Re: [asa] ICR for August - update

Steve,
You're right, but I don't think you've penetrated the YEC mind set. They
currently have the nonsensical idea that there was a great acceleration
of radioactivity during the flood, so the dates are not accurate. But
they can use the data to identify sources, probably geographically rather
than temporally. Since they claim that more than 99.99% of all the
release of energy from radioactive sources on earth took place within a
year's time, Noah's geese and Noah were thoroughly cooked, but somehow
survived in the Ark. Since various YEC "authorities" have declared that
there is no evidence that could change their minds (I was present to hear
Gish once), and they are happy with incompatible "explanations" for
observed data, you can't touch them. As Lowell wrote: "The right to be a
cussed fool / Is safe from all devices human..."
Dave

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:08:50 -0600 Steven M Smith <smsmith@usgs.gov>
writes:

Back on Aug 9th, I wrote about some interesting YEC contradictions &
implications for flood geology in the Austin & Hoesch IMPACT article. In
that post, I said that I would consult one of their references about the
Late Jurassic age of the Independence dike swarm to confirm that
radiometric dating was used to determine the age of ~150 million years
(Ma). My update follows the relevant snippet from that previous post.
-----
<<4. Radiometric dating is an invalid way of determining ages (numerous
YEC sources including Morris and Austin.)>>

<<Austin & Hoesch don't claim to accept the validity of radiometric
dating. In fact, Austin has done several studies attempting to discredit
radiometric dating assumptions, techniques, or results. Thus my
amazement when I read the part in this IMPACT article where Austin &
Hoesch suggest that the source of the volcanic ash in the Late Jurassic
Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation could be the Independence
dike swarm in the central Sierra Nevada Range with the statement: "The
swarm of dikes has long been interpreted as having opened as an event
with an interpreted age of ~150 Ma (Late Jurassic)". Now I didn't take
the time to check out their reference for this age for the dike swarm but
I would be willing to bet that it is based on radiometric dating. (I'll
check it out from the library when I return in a few days and will issue
a retraction if I am proved wrong.) If my assumption is correct, then
Austin & Hoesch are accepting radiometric ages when they are convenient
but then turning around and denying the validity of the technique and
resulting numbers.>>
-----

The Austin & Hoesch reference for the age of the dike swarm was "Carl,
B.S., and Glazner, A.F., 2002, Extent and significance of the
Independence dike swarm, eastern California, in Glazner, A.F., Walker,
J.D., & Bartley, J.M., eds., Geologic Evolution of the Mojave Desert and
Southwestern Basin and Range: Boulder, Colo., Geological Society of
America Memoir 195, pp. 117–130." As I suspected, this article contains
a compiled table (p. 120) of 61 published & unpublished radiometric dates
(23 dikes, 8 volcanic rocks, and 30 coeval plutons) done almost
exclusively by uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating of zircon crystals.

To get to the point of this update. Austin & Hoesch apparently accept
that the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation is Late Jurassic
but would deny that it is ~150 Ma. They summarize and conclude their
article with these statements: "The same watery catastrophe that buried
dinosaurs in Utah was accompanied by super-size volcanism from sources in
the west. The [geologic] record is best interpreted in durations of days
or weeks, not millions of years. The Genesis Flood provides the
historical framework used to understand supervolcanoes." Yet their logic
escapes me. The Brushy Basin Member has been designated by geologists as
Late Jurassic based upon it's stratigraphic position and fossils
(including dinosaurs) - two assumptions commonly denied by YEC writers.
The approximate numeric age of the Brushy Basin Member has been
determined by radiometric dating of crosscutting dikes and from U-Pb
dates of zircons in contained ash fall layers - techniques commonly
rejected by YEC writers. So, unless they believe that the U-Pb dating
methods give consistent results, why search the scientific literature and
cite possible volcanic ash sources by correlating U-Pb dates? Remember,
they believe that the entire Brushy Basin Member was deposited in "days
or weeks" and yet they are trying to identify a volcanic event that may
have happened during those same hours of the one-year-long Genesis Flood.
 In their extremely compressed time frame, there are hundreds of volcanic
events in the western U.S. that could have potentially supplied ash
during those few hours ... unless you are constrained by the data
obtained from radiometric dating.

Steve
[Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own and
are not to be attributed to my employer.]
_____________
Steven M. Smith, Geologist, U.S. Geological Survey
Box 25046, M.S. 973, DFC, Denver, CO 80225
Office: (303)236-1192, Fax: (303)236-3200
Email: smsmith@usgs.gov
-USGS Nat'l Geochem. Database NURE HSSR Web Site-
 http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/ofr-97-0492/

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Received on Wed Aug 23 16:06:41 2006