Veritas: Age Correlations and An Old Earth

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Age Correlations and An Old Earth

by Paul Smith
Version 2.1 Revised 11 JUN 2007

Correlations Correlations Correlations

We see many creationists saying that dating methods are not accurate and are prone to errors. The problem is that these methods all correlate with each other in many rather astounding ways, given that they are based on very different mechanisms.
To address this issue of correlations, and to bring this issue to the fore, we'll start with ones that have direct methods of counting ages due to annual layers, how those annual layers validate each other and how several radiometric methods enter into the mix -- correlations not just with age but with climate and certain known instances that occurred in the past and which show up in these records just where they should be.
The challenge for the creationist is not just to describe how a single method can be wrong, but how they can all be wrong at the same time and yet produce identical results - when the error mechanisms in different systems should produce different random results.

Summary of the Age Dating Correlations Covered:

For anybody unclear on the concept, this is how it stacks up - there are a number of different ways that annual sequences can be counted, ones that do not rely on radioactivity or rocket science to understand:

Bristlecone Pines: The minimum age of the earth is 8,000 years by annual tree rings in California.
European Oaks: The minimum age of the earth is 10,434 years by annual tree rings in Europe (different environment, different genus, not just different species and from two different locations).
German Pine: The minimum age of the earth is 12,405 years by adding more annual tree rings in Europe (different environment and species), confirmed by carbon-14 levels in the samples (different information from the same sources).
Lake Suigetsu: The minimum age of the earth is 35,987 years by annual varve layers of diatoms in Japan (different process, biology and location).
Dunde Ice Core: The minimum age of the earth is 40,000 years by annual layers of ice in China (different process altogether).
Greenland Ice Cores: The minimum age of the earth is 37,957 years by visually counting layers, 60,000 years by counting dust layers, 110,000 years by measuring electrical conductivity of layers, and up to 250,000 years by counting of layers below a discontinuity, all counting annual layers of ice in Greenland (different location).
Antarctica Ice Cores: The minimum age of the earth is 422,776 years by annual layers of ice in the Vostok Ice Core, extended to740,000 years with the EPICA Ice Core with an estimated final depth age of 900,000 years. (different location again).
Devil's Hole: The radiometric age of the earth is validated to 567,700 years by annual deposition of calcite in Nevada and correlation to the annual ice core climate data.
Coral Heads: The minimum radiometric age of the earth is of coral is >400,000,000 years by radiometric age correlated with the astrono-physics predicted length of the day correlated with the daily growth rings in ancient coral heads. (different location, different environment, different methods).
Radiometric Correlations: the radiometric dates for a number of specific events show a consistent accuracy to the methods used, and an age for the earth of ~4,500,000,000years old.
Final Summary: the bottom line is that the valid scientific age for the earth is ~4,500,000,000 years old.
Theme Song: just for fun.

Denial of contradictory evidence is not confronting the evidence, but avoiding it.
Enjoy.
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Bristlecone Pines

(Note: I have been in a small confusion concerning specific trees here, and I have finally sorted it out. I apologize for spreading mistaken information on the web. The result is a small change to slightly younger ages of the two trees discussed here.)
By counting tree rings and matching the overlapping patterns of growth from live to dead trees, scientists have developed a tree-ring chronology of nearly 10,000 years using wood from the Schulman Grove area, California (one tree still living is 4,839 years old). From "//Pinus longaeva// D.K. Bailey 1970"(5):

The oldest known living specimen is the "Methuselah" tree, sampled by Schulman and Harlan in the White Mountains of CA, for which 4789 years are verified by crossdating. An age of 4,844 years was determined post-mortem (after being cut down) for specimen WPM-114 from Wheeler Peak, NV. The age is largely crossdated (6). Naturally, these ages underestimate the true ages of the respective trees (see Tree Age Determination for details), perhaps by hundreds of years in view of the fact that pith dates were not recovered for these trees. It seems likely that trees at least 5000 years old exist.Pinus longaeva is generally regarded as the longest-lived of all sexually reproducing, nonclonal species, with many individuals known to have ages exceeding 4000 years. Due to the resinous wood and extremely cold and arid habitat, decay of dead wood is extremely slow, and wood on the ground in some stands has ages exceeding 10,000 years. This has permitted building a continuous chronology of more than 8,000 years, which in turn has been used to calibrate the radiocarbon timescale. The species has been widely used in dendroclimatic reconstruction and in several classic studies of timberline ecology.
(6) Brown, Peter M. 1996. OLDLIST: A database of maximum tree ages. P. 727-731 in Dean, J.S., D.M. Meko and T.W. Swetnam, eds., "Tree rings, environment, and humanity." Radiocarbon 1996, Department of Geosciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson.

(Note that the article refers to two trees, Methusula and specimen WPM-114, which is also known as the "Prometheus" tree. This is the source of my confusion).
The "Methusulah" specimen was sampled (borings) in 1957, so the estimated germination date is 2,832 years BCE. By this one tree alone the minimum age for the earth is 4,839 years... and counting. See Wikipedia: "Methuselah (tree)"(2) for additional information on this tree. The Bristlecone Pine that has been cut down is "Prometheus". From "The "Prometheus" Story"(4):

The Forest Service granted permission for the researcher to take core samples from several old-looking bristlecone pines and to cut one down. Bristlecone pines often grow in a twisted fashion. Also, one section of the tree may die off even a couple thousand years before another part. This means it can be very difficult to capture the oldest part of the tree in a core sample. The tree that was cut down in 1964--while still living--has since become know to some as "Prometheus." Counting revealed that Prometheus contained about 4,900 growth rings. This made it the oldest known tree. Currently the oldest known living tree, about 4,600 years old, is in the White Mountains of California. Chances are good that there are other, older, bristlecones that have not been dated.

The "Prometheus" specimen was was 4,844 years old when it was cut down in 1964. This is a minimum as the core of the tree had eroded away, and this gives a latest germination date of 2,880 BCE. By this one tree alone the minimum age for the earth is 4,887 years (in 2007)... and counting. See Wikipedia: "Prometheus (tree)"(3) for additional information on this tree.
As both these trees have been cut down and they are about the same age they are very useful in building a dendrochronology as the whole ring pattern can be observed and checked for the time period back to 4,839 years ago covered by both trees. Normally only dead samples are cut for cross-sections and live trees are normally sampled by taking cores (as was being done on Prometheus when the tool broke). Cores and cross-sections of different samples are aligned by the pattern of annual rings that show the variations in climate from year to year. From "Dendrochronology"(7):

Simply put, dendrochronology is the dating of past events (climatic changes) through study of tree ring growth. Botanists, foresters and archaeologists began using this technique during the early part of the 20th century. Discovered by A.E. Douglass from the University of Arizona, who noted that the wide rings of certain species of trees were produced during wet years and, inversely, narrow rings during dry seasons.Each year a tree adds a layer of wood to its trunk and branches thus creating the pict of cells annual rings we see when viewing a cross section. New wood grows from the cambium layer between the old wood and the bark. In the spring, when moisture is plentiful, the tree devotes its energy to producing new growth cells. These first new cells are large, but as the summer progresses their size decreases until, in the fall, growth stops and cells die, with no new growth appearing until the next spring. The contrast between these smaller old cells and next year's larger new cells is enough to establish a ring, thus making counting possible.
Lets say the sample was taken from a standing 4,000 year-old (but long dead) bristlecone. Its outer growth rings were compared with the inner rings of a living tree. If a pattern of individual ring widths in the two samples prove to be identical at some point, we can carry dating further into the past. With this method of matching overlapping patterns found in different wood samples, bristlecone chronologies have been established almost 9,000 years into the past.
A number of tree samples must be examined and cross dated from any given site to avoid the possibility of all the collected data showing a missing or extra ring. Further checking is done until no inconsistency appears. Often several sample cores are taken from each tree examined. These must be compared not only with samples from other trees at the same location but also with those at other sites in the region. Additionally, the average of all data provides the best estimate of climate averages. A large portion of the effects of nonclimatic factors that occur in the various site data is minimized by this averaging scheme.
The bristlecone pine chronology in the White Mountains currently extends back almost 9,000 years continuously. That's to 7,000 BC! Several pieces of wood have been collected that will extend this date back even further. The hope is to push the date back to at least 8,000 BC. This will be important as the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, and to have a record of this transition period would offer scientists a wealth of information.

Note three things: the tree rings contain climate data, the chronology is not based on one sample but many overlapping and duplicate (some from the same tree) samples, and there are other samples that have not been counted yet or that have a break in the climate data that means they are "floating" in the chronology somewhere beyond the end of the continuous record. Adding up all the time recorded by these tree rings would give us a minimum age of the earth for all those years to have passed that generated the rings. We'll be minimalist here and say:

Minimum age of the earth > 8,000 years based on this data.

This is already older than many YEC models (6,000 years for those using Archbishop Ussher's calculation of a starting date of 4004 BC). This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 8,000 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.
Also see "The Ancient Bristlecone Pine"(8), "California's Ancient Bristlecone Pines, The Oldest Living Things"(1) and "Ultimate Tree-Ring Web Pages "(6) for further study.
This is only the start.
Enjoy.
References

Anonymous "California's Ancient Bristlecone Pines, The Oldest Living Things" American West Travelogue, 1996-2007 ASA Consultants, Inc. no date, accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.amwest-travel.com/awt_bristle.html
Anonymous "Methuselah (tree)" Wikipedia. updated 9 Jan 2007. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_%28tree%29
Anonymous "Prometheus (tree)" Wikipedia. updated 7 Jan 2007. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_%28tree%29
Anonymous "The "Prometheus" Story" Great Basin On-line. updated 2 Aug 2002. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.nps.gov/grba/Bristlecone%20Pines/bristleconepineprometheus.htm
Earle, Christopher J. "Pinus longaeva D.K. Bailey 1970" Gymnosperm Database. updated 28 Jan 2000. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/earle/pi/pin/longaeva.htm
Grissino-Mayer , Henri D., "Ultimate Tree-Ring Web Pages" Department of Geography, The University of Tennessee. updated 28 Jun 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/
Miller, Leonard, "Dendrochronology" Sonic.net/bristlecone. updated 2 Jan 2005. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/dendro.html
Miller, Leonard, "The Ancient Bristlecone Pine" Sonic.net/bristlecone. updated 2 Jan 2005. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from from http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/intro.html

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European Oaks

My recollection is that dendrochronology started with oak trees in Europe, by setting up a database of oak tree sections from archaeological sites and matching different sections that overlapped in time to build a complete lineage of tree ring dates.
The common name for this species is "Post Oak" due to its natural resistance to rot thus making a good material for posts in ancient constructions. This also means that there are a lot of samples that are referenced to and associated with archaeological finds, finds that can be dated by other means, including historical documents as far back as the history goes. From "Useful Tree Species for Tree-Ring Dating"(3):

Oak is a highly preferred species to use in dendrochronology - in fact, the longest continuous tree-ring chronology anywhere in the world was developed in Europe and is currently about 10,000 year in length. This chronology is providing scientists new insights on climate over the past 10,000 years, especially at the end of the last Glacial Maximum.Because ring-porous species almost always begin annual growth with this initial flush, missing rings are rare in such species as oak and elm. In fact, the only recorded instance of a missing ring in oak trees occurred in the year 1816, also known as the Year Without a Summer. A volcanic eruption in the year 1815 caused much cooler temperatures globally, thus causing oak trees to remain dormant. Therefore, no clear annual ring was formed in 1816 for certain locations in Europe.
Occasionally, offsets in oak tree rings can be problematic when trying to crossdate the rings. Dendrochronologists therefore must be careful when working with oak species, as these rays can cause a misdate of one year.

Note that sources of error are identified and accounted for. Crossdating is one method to check for errors. Another is to build two independent chronologies from the same species in two different locations. For an idea of the accuracy of the data and the amount of error involved we have this from "INTCAL04 Terrestrial Radiocarbon Age Calibration, 0–26 CAL KYR BP"(4):

The Holocene part of the 14C calibration is based on several millennia-long tree-ring chronologies, providing an annual, absolute time frame within the possible error of the dendrochronology, which was rigorously tested by internal replication of many overlapping sections. Whenever possible, they were cross-checked with independently established chronologies of adjacent regions. The German and Irish oak chronologies were cross-dated until back into the 3rd millennium BC (Pilcher et al. 1984), and the German oak chronologies from the Main River, built independently in the Göttingen and Hohenheim tree-ring laboratories, cross-date back to 9147 cal BP (Spurk et al. 1998).Due to periodic narrow rings caused by cockchafer beetles, some German oak samples were excluded from IntCal98. Analysis of these tree rings, with an understanding of the response of trees to the cockchafer damage, allowed some of these measurements to be re-instated in the chronology (Friedrich et al., this issue).
The relation between North American and European wood has been studied using bristlecone pine (BCP) and European oak (German oak and Irish oak), respectively. Discrepancies have become evident over the years, in particular when the German oak was corrected by a dendro-shift of 41 yr towards older ages (Kromer et al. 1996). Attempts were made to resolve the discrepancies by remeasuring BCP samples, measured earlier in Tucson (Linick et al. 1986). The University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research provided dendrochronologically dated bristlecone pine samples to Heidelberg (wood from around 4700 and 7600 cal BP), Groningen (around 7500 cal BP), Pretoria (around 4900 cal BP), and Seattle (around 7600 cal BP). The replicate measurements have a mean offset of 37 ± 6 14C yr (n = 21) from the Tucson measurements.
There was not a large difference in the calculated k values between early and recent measurements in the Belfast lab for the Irish oak samples when the previously applied laboratory error multiplier on the more recent data set is considered; however, the early measurements of German oak were more variable than those of Irish oak. The recent Heidelberg data sets had smaller k values than older measurements. The reason for the early variation is partly due to the fact that these samples were measured to help place a tree in the dendrochronology as it was being built instead of measured consecutively, and also because many of these samples contain only a few tree rings but are being compared to decadal samples.
Uncertainty in single-ring cal ages for dendrochronologically-dated wood is on the order of 1 yr for highly replicated and cross-checked chronologies and is therefore ignored in the analysis.

