Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

Theprefix
"XENO" means that the mineral dated is foreign to the rock body in which it was found. QED.

For those who would like to read an interesting piece on Andrew Snelling, whom "real life" has quoted, i recommend this article by another Australian geologist.

The author of that piece describes "Snelling 1," the creationist geologist, and "Snelling 2," the working geologist, and points out just how different these split-personality aspects of the man are:



It seems that Mr. Snelling is a young earth creationist when he wants to line his bank account from the pockets of gullible creationist sheep--but reverts to real science when he pursues his profession.

By their fruits ye shall know them.

Are you trying to imply that argon was ONLY found in minerals 'foreign' to the lava flow and not in the lava itself? Such is not the case.

Hi RL. 2 day unauthorized vacation. What's up?

Interesting article, Setanta.

Troubling? Yes, indeed. I'll tell you that I am troubled by it.

I have no explanation but would love to hear the other side of the story, for sure. It's not a pretty story, and I can't blame you for being skeptical of anything Snelling says until we hear what the other side is. I'm skeptical too.

However, my reservations about the K-Ar method are not tied to Snelling, Austin or any individual.

If the amount of argon ( and in this context I am always referring to radiogenic argon) in the rock at the time of it's formation is NOT known, then measuring the amount of argon in it NOW, still doesn't give us a sufficient basis to 'date' it, since there is no base data to compare it to (i.e to subtract from the current amount)

If the amount of argon in the rock at the time of it's formation is ASSUMED to be known (i.e. zero argon at formation) then the data clearly show this not to be the case since lava flows of known recent origin have quantities of argon which makes them 'appear' old.

If Snelling and Austin are simply lying, and there IS no argon in the lava flows at Mt St Helens and Mt Ngauruhoe , then it should be easy for Old Earthers to demonstrate this. But this they haven't done because they all know there IS argon there.

But thanks for bringing that article to my attention, and I would be interested in any other.

Hope you are having a great day.

As has been pointed out to you, it isn't a contention that there is no argon, it is a matter of comparison of different types of ionic argon, and Austin's failure to test for that comparison.

But go ahead and play your little game--it appears at least to entertain you, if no one else is interested.

Hello my friend. Sorry I didn't check with you first.

I actually do have a life outside of A2K. Go figure.

Weather and coffee's good here if you make it down this way.

The assumption is that there should be NO radiogenic argon in a sample that is just a decade ( or a few decades ) old, is it not?

No.

OK, then if we are NOT assuming there is zero argon at the outset; and we don't know how much there actually was; then on what basis are we comparing the amount today with an 'unknown' amount to arrive at a 'date'?

There is a great deal of evidence that radiogenic argon is not only present in recent lava flows, but so much so that it gives false dates for recent lava flows. There are literally thousands of citations for this in online searches.

For example, this précis of a paper entitled Argon-40: Excess in Submarine Pillow Basalts from Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii:



(From the online version of Science.)

Therefore, by not getting comparisons of ionic argon, and argon potassium compounds, Austin was knowingly falsifying the results. This phenomenon is well known--even a creationist clown like Austin would know of it, and could use it to cozen the Bobble sheep who are desperate to discredit science. This is why Farmerman (who being the hospital, can't come back here to combat your foolishness) has so tediously repeated to you that the comparison of ionic forms of argon is important. If you send a sample to lab, and don't ask for the comparison, you will almost certainly get a false date.

Dalrymple, the author of the article you cite, is also the one Snelling quotes as stating there should be no argon at the time of the rock's formation:



http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=436

Also submarine basalts are not the only ones to evidence the 'excess argon' problem. There is a list of lava flows of known recent origin.

If a lab knows that the ratio of other substances is critical to achieving an accurate date, then surely they don't have to be told that, do they?

The point is, whether you are comparing the amount of one substance or 20 that are PRESENTLY found in a sample, if you don't know the amounts of ANY of these when the rock was formed, then you have nothing of value to compare it to in order to determine how much of ANY have been formed since the time the rock was first made.

(Sorry to hear about Farmerman's hospital stay. I hope he gets better soon. Let him know if you talk with him please.)

rl Interesting choice of words. You are now losing the entire premise big time by capitulating to the Ar isotope speciation issue that you were earlier trying to have me ignore. See how easy deception can be rooted out?
If your mentor (Austin) is gonna be a liar , he has to be a good one and not gently try to swing the whole argument around to make it appear that he thought of it all along.

