1

. Since the industrial revolution began, human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, has altered the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere. (This ratio in fossil fuels is relatively low, because these fuels were formed at the time of the flood.) Also, nuclear explosions in the atmosphere temporarily tripled the ratio.

2

. A radiocarbon year would also not equal a calendar year if, for example, the half-life of carbon-14 has changed, if carbon-12 or carbon-14 was added to or leached from the specimen being dated, or if the formation rate of carbon-14 in the upper atmosphere changed.

3

. In 1952, when Willard Libby first published his work on radiocarbon dating, he called attention to the critical assumption that the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 has been constant. He tested that assumption by making various measurements and calculating how rapidly carbon-14 was forming and decaying. Surprisingly, he saw that carbon-14 was forming faster than it was decaying. That meant there was much less atmospheric carbon-14 in the past. If we did not know that, we would incorrectly conclude that the lack of carbon-14 in dead animals and plants was because much time had passed and the carbon-14 had decayed.

Libby believed that his measurements were in error, because he thought that the earth was so old that a balance between formation and decay must exist.  He wrote:

If the cosmic radiation has remained at its present intensity for 20,000 or 30,000 years, and if the carbon reservoir has not changed appreciably in this time, then there exists at the present time a complete balance between the rate of disintegration of radiocarbon atoms and the rate of assimilation of new radiocarbon atoms for all material in the life-cycle. Willard F. Libby, Radiocarbon Dating (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), pp. 4–9.

In 1986, Libby’s measurements were repeated with even greater accuracy. These results show that the out-of-balance condition is much more than Libby believed. Radiocarbon is forming 28–37% faster than it is decaying. This means that the farther one looks back in time, the greater the out-of-balance condition would have been—until the time of the flood. Changes in the carbon-14 to carbon-12 ratio, from 3,500 years ago to the industrial revolution, have been very small, because the biosphere has so much carbon-12. [See Melvin A. Cook, “Nonequilibrium Radiocarbon Dating Substantiated,” Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, Vol. 2 (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship, 1986), pp. 59–68.]  This is what we would expect as a result of the flood.

“It now appears that the C14 decay rate in living organisms is about 30 per cent less than its production rate in the upper atmosphere.” William D. Stansfield, Science of Evolution (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1977), p. 83.

4

. Robert H. Brown, “Implications of C-14 Age vs. Depth Profile Characteristics,” Origins, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1988, pp. 19–29.

Radiocarbon ages of seeds in ancient caves often span unreasonably long time periods, such as 2,000 years. [See, for example, Bruce D. Smith, “The Initial Domestication of Cucurbita pepo in the Americas 10,000 Years Ago,” Science, Vol. 276, 9 May 1997, pp. 932–934. Also see, Wade Roush, “Squash Seeds Yield New View of Early American Farming,” Science, Vol. 276, 9 May 1997, pp. 894–895.]

5

. W. S. Glock and S. Agerter, “Anomalous Patterns in Tree Rings,” Endeavor, Vol. 22, January 1963, pp. 9–13.

6

. The oldest living tree known (called the Methuselah Tree) is a bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California. The American Forestry Association estimates that it is 4,600 years old. Amazingly, it is not part of any “long chronology.” Its age, however, is remarkably close to the probable time of the flood, about 5,000 years ago. It should not be surprising that some trees alive today started growing soon after the flood.

7

. Harold S. Gladwin, “Dendrochronology, Radiocarbon and Bristlecones,” Anthropological Journal of Canada, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1976, pp. 2–7.

8

. “The entire chronology is the work of one laboratory, the director of which [C. W. Ferguson] has refused to allow critical study of the raw data.” For details, see Herbert C. Sorensen, “Bristlecone Pines and Tree-Ring Dating: A Critique,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 13, June 1976, p. 5.

Leading tree-ring specialists do not subject their judgments to statistical tests. In a private three-hour meeting (19 July 1989) I had with the director (Dr. Malcolm Hughes) and lead scientist (Dr. Austin Long) of the world’s largest tree-ring laboratory (University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research), both expressed no interest in doing so.

A year before, a worker in this laboratory told a mutual friend that circular reasoning was used in tree-ring chronologies. Wood specimens considered for “long chronologies” are first radiocarbon dated. If the date is old enough (perhaps by an erroneous reading), tree-ring specialists, look at ring thicknesses for a way to extend the “long chronology.” This chronology is then used to assure the public that radiocarbon dating has been calibrated by a continuous sequence of tree rings. [This unsound practice is also described by Henry N. Michael and Elizabeth K. Ralph, “‘Quickee’ ¹⁴C Dates,” Radiocarbon, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1981, pp. 165–166.]

9

. Little, if any, carbon-14 existed immediately after creation, because carbon-14 accumulates with time. The preflood earth had more land area and less sea area, because about half of today’s water was under the earth’s crust. Therefore, what little carbon-14 accumulated before the flood was diluted with the carbon-12 in the vast amounts of lush vegetation growing on the earth, most of which was buried during the flood to become our coal, oil, and methane deposits.

10

. R. E. Taylor et al., “Major Revisions in the Pleistocene Age Assignments for North American Human Skeletons by C-14 Accelerator Mass Spectrometry,” American Antiquity, Vol. 50, No. 1, 1985, pp. 136–140.

11

. “There is measurable carbon-14 in [75 samples of] material that should be ‘dead’ according to standard evolutionary theory;” Paul Giem, “Carbon-14 Content of Fossil Carbon,” Origins, Vol. 51, 2001, p. 6.

Giem addressed (on pages 6–30) possible sources of error, including contamination. He either eliminated them or determined that they were highly unlikely.

Personal communication: Walt Brown to Paul Giem, 4 April 2000; Paul Giem to Walt Brown, 10 September 2000.

John R. Baumgardner et al., “Measurable ¹⁴C in Fossilized Organic Materials,” Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship, Inc., 2003), pp. 127–142.

12

. “Since it is believable that most fossil carbon has roughly the same ¹⁴C/C ratio, it is reasonable to conclude that all this carbon was in the biosphere at approximately the same time. In that case, since most, if not all, fossil carbon was deposited by water, the data suggest a flood of massive proportions, and that the biblical account has to be taken seriously.”  Giem, p. 26–27.