There are several things to note here. First, is that there are three (3) main chronologies: one of Bristlecone Pine and two of European Oak, one German and one Irish. Second, is that originally one oak chronology was "not good enough" to be included in the IntCal98 - because it was off by 41 years in (then) ~8,000 years, an error of 0.5%. Third, is that when one oak chronology was corrected, it was not the odd one out, but the one that previously agreed with the Bristlecone Pine chronology. Fourth, now the Bristlecone Pine chronology is now considered "not good enough" - because it is off by 37 years in ~7600 years, an error of 0.5%. Fifth, that where some German Oak samples had been placed by carbon-14 levels in the earlier chronology (used in IntCal98) these are now placed by additional tree samples that fill in the consecutive chronology (and these initial carbon-14 levels are not now used to place those samples). Finally, that the European Oak absolute chronology now extends back to 9,147 years BP with cross dating and including all three in one data set means that the error involved is on the order of 0.5% - over the whole period of time covered.
The IntCal04 discussion doesn't give the breakdown on the actual ages of each chronology, so for that we refer to "The 12,460-Year Hohenheim Oak and Pine Tree-Ring Chronology from Central Europe—a Unique Annual Record for Radiocarbon Calibration and Paleoenvironment Reconstructions"(2):

The combined oak and pine tree-ring chronologies of Hohenheim University are the backbone of the Holocene radiocarbon calibration for central Europe. Here, we present the revised Holocene oak chronology (HOC) and the Preboreal pine chronology (PPC) with respect to revisions, critical links, and extensions. Since 1998, the HOC has been strengthened by new trees starting at 10,429 BP (8480 BC). Oaks affected by cockchafer have been identified and discarded from the chronology.

These are just three examples of dendrochronologies, the three that happen to be the longest absolute chronologies. There are many species of trees used for dendrochronology, and many different chronologies. Several chronologies are "floating" - do not have a fixed begin date - and many of those are older than the dates discussed here. All the species show the same trends in world climate whenever they overlap. The climatological trends correlate the ages from one species to the others, thus any errors that would invalidate dendrochronology would need to apply to each (and all) species in each (and all) locations at the same time. Here we need only discuss the three long absolute chronologies and how they validate each other.
Now we have a problem for YEC people, because not only do these different chronologies cover the same time, they also have the same pattern of climate shown in their tree rings even though they come from opposite sides of the earth and are in very different kinds of trees, one evergreen living at high altitudes and one deciduous living near sea levels, and anything that can cause errors in one system has to have a method that can cause exactly the same error in the other at exactly the same time. Positing false rings does not accomplish this. All three sets also show the "little ice age" and other marker events at the same ages. They all come to the same age for the matching climate data. We can be minimalist here, and say that the minimum age covered by the European Oak chronology is 10,429 years BP - 0.5% = 10,377 years BP. "BP" means "Before Present" and is defined as years before 1950(1), so this is really 10,434 years ago (in 2007).

Minimum age of the earth > 10,434 years based on this data.

This is now older than most if not all YEC models for the age of the earth.
This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 10,434 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.
And this is still just the start: three different dendrochronologies that correlate age with climate and that match - wiggle for wiggle -within 0.5%.
Enjoy.
References

Anonymous "Before Present" Wikipedia. updated 28 Dec 2006. accessed 17 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
Friedrich, Michael et al, "The 12,460-Year Hohenheim Oak and Pine Tree-Ring Chronology from Central Europe—a Unique Annual Record for Radiocarbon Calibration and Paleoenvironment Reconstructions" Radiocarbon, Volume 46, Issue 3, Pages v-1334 (March 2004), pp. 1111-1122(12) accessed 17 Jan 2007 from http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/arizona/rdc/2004/00000046/00000003/art00008 (abstract)
Martinez, Lori, "Useful Tree Species for Tree-Ring Dating" Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona. updated Oct 2001. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/lorim/good.html
Reimer, Paula J. et al, "INTCAL04 Terrestrial Radiocarbon Age Calibration, 0–26 CAL KYR BP" Radiocarbon, Volume 46, Issue 3, Pages v-1334 (March 2004), pp. 1029-1058(30). accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://courses.washington.edu/twsteach/ESS/302/ESS%20Readings/Reimer2004.pdf

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Adding German Pines

Tree rings (and other systems of independent measurements of actual age of items) are used to calibrate the carbon 14 dating method to make it more accurate than it is uncalibrated. The scientists doing this are very concerned with the accuracy of the data.
NOTE: we are NOT discussing carbon 14 dating yet, just the evidence from tree-ring chronologies and the accuracy of the data. Some of this has already been discussed above, in regards to the two oak chronologies. Here we are concerned with the last of the tree-ring chronologies that we can fix to an absolute time frame. Again, from "INTCAL04 Terrestrial Radiocarbon Age Calibration, 0–26 CAL KYR BP"(10):

The 2 parts of the German Preboreal pine chronology (PPC), which were formerly floating, have been linked and cross-matched dendrochronologically to the absolutely-dated Holocene oak chronology. Including additional new finds, the south German part of the PPC is prolonged into the Younger Dryas and now starts at 11,993 cal BP. New pine chronologies from Switzerland and eastern Germany extend the PPC to 12,410 cal BP (Friedrich et al., this issue).

Note that "floating" chronologies are ones where the end is not known. There are many other floating dendrochronologies that extend further into the past, but they are not discussed here as they can't be tied by climate correlations to the existing absolute dendrochronologies. Note further that the absolute European (German & Irish) Oak chronologies were discussed above, and that the accuracy of those with the Bristlecone Pine chronology was found to have an error of ~0.5% and that the Bristlecone Pine was excluded to bring the error down - there was less error between the German Oak, the Irish Oak and the German Pine chronologies.
The IntCal04 discussion doesn't give the breakdown on the actual ages of each chronology, so for that we refer to "The 12,460-Year Hohenheim Oak and Pine Tree-Ring Chronology from Central Europe—a Unique Annual Record for Radiocarbon Calibration and Paleoenvironment Reconstructions"(6):

The combined oak and pine tree-ring chronologies of Hohenheim University are the backbone of the Holocene radiocarbon calibration for central Europe. Here, we present the revised Holocene oak chronology (HOC) and the Preboreal pine chronology (PPC) with respect to revisions, critical links, and extensions. Since 1998, the HOC has been strengthened by new trees starting at 10,429 BP (8480 BC). Oaks affected by cockchafer have been identified and discarded from the chronology. The formerly floating PPC has been cross-matched dendrochronologically to the absolutely dated oak chronology, which revealed a difference of only 8 yr to the published 14C wiggle-match position used for IntCal98. The 2 parts of the PPC, which were linked tentatively at 11,250 BP, have been revised and strengthened by new trees, which enabled us to link both parts of the PPC dendrochronologically. Including the 8-yr shift of the oak-pine link, the older part of the PPC (pre-11,250 BP) needs to be shifted 70 yr to older ages with respect to the published data (Spurk 1998). The southern German part of the PPC now covers 2103 yr from 11,993–9891 BP (10,044–7942 BC). In addition, the PPC was extended significantly by new pine chronologies from other regions. A pine chronology from Avenches and Zürich, Switzerland, and another from the Younger Dryas forest of Cottbus, eastern Germany, could be crossdated and dendrochronologically matched to the PPC. The absolutely dated tree-ring chronology now extends back to 12,410 cal BP (10,461 BC). Therefore, the tree-ring-based 14C calibration now reaches back into the Central Younger Dryas. With respect to the Younger Dryas-Preboreal transition identified in the ring width of our pines at 11,590 BP, the absolute tree-ring chronology now covers the entire Holocene and 820 yr of the Younger Dryas.

Note that the "Younger Dryas" - a period of significant climate change bigger than the "Little Ice Age" (and named for the pollen from the Dryas octopetala plant showing up in various sediments)(1) - now shows up in the tree-ring chronology, marked by the width of the rings.
What they are essentially doing with all these dendrochronologies is building an overall dendrochronology independent of genus or species. The method for matching elements of some species dendrochronologies is the same as it is for matching sample elements within species dendrochronologies: they match up the patterns of climate with annual rings. So we have the German Oak running to10,429 BP and the German Pine running from 9891 BP to 12,410 BP and it overlaps the German Oak for 538 years. We can again be {minimalist\parsimonious\generous} and say that the error in this date is 0.5% (to include the Bristlecone Pine) and the minimum age then is 12,410 BP - 0.5% + (2007-1950) = 12,405 years.
Creationists try to discredit the whole field of dendrochronology as a means to deny the massive evidence that it has compiled. Remember that this is not one tree or one species but thousands of dendrochronologies that all correlate to the same climate and annual data. A typical creationist attempt is one by Don Batten's article "Tree ring dating (dendrochronology)"(4):

Tree ring dating (dendrochronology) has been used in an attempt to extend the calibration of carbon-14 dating earlier than historical records allow. The oldest living trees, such as the Bristlecone Pines (Pinus longaeva) of the White Mountains of Eastern California, were dated in 1957 by counting tree rings at 4,723 years old. This would mean they pre-dated the Flood which occurred around 4,350 years ago, taking a straightforward approach to Biblical chronology.Recent research on seasonal effects on tree rings in other trees in the same genus, the plantation pine Pinus radiata, has revealed that up to five rings per year can be produced and extra rings are often indistinguishable, even under the microscope, from annual rings. As a tree physiologist I would say that evidence of false rings in any woody tree species would cast doubt on claims that any particular species has never in the past produced false rings. Evidence from within the same genus surely counts much more strongly against such a notion.

This article is discussed in greater detail in my article "Dendrochronolgy Fact and Creationist Fraud"(11), however he is (a) talking about a tree selected and bred by the timber industry for fast growth, that is (b) in a different subgenus (all pines are in the genusPinus, so this is like comparing a car with a bus as modes of transportation), (c) he doesn't discuss other sources of error that can mean the tree is older than the ring data, and finally (d) he can - and did - distinguish the false rings from the annual ones, just as dendrochronologists do ("up to five rings per year"). Suffice it to say, the argument from Don Batten is false and misleading and does not answer the question of how all the different dendrochronologies end up with the same climate and annual ring patterns when the scientists have accounted for the known sources of errors in the different tree lines, errors that would occur at different times in different species in different locations, for different reasons, errors that add up to only 37 years in differences between the Bristlecone Pine and the European Oak chronologies.
Furthermore, the ages of the tree-ring data are validated by the carbon-14 levels in the samples. The "carbon-14 age" of a sample is really a measurement of the quantity of carbon-14 in the sample compared to the total carbon in the sample. This quantity measurement is then transformed by a mathematical formula based on radioactive decay into a theoretical "age," but this "age" is really just a mathematical scale for displaying the actual amount of carbon-14 in the sample. The point here is that it does not matter what creationists think about the validity of carbon-14 dating in particular, radiometric dating in general, or radioactive decay, because two samples of the same age - that lived in the same atmospheric environment and absorbed the then existing levels of atmospheric carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14 (the three common isotopes) - will have the same levels of carbon-14 in the samples today. No fantastic scheme invented to change the way radioactivity works will change that simple fact, for whatever is changed in one sample is changed in all the others of the same time. Thus, when sample {A} is dated to {X} years by dendrochronology and it has level {Y} carbon-14 content, and when sample {B} is also dated to {X} years by dendrochronology and it has level {Y} carbon-14 content, the carbon-14 content validates the age - because, growing in the same environment, they could not be the same age and NOT have the same carbon-14 content.

The Carbon-14 Environment and Tree Ring Data Correlations

Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon. From "Carbon: Properties and Isotopes"(1):

Carbon has 13 known isotopes, which have from 2 to 14 neutrons in the nucleus and mass numbers from 8 to 20. Carbon-12 was chosen by IUPAC in 1961 as the basis for atomic weights; it is assigned an atomic mass of exactly 12 atomic mass units. Carbon-13 absorbs radio waves and is used in nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry to study organic compounds. Carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,730 years, is a naturally occurring isotope that can also be produced in a nuclear reactor.

The amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is normally very low compared to the amounts of carbon-12 and carbon-13 (both stable isotopes). From "The 14C Method"(7):

Three principal isotopes of carbon occur naturally - C-12, C-13 (both stable) and C-14 (unstable or radioactive). These isotopes are present in the following amounts C12 - 98.89%, C13 - 1.11% and C14 - 0.00000000010%.

This atmospheric carbon-14 is produced by cosmic ray bombardment. From "How Carbon-14 Dating Works"(5):

Cosmic rays enter the earth's atmosphere in large numbers every day. For example, every person is hit by about half a million cosmic rays every hour. It is not uncommon for a cosmic ray to collide with an atom in the atmosphere, creating a secondary cosmic ray in the form of an energetic neutron, and for these energetic neutrons to collide with nitrogen atoms. When the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons). Carbon-14 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years.

This takes energy to accomplish, and the decay releases this energy: carbon-14 decays back to Nitrogen-14 by beta- decay. From "Glossary: Beta Decay"(9):

During beta-minus decay, a neutron in an atom's nucleus turns into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino. The electron and antineutrino fly away from the nucleus, which now has one more proton than it started with. Since an atom gains a proton during beta-minus decay, it changes from one element to another. For example, after undergoing beta-minus decay, an atom of carbon (with 6 protons) becomes an atom of nitrogen (with 7 protons).

Thus cosmic ray activity produces a "carbon-14 environment" in the atmosphere, where carbon-14 is being produced or replenished while also being removed by radioactive decay due to a short half-life. This results is a variable but fairly stable proportion of atmospheric carbon-14 for absorption from the atmosphere by plants during photosynthesis in the proportions of C-12 and C-14 existing in the atmosphere at the time.
The level of carbon-14 has not been constant in the past, as it is known to vary with the amount of cosmic ray bombardment and climate change. The half-life of 5730 years for carbon-14 has a and this can be used to calculate an apparent "C-14 age" from the proportion of C-14 to C-12 in an organic sample (that derives its carbon from the atmosphere) and this "date" can be checked against known dates to determine the amount of C-14 that was in the atmosphere:

(Image based on calibration curvefrom Wikipedia(2) - Both images are in the public domain.)
Note that the "C-14 age" is really a measurement of the actual ratio of C-14 to C-12 isotopes in the sample, and a comparison of that to modern day proportions. The "age" is then calculated by a radioactive decay formula. From "How Carbon-14 Dating Works"(5):

A formula to calculate how old a sample is by carbon-14 dating is:t = {ln (Nf/No)/ln (1/2)} x t1/2
where t is the "C-14 age", ln is the natural logarithm, Nf/No is the percent of carbon-14 in the sample compared to the amount in living tissue, and t1/2 is the half-life of carbon-14.