The method has identified its limitations which were within the scientific literature since the late 60's. Your argument has been over for , lessee, 40+ years, Yet Austin (and you apparently) are flogging the corpse hoping to make some phony ass point that, you hope, will make people doubt radiometric dating entirely.( Actually, RL , youre doing a great service by making many more people aware about how science works and how methods of quantitation are not subject to "divine intervention". For that, I thank you and tip my hat)

Like I said before, we dont do a number of isotopic ID's or age/range calculations without their calibration and ,primarily, knowing about their bounds of stability.


Next your gonna find out that C14 has a max quantifiable age and Neodymium has a " set field" range, and U238/lead 210 /zircon has to use a "concordia comparison " Or whatever happened to all the Iron 60?

Why not bring up Austins earlier attempts at using Polonium to try to refute radiometric dating? He didnt fare well in that one either.

If you wish to argue "quantitative slop" why not Google up "Amitsoq Gneiss-age determinations"
and we can have a real technical discussion on radiometric variability.

rl. If you are paying for an analysis and a radiometric determination why wouldnt you? This is wasting the labs time and your money to play a game with a sample , the analytical outcome of which bears heavily on your project conclusions.

1If you want to lie, then dont share anything with the lab. They have no vested interest in any outcome ---YOU DO.

2If you are so commited to some mooga booga "Science" , then lying makes perfect sense to obscure any applications of QA methods or calibration. The existence of remobilized minerals that have isotopic cores of earlier nuclei is not a measure of anything. Its a bag of **** that has no business even being presented, (exceptonly as an example of how methods can be jerked around by deceptive trained scientsist like Austin)

http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/blind_leading_blind_kh.htm

Blind Leading the Blind: Austin, Snelling and Swenson Misinterpret Dalrymple's K-Ar Dating of Historical Volcanics
Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D.

The following material may be freely copied and distributed as long as the author is properly acknowledged
and the material is not altered, edited or sold.
Because radiometric dating utterly refutes their biblical interpretations, young-Earth creationists (YECs) are desperate to undermine the reliability of these dating methods. As part of their efforts, YECs clearly believe that they can discredit K-Ar dating if they can show that excess argon routinely enters rocks and minerals as they form. That is, they believe that excess argon will cause rocks and minerals that are supposedly less than 10,000 years old to have 'deceptively' old K-Ar dates of millions or billions of years. In particular, YECs attempt to demonstrate that excess argon is a 'problem' for K-Ar dating by locating examples of historically erupted volcanics, which yield K-Ar dates that are hundreds of thousands or millions of years older than their eruption dates. By listing enough examples of modern volcanics that apparently have unrealistically old K-Ar dates, YECs create the false impression that ALL K-Ar dates are spuriously old.

YECs Dr. Steve A. Austin, Dr. Andrew A. Snelling (and also here) and MD Keith Swenson list the same set of old K-Ar 'dates' for some historical lava flows. The data were miscopied from Dalrymple (1969).G. Brent Dalrymple is a geochronologist with 40 years experience, a pioneer in the identification of excess argon in igneous samples, and an outspoken critic of young-Earth creationism (e.g., Dalrymple, 1984). As part of his seminal work on excess argon, Dalrymple (1969) dated 26 historical lava flows with K-Ar to determine whether excess argon was present. Of the 26 lava flows that were sampled and analyzed, 18 of them gave expected results. That is, no excess 40Ar or 36Ar were present. Eight rocks yielded unrealistic dates, which were either too old because of the presence of excess 40Ar (5 of them) or too young (negative ages) because of the presence of excess 36Ar (3 of them). The details on the 8 anomalous samples are listed in Table 2 of Dalrymple (1969, p. 51), which is reproduced at Ar-Ar Dating Assumes There is No Excess Argon? The 5 samples with excessively old K-Ar dates include a Hualalai basalt from Hawaii (K-Ar 'dates' of 1.05 and 1.19 million years; the basalt erupted in 1800-1801 AD), two Mt. Etna basalts (a 'date' of 150,000 years for a sample that erupted in 1792 AD and a K-Ar 'date' of 100,000 years for the other sample, which erupted in 122 BC), a plagioclase from Mt. Lassen, California ('dated' at 130,000 years; erupted in 1915 AD), and a basalt from Sunset Crater, Arizona ('dated' at 210,000 and 220,000 years; erupted in 1064-1065 AD).

