Keith Olbermann is an idiot...

[elfs]

As you know, I'm no fan of the Intelligent Design idiocies and the associated anti-evolutionary thinking. Every child in every classroom infested with those memes is one child fewer that might go on to be a scientist and produce the next great breakthrough in medicine agriculture. To date, not a single meaningful technological advance has been made using intelligent design as the premise. It has been as useful to us as Aristotelian physics.

So I wasn't surprised when Olbermann chose Arizona State Senator Silvia Allen's little comment, while defending a local uranium mine's lax environmental post-processing policies, "The Earth has been here 6,000 years, long before anyone had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn't been done away with."

But I was disgusted when Olbermann proceeded to make fun of the fact that Allen's comment about the age of the Earth came in the context of a discussion about uranium mining. Olbermann asserted, "The way we can know the Earth is billions of years old is because of the decay of uranium. Carbon dating!"

Sigh.

Someone tell Keith that uranium is only a mediocre dating choice because of its uniformity. It's hard to tell how much uranium a sample started with, therefore it's hard to date. Much better choices are rubidium, potassium, and strontium, all of which have multiple decay products that can be measured in ratio to one another to produce accurate results.

As for "carbon dating," carbon is an entirely different element from uranium, and is used for the dating of recently dead things, as it is only accurate out to about 50,000 years, and is only good for dating organics. (Living things have a regular flow of carbon in and out as they eat and breath; it's only after fossilization that carbon transference stops and we can reliably date the organism's age from the decay of carbon left.).

So Keith is an idiot. He should consult with a geek before he goes off, again, with an idiotic rant of that flavor. Apparently, an MSNBC peer, Ed Schultz, made a similar mistake, claiming that the Earth is only a billion years old. It's about 4.5 billion.

Comments

[maellenkleth]

Beg to quibble -- the uranium/lead/lead dating system works well for very old rocks, with good repeatability, but (alas) suboptimal resolution.

Your underlying point of galloping scientific illiteracy is utterly concurred with!

[mouser.livejournal.com]

You may want to cut a former sportscaster a bit of slack for not know thing difference between Radiometric dating (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating) and Radiocarbon dating (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating)...

[gromm.livejournal.com]

1: "Every child in every classroom infested with those memes is one child fewer that might go on to be a scientist"

I think they may even be counting on that, since they believe that science is their enemy.

2: Re: Carbon dating.

You already demonstrate more knowledge about this subject that my own high school science teacher, who neither knew this level of detail, nor that radio carbon dating can't be used to find the age of dinosaur fossils. So I honestly think that you can't fault a politician (whose forte isn't science, it's people) for making a comment off the cuff like this. At least he knows that the earth is older than 6000 years.

Aristotelian physics

[(Anonymous)]

Aristotelian physics was quite useful -- that's why it was dominant for 2000 years. In fact, we still use it all the time as the physics of our day-to-day world. (For instance, we all assume that if we stop supplying gas to our car's engine, it will stop moving, and not continue on forever in a straight line.)

Of course we can (and should) blame him!

[(Anonymous)]

"So I honestly think that you can't fault a politician (whose forte isn't science, it's people) for making a comment off the cuff like this."

Of course we can -- he3 has no more idea of what he is talking about than she does -- he's just parroting ideas he doesn't grasp, just like her. (And, fyi, he's not a politician.)

Cut Him Some Slack?

[(Anonymous)]

"You may want to cut a former sportscaster a bit of slack for not know thing difference between Radiometric dating and Radiocarbon dating..."

Yes, you might... except when he, in a sneering, condescending tone, is calling someone "the worst person in the world" for their scientific ignorance!

[elfs.livejournal.com]

He's not a politician, he's a journalist. He is paid to inform his listeners. He failed.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Ah, technilliteracy. It's not just for the rightwingnuts anymore!

*grumble*

We are so doomed when the people speaking in defense of science are scientifically-illiterate.

Sorry, but...

[(Anonymous)]

I know that I am just some dumb christian conservative, but as any good scientist should, you must acknowledge all evidence concerning carbon dating (or any radiometric dating for that matter). Have you ever considered how many unseen assumptions you have made? I imagine you can't find any and are probably already thinking I'm an idiot, which is probably true. At least, it's what you want to hear.
Truth is, in blindly taking this dating method at face value, you have made assumptions that are profoundly ridiculous.

1)The rate of change has remained constant throughout the past

2)The original conditions are known

3)The process has not been altered by outside forces

Re: Sorry, but...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Except that these are physical forces, and so are measurable forces. The radioactive decay rates of nuclides used in radiometric dating have not been observed to vary since their rates were directly measurable, at least within limits of accuracy. This is despite experiments that attempt to change decay rates. No known outside forces change the radioactive decay rates of nuclides.

As for the amounts, different nuclides have different decay rates, yet all modern testing rates give us consistent data, giving us a very high degree of certainty that the datings are correct.

Certainly, we can propose unknown forces changed the rates. We can also propose an unknown force created the universe five minutes ago. But the simple fact is that we have to assume a certain amount of reliability in every tier of the observable universe: sodium and chlorine combine to make salt. One proton and one electron make hydrogen. Anything else leads to the insane conclusion that no science is reliable and all technology, medicine, and modern agriculture is no better than voodoo.