The age calibration curves have been extended now to the limits of carbon-14 dating, but it is also of interest to look at just the carbon-14 calibration curve for dendrochronology - the results of matching tree-rings to carbon-14 levels and their implied "C-14 age" - from "Extension of the radiocarbon calibration curve by AMS dating of laminated sediments of lake Soppensee and lake Holzmaar"(8):

This means we can look at the "C-14 age" as a measurement of the carbon-14 actually remaining in the samples from what was absorbed from the atmosphere at the time that the tree-rings were formed and note the following:

If there were numerous errors in the tree-ring data caused by false rings (as proposed by Dr. Don Batten), then this would show up as a steep rising "C-14 age" that would be much younger than the recorded tree-ring age. This is not the case.
The false rings would also have to be perfectly matched for each of the species used for the overall dendrochronology ages or the "C-14 age" for each one would be different and the line of calibration would be extremely blurred. This is not the case.
The age derived from carbon-14 analysis is consistently younger than the actual age measured by the numerous tree-ring chronologies in pre-historical times, meaning that C-14 dating underestimates the ages of objects.

Conclusions

The actual amount of C-14 in the tree-ring samples match from species to species for the same ages as the tree-rings, regardless of the radioactive decay rate for carbon-14, and this validates that they formed in the same "carbon-14 environment" regardless of radioactive decay afterwards.
Samples that get carbon-14 only from atmospheric sources while living cannot be the same age and NOT have the same carbon-14 content.
False tree-rings for each and every one of the different species that were used on the calibrations curve would have to have occurred at the same time in several different habitats, locations and environments around the world to produce simultaneous false results.
Anyone wanting to invalidate tree-rings as a viable age measurement method need to simultaneously explain the correlation of tree-rings to climate between each species and the correlation of tree-rings to carbon-14 levels absorbed in each of the tree-rings in each of the species at the same tree-ring age. This is three different systems having matching data on a year by year basis. This is highly unlikely to be done.
The logical conclusion is that this confirms the dendrochronology age for the Bristlecone Pines, the German Oaks, the Irish Oaks and the German Pines.

Minimum age of the earth > 12,405 years based on this data.

This is now older than ALL YEC models for the age of the earth that I am aware of, meaning that the YEC concept is invalidated based on tree-ring data alone.
This also means that there was absolutely NO world wide flood (WWF) during those 12,405 years, as there would be no possible overlap of tree ring chronologies if there were some point at which ALL were dead.
And we haven't even gotten to the tip of the iceberg.
Enjoy.
References

Anonymous "Carbon: Properties and Isotopes" The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2006, Columbia University Press. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0857174.html
Anonymous "Radiocarbon Dating" Wikipedia. updated 10 Jan 2007. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
Anonymous "Younger Dryas" Wikipedia. updated 30 Dec 2006. accessed 18 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas
Batten, Don, "Tree ring dating (dendrochronology)" Creation on the Web. Undated. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2441
Brain, Marshall, "How Carbon-14 Dating Works" HowStuffWorks.com. undated. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-14.htm/printable
Friedrich, Michael et al, "The 12,460-Year Hohenheim Oak and Pine Tree-Ring Chronology from Central Europe—a Unique Annual Record for Radiocarbon Calibration and Paleoenvironment Reconstructions" Radiocarbon, Volume 46, Issue 3, Pages v-1334 (March 2004), pp. 1111-1122(12) accessed 17 Jan 2007 from http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/arizona/rdc/2004/00000046/00000003/art00008 (abstract)
Gagnon, Steve, "Glossary: Beta Decay" Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education. undated. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://education.jlab.org/glossary/betadecay.html
Higham, Thomas, "The 14C Method" Info Radiocarbon Web. undated. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.c14dating.com/int.html
Hajdas-Skowronek, Irka, "Extension of the radiocarbon calibration curve by AMS dating of laminated sediments of lake Soppensee and lake Holzmaar" PhD Thesis, 1993, Institute of Particle Physics, Zurich, Switzerland. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.ipp.phys.ethz.ch/research/experiments/tandem/radiocarbon/HajdasPhDthesis1993.pdf
Reimer, Paula J. et al, "INTCAL04 Terrestrial Radiocarbon Age Calibration, 0–26 CAL KYR BP" Radiocarbon, Volume 46, Issue 3, Pages v-1334 (March 2004), pp. 1029-1058(30). accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://courses.washington.edu/twsteach/ESS/302/ESS%20Readings/Reimer2004.pdf
Smith, Paul "Dendrochronolgy Fact and Creationist Fraud" razd.evcforum.net, Version 1, dated 14 Jan 2007, Accessed 15 Jan 2007 from http://razd.evcforum.net/dendrochronology.html

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Lake Suigetsu Varves

Scientists lead by Dr. H. Kitagawa were able to measure a chronology extending over a period of 29,100 years. They were also able to measure and match the "C-14 age" of samples taken with the core to the ages and carbon-14 levels documented for the tree ring data for an overlap period starting 8,830 years ago. This is a "floating" chronology, as it does not have accurate data up to the present due to the coring technology and the characteristics of the recently deposited silty clay bottom before it gets compacted by time and later depositions. From "Atmospheric Radiocarbon Calibration to 45,000 yr B.P.: Late Glacial Fluctuations and Cosmogenic Isotope Production"(4) (If the link is not accessible try "Lake Varves"(2)):

A 75-m long continuous core (Lab code, SG) and four short piston cores were taken from the center of the lake in 1991 and 1993. The sediments are laminated in nearly the entire core sections and are dominated by dark-colored clay with white layers resulting from spring-season diatom growth. The seasonal changes in the depositions are preserved in the clay as thin laminations or varves. The sedimentation or annual varve thickness is relatively uniform, typically 1.2 mm/year during the Holocene and 0.61 mm/year during the Glacial. The bottom age of the SG core is estimated to be older than 100,000 years, close to the beginning of the last interglacial period.To reconstruct the calendar time scale, we counted varves, based on gray-scale image analyses of digital pictures, in a 10.43- to 30.45-m-deep section, producing a 29,100-year-long floating chronology. Because we estimated the varve chronology of older than ~20,000 yr B.P. (19-m depth of SG core) by counting in a single core section, the error of the varve counting increases with depth, and the accumulated error at 40,000 cal yr B.P. would be less than ~2000 years, assuming no break in the sediment (12).
The 14C/12C and 13C/12C ratios of more than 250 terrestrial macrofossils (leaves, twigs, and insect wings) in the sediments were measured by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) at the Groningen AMS facility (13), after proper sample pretreatment (14). The floating varve chronology was connected to the old part of the absolute tree-ring chronology (2, 15) by 14C wiggle matching (16), resulting in an absolute calendar age covering the time span from 8830 to 37,930 cal yr B.P. (17). The age beyond 37,930 cal yr B.P. is obtained by assuming a constant sedimentation in the Glacial.
Abrupt δ14C decreases correspond to radiocarbon plateaus in the calibration curve. Near (a few centuries after) the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD), the δ14C value decreases by 80 per mil from 10,800 to 9800 yr B.P. (12,500 to 10,000 cal yr B.P.)

Note that annual varves run for a period of 29,100 years (from 8,830 back to 37,930 cal yr B.P if correctly aligned with the tree chronology), and that this alone is several times older than any YEC model for the age of the earth. The varve layers continue down below the limits of C-14 dating to ~100,000 years, with some assumptions made below the 37,930 cal yr BP level. As the data below this 37,930 cal yr BP level does not use annual varve layers but an estimated rate of sedimentation, we cannot use it for our minimum annual layer counts other than to say that the earth is older than the annual varves show. Again we can be minimalist: if we take 2,000 years as the error in the data at maximum depth counted, then either of these two scenarios can apply:

This chronology is totally independent of the one from the tree-ring data in spite of several thousand years of matching carbon-14 levels, and the minimum age of the earth is 12,326 + 29,100 +/- 2,000 = 39,436 years old (with a possible world wide flood in between? Perhaps, or perhaps not, depending on later information eh?), OR
These chronologies overlap as determined by matching the "C-14 age" levels, and the minimum age of the earth is 37,930 +/- 2,000 = 35,930 years BP = 35,987 years old in 2007.

Minimum age of the earth > 35,987 years based on this data.

Note that the climatological information from the varves matches that from dendrochronology for the period of overlap, including the Younger Dryas. Note further that this extends annual chronological dating to the archaeological dates found for the cave paintings at Lasceaux and Chauvet - the archaeological record shows that an early nomadic cave using civilization that involved stone tools, burial ceremonies and undeniably impressive artwork at the Lasceaux Caves in southern France around 15,000 to 13,000 BC, (what is known as the late Aurignacian period) or 17,000 years ago, and at a cave near Chauvet (south-central France) around 30,340 and 32,410 years ago. We have verified a chronological age for these artifacts, and we have hardly begun to get into the age of Homo sapiens, the hominid ancestors of man, the age of life on the earth or even the actual ancient age of the earth.
Note further that the layers extend back to 100,000 years ago but that this research only concentrated on the last 45,000 years to calibrate C-14 dating (albeit making some assumptions for before 37,930 years BP).

Carbon-14 Correlations to Lake Varves

We discussed the calibration curves for Carbon-14 above, using them to show the Carbon-14 environment and making a clear distinction between the levels of Carbon-14 being measured and the age determined by calculation from the measured levels of Carbon-14 in the rings. We also noted that these calibration curves have been extended by other later work.
In the case of the Lake Suigetsu Lake Varves they present a calibration curve as well, and we can use this to represent the Carbon-14 environment in the same way we did for the tree-rings - as an indicator of what the levels of Carbon-14 were when the organic samples were alive and growing. From "Atmospheric Radiocarbon Calibration to 45,000 yr B.P.: Late Glacial Fluctuations and Cosmogenic Isotope Production"(4) (If the link is not accessible try "Lake Varves"(2)):

Fig. 1. (A) Radiocarbon calibration up to 45,000 yr B.P. reconstructed from annually laminated sediments of Lake Suigetsu, Japan. The small circles with 1s error represent the 14C ages against varve ages. For the oldest eight points (>38,000 years, filled circles), we assumed a constant sedimentation during the Glacial period. The green symbols correspond to the tree-ring calibration (2, 15), and the large red symbols represent calibration by combined 14C and U-Th dating of corals from Papua New Guinea (squares) (8), Mururoa (circles), and Barbados (triangles) (7). The line indicates that radiocarbon age equals calibrated age.Because we estimated the varve chronology of older than ~20,000 yr B.P. (19-m depth of SG core) by counting in a single core section, the error of the varve counting increases with depth, and the accumulated error at 40,000 cal yr B.P. would be less than ~2000 years, assuming no break in the sediment (12).
The 14C/12C and 13C/12C ratios of more than 250 terrestrial macrofossils (leaves, twigs, and insect wings) in the sediments were measured by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) at the Groningen AMS facility (13), after proper sample pretreatment (14). The floating varve chronology was connected to the old part of the absolute tree-ring chronology (2, 15) by 14C wiggle matching (16), resulting in an absolute calendar age covering the time span from 8830 to 37,930 cal yr B.P. (17).

We are only concerned here with the open blue circles and their match to the green tree-ring data. Additionally we need to look at the number of cores involved with the data for a measure of their replication of data. This graph shows the previous dendrochronology calibration curve, the Lake Suigetsu data and some other data from marine corals. On this graph we have the Carbon-14 levels (represented as "Radiocarbon Age") shown for multiple cores from 8830 to ~20,000 years on the horizontal time scale, and data (I count ~50 samples) from ~20,000 to 37,930 years from one core correlated with counted varve layers, and then eight more organic samples where the horizontal age datum is assumed from sediment thickness (and which are not included in discussion here). This means that most of the 250 samples occurred in the area of most reliability - where there were multiple cores.
Again we can look at the "C-14 age" as a measurement of the amount of Carbon-14 actually remaining in the samples from what was absorbed from the atmosphere at the time that the leaves, twigs and wings were formed. Notice that the these samples, including elements of trees, will be from the same "C-14 environment" environment as the tree-rigs were.
What are those amounts? The age calculation is based on the exponential decay curve for a radioactive element with a half-life of 5730 years. From "How Carbon-14 Dating Works"(3):
t = {ln (Nf/No)/ln (1/2)} x t1/2
where t is the "C-14 age", ln is the natural logarithm, Nf/No is the percent of carbon-14 in the sample compared to the amount in living tissue, and t1/2 is the half-life (5730 years) of carbon-14.
t = {ln (Nf/No)/-0.69315} x 5730 = -8267 x ln (Nf/No)
Where No is the original level of the C-14 isotope in the sample (when it was alive and growing and absorbing atmospheric C-14), and Nf is the amount remaining. The value for No today is ~0.00000000010% of total organic carbon and Nf is smaller depending on how much time has passed.
Exponential curves look like this (with %original on the y-axis and half-lives on the x-axis):

We can calculate (Nf/No) ratios for a number of decay ages and use those with the horizontal time frames to show what the approximate ratios would have been (we could refine those by multiplying by the ratio between the data point elevations and the 1:1 correlation line if we want to get more accurate numbers):
(Nf/No) = e^(t/-8267)

|| C-14
Age || (Nf/No) || ||
|| 5,730 || 0.5000 || = 1 half-life ||
|| 8,000 || 0.3799 || ||
|| 8,500 || 0.3576 || ||
|| 8,830 || 0.3436 || ||
|| 9,000 || 0.3366 || ||
|| 9,500 || 0.3169 || ||
|| 10,000 || 0.2983 || ||
|| 10,500 || 0.2808 || ||
|| 11,000 || 0.2643 || ||
|| 11,460 || 0.2500 || = 2 half-lives ||
|| 11,500 || 0.2488 || ||
|| 12,000 || 0.2342 || ||
|| 12,326 || 0.2251 || ||
|| 12,500 || 0.2204 || ||
|| 13,000 || 0.2075 || ||
|| 13,500 || 0.1953 || ||
|| 14,000 || 0.1839 || ||
|| 14,500 || 0.1731 || ||
|| 15,000 || 0.1629 || ||
|| 15,500 || 0.1534 || ||
|| 16,000 || 0.1444 || ||
|| 16,500 || 0.1359 || ||
|| 17,000 || 0.1279 || ||
|| 17,190 || 0.1250 || = 3 half-lives ||

These ratios apply to both the tree-ring data and the Lake Suigetsu varve data. This means that to match the levels of C-14 between the two in order to see how they correlate with each other we are matching curves for slopes and general curvature, with the tree-ring data from 0 yr BP to 12,410 yr BP and the varve data from 8,830 yr BP to 37,930 yr BP and an overlap from 8,830 yr BP to 12,410 yr BP, or 3,580 years.
Possible sources of error involve C-14 from other than atmospheric sources (use of already aged carbon would mean that there was less C-14 in the original sample, and C-14 made by radioactive interaction in the ground would mean there was more C-14 in the measured sample). There were no radioactive elements in the sediments to artificially raise the measured sample amounts, and in both the tree-ring data and the varve fossil data the organic samples involve atmospheric C-14.
Loss of carbon from the samples by leaching in the lake or other similar processes would not preferentially leach one isotope in favor of the other as they are a purely chemical reaction. This would reduce the amount of both C-14 and C-12 in the samples in proportion to the numbers of atoms of each in the sample, and thus not affect the ratio of C-14 to C-12.