The author of Ar-Ar Dating Assumes There is No Excess Argon? attacks Snelling for misinterpreting Dalrymple (1969) and seriously overestimating the importance of excess argon in modern volcanics:
'Thus while Snelling implied that Dalrymple [1969] found severe problems with K-Ar dating when the truth is quite the opposite. Dalrymple found that they are reliable. Two-thirds of the time there is no excess argon at all. And in 25 times out of 26 tests there is no excess argon or there is so little excess argon that it will make only a tiny error, if any, in the final date for rocks millions of years old. Thus Dalrymple's data is not consistent with a young Earth whatsoever. Indeed, if Dalrymple's data is representative, 3 times out of 26 the K-Ar method will give a too young date (though by only an extremely trivial amount for a rock that is really millions of years old). The one case that would have produced a significant error, the Hualalai flow in Hawaii, was expected (see the previous essay). Even that significant error is only 1.19 million years (and not the 1.60 million years that Snelling claimed). If the identical rock had been formed 50 million years ago, the K-Ar would give a "false" age of a little over 51 million years. Thus this data is strongly supportive of mainstream geology.' [author's emphasis]

As discussed at Ar-Ar Dating Assumes There is No Excess Argon? and Dalrymple (1969, p. 49), the ONLY sample of the 26 that had significant excess argon also had very noticeable xenoliths (older rock contaminants that were incorporated into the magma as it rose through the Earth to the surface). Furthermore, as discussed in Funkhouser and Naughton (1968, p. 4603), once the xenoliths were removed, the remaining matrix provided an expected date of 'zero years' (also see: Fresh Lava Dated as 22 Million Years Old).

As further discussed in Dalrymple and Lanphere (1969, p. 121-144) and Dalrymple (1991, p. 91-92), Dalrymple concludes that excess argon is rare in volcanic rocks. In addition, excess argon is even less of a problem with Ar-Ar dating, where excess argon can often be distinguished from radiogenic argon and its effects eliminated (McDougall and Harrison, 1999, p. 123-130; Maluski et al., 1990).

As originally uncovered at Ar-Ar Dating Assumes There is No Excess Argon?, Snelling failed to properly quote the 'apparent K-Ar dates' from Table 2 in Dalrymple (1969, p. 51). That is, Snelling mistakenly listed the concentrations of 40Ar (in 10 to the -12 moles/gram) for the Hualalai, Mt. Etna (2 samples), Mt. Lassen, and Sunset Crater samples as their apparent K-Ar dates!! Austin and Swenson also contain the same erroneous data. For example, Austin, Snelling and Swenson all list the 'apparent K-Ar date' for the Hualalai basalt as '1.60 million years' instead of 1.19 million years. In reality, the Hualalai basalt had 1.60 x 10 to the -12 moles/gram of 40Ar.

Because Austin's essay is older, we can probably assume that these copying errors originated with him. Rather than checking the accuracy and relevancy of Austin's quotations from Dalrymple (1969), Snelling and Swenson simply uncritically parroted and perpetuated Austin's mistakes in their later web essays. This is truly a case of the blind leading the blind!!

REFERENCES
Dalrymple, G.B., 1969, '40Ar/36Ar Analyses of Historic Lava Flows,' Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., v. 6, p. 47-55.
Dalrymple, G. B., 1984, 'How Old is the Earth?: A Reply to "Scientific" Creationism,' in Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, vol. 1, pt. 3, Frank Awbrey and William Thwaites (Eds).
Dalrymple, G.B., 1991, The Age of the Earth, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, USA.
Dalrymple, G.B. and M.A. Lanphere, 1969, Potassium-Argon Dating, Freeman, San Francisco.
Funkhouser, J.G. and J.J. Naughton, 1968, 'Radiogenic Helium and Argon in Ultramafic Inclusions from Hawaii,' J. Geophys. Res. v. 73, n.14, p. 4601-4607.
Maluski, H., P. Monie, J.R. Kienast, and A. Rahmani, 1990, 'Location of Extraneous Argon in Granulitic-facies Minerals: A Paired Microprobe-laser probe 40Ar/39Ar Analysis,' Chem. Geol. (Isotop. Geosci. Sec.), v. 80, p. 193-217.
McDougall, I. and T.M. Harrison, 1999, Geochronology and Thermochronology by the 40Ar/39Ar Method, Oxford University Press, New York.

More like the blind leading puppets. [size=7] Puppets don't have a brain.[/size]

To get an objective result.




The outcome should not rest on my assumptions, but rather, on what the data shows.


