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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2005
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Claim CD011.6:

Coal and oil are supposedly millions of years old. Effectively all of the carbon-14 in a sample would have decayed in that time. But carbon-14 still exists in coal, implying an age of only about 50,000 years.

Source:

Baumgardner, John, 2003. Carbon dating undercuts evolution's long ages. Impact #364 (Oct.), http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=117
Baumgardner, J. R., D. R. Humphreys, A. A. Snelling, and S. A. Austin, 2003. Measurable 14C in fossilized organic materials: Confirming the young earth creation/Flood model. in Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Creationism, R. E. Walsh, ed., Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, pp. 127-142.

Response:

  1. New 14C is formed from background radiation, such as radioactivity in the surrounding rocks. In some cases, 14C from the atmosphere can contaminate a sample. A few processes that can add "modern" 14C to coal are:
    Minute amounts of contamination from these sources can cause apparent ages around 50,000 years, which is near the limit of the maximum age that carbon dating can measure.

Links:

Hunt, Kathleen, 2002. Carbon-14 in coal deposits. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html

References:

  1. Hunt, K., 2000. (see above)

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created 2003-5-25, modified 2004-10-25