Conclusions

With the continual loss of C-14 with time due to radioactive decay, there is only one period where both the tree-rings and the lake varve fossils will have similar levels of remaining C-14 if they were living, growing and absorbing C-14 from the atmosphere at the same time.
Samples that get carbon-14 only from the same source while living (and that have not been contaminated by other carbon-14 since then) cannot be the same age and NOT have the same carbon-14 content.
Any mechanism that would not have C-14 decay in the distant past would not match the decay curve shape and this would show up on the calibration curve as a sharply rising line.
Any mechanism that would produce lower C-14 levels in the distant past would not match the decay curve at the point of overlap - it would be too low.
Anyone wanting to invalidate this link between tree-ring age and lake varve age will need to provide a mechanism to produce higher C-14 levels at some point in the distant past for the varves, which then decay down to the tree-ring levels over longer periods of time -- and this would mean that the lake varves are even older than listed.
Because actual amount of C-14 in the lake varves and the tree-ring samples comes from the same source - the atmosphere at the time that each sample was living, growing and absorbing C-14 from the atmosphere - matching the actual C-14 levels between them will provide an accurate estimate of age for the start of the varve floating chronology - objects that are the same age cannot have different C-14 levels because they grew in the same "C-14 environment".
Anyone wanting to invalidate this link will need to provide a mechanism to produce false amounts of C-14 in one system that doesn't happen in the other. This has not been observed.
Anyone wanting to invalidate the lake varves as being annual varves will need to provide a mechanism that produces a continual change in the decay of C-14 so that the curve can be compressed in the horizontal scale and match the curvature of the 5730 half-life curve. This has not been observed.
The logical conclusion is that this Carbon-14 data (the actual amount of C-14, not the calculated age) confirms the lake varve chronological age.

Minimum age of the earth > 35,930 years based on this data.

Enjoy.
References

Anonymous "Exponential Decay" Wikipedia. updated 8 Jan 2007. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_decay
Anonymous "Lake Varves" Genesis Research. updated 28 Oct 1998. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/varves.html
Brain, Marshall, "How Carbon-14 Dating Works" HowStuffWorks.com. undated. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://science.howstuffworks.com/carbon-14.htm/printable
Kitagawa, H., et al., "Atmospheric Radiocarbon Calibration to 45,000 yr B.P.: Late Glacial Fluctuations and Cosmogenic Isotope Production" Science 279, 1187 (1998); DOI: 10.1126/science.279.5354.1187 accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/279/5354/1187

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Annual Layers of Ice

Tree-rings and lake varves are not the only system that build annual layers that can be measured and counted. Snow and ice also follow annual patterns in their formation and deposition that allow a number of ways to determine the annual layers.
To introduce the basic methods we will start with a fairly simple but dramatic set of annual ice layers:

The Quelccaya Ice Core

This information comes from an on-line slide show, "Paleo Slide Set: Low Latitude Ice Cores: High Resolution Records of Climatic Change and Variability in the Tropics and Subtropics"(3):

(Slide 1) - The Peruvian altiplano is a high plateau ranging in altitude from 3500 to over 4000 meters above sea level. Though the altiplano is a cold, harsh environment, large herds of hardy llamas such as these hint at the richness of South America's high grasslands. The Quelccaya ice cap rises in the background, 55 km2 of ice that provides important clues on climatic change and variability in the South American tropics. The ice sheet's summit elevation is 5670 m and its maximum summit thickness is 164 m.

(Slide 3) - The Quelccaya cap terminates abruptly and spectacularly in a 55 m ice cliff. The annual accumulation layers clearly visible in the photograph are an average of .75 m thick. While snow can fall during any season on the altiplano, most of it (80-90%) arrives between the months of November and April. The distinct seasonality of precipitation at Quelccaya results in the deposition of the dry season dust bands seen in the ice cliff. These layers are extremely useful to the paleoclimatologist because they allow ice core records to be dated very accurately using visual stratigraphyy, which is simply the visual identification of annual dust layers in ice records (in most ice cores, annual layers become indistinct at depth, forcing paleoclimatologists to rely on less-accurate ice-flow models to establish chronologies; at Quelccaya, on the other hand, annual layers are visible throughout the core).
(Slide 6) - An array of forty-eight solar panels provided enough electricity to recover two ice cores to bedrock, one 154.8 m long covering the last 1350 years, and the other 163.6 m long and 1500 years old.
(Slide 11) - Two of the analyses performed on the cores are presented here, accumulation and the oxygen isotope ratio (known as δ18O). Accumulation is a measure of annual layer thickness normalized to account for the compression of ice layers at depth and corrected for ice flow dynamics. The oxygen isotope ratio (a measure of the ratio of heavy oxygen (18O) to light oxygen (16O)) is a proxy measure for paleotemperature, though it also reflects changes in snow surface processes and water-vapor history.
One of the most salient features in the last millennium of climate history is the Little Ice Age, a loosely-defined period of cold temperatures and increased climatic variability that has been documented in many parts of the globe.* As this figure shows, the Little Ice Age is identified in the Quelccaya climate record as a period of 'colder' (more negative) δ18O roughly bracketed between 1550 A.D. and 1900 A.D.

Note that they are talking about correlating layers with climate information provided by δ18O. We'll also come across this in other measurement systems. This is the proportion of a "heavy" isotope of oxygen in the atmosphere (16O is "normal" weight oxygen) - see "Oxygen-16"(1) and "Oxygen-18"(2) for information on these isotopes of oxygen.
While this series of layers only date back to ~500AD they are important for a couple of reasons: they show visible layers, and they allow calibration of the oxygen isotope ratio (δ18O) as a measure of layers and of climate. These layers also show a period of sever weather that is known from history (the Little Ice Age) and the effects of a volcanic eruption nearby that occurred in 1600 AD. These results can then be applied to other ice cores.

The Dunde Ice Core

Continuing from the same slide show: "Paleo Slide Set: Low Latitude Ice Cores: High Resolution Records of Climatic Change and Variability in the Tropics and Subtropics"(3):

(Slide 14) - The Dunde Ice Cap (pronounced Dun-duh) is extremely remote, perched on the mountain range separating China's highest desert, the Qaidam Basin, from its more famous counterpart, the Gobi. For over 40,000 years, snow has been piling up on this 60 km2 ice cap deep in China's sparsely inhabited interior. A team of paleoclimatologists from the United States and China came here in 1987 to uncover the climatic secrets locked in Dunde's icy depths.(Slide 17) - Since Quelccaya is at the edge of the moist Amazon Basin while Dunde is wedged between two deserts, it is not surprising that accumulation rates are much higher at Quelccaya. Indeed, the annual average accumulation at Quelccaya in meters of water equivalent is 1.15 m compared to just .43 m at Dunde. Like Quelccaya, around 80% of Dunde's precipitation falls during the wet season. The dry season is clearly identified in the core record by the layers of dust from surrounding deserts visible in this ice segment.
Since snow accumulates more slowly at Dunde, ice from its ~140 m cores is significantly older than that from Quelccaya. While Quelccaya provides high-resolution clues to the last 1500 years of climate, Dunde stretches back over 40,000 years, well into the last ice age.

The same kind of alternating layers of dust and snow as at Quelccaya, the same kind of climate information from the oxygen isotope ratio (δ18O), data that matches known climate markers, including the last ice age, data that also showed up in Lake Suigetsu climate information. Research on the Dunde Ice Cores is continuing, including analysis of the dust and pollen as markers not just of climate but of environment. From"A pollen record of Holocene climatic changes from the Dunde ice cap, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau"(5):

High pollen concentrations between 10 000 and 4800 yr B.P. suggest that the summer monsoon probably extended beyond its present limit to reach Dunde and westernmost Tibet in response to orbital forcing. The summer monsoon retreated time-transgressively across the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau during the middle Holocene. Relatively humid periods occurred at 2700-2200, 1500-800, and 600-80 yr B.P., probably as a result of neoglacial cooling. Prominent pollen changes during the Medieval Warm Period (790-620 yr B.P.) and the Little Ice Age (330-80 yr B.P.) suggest that the vegetation in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau region is sensitive to abrupt, century-scale climatic changes, such as those anticipated in scenarios of greenhouse warming.

And from "Wisconsin/Würm glacial stage ice in the subtropical dunde ice cap, China"(6):

The insoluble microparticle concentrations and size distributions and oxygen isotope abundances (δ180) in two 1-meter ice cores from the margin of the Dunde ice cap (38° 06 'N; 96° 24 'E; 5325 masl) drilled in 1986 and three ice cores drilled to bedrock at the summit of the ice cap in 1987 suggest the presence of Wisconsin/Würm Glacial Stage (LWGS) ice in the subtropics.Additionally, the morphological properties of the particles in the LWGS ice are identical to those of the thick, extensive loess deposits of central china which accumulated during the cold, dry glacial stages of the Pleistocene. When the climatic and environmental records are fully extracted from the three deep cores they will provide a very detailed record of variations in particulates (soluble and insoluble), stable isotopes, net balance, pollen and perhaps atmospheric gases of CO2 and methane through the Holocene into the last glacial in the subtropics on the climatically important Tibetan Plateau.

From "Wisconsin glaciation"(4):

The Wisconsin (in North America), Devensian (in the British Isles), Midlandian (in Ireland), Würm (in the Alps), and Weichsel (in northern central Europe) glaciations are the most recent glaciations of the Pleistocene epoch, which ended around 10,000 BCE. The general glacial advance began about 70,000 BCE, and reached its maximum extent about 18,000 BCE.The name Devensian glaciation is used by British geologists and archaeologists and refers to what is often popularly meant by the latest Ice Age.
It was the final glacial phase of the Pleistocene and its deposits have been found overlying material from the preceding Ipswichian interglacial and lying beneath those from the following Flandrian stage of the Holocene.
The latter part of the Devensian includes Pollen zones I-IV, the Allerød and Bølling Oscillations and the Older and Younger Dryas climatic stages.

Thus we see evidence of the end of the last glaciation period in the dust and pollen in the layers of ice from the Dunde Ice Core in addition to the evidence of the δ18O ratios. Data that also makes the concept of a world wide flood (WWF) within this period difficult, as the dust every year is of the same type and the thickness of ice and dust layers are the same from year to year indicating that the ice cap has not changed locations nor floated on water at any time in its history.

Minimum age of the earth > 40,000 years based on this data.

