Dendrochronology: Disastrous Data

Michael Baillie has posted a Tree-ring and Radiocarbon Rebuttal to Gunnar Heinsohn’s 700 Phantom Years hypothesis over at http://www.q-mag.org .

http://www.q-mag.org/the-1st-millennium-a-d-chronology-controversy.html

Click to access baillie-dendrochronology-gunnar.pdf

Unsurprisingly, Michael Baillie is not impressed and dismisses the Phantom Years as “semantic games with historical documents” and supports his argument with radiocarbon dated chronologies based upon Sequoia, Bristlecone Pine and Irish Oak trees.

I am indebted to Michael Baillie for introducing the Irish Oak chronology because it provides another opportunity to examine why “scientists have their own approach to issues of chronology”.

https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/download/1556/1560

The saw-toothed Irish Oak chronology is very similar to the mainstream Bristlecone Pine chronology in the BC era where the casual observer could mistakenly conclude the data has been sliced and diced to fit a preconceived construct.

However, there is a very marked divergence during Gunnar Heinsohn’s 700 Phantom Years.

Bristlecone Pine Chronology

The casual observer of the Irish Oak chronology could also be mistakenly suspicious of:
1) The apparent splice that occurs between [about] 100 AD and 1400 CE.
2) The younger-to-older inversion of 350 years that occurs [about] 700 BC to 400 BC.

The casual observer could also mistakenly assume that the yawning gaps in the radiocarbon chronology for the 1st millennium BC means that Irish Oak trees absconded from Ireland for [about] one hundred years on two separate occasions.

The casual observer might again mistakenly assume that the sparse radiocarbon chronology for the 1st millennium AD means that Irish Oak trees were so thin on the ground during this period of Irish history that bridges were regularly constructed using wood from phantom oak trees.

Thankfully, to avoid any confusion, the Irish Oak chronology also provides Δ14C data so that casual observers can cross-check the tree-ring chronology and the radiocarbon dating.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/outreach/isotopes/deltavalues.html

The saw-tooth Δ14C data starts off rationally enough showing a generally declining trend that would be expected if radioactive carbon-14 is [always] slowly decaying.

The casual observer may foolishly wonder about the saw-tooth Δ14C profile because they have been told the level of carbon-14 remains constant in the atmosphere.

Obviously, this foolishness results from an ignorance of the de Vries effect which was “not understood” in 1970 but is now generally presumed to be associated with changes in solar activity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating_considerations#Atmospheric_variation

http://jgreenwood.web.wesleyan.edu/wescourses/2006f/ees302/01/lect6.html

However, the casual observer is then amazed to discover that during Gunnar Heinsohn’s 700 Phantom Years the radioactive carbon-14 stops decaying.

Furthermore, the casual observer is then spellbound as they watch the Δ14C levels increase throughout the 1st millennium BC.

In fact, the Δ14C level doesn’t stop increasing until about 4500 BC according to the Irish Oak trees.

Obviously, only a crazed catastrophist could imagine that the Earth was closer to the Sun in 4500 BC [with a year of 360 days] and then began to slowly drift away from the Sun until about 324 AD [with a year of 365.25 days].

Evidently, only a crazed catastrophist could imagine that the Δ14C data supports the notion that the Earth experienced a series of catastrophes [as per Immanuel Velikovsky] between 1000 BC and 234 AD.

Obviously, only a crazed catastrophist could imagine that data had been spliced into Gunnar Heinsohn’s 700 Phantom Years

Obviously, only a crazed catastrophist could imagine that data had been spliced over a catastrophe in 687 BC [as theorised by Immanuel Velikovsky].

Hopefully, the casual observer will now appreciate why “scientists have their own approach to issues of chronology”.