If you watched the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye, you may remember that Bill Nye used tree ring evidence to support the idea that there was not a global flood 4,000 ago.  He said that they found evidence of a tree that was dated by humans to be 9,500 years old.

Beside the fact that there’s a big difference between 10,000 and 5,000,000,000 (the supposed evolutionary age of the earth, a problem that wasn’t really addressed), he was playing on a childhood belief that there is only one tree ring per year on a tree.

A little research into the science of tree dating reveals that it is a well known fact that, sometimes, trees produce more rings than one in a year.  I wouldn’t throw away your belief in a young earth based on Bill Nye’s arm chair analysis.

To learn a bit more about the assumptions that go into dating trees, see these articles:

Do Tree Rings Disprove the Genesis Chronology?

Evidence for multiple ring growth per year in Bristlecone Pines

Remember, evidence isn’t proof because scientists can be wrong.  Even when something is likely to be true, it doesn’t mean that it is true.  Sometimes, unlikely things happen.  In this case, it wasn’t even unlikely.  Sometimes, trees produce more that one ring a year, and scientists already know this.