And this is but the tip of the iceberg.
Enjoy.
References

Anonymous "Oxygen-16" Wikipedia. updated 7 Dec 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen-16
Anonymous "Oxygen-18" Wikipedia. updated 7 Dec 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen-18
Anonymous "Paleo Slide Set: Low Latitude Ice Cores: High Resolution Records of Climatic Change and Variability in the Tropics and Subtropics" NOAA Paleoclimatology. Updated 20 Jul 2004. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/slides/slideset/index20.htm
Anonymous "Wisconsin glaciation" Wikipedia. updated 15 Jan 2007. accessed 19 Jan 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_glaciation
Kam-biu Liu, et al, "A pollen record of Holocene climatic changes from the Dunde ice cap, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau" Geology; February 1998; v. 26; no. 2; p. 135-138 accessed 19 Jan 2007 from http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/2/135
Thompson, Lonnie G., "Wisconsin/Würm glacial stage ice in the subtropical dunde ice cap, China" GeoJournal Vol 17, No 4 Dec 1988 DOI 10.1007/BF00209440 P517-523, SpringerLink Date 20 Oct 2004 accessed 19 Jan 2007 from http://www.springerlink.com/content/wu102k4348572506/

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Ice Cores in Greenland

Several ice cores have also been taken from ice near the North Pole. From "The Greenland ice core records"(4):

Combined with highly advanced measuring techniques (Fuhrer et al. 1993; Hammer et al. 1985; Röthlisberger et al. 2000) the resolution of the Greenland ice-core records can frequently be finer than a year, and potentially this degree of temporal resolution extends back to before 100 thousand years before present. The records are capable therefore of providing information on longterm (millennial, supra-millennial) and short-term (sub-millennial to annual or seasonal) cycles or trends in the Earth’s past environmental history, as well as on important singular events, such as major volcanic eruptions or particularly pronounced climatic shifts. Furthermore, the age and durations of past environmental events can be estimated by counting of the annual ice increments, by analysing selected constituents combined with visual core stratigraphy (Alley et al. 1993; Hammer et al. in press,1999?; Hammer et al. 1978; Meese et al. 1997). ... In many cases the potential resolution of the records is reduced by diffusional processes in firn and ice, which significantly limits the usefulness of the data. As a compensation, however, such influences can leave an imprint which is detectable in the data, for the effects of diffusion are constrained by ice surface temperature and snow/ice accumulation rate, so that these parameters can be modelled by the application of appropriate calibration techniques (Johnsen et al. 2000).The 8.2 k cold event was originally dated in the Dye-3 core (Hammer et al. 1986) using the strong δ18O annual cycle. The Dye-3 chronology was subsequently transferred to the GRIP ice core by correlating volcanic events. The absolute age of the Younger Dryas/Preboreal transition in the GRIP core (11.500 BP) was obtained by counting annual cycles in high resolution Ca and ammonium ion records (Fuhrer et al. 1993) starting at the 8.2k cold event. Dating of the GRIP core further back in time was done by using two independent methods, i) by a relatively simple ice flow model that uses two tie points to constrain two model parameters combined with a snow accumulation model based on the measured isotopic profile (Johnsen et al. 1995; Johnsen and Dansgaard 1992) and ii) by counting annual cycles in a continuous dust record back to 60 ka (Hammer et al. in press,1999?).
The adopted model chronology for the glacial parts of the GRIP core (ss09) uses the measured isotope values for the accumulation model. A new improved chronology (ss09sea) has been developed that more correctly uses sea water corrected isotope values [Waelbroeck, submitted #3629] for the accumulation model.
The GISP2 core has been absolutely dated 37.9 ka back in time mainly by counting visible annual layers in the core (Alley et al. 1993; Alley et al. 1997; Meese et al. 1994; Meese et al. 1997). The core was dated further back to 100 ka by tuning the GISP2 δ18Oatm profile (Bender et al. 1994) with the Vostok δ18Oatm profile (Sowers et al. 1993) that was made consistent with the orbitally tuned SPECMAP chronology (Martinson et al. 1987).

Note the Younger Dryas age correlates with the age from dendrochronology above:11,590 - 11,500 = 90 years difference between tree-ring and ice core data, an error of 0.8%. We'll come to the Vostok Ice Cores next, but note that they are talking about correlating the two systems based on climate information provided by δ18O, a climate marker we have seen already in the other ice cores. We'll also come across this in other measurement systems. As noted previously, this is the proportion of a "heavy" isotope of oxygen in the atmosphere (16O is "normal" weight oxygen) - see "Oxygen-16"(1) and "Oxygen-18"(2) for information on these isotopes of oxygen.
Also note visual counting of annual layers to 37,900 yr BP - 37,957 years ago in 2007 - the same time scale as the Lake Suigetsu data that we've discussed above:

Minimum age of the earth = 37,957 years based on visual data alone.

And they also counting annual cycles of dust layers - similar to the Quelccaya and Dunde Ice Cores - back to 60,000 yr BP:

Minimum age of the earth = 60,000 years based on dust layer data alone.

But they also counted layers down to 100,000 yr BP without coming to an end of that ice core or the data. While the cores extend below the 100 kyr depth, they are a little jumbled below that level and thus the absolute dating of the age of the lower ice is not as reliable - from "The GISP2 ice core record--paleoclimate highlights"(5):

(Page 2) - The similarity (discussed below) of the GISP2 and GRIP records is compelling evidence that the stratigraphy of the ice is reliable and unaffected by extensive folding, intrusion, or hiatuses from the surface to 2790 m (~110,000 years ago). This agreement (between the two cores separated by 30 km, ~10 ice thicknesses) provides strong support of climatic origin for even the minor features of the records and implies that investigations of subtle environmental signals (e.g., rapid climate change events with 1-2 year onset and termination) can be rigorously pursued.(Page 5) - The Little Ice Age (LIA) and Medieval Warm Period (MWP) environments (the most recent analogs for conditions cooler and warmer, respectively, than the present century) can be characterized by interpreting the multi-parameter GISP2 series (Figure 1). The LIA appears to span the period ~AD1350 or 1450 to ~AD1900, depending upon measurement type (since each may respond to climate change differently), and the MWP includes the milder few centuries prior to the LIA.
(Page 6) The Younger Dryas (YD) was the most significant rapid climate change event that occurred during the last deglaciation of the North Atlantic region. Previous ice core studies have focused on the abrupt termination of this event [Dansgaard et al., 1989] because this transition marks the end of the last major climate reorganization during the deglaciation. Most recently the YD has been redated--using precision, subannually resolved, multivariate measurements from the GISP2 core--as an event of 1300+/-70 years duration that terminated abruptly, as evidenced by an ~7C rise in temperature and a twofold increase in accumulation rate, at ~11.64 kyr BP [Alley et al., 1993] (Figure 2). The transition into the Preboreal (PB), the PB/YD transition, and the YD/Holocene transition were all remarkably fast, each occurring over a period of a decade or so [Alley et al., 1993]. Fluctuations in the electrical conductivity of GISP2 ice on the scale of <5-20 years have been used to reveal rapid changes in the dust content of the atmosphere during the same periods and throughout the last glacial [Taylor et al., 1993b]. These rapid changes appear to reflect a type of "flickering" between preferred states of the atmosphere [Taylor et al., 1993b], which provides a new view of climate change. Holocene climates are by comparison stable and warm.
(Page 8) - The climatic significance of the deeper part of the GISP2 ice core, below 2790 m depth and 110 kyr age, is a matter of considerable investigation and controversy. The isotopic temperature records and electrical conductivity records of GISP2 and GRIP, so similar for ice <110 kyr in age, are very different in the lower part [Grootes et al., 1993; Taylor et al., 1993a]. Ice in GISP2 below 2790 m depth is folded and tilted, and shows evidence of unconformities [Gow et al., 1993]. The δ18O of O2 in GISP2 above 2790 m matches almost perfectly with the Vostok record [Sowers et al., 1993]; below that depth, it is far noisier and cannot be aligned with the smoothed Vostok signal [Bender et al., 1994]. These features all suggest that ice age changes discontinuously in the deepest part of GISP2 as a result of folding, extensive boudinage (squeezing out of layers of ice), and/or intrusion. Bender et al. [1994] concluded that the bottom ~200 m of ice at GISP2 may be correctly ordered but discontinuous and extremely condensed, perhaps extending back to several hundred kyr BP. Alternatively, the core may contain a disordered sequence of much younger ice, perhaps largely from about 115-130 kyr BP.

The Little Ice age and the Younger Dryas periods show up in this data and correlate with other data from other annual counting systems and the δ18O correlates with other data: 11,640 - 11,590 = 50 years difference between tree-ring and ice core data, an error of 0.4%. The ice below the 2790 meter level means that the earth is older than 110,000 years, maybe only as little as another 20,000 years, but again we can be minimalist and rely only on the data that is of known annual processes:

Minimum age of the earth = 110,000 years based on this data.

From "The GISP2 Ice Core: Ultimate Proof that Noah’s Flood Was Not Global"(6):

There are a dozen or so important Greenland ice cores, but the latest and greatest are GRIP (Greenland Ice Project) and GISP2 (Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2), which were extracted at the Summit where the ice rarely melts. GRIP was dated by counting back annual layers from the surface to c. 14,500 BP (before the present, dated 1950) using electrical conductivity method (ECM, see below) and the rest of the ice core was dated on the basis of flow modeling and chemical techniques. GISP2 was dated by visually counting annual hoar frost layers back to c. 12,000 BP and from 12,000 to 110,000 BP by visually counting annual dust layers.Back to 12,000 BP, this counting was validated by a very close agreement of three independent methods of counting the annual layers. From 12,000 BP back to 40,000 BP, the counting was validated by a very close agreement of two independent methods of counting the annual layers, and from 40,000 BP back to 110,000 BP by a close agreement of two independent methods. Also, despite the different methods used for dating GRIP and GISP2, there is "excellent agreement" between them (and with deep sea cores as well); so the cores corroborate each other.
The first way we know the top 12,000 layers are annual is because the snow that falls in the summer in Greenland is affected by the sun (which only shines in the summer) in such a way that its crystals become much more coarse grained than winter snow.
Another way to distinguish the annual layers is to note the dust concentrations. In the late winter/early spring when the wind is stronger than usual, significantly more dust (insoluble matter of various kinds) is carried in the air—even from the Southern hemisphere and Asia—and is deposited in the layers of snow in Greenland.
The third way annual layers can be distinguished is via the electrical conductivity of the layers.16 In the spring and summer when the sun is shining, nitric acid is produced in the stratosphere and enters the snow, but this does not happen in the winter.17 The acid in the spring/summer layer enables an electrical current to easily flow through that layer, but the relative lack of acid in the winter layer allows much less electricity to flow through that layer. So, as two electrodes mechanically run down the ice core the readout (mm by mm) of the resultant flows of electricity shows the successive years as a series of peaks (summer) and valleys (winter).
It is to a large extent the correlation and corroborating testimony of these three main methods of counting the annual layers in the GISP2 core which guarantees the validity of the ice core dating.22 The three methods have excellent correlation with each other down to 2500 m, that is, back to c. 57,000 BP.23 In the upper 2300 m (down to c. 40,000 BP) the correspondence of the three methods has been called "remarkable."24
In the lower half of GISP2 (1,678 meters to the bottom) where the dust is more concentrated, Ram and Koenig could scatter the laser light directly off the ice without having to melt it—and could do this mechanically one mm at a time—and feed the data directly into a computer. The readout showed the seasonal variations as a series of peaks and valleys. In this way, they were able to date the ice down to 2,849 meters at around 127,600 BP.
At c. 2,464 meters down, their dating of the volcanic ash found there (57,300 ± 1700 BP) agrees very closely with the Z2 layer of volcanic ash found in Atlantic sea cores which is dated 57,500 ± 1300 BP. At 2,808 meters down, their dating was c. 115,000 BP which was in essential agreement with the independent gas-age dating of c. 111,000 BP for that level.15 Although the ice below 2,850 meters may be disturbed, Ram and Koenig continued measuring via LLS both with 1mm and some 0.5 mm steps; and, this yielded an estimated age for the ice at the silty ice boundary of "at least 250,000 BP."

The annual measurement of layers by measuring dust levels correlates with volcanic eruptions and the other dating methods for the layers down to the 111,000 yr BP level, correlates with volcanic data from other evidence at ~57,500 yr BP and continues on to count annual layers down to 250,000 yr BP.

Minimum age of the earth > 250,000 years based on this data.

This data that also makes the concept of a world wide flood (WWF) within this period difficult, as the layers have the same characteristics from year to year indicating that the ice cap has not changed locations nor floated on water at any time in its history.
There is also a discussion of the age of icecaps at TalkOrigins.com - see "Ice Core Dating"(3).
Enjoy.
References

Anonymous "Oxygen-16" Wikipedia. updated 7 Dec 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen-16
Anonymous "Oxygen-18" Wikipedia. updated 7 Dec 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen-18
Brinkman, Matt "Ice Core Dating" Talk.Origins Archive. Updated 3 Jan 1995. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icecores.html
Johnsen, Sigfús J. "The Greenland ice core records" ESF–HOLIVAR workshop, Lammi Finland, April 17-20th 2002 Disscussion Paper. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.gsf.fi/esf_holivar/johnsen.pdf>
Mayewski, Paul A., Bender, Michael "The GISP2 ice core record--paleoclimate highlights" U.S. National Report to IUGG, 1991-1994 Rev. Geophys. Vol. 33 Suppl., © 1995 American Geophysical Union. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/mayews01/mayews01.html
Seely, Paul H. "The GISP2 Ice Core: Ultimate Proof that Noah’s Flood Was Not Global" Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Volume 55, Number 4, Dec 2003. accessed 10 Jan 2007 http://www.asa3.org/aSA/PSCF/2003/PSCF12-03Seely.pdf

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Ice Cores in Antarctica

There have also been ice cores taken from various places in Antarctica.

Vostok Ice Core

The layers of the Vostok Ice Cores have been measured independently by several scientists using a variety of methods. There is some uncertainty involved on some layers resulting in minor discrepancies in the data. From "Ice Core Gateway: Vostok Ice Core"(1):

In January 1998, the collaborative ice-drilling project between Russia, the United States, and France at the Russian Vostok station in East Antarctica yielded the deepest ice core ever recovered, reaching a depth of 3,623 m (Petit et al. 1997, 1999). Preliminary data indicate the Vostok ice-core record extends through four climate cycles, with ice slightly older than 400 kyr (Petit et al. 1997, 1999).

They provide data to download for access from "Ice Core Gateway: Vostok Ice Core Timescales"(2) and this data can be summarized as follows:

6 measurements at 1934 m
- 136,758 years (Sowers) last datum
- 141,804 years (Lorius)
- 137,725 years (Jouzel-1)
- 135,018 years (Jouzel-2)
- 140,243 years (Waelbroeck)
- 135,507 years (Petit)
Average = 137,842 years +/- 3,393 (2.5%)5 measurements at 2082 m
- 164,433 years (Lorius) last datum
- 155,785 years (Jouzel-1)
- 150,957 years (Jouzel-2)
- 152,239 years (Waelbroeck)
- 151,721 years (Petit)
Average = 155,027 years +/- 6,738 (4.3%)4 measurements at 2757 m
- 261,787 years (Jouzel-1) last datum
- 242,235 years (Jouzel-2) last datum
- 243,004 years (Waelbroeck) last datum
- 237,975 years (Petit)
Average = 246,250 years +/- 11,906 (4.8%)1 measurement at 3310 m
- 422,766 years (Petit) last datum
Average = 422,776 years

Depending on where you want to cut it, there is high correlation with an age of 137,842 years at the 1934 meter depth, and good correlation with both the 155,027 year age at 2082 meter depth and the 246,250 year age at the 2757 meter depth. Note that the ice core extends beyond these depths and the data ends because of limitations in the measurements (indicating an older overall age for the ice cap). Notice too, that the Petit data (that measures the oldest layers) is consistently under the averages at these previous depths -- this would give a high degree of confidence that the minimum age of the ice cap is 422,776 years.

