Adam When?

    In our study we have insisted on the following conclusions relative to C14 production.

1. C14 production began about 13,000 years ago in the year 11,013 B.C. on the fourth day of creation when the light bearers were created. 2. The fossils and fossil fuels such as coal and oil were formed chiefly as a result of the cataclysmic flood that struck the earth in Noah’s time some 7000 years ago. 3. Because the specific activity of carbon just before the flood was about one half of that which existed today, it would appear logical then that all fossils should show a present C14 date of about 12,000 years.

    In the face of the above assertions one wonders why all fossils and fossil fuels such a coal and oil do not show this date by their C14 content. Many of them do, as we showed in Chapter 13, but a larger number of them do not. Many show trace amounts of C14 and many do not show any C14. How can this problem be resolved?

    Dr. Melvin Cook, Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Utah, tackles this problem by suggesting that possibly:

the biosphere was effectively ‘fluxed’ with the several hundred fold increase in total carbon, mostly entirely free from C14, providing a means of diluting the radiocarbon content by ion exchange in the heated slurry that perhaps generated the coal and oil.1

    In analyzing the possibility of ion exchange in materials containing carbon, he declares:

In chemisorptions and even strong ‘structural adsorption’ of an adsorbate on an adsorbent with atoms in common there is always a chance for atom exchange between the adsorbate and adsorbent. This possibility has been considered in radiocarbon

dating; there are several circumstances where it definitely occurs and evidently other where it is almost certain to occur. For example, anomalies found in dating mollusk shells from river waters (Keith and Anderson, 1963) may be cited (several other references were cited in this article). Kovalyenko (1964) found that the thermal decomposition of calcite had an activation energy of about 40 kcal/mol when decomposed under flowing nitrogen, but when the gas stream contained CO2 at various partial pressures, the activation energy was raised to 160 kcal/mol (due apparently to blockage by chemisorbed CO2) and the rate fell off progressively as the partial pressure of CO2 was increased. Moreover, thermal decomposition of calcite involved induction times due to the chemisorbed film of CO2. The mechanism of decomposition was thus explained by taking into account CO2 adsorption with a heat of 120 kcal/mol. Therefore, C12 and C14 exchanged should occur on calcite. Furthermore, the chemisorptions of CO2 on charcoal should involve carbon exchange, a process that sometimes occurs at a finite rate even at ambient temperatures when the adsorption potential is high.

    Kieth and Anderson found that modern mollusk shells were very deficient in C14, and even gave radiocarbon ages of 1010 to 2300 years. They found also errors in measured radiocarbon ages in these and other specimens form river water sometimes as large as 3000 years. This is most likely due to carbon exchange with CO3 derived from CaCO3 deposits. Considerations given later in this chapter concerning the salt balance of the Great Basin indicate that Lake Bonneville disappeared only about 2000 years ago, interestingly enough, at a time coinciding with a persistent Indian legend which also described the nature of the disappearance of Lake Bonneville. If this were not true, such radiocarbon age determinations as those for Danger Cave (Libby, 1955) involving charcoal specimens dating around 11,500 years ago and those described by Broecker and Orr (1961) for samples taken from the shores of fossil Lake Bonneville, showing radiocarbon ages around 1-2.10⁴ years, must be considered anomalous. Danger Cave, for instance, occurs on the shore about 100 feet above the present level of Great Salt Lake, and would, therefore, have been under several hundred feet of water 2000 years ago. Exchange C14 and C12 in samples by fresh water action would probably always have the effect of diluting the C14 in specimens where this exchange is possible, because the exchange would most generally involve carbonate deposits that contain no C14.²

    Since ion exchange apparently does take place in some instances, the potential for such occurring during the flood and during continental division must have been very great. We cannot escape the conclusion that the huge and cataclysmic forces at work during these fantastic events would have thoroughly disrupted any evidence of uniform development of the earth’s crust.



NOTES


    ¹Melvin A. Cook, Prehistory and Earth Models, London, Max Parrish and Co., 1966, p. 206.

    ²Ibid., pp. 3-4.