands of years old is similar to claiming you can't distinguish the difference between a small child and a 70 year old person.

Originally posted by FMF
When I lived in Japan, I once woke up to find 3 metres of snow had fallen overnight. perhaps we can extrapolate from this that the world is only a few hundred years old?

See there, the weather is unpredictable. The scientist do what they can,
but they are not infallible.

Originally posted by Proper Knob
Can you not understand the difference between 'approximation' based on the evidence and 'wild guess'? You seem to think the two are mutually exclusive.

Here's a scenario for you -

A human being is presented to you, you have never see this person before in your life and you are asked state what you think their age is. Now of course you're not going g you can't distinguish the difference between a small child and a 70 year old person.

There are a lot more room for error when dealing with thousands of years
vs. months and years. And we still have a lot to learn about ice cores to
be assuming things to prove other things. And I do understand that they
are not just making complete wild quesses, but I don't believe the have
enough verifiable evidence to make the guesses they are making. Who
knows how the weather was thousands of years ago, especially if the
world wide flood is true.

Originally posted by RJHinds
See there, the weather is unpredictable. The scientist do what they can,
but they are not infallible.

Well sometimes it snows and sometimes it doesn't. What is it you think scientists say about that?

Originally posted by RJHinds
There are a lot more room for error when dealing with thousands of years
vs. months and years. And we still have a lot to learn about ice cores to
be assuming things to prove other things. And I do understand that they
are not just making complete wild quesses, but I don't believe the have
enough verifiable evidence to make the guesses they are making. ...[text shortened]...
knows how the weather was thousands of years ago, especially if the
world wide flood is true.

You knew nothing about ice core samples a few days ago, how you can now make statements like these is astonishingly arrogant -

And we still have a lot to learn about ice cores to be assuming things to prove other things

and

but I don't believe the have enough verifiable evidence to make the guesses they are making

You know nothing of the subject apart that it conflicts with your religious beliefs so therefore it has to be wrong.

Originally posted by FMF
Well sometimes it snows and sometimes it doesn't. What is it you think scientists say about that?

Ask the TV weather man, not me. 😏

Originally posted by Proper Knob
You knew nothing about ice core samples a few days ago, how you can now make statements like these is astonishingly arrogant -

And we still have a lot to learn about ice cores to be assuming things to prove other things

and

but I don't believe the have enough verifiable evidence to make the guesses they are making

...[text shortened]... he subject apart that it conflicts with your religious beliefs so therefore it has to be wrong.

I did not say I did not know nothing of the subject. I said the following:

"I don't know much about what scientists are doing with ice cores. I have
not gotten interested in that subject. Sorry."

Not knowing much and not knowing nothing is not the same. And with you
guys harrassing me, I had to get interested to respond. 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
There are a lot more room for error when dealing with thousands of years
vs. months and years.

No, actually there isn't. There is nothing inherent to time that makes longer time periods more prone to error than short time periods.

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, actually there isn't. There is nothing inherent to time that makes longer time periods more prone to error than short time periods.

Explain please. That does not make sense to me.

Originally posted by RJHinds
There are a lot more room for error when dealing with thousands of years
vs. months and years. And we still have a lot to learn about ice cores to
be assuming things to prove other things. And I do understand that they
are not just making complete wild quesses, but I don't believe the have
enough verifiable evidence to make the guesses they are making. ...[text shortened]...
knows how the weather was thousands of years ago, especially if the
world wide flood is true.

There are a lot more room for error when dealing with thousands of years
vs. months and years.

You can look at someone who appears to be 70 years old and make an estimate of their age to within 7 years each way (10% ).

Likewise you can look at an ice core that appears to be 70,000 years old and be accurate to within 7,000 years each way (10% ).

So essentially there is no difference. The researchers are aware of the error ranges and they take them into account.

--- Penguin.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Explain please. That does not make sense to me.

If a dating method relies on something that is believed to be constant such as nuclear decay, then it will have a fixed error margin that is a percentage of the time period in question. Although this may be slightly larger in magnitude for large time scales, it will not be larger in proportion. In many cases, the reverse is true ie it will not be accurate at small scales. Even ice core data is practically useless for measuring anything on scale of days or weeks, but because of yearly layering can be very useful for measuring years.
There is nothing inherent to time that makes measuring long periods inaccurate.