Minimum age of the earth = 422,776 years based on this data.

EPICA Ice Core

From "Do I Hear a Million?"(7):

There is a bidding war going on in Antarctica, and it has just heated up in a big way. The bidding started with 80,000 for the Byrd Ice Core. Vostok raised the bid to 160,000 and then 420,000. Now a new ice core, the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) Dome C core, has raised the bid to a startling 740,000. No, we’re not talking money here, but something very precious, to paleoclimatologists at least, and that is years. At a site in east Antarctica, a team of European and Russian researchers from about a dozen countries have recovered an ice core that extends back in time 740,000 years, nearly twice as long as our previously longest ice core record. They report their findings in this week’s Nature (1).

From "Stable Carbon Cycle–Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene" (5):

A record of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations measured on the EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) Dome Concordia ice core extends the Vostok CO2 record back to 650,000 years before the present (yr B.P.). Before 430,000 yr B.P., partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 lies within the range of 260 and 180 parts per million by volume. This range is almost 30% smaller than that of the last four glacial cycles; however, the apparent sensitivity between deuterium and CO2 remains stable throughout the six glacial cycles, suggesting that the relationship between CO2 and Antarctic climate remained rather constant over this interval.The European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) recovered two deep ice cores from East Antarctica. One of the cores, located at Dome Concordia (Dome C) (75°-06'S, 123°-21'E, altitude of 3233 m above sea level, and mean annual accumulation rate of 25.0 kg mj2 yearj1), is the only ice core covering at least eight glacial cycles (1), four cycles longer than previously available from ice cores. This has allowed us to reconstruct the record of the concentration of atmospheric CO2 much further back in time than was possible before.
A detailed comparison with Vostok data (28) during MIS 11, an interglacial period that occurred some 400,000 years ago and lasted for about 30,000 years, is shown in Fig. 2 in order to examine the consistency of CO2 values measured in this deep ice. Both records agree within the error limits and show interglacial CO2 concentrations in MIS 11 similar to those found in the Holocene. Accordingly, we are confident that the Dome C data in the pre-Vostok era reflect true atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

From "Atmospheric Methane and Nitrous Oxide of the Late Pleistocene from Antarctic Ice Cores" (6):

The European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) Dome Concordia (Dome C) ice core (75°-06'S, 123°-21'E, 3233 m above sea level) provides an ice core archive much longer, spanning eight climatic cycles over the past 740 thousand years (ky) (3). It demonstrates that the oldest four interglacials were cooler but lasted longer than the younger interglacials. Such findings raise the question whether the greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O behaved differently before MIS 11. Here, we present CH4 and N2O records derived from the EPICA Dome C ice cores reaching back to 650 kyr B.P.

The European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica Dome C ice core enables us to extend existing records of atmospheric methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) back to 650,000 years before the present. A combined record of CH4 measured along the Dome C and the Vostok ice cores demonstrates, within the resolution of our measurements, that preindustrial concentrations over Antarctica have not exceeded 773 ± 15 ppbv (parts per billion by volume) during the past 650,000 years. Before 420,000 years ago, when interglacials were cooler, maximum CH4 concentrations were only about 600 ppbv, similar to lower Holocene values. In contrast, the N2O record shows maximum concentrations of 278 ± 7 ppbv, slightly higher than early Holocene values.

The Ice Core is measured to 740,000 years and they are not at the bottom. They have also now measured climate by two different methods, both agreeing with the Vostok core data where they overlap. The data also confirms the dates for eight climatic cycles, of glacial and interglacial periods.

Minimum age of the earth > 740,000 years based on this data.

But they are not done yet. From "In the Cornucopia of the European Project of Ice Coring in Antarctica: the oldest Antarctic ice core"(3)

The drilling has been very successful and has been followed by a wide community of ice and climate researchers. The 70 meters of ice drilled this season completes a long venture started in 1996. The core has already led to the release in the scientific journal ’Nature’ last June of a 740,000-year record of Antarctic climate. The new piece of core will extend the record to an age estimated to be more than 900.000 years old. This is the oldest ice that has been recovered from deep ice cores. The basal ice has ice crystals, some bigger than 40 centimetres and we have observed many inclusions of brown/reddish material mainly between the big ice crystals.

Minimum age of the earth > 900,000 years based on this data.

There is also a discussion of the age of icecaps at TalkOrigins.com - see "Ice Core Dating"(4).
Enjoy.
References

Anonymous "Ice Core Gateway: Vostok Ice Core" National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). updated 27 Dec, 2005. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok.html
Anonymous "Ice Core Gateway: Vostok Ice Core Timescales" National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). updated 27 Dec, 2005. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok.html
Anonymous "In the Cornucopia of the European Project of Ice Coring in Antarctica: the oldest Antarctic ice core" Alfred-Wegener-Institute (AWI) updated 13 Feb 2006 accessed 19 Jan 2007 from http://www.awi-bremerhaven.de/AWI/Presse/PM/pm05-1.hj/050113EPICA-e.html
Brinkman, Matt "Ice Core Dating" Talk.Origins Archive. updated 3 Jan 1995. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icecores.html
Siegenthaler, Urs et al. "Stable Carbon Cycle–Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene" Science 310, 1313 (2005); DOI: 10.1126/science.1120130. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/310/5752/1313.pdf
Spahni, Renato et al. "Atmospheric Methane and Nitrous Oxide of the Late Pleistocene from Antarctic Ice Cores" Science 310, 1317 (2005); DOI: 10.1126/science.1120132. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/310/5752/1317.pdf
White, James "Do I Hear a Million?" SCIENCE VOL 304 11 JUNE 2004 accessed 19 Jan 2007 from http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/white04sci.pdf

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The Devil's Hole

Now we have reached nearly a million years for the age of the earth by methods that count annual layers, each step along the way validating the method and age that was arrived at with the previous step. We are way past any age that can possibly be called a "young" earth concept, but we have not yet reached beyond the age of hominid fossils (although we are beyond the fossil record forHomo sapiens), and we still have a ways to go to get to billions of years.
We may have reached the limits of annual counting systems to measure the age of the earth, but there are other ways to measure age. We could talk about dating from the radioactive decay carbon-14, using the information from IntCal04, dendrochonology and the Lake Suigetsu varves, however the carbon-14 dating is complicated by the carbon-14 content being variable in the atmosphere, so the initial amount in samples is variable. The purpose of calibration curves is to reduce the error due to the variations in initial carbon-14 content of the atmosphere.
To discuss radioactive decay and dating systems that are based on this concept we need a system not subject to this kind of variation. We also need one that can be correlated over substantial time to validate the system. From" Devil's Hole" (2):

Devils Hole is a tectonically-formed subaqueous cavern in south-central Nevada. Vein calcite, which coats the walls of this cavern, has provided an extremely well-dated 500,000-year record of variations in temperature as well as other paleoclimatic parameters.

We have correlations between age, climate and temperatures, so how is this data evaluated? From "Data for Devil's Hole Core DH-11"(3):

Devils Hole is a tectonically formed cave developed in the discharge zone of a regional aquifer in south-central Nevada. (See Riggs, et al., 1994.) The walls of this subaqueous cavern are coated with dense vein calcite which provides an ideal material for precise uranium-series dating via thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS). Devils Hole Core DH-11 is a 36-cm-long core of vein calcite from which we obtained an approximately 500,000-year-long continuous record of paleotemperature and other climatic proxies. Data from this core were recently used by Winograd and others (1997) to discuss the length and stability of the last four interglaciations.Carbon and oxygen stable isotopic ratios were measured on 285 samples cut at regular intervals inward from the free face of the core (as reported in Winograd et al. ,1992, and in Coplen et al., 1994). Table 1 lists only 284 samples because a sample taken at 114.28 mm was eliminated when post-1994 reanalysis of its δ18O value indicated an error in the earlier determination. Carbon isotopic ratios are reported in per mill (footnote #1) relative to VPDB, defined by assigning a δ13C of +1.95 per mill to the reference material NBS 19 calcite. Oxygen isotopic ratios are reported relative to VSMOW reference water on a scale normalized such that SLAP reference water is -55.5 per mill relative to VSMOW reference water. The oxygen isotopic fractionation factors employed in this determination are those listed in Coplen and others (1983). The δ18O value of the isotopic reference material NBS 19 on this scale is +28.65 per mill. The ± 1 sd (standard deviation) error for the δ18O and δ13C analyses is ±0.07 and 0.05 per mill, respectively.

They measured the age with a radiometric decay system and also measured δ18O and δ13C as measures of climate. There is a table with the 284 samples by age with δ18O and δ13C values. For a correlation of that data to the age and climate information we have already see we turn to "A Devil's Hole Primer"(8):

The Devils Hole δ18O record is an indicator of paleotemperature and corresponds in timing and magnitude to paleo-SST (sea surface temperature) recorded in Pacific Ocean sediments off the California and Oregon coasts. The record is also highly correlated with major variations in temperature in the Vostok ice core, from the East Antarctic plateau. The δ13C record is thought to reflect changes in global variations in the ratio of stable carbon isotopes of atmospheric CO2 and/or changes in the density of vegetation in the groundwater recharge areas tributary to Devils Hole. (See Winograd et al., 1996; Herbert et al., 2001; Winograd, 2002; Winograd, et al., 1997; Landwehr and Winograd, 2001; Landwehr, 2002; and Coplen, et al., 1994.)As eminent a geochemist as W. Broecker has stated that "...the Devils Hole chronology is the best we have..." Since 1992, all core material has been uranium-series dated using thermal ionization mass spectrometric (TIMS) methodology. In 1997, the Devils Hole Thorium-230 dates were independently confirmed by non-USGS investigators using Protactinium-231. (See Broecker, 1992; Ludwig, et al., 1992; Winograd, et al., 1997; and Edwards, et al., 1997.)

Note - "highly correlated" with climatological data from the Vostok ice core data, which "matches almost perfectly" the climatological data from the Greenland ice core data.
So what exactly do we have here? Water dripping down a cave wall, depositing calcite and various other minerals and impurities, elements that are soluble in water, including trace levels of radioactive isotopes of uranium. Material that gets deposited as the water evaporates, forming layer after layer of similar deposits, each one trapping the material in their respective layers. The calcite forms a matrix that holds the impurities, minerals and trace elements in a position related to the time the calcite was deposited.
From "Calcite"(1):

The carbonate mineral calcite is a chemical or biochemical calcium carbonate corresponding to the formula CaCO3 and is one of the most widely distributed minerals on the Earth's surface. It is a common constituent of sedimentary rocks, limestone in particular. It is also the primary mineral in metamorphic marble. It also occurs as a vein mineral in deposits from hot springs, and also occurs in caverns as stalactites and stalagmites. Calcite is often the primary constituent of the shells of marine organisms, e.g., plankton (such as coccoliths and planktic foraminifera), the hard parts of red algae, some sponges, brachiopoda, echinoderms, most bryozoa, and parts of the shells of some bivalves, such as oysters and rudists). Calcite represents the stable form of calcium carbonate; aragonite will change to calcite at 470°C.

Radioactive elements decay into other elements, and some of these are not soluble, and thus the presence of these insoluble daughter elements is evidence of decay of the soluble parent elements. These daughter elements are still trapped in the layers of calcite that the parent elements were depositied in, so their position also relates to the age of the daughter elements in the calcite layers. We are interested in four isotopes of these matrix constrained elements, two radoactive - thorium-230 and protactinium-231 - and two not radioactive - oxygen-18 and carbon-13 - and what they can tell us about climate and age.

Thorium-230

From "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective"(9):

Two of the most frequently-used of these "uranium-series" systems are uranium-234 and thorium-230.Like carbon-14, the shorter-lived uranium-series isotopes are constantly being replenished, in this case, by decaying uranium-238 supplied to the Earth during its original creation. Following the example of carbon-14, you may guess that one way to use these isotopes for dating is to remove them from their source of replenishment. This starts the dating clock. In carbon-14 this happens when a living thing (like a tree) dies and no longer takes in carbon-14 laden CO2. For the shorter-lived uranium-series radionuclides, there needs to be a physical removal from uranium. The chemistry of uranium and thorium are such that they are in fact easily removed from each other. Uranium tends to stay dissolved in water, but thorium is insoluble in water. So a number of applications of the thorium-230 method are based on this chemical partition between uranium and thorium.
On the other hand, calcium carbonates produced biologically (such as in corals, shells, teeth, and bones) take in small amounts of uranium, but essentially no thorium (because of its much lower concentrations in the water). This allows the dating of these materials by their lack of thorium. A brand-new coral reef will have essentially no thorium-230. As it ages, some of its uranium decays to thorium-230. While the thorium-230 itself is radioactive, this can be corrected for. The equations are more complex than for the simple systems described earlier, but the uranium-234 / thorium-230 method has been used to date corals now for several decades. Comparison of uranium-234 ages with ages obtained by counting annual growth bands of corals proves that the technique is highly accurate when properly used (Edwards et al., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 90, 371, 1988). The method has also been used to date stalactites and stalagmites from caves, already mentioned in connection with long-term calibration of the radiocarbon method. In fact, tens of thousands of uranium-series dates have been performed on cave formations around the world.
As with all dating, the agreement of two or more methods is highly recommended for confirmation of a measurement.

At the Devil's Hole we are essentially dealing with one very large stalactite. The calcite was deposited after being dissolved in water, the Th-230 in the calcite could only come from the decay of the parent U-234, giving an accurate measurement of the age of the layers of calcite.
Note this mentions dating marine corals by the same method, and we saw this noted with the Lake Suigetsu data.
See also Wikipedia.com -Thorium(7). Thorium-230 has a half-life of 75,380 years.

