Counting Tree Rings is a Flawed Dating Method

As discussed previously, dendrochronology (counting tree rings) a favorite of people who believe in an old earth, especially because important facts can be omitted so they can get the deep-time numbers they so desire. However, this and other methods of counting layers are terribly flawed.

In fact, they like it so much, secularists still use dendrochronology on children as a propaganda tool. With all the difficulties that have been found in counting supposed annual layers, you wooden think they still used that method.

Credit: Public Domain Pictures.net / Sheila Brown

Some tinhorns exclaim, "Aha! There are trees with rings that date them older than you people believe. Take that, creationists!" Rein in there a mite, Hoss. The basic idea of one growth ring per year is misleading, since some trees produce multiple rings each year, other trees may take a notion to skip a year, and others produce none at all. What is seen is more likely a record of past climate and other environmental conditions, not age. Other dating methods used to calibrate and correlate dendrochronology are also saturated with difficulties.

Dendrochronology, using tree ring data to determine age (as well as infer temperature and climatic data over the tree’s lifespan), is one of the dating methods used to discredit young-earth chronology of approximately 6,000 years and a global flood that occurred roughly 4,350 years ago. . . .

This paper will focus primarily on living trees with age estimates done by tree ring counting, looking at multiple-rings-per-year production, and rings produced during times of stress (drought and other climatological factors). But we will also briefly discuss clonal- and radiocarbon-dating assumptions and the problems associated with them.

To read all of this very interesting article, navigate to "Ask the Trees — Why dendrochronology is not evidence for an old earth".