.

My interest is in the truth, not in cashing in. I want an objective result, not a rubber stamp of my presup.

If you truly wanted an objective result, then when testing samples, you would provide for all the tests which would be necessary to determine the result objectively. Dalrymple's work, since 1956, in fact, has been focused on the possibility of excess argon isotopes being found in some (and by no means all, and in fact, in a minority of cases) recent flow samples. His work is important because it provides for a method to carefully eliminate false positive (and negative) results by a comparison of various isotopes of argon, along with the relationship of argon to potassium, and to other elemental substances and geochemical compounds.

Why would a lab "fail" to test for those comparisons? Because labs are in the business of making money, just as will be the case with any other such enterprise which relies upon income for their services in order to pay operating costs and staff. So if you don't pay for it, they're not going to do the tests. People like Austin and Snelling know this up front, so they know they can "queer" the results by failing to ask for (and pay for) tests of the relative concentrations of different argon isotopes, and the relationship of the various argon isotopes to other elemental material (such as potassium) and/or other geochemical compounds produced during the eruption. Labs aren't cheap, they don't work for free, and i'll bet the creationist "scientists," besides being deceptive, don't want to waste any of a limited budget.

*********************************************

When i was 14, i was eligible to play high school spring and summer baseball (i.e., at the end of the school year, and just before and at the beginning of the school year), as well as playing pony or colt league ball, and Lions Club ball. That meant, given the size of the leagues (10 high school teams and about 15 colt league and Lions Club league teams), i would be playing 70 or 80 games per year--which is close to the number of games that profession major league ball players play in.

Therefore, for reasons of insurance, i was required to get a more thorough physical examination that would have been required just to play high school ball, which in that state would only have required the usual annual school physical. My mother (a life-long RN) took me to a thorough and very competent physician she knew, and when the urine sample was returned, there was a result of albumin++. This could have been an indicator of incipient type 2 diabetes. So, being a thorough and competent physician, that gentleman explained that although he could certify me to play ball, he could only do so with a caveat that i'd have to submit regular urine samples to track the albumin level--and that he personally thought it would be a good idea to test the urine samples for residual blood sugar, and to submit blood samples as well. He then explained that this would entail an extra cost, because those tests were not mandated by the insurance physical, and would have to be paid for, because labs who do tests don't do them for free. So, over a period of six months, while legally playing ball (legally in terms of insurance requirements), i submitted three more urine samples and blood samples on each occasion. All the samples returned an albumin+ or albumin++ result; but the residual blood sugar in the urine was within normal limits, and the blood tests revealed no high blood sugar results. His eventual conclusion was that the albumin+ results were a product of a high fat diet, which would not be a problem for an adolescent boy, but warranted monitoring, and a conscious effort to reduce fat in my diet.

Without the additional tests, a sloppy doctor could have certified me for the insurance physical, and told me that i had incipient type 2 diabetes. But a more thorough examination of blood and urine samples revealed that although the albumin levels were anomalous, they were not the product of any diabetic condition. Had a physician failed to order the additional tests (or at least to have pointed out that the additional test were indicated), and had simply diagnoses incipient diabetes, not only would he have failed to properly exercised his profession, he might have been liable for a malpractice lawsuit.

Geologists can't be sued for malpractice, so whether a geologist ignorantly or with willful deceit, fails to thoroughly test a sample, there is no remedy for the public to keep him honest. And the evidence here is overwhelming that both Austin and Snelling are being willfully deceitful--and that they can get away with it--both because there is no malpractice threat to them, and because those who want to believe are too ignorant to detect the deceit--and because they are happy to see results which "rest on [their] assumptions.[/u]"

Same goes for the "teachings" of religion; they can't be sued for any and all falsehoods; sort of goes hand in hand.

Not so fast big guy. While I agree with most everything youve posted, this is incorrect. In 29 states, geologists are now registered as practicing professionals with each state having a code of ethics. If Austin prepared and delivered a K/Ar report to a client (say me) , I could have reported him to the ethics committee ,In this case , the most he would have been found against would be for the practice of geology without a license (hes not licensed in PA) and probably incompetence. A minimal competence is required for any licensure In PA its called Act167, "Requiring the Licensure o practice Engineering, Geology, and Land SUrveying, and Practices Thereof...Act"

Willful deceit is hard to prove. The only case I knew of was in
South Carolina, where someone , a licensed geologist , was selling "salted minelands"