Protactinium-231

From "Human Health Fact Sheet: Protactinium"(5):

Protactinium is a malleable, shiny, silver-gray radioactive metal that does not tarnish rapidly in air. It has a density greater than that of lead and occurs in nature in very low concentrations as a decay product of uranium. There are three naturally occurring isotopes, with protactinium-231 being the most abundant. ... The other two naturally occurring isotopes are protactinium-234 and protactinium-234m (the “m” meaning metastable), both of which have very short half-lives (6.7 hours and 1.2 minutes, respectively) and occur in extremely low concentrations.Protactinium-231 is a decay product of uranium-235 and is present at sites that processed uranium ores and associated wastes. This isotope decays by emitting an alpha particle with a half-life of 33,000 years to actinium-227, which has a half-life of 22 years and decays by emitting an alpha or beta particle.
Protactinium is widely distributed in very small amounts in the earth’s crust, and it is one of the rarest and most expensive naturally occurring elements. It is present in uranium ores at a concentration of about 1 part protactinium to 3 million parts uranium. Of the three naturally occurring isotopes, protactinium-231 is a decay product of uranium-235, and protactinium-234 and protactinium-234m are decay products of uranium-238.

The U-235 to Pa-231 decay is from a different series than the U-234 to Th-230 decay, so the two are independent of each other. Again, as the Devil's Hole calcite was deposited after being dissolved in water, the Pa-231 in the calcite could only come from the decay of the parent U-235, giving an accurate measurement of the age of the layers of calcite.
See also Wikipedia.com - Protactinium(6). Protactinium-231 has a half-life of 32,760 years.

Radioactive Decay

We also saw above that the radiation decay curve is exponential, with different results for different decay constants - the half-lives of the radioactive isotopes. From "Exponential Decay"(4):

A quantity is said to be subject to exponential decay if it decreases at a rate proportional to its value. Symbolically, this can be expressed as the following differential equation, where N is the quantity and λ is a positive number called the decay constant:N(t) = N0e-λtHere N(t) is the quantity at time t, and N0 = N(0) is the (initial) quantity, at time t=0.
If the decaying quantity is the number of discrete elements of a set, it is possible to compute the average length of time for which an element remains in the set. This is called the mean lifetime, and it can be shown that it relates to the decay rate,
T = 1/λThe mean lifetime (also called the exponential time constant) is thus seen to be a simple "scaling time"
A more intuitive characteristic of exponential decay for many people is the time required for the decaying quantity to fall to one half of its initial value. This time is called the half-life, and often denoted by the symbol t1/2. The half-life can be written in terms of the decay constant, or the mean lifetime, as:
t1/2 = ln2/λ = Tln2When this expression is inserted for T in the exponential equation above, and ln2 is absorbed into the base, this equation becomes:
N(t) = N02-t/t1/2

Using the half-lives of thorium-230 (75,380 years) and protactinium-231 (32,760 years), we can now draw the exponential curves for these isotopes (with % on the y-axis and time in k-yrs on the x axis, thorium in blue and protactinium in red):

This means we have a series of data with three different pieces of information: calcite layer age, Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 content. We also note that Thorium-230 has a half-life of 75,380 years, while Protactinium-231 has a half-life of 32,760 years - less than half the half-life of Thorium-230. This means that layer by layer the ratio of Thorium-230 to Protactinium-231 is different:

|| Age || THr=THf/THo || PAr=PAf/PAo || THr/PAr ||
|| 0 || 1.0000 || 1.0000 || 1 ||
|| 75,380 || 0.5000 || 0.2029 || 2.46 ||
|| 150,760 || 0.2500 || 0.0412 || 6.07 ||
|| 226,140 || 0.1250 || 0.0084 || 14.96 ||
|| 301,520 || 0.0625 || 0.0017 || 36.86 ||
|| 376,900 || 0.0313 || 0.0003 || 90.82 ||
|| 452,280 || 0.0156 || 0.0001 || 223.77 ||
|| 527,660 || 0.0078 || 0.00001 || 551.35 ||

So for these dates to be invalid there would have to be a mechanism that can layer by layer preferentially change the ratio of these two {elements\isotopes} within the solid calcite vein.

The Climate Correlation

Buried in the calcite layers are also the elements of oxygen and carbon, and the ratios of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 and of carbon-13 to carbon-12 are markers of climate. These ratios are like the tree-rings climate data used to match different samples and different dendrochronologies, except that we have two sets of data instead of just one, and these do not decay or change over time once they are buried in the calcite. The climate data from δ18O is validated by the δ13C values.
Based on the ages determined from the radioactive decay of thorium and protactinium the values for δ18O and δ13C values were tabulated and these climate patterns were compared to those of the ice cores. The result was that they were "highly correlated" with climatological data from the Vostok ice core data, which "matches almost perfectly" the climatological data from the Greenland ice core data. Thus the climate correlation shows that the ages determined by the radioactive decay match the ages determined from counting the layers of ice in these cores - highly correlated between two climate measures, two radioactive age measures, two ice cores.
One could say that this data validates the age of the Devil's Hole calcite, but that is not really what is being validated here - we've already validated the calcite with the Vostok Ice Core data and other data - instead this validates the theoretical basis for radiometric dating as being accurate and valid.
This means that any young earth creation (YEC) model suggesting different rates of radioactivity before a world wide flood (WWF) for this period of time is also invalid, as this would not explain the change in ratio of these elemental isotopes layer by layer by layer by layer for 567,700 layers. This also invalidates the occurrence of a WWF during the data period as that would have produced a change in the Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 content compared to the calcite layer age.

Conclusions

Based on this information alone we can conclude:

The theoretical basis for radiometric dating is accurate and valid.
The two different radiometric methods are equally valid - at least as far back as 567,700 yr BP.
That there was no change in the behavior of radioactive materials in the last 567,700 years.
The world is older than 567,000 years and no global flood has occurred in that time.

Enjoy.
References:

Anonymous "Calcite" Wikipedia. updated 25 Jan 2007. accessed 27 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcite
Anonymous "Devil's Hole" Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey National Research Program updated: 26 Jan, 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://water.usgs.gov/nrp/devilshole.html
Anonymous "Data for Devil's Hole Core DH-11" Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey National Research Program updated: 1 Sep 2005. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://water.usgs.gov/nrp/devilshole.html
Anonymous "Exponential Decay" Wikipedia. updated 8 Jan 2007. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_decay
Anonymous "Human Health Fact Sheet: Protactinium" Argonne National Laboratory, EVS, August 2005. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/protactinium.pdf
Anonymous "Protactinium" Wikipedia. Last modified 23 Dec 2006. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protactinium
Anonymous "Thorium" Wikipedia. Last modified 3 Jan 2007. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
Landwehr, J. M. and Winograd, I. J. "A Devil's Hole Primer" Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey National Research Program updated: 29 Dec 2004. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://water.usgs.gov/nrp/devilshole.html
Wiens, Roger C. "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective." The American Scientific Affiliation: A Fellowship of Christians in Scientists. First edition 1994; revised version 2002. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

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Talking Coral Heads

Now we are going to introduce a twist. We've mentioned coral with previous dating mechanisms and we've now been through thorium dating, a common method for dating coral heads. Coral heads put down growth layers just like trees and other organic systems. From "Estimating past sea-surface temperatures from corals"(1):

Some species of corals have stony skeletons, consisting almost entirely of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), and the term coral is often applied to the skeletons themselves.... There are three kinds of this skeletal material, i.e. plate-like, branching, and 'massive' The last is rounded and bulky and proves to be useful for estimating past sea-surface temperatures (SST) in tropical regions.X-ray examination reveals that massive coral has layers of different density, due to seasonal variations, like the annual rings of tree trunks. Counting of the density layers in large colonies of coral provides annual dating of the layers for several hundreds of years. Massive coral cores of the Porites type on Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been dated back to 1479 AD.

So where's the twist? What else can coral tell us that these other systems and mechanisms can't? Those dates are pretty insignificant compared to the other data, right? The twist comes from ancient corals. Sure, one can assemble all the coral cores and align them by seasonal variations and piece together a database similar to the tree ring data bases we started with, but as it sits now there are not enough cores to assemble without significant gaps in between (I fully expect a complete database to be assembled over time).
For now we can assemble the bits and pieces, placing the ancient cores by dates derived from radiometric testing (thorium-230 is used for some), and while we can derive similar dates from two or more tests, this is hardly enough to impress people who still have some doubts about radiometric dating methods. Is there something else that will give us an independent confirmation?
The answer is yes, and it comes from the astrophysics of the earth-moon system. From "Coral Growth and Geochronometry"(2):

The other approach, radically different, involves the astronomical record. Astronomers seem to be generally agreed that while the period of the Earth's revolution around the Sun has been constant, its period of rotation on its polar axis, at present 24 h, has not been constant throughout Earth's history, and that there has been a deceleration attributable to the dissipation of rotational energy by tidal forces on the surface and in the interior, a slow-down of about 2 sec per 100,000 years according to the most recent estimates. It thus appears that the length of the day has been increasing throughout geological time and that the number of days in the year has been decreasing. At, the beginning of the Cambrian the length of the day would have been 21 h ...The best of the limited fossil material I have examined so far is from the MiddleDevonian ... Diurnal and annual growth-rates vary in the same individual, adding to the complexity, but in every instance there are more than 365 growth -lines per annum. usually about 400, ranging between extremes of 385 and 410. It is probably too much, considering the crudity of these data, to expect a narrower range of values for the number of days in a year in the Middle Devonian; many more measurements will be necessary to refine them.
A few more data may be mentioned: Lophophllidium from the Pennsylvanian (Conemaugh) of western Pennsylvania gave 390 lines per annum, and Caninia from the Pennsylvanian of Texas, 385. These results imply that the number of days a year has decreased with the passage of time since the Devonian, as postulated by astronomers.

I also found this graphic on this website although it was not used in the article:

Original at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~springport/geology/fig1wells.jpg(3)
This shows the smooth change in the length of days with time. The calculations based on just the astrophysics gives a 400 day/year figure for the Devonian and a 390 day/year figure for the Pennsylvanian, so there is very close accord between the predicted number of days, the measured number of days and the measured age of the fossil corals. These corals will be useful in anchoring the database of annual layers as it builds up a picture of climate change with age and extending, eventually, back into the Devonian period (360 to 408.5 million years ago).

The age of the earth >400,000,000 years based on this data.

At this point we have moved from hard evidence of actual years into other evidence, waiting for the hard evidence to fill in the gaps. This data correlates between astro-physics, biology and radioactivity. Any alternative explanation of any part of this data must also explain this three-way correlation.
Enjoy.
References:

Geerts, B. and Linacre, E. "Estimating past sea-surface temperatures from corals" University of Wyoming Dept. of Atmospheric Science. Nov 1997. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap15/coral.html
Wells, John W. "Coral Growth and Geochronometry" Nature 197, 948 - 950 (09 March 1963); doi:10.1038/197948a0. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~springport/geology/coral_growth.html
Wells, John W. - source of picture not known, found on website 10 Jan 2007 http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~springport/geology/fig1wells.jpg

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Radiometric Correlations

We've touched on radiometric dating methods now, starting where we were not concerned with the derived age but what that meant for the amount of Carbon-14 in the samples, and then where we showed that the theoretical basis is valid. There are other correlations between radiometric dating methods, all showing broad consistency in results when properly applied, from "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective"(5):

There are well over forty different radiometric dating methods, and scores of other methods such as tree rings and ice cores.
All of the different dating methods agree--they agree a great majority of the time over millions of years of time. Some Christians make it sound like there is a lot of disagreement, but this is not the case. The disagreement in values needed to support the position of young-Earth proponents would require differences in age measured by orders of magnitude (e.g., factors of 10,000, 100,000, a million, or more). The differences actually found in the scientific literature are usually close to the margin of error, usually a few percent, not orders of magnitude!

Let's look at some of those numbers. First, from "Are Radioactive Dates Consistent With The Deeper-Is-Older Rule?"(4):
For example, Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) dating was tested against the Cenozoic-Era North American Land Mammal ordering. By ordering, I mean that rock layers were given numbers, with bigger numbers at greater depth. Each fossil was given the number of the rock layer it was found in. (Geologists call this stratigraphic order.) Here are the results:

|| Stratigraphic || || K-Ar Date || # Samples ||
|| Position || Name of Age || (millions) || Dated ||
|| 1 || Irvingtonian || 1.36 || 1 ||
|| 2 || Blancan || 1.5 - 3.5 || 7 ||
|| 3 || Hemphillian || 4.1 -10.0 || 8 ||
|| 4 || Claredonian || 8.9 -11.7 || 16 ||
|| 5 || Barstovian || 12.3-15.6 || 9 ||
|| 6 || Hemingfordian || 17.1 || 1 ||
|| 7 || Arikareean || 21.3-25.6 || 4 ||
|| 8 || Orellian || --- || 0 ||
|| 9 || Chadronian || 31.6-37.5 || 9 ||
|| 10 || Duchesnean || 37.5 || 3 ||
|| 11 || Uintan || 42.7-45.0 || 2 ||
|| 12 || Bridgerian || 45.4-49.0 || 2 ||
|| 13 || Wasatchian || 49.2 || 1 ||
|| 14 || Puercan || 64.8 || 1 ||

The standard geological idea is that "deeper is older". (It's called the Principle of Superposition, and was invented two centuries before Darwin.) In this table, Superposition and K-Ar dating are mutually consistent.
Layer by layer the stratigraphic measures older by radiometric dating, entirely consistent with the long term deposition of sedimentary layers (and not some jumbled debris of some fantasy flood scenario). None of the K-Ar Dates overlap into the wrong sedimentary layers. This is similar to the layer by layer correlation between Thorium-230 content and Protactinium-231 with the calcite layers in Devil's Hole.
There is also one layer that is not measured - the Orellian - and here is dated by the "sandwich" method (layers above and below) to 25.6 to 31.6 million years ago (this essentially makes a prediction that dating will fill this gap within this range). This demonstrates how this type of dating of objects works.
From "Radiometeric Dating Does Work!"(2):

One of the most exciting and important scientific findings in decades was the 1980 discovery that a large asteroid, about 10 kilometers diameter, struck the earth at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The collision threw many tons of debris into the atmosphere and possibly led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other life forms. The fallout from this enormous impact, including shocked quartz and high concentrations of the element iridium, has been found in sedimentary rocks at more than 100 locations worldwide at the precise stratigraphic location of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary (Alvarez and Asaro 1990; Alvarez 1998). We now know that the impact site is located on the Yucatan Peninsula. Measuring the age of this impact event independently of the stratigraphic evidence is an obvious test for radiometric methods, and a number of scientists in laboratories around the world set to work.In addition to shocked quartz grains and high concentrations of iridium, the K-T impact produced tektites, which are small glass spherules that form from rock that is instantaneously melted by a large impact. ... The results from all of the laboratories were remarkably consistent with the measured ages ranging only from 64.4 to 65.1 Ma (Table 2). Similar tektites were also found in Mexico, and the Berkeley lab found that they were the same age as the Haiti tektites. But the story doesn't end there.
The K-T boundary is recorded in numerous sedimentary beds around the world. The Z-coal, the Ferris coal, and the Nevis coal in Montana and Saskatchewan all occur immediately above the K-T boundary. Numerous thin beds of volcanic ash occur within these coals just centimeters above the K-T boundary, and some of these ash beds contain minerals that can be dated radiometrically. Ash beds from each of these coals have been dated by 40Ar/39Ar, K-Ar, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb methods in several laboratories in the US and Canada. Since both the ash beds and the tektites occur either at or very near the K-T boundary, as determined by diagnostic fossils, the tektites and the ash beds should be very nearly the same age, and they are (Table 2).
There are several important things to note about these results. First, the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods were defined by geologists in the early 1800s. The boundary between these periods (the K-T boundary) is marked by an abrupt change in fossils found in sedimentary rocks worldwide. Its exact location in the stratigraphic column at any locality has nothing to do with radiometric dating — it is located by careful study of the fossils and the rocks that contain them, and nothing more. Second, the radiometric age measurements, 187 of them, were made on 3 different minerals and on glass by 3 distinctly different dating methods (K-Ar and 40Ar/39Ar are technical variations that use the same parent-daughter decay scheme), each involving different elements with different half-lives. Furthermore, the dating was done in 6 different laboratories and the materials were collected from 5 different locations in the Western Hemisphere. And yet the results are the same within analytical error. If radiometric dating didn’t work then such beautifully consistent results would not be possible.

That's 187 results between minimum 63.1 million years ago and maximum 66.5 million years ago, from a number of different sources and techniques.
From "Are Radioactive Dating Methods Consistent With Each Other?"(3):
Here are the five confirmed craters:

|| Crater || Country || Diameter || 10^6yrBP || Dating Method ||
|| Manicouagan || Canada || 100 km || 214 ± 1 || U-Pb on zircons ||
|| Saint Martin || Canada || 40 km || 219 ± 32 || Rb/Sr ||
|| Rochechouart || France || 25 km || 214 ± 8 || Ar/Ar laser spot fusion ||
|| Obolon || Ukraine || 15 km || 215 ± 25 || stratigraphic ||
|| Red Wing || USA || 9 km || 200 ± 25 || stratigraphic ||

"Stratigraphic" dating means that the crater itself has not been dated. Instead, the rock strata above and below the crater was dated. (By now, the Red Wing crater is under 1.5 kilometers of sediment.)
One multiple impact event with 5 different craters, independently dated, where all of those ages overlap within the margins of error for each method - an actual age of 214x10^6 years BP is consistent with each one.
From "Radiometeric Dating Does Work!"(2):

Some meteorites, because of their mineralogy, can be dated by more than one radiometric dating technique, which provides scientists with a powerful check of the validity of the results. The results from three meteorites are shown in Table 1. Many more, plus a discussion of the different types of meteorites and their origins, can be found in Dalrymple (1991).
There are 3 important things to know about the ages in Table 1. The first is that each meteorite was dated by more than one laboratory — Allende by 2 laboratories, Guarena by 2 laboratories, and St Severin by four laboratories. This pretty much eliminates any significant laboratory biases or any major analytical mistakes. The second thing is that some of the results have been repeated using the same technique, which is another check against analytical errors. The third is that all three meteorites were dated by more than one method — two methods each for Allende and Guarena, and four methods for St Severin. This is extremely powerful verification of the validity of both the theory and practice of radiometric dating.
In the case of St Severin, for example, we have 4 different natural clocks (actually 5, for the Pb-Pb method involves 2 different radioactive uranium isotopes), each running at a different rate and each using elements that respond to chemical and physical conditions in much different ways. And yet, they all give the same result to within a few percent. Is this a remarkable coincidence? Scientists have concluded that it is not; it is instead a consequence of the fact that radiometric dating actually works and works quite well. Creationists who wants to dispute the conclusion that primitive meteorites, and therefore the solar system, are about 4.5 Ga old certainly have their work cut out for them!

(Note image used is originally from this website and was only copied to a mirror site to reduce bandwidth traffic on the original source).
Excluding the Sm-Nd isochron (4 points) dating of St. Severin meteor - which runs from 4.22 billion years ago to 4.88 billion years ago - that's 16 results between 4.34 billion years ago and 4.61 billion years ago (and also within the envelope of the St. Severin meteor
Notice that these correlated dates all imply an age for the earth of ~4.5 billion years. This is one piece of evidence of the extreme old age of the earth. From "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective"(5):

Most of the rocks we have from the moon do not exceed 4.1 billion years. The samples thought to be the oldest are highly pulverized and difficult to date, though there are a few dates extending all the way to 4.4 to 4.5 billion years. Most scientists think that all the bodies in the solar system were created at about the same time. Evidence from the uranium, thorium, and lead isotopes links the Earth's age with that of the meteorites. This would make the Earth 4.5-4.6 billion years old.

Matching data on the earth, on the moon and from meteors.
The essential element of measuring the age of the earth is NOT finding evidence that the earth is young - that is easy on an old earth - but in finding the oldest available evidence - evidence of age that just cannot be made compatible with any young earth creation model no matter how hard the creationists try.

The age of the earth ~4.5 billion years based on this data.

For comments related to common creationist arguments against radioactive dating techniques see Chris Stassen's comments at "Feedback for January 1999"(1).
Enjoy.
References:

Anonymous "Feedback for January 1999." The Talk.Origins Archive. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/jan99.html
Dalrymple, G. Brent "Radiometeric Dating Does Work!" National Center for Science Education. Originally published in RNCSE 20 (3): 14-19. The version on the web might differ slightly from the print publication. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/4180_radiometeric_dating_does_work_12_30_1899.asp
Lindsay, Don "Are Radioactive Dating Methods Consistent With Each Other?" Don Lindsay Archive. Last modified: 2 April 2000. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/crater_chain.html
Lindsay, Don "Are Radioactive Dates Consistent With The Deeper-Is-Older Rule?" Don Lindsay Archive. Last modified: 2 April 2000. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/confirm.html
Wiens, Roger C. "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective." The American Scientific Affiliation: A Fellowship of Christians in Scientists. First edition 1994; revised version 2002. accessed 10 Jan 2007 from http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

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The Bottom Line?

The bottom line is that this is but a small sample of all the correlations for all the different methods used to determine the age of portions of the earth. All these methods show the same pattern of climatological changes for the periods of overlap, thus they correlate and corroborate each other even though they are based on different environments, different methods and different evidence.
We have counted annual layers to 900,000 years, almost a million years, at each level validating the previous level, and matchig each one to climatological information. For the dating ages that are covered by these methods to be wrong -- "filled with errors" in the lexicon of the creationists -- there must be a mechanism that will cause exactly the same patterns of climatological change in each one, a mechanism that has escaped scientists, a mechanism that would have to mimic diverse complete annual phenomena within a very short period (10,000*365/900,000 = 4.05 days? on average? ... and excluding the last 5,500 years of written history makes it worse yet: 4,500*365/900,000 = 1.83 days - average), and it would have to mimic it to such an extent that it would be experienced by any living plant or creature as an actual annual time period. If more than one mechanism is involved then there has to be a direct link between the mechanisms that makes them operate in tandem, or triplicate or .... or in other words, an overriding mechanism that coordinates all the little mechanisms to operate at just the right time and place.
We have gone further, and shown that radiometric dating is valid, and that the ages for the earth derived from radiometric methods tell us the earth is ~4,500,000,000 years old.
The bottom line is that the earth is old, way older than any young earth creation (YEC) model can explain. These methods also invalidate the concept of a world wide flood (WWF) occurring in the same time frame, as this would disrupt the annual layers in a noticeable way. Furthermore, this list is by no means comprehensive or complete, the items were selected to build on each other and to show the diversity, validity and accuracy of information available and the number of different disciplines involved.
Denial of contradictory evidence is not confronting the evidence, nor is it faith, it is delusion:

**delusion** -noun
1. an act or instance of deluding.
2. the state of being deluded.
3. a false belief or opinion: delusions of grandeur.
4. Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.

The bottom line is that the evidence of an old earth is as overwhelming as the data that the earth is an oblate spheroid that orbits the sun. In fact one could say that the evidence for an old earth is more accessible and easier to comprehend than the evidence that invalidates the geocentric model of the universe.
Thus any "Young Earth Creationist" (YEC) that persists in their belief - in spite of all the evidence to the contrary - is no more rational than any "geocentrist" holding on to their mistaken belief.
Once the irrational belief in a young earth is cleared away, rational people can go further and see that the probable age of the earth is much much older than a few thousand years. Certainly scientists (and people who do not have problems with the results of science) agree that the accumulation of evidence available shows that life on earth is at least 3.5 billion years old and that the earth itself is at least 4.55 billion years old.

The scientific age of the earth = 4,550,000,000 years

... old enough by any standard.
And this is still just the beginning of the information that is available to those who are interested in finding the truth about the age of the earth.

Other Information, Links and References

I expect to revise this post to add more information links as they become available and known.
Another site that discusses radiometric dating information and their relation to the other dating systems (such as the ones noted above) is on this website: An Essay on Radiometric Dating By Jonathon Woolf
There are also a bunch of 'slide-shows' available. See the complete set of slide shows - some of the pertinent ones are:
Coral Cores
Tree Rings
Low Latitude Ice Cores: Ice Core techniques (Good picture of layers on slide 3) and results for two glaciers near the equator in South America, extending back 1500 years (slide 6), with 'little ice age' confirmed and discussions on the relative dO16 and dO18 ratios (slide 11), and in China extending back 40,000 years (slide 17).
Ice Ages an overview of ice ages in earths past, and mentions the flood (slide 6), Milankovitch (slide 11) ... good example of the growth and development of the scientific theory process in explaining the known data as new information is added.
Enjoy.
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Theme Song

Time is on my side, yes it is

Time is on my side, yes it isNow you always say

That you want to be free

But you'll come running back (said you would baby)

You'll come running back (I said so many times before)

You'll come running back to me
Oh, time is on my side, yes it is

Time is on my side, yes it is
You're searching for good times

But just wait and see

You'll come running back (I won't have to worry no more)

You'll come running back (spend the rest of my life with you, baby)

You'll come running back to me
Go ahead, go ahead and light up the town

And baby, do everything your heart desires

Remember, I'll always be around

And I know, I know

Like I told you so many times before

You're gonna come back, baby

'Cause I know

You're gonna come back knocking

Yeah, knocking right on my door

Yes, yes!
Well, time is on my side, yes it is

Time is on my side, yes it is
'Cause I got the real love

The kind that you need

You'll come running back (said you would, baby)

You'll come running back (I don't always said you would)

You'll come running back (I won't have to worry no more)

Yes time, time, time is on my side, yes it is

Time, time, time is on my side, yes it is

Oh, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is

I said, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is

Oh, time, time, time is on my side

Yeah, time, time, time is on my side[/indent]- Rolling Stones

(yeah, I know ... they're as old as the dinosaurs ...)
Enjoy.
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Notes:

This is an essay and as such represents the opinions of the author. You can e-mail comments to me at RAZD8@yahoo.com)
Where possible, I have tried to follow the standard academic procedure for citing online publications, where if you last accessed this page on January 30, 2007, and used version 2, you would cite this as:
- Smith, Paul "Age Correlations and an Old Earth" razd.evcforum.net, Version 2, updated 27 Jan 2007, accessed 30 Jan 2007 from http://razd.evcforum.net/Age_Dating_v2.html
Also see formal MLA style referencing.

we are limited in our ability to understand

.... by our ability to understand

Rebel A American O Zen [ Deist

... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...

Age Correlations and An Old Earth

Age Correlations and An Old Earth

Correlations Correlations Correlations

Summary of the Age Dating Correlations Covered:

Bristlecone Pines

Minimum age of the earth > 8,000 years based on this data.

European Oaks

Minimum age of the earth > 10,434 years based on this data.

Adding German Pines

The Carbon-14 Environment and Tree Ring Data Correlations

Conclusions

Minimum age of the earth > 12,405 years based on this data.

Lake Suigetsu Varves

Minimum age of the earth > 35,987 years based on this data.

Carbon-14 Correlations to Lake Varves

Conclusions

Minimum age of the earth > 35,930 years based on this data.

Annual Layers of Ice

The Quelccaya Ice Core

The Dunde Ice Core

Minimum age of the earth > 40,000 years based on this data.

Ice Cores in Greenland

Minimum age of the earth = 37,957 years based on visual data alone.

Minimum age of the earth = 60,000 years based on dust layer data alone.

Minimum age of the earth = 110,000 years based on this data.

Minimum age of the earth > 250,000 years based on this data.

Ice Cores in Antarctica

Vostok Ice Core

Minimum age of the earth = 422,776 years based on this data.

EPICA Ice Core

Minimum age of the earth > 740,000 years based on this data.

Minimum age of the earth > 900,000 years based on this data.

The Devil's Hole

Thorium-230

Protactinium-231

Radioactive Decay

The Climate Correlation

Conclusions

Talking Coral Heads

The age of the earth >400,000,000 years based on this data.

Radiometric Correlations

The age of the earth ~4.5 billion years based on this data.

The Bottom Line?

The scientific age of the earth = 4,550,000,000 years

Other Information, Links and References

Theme Song

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