The Society has commented on the bristlecone pine evidence a couple of times, but a long time ago. They basically dismissed the evidence in the usual way -- scientists can be wrong, several rings can form in a year, how could dead wood possibly hand around for such a long time? etc. They never addressed the hard questions.
Dead wood can hang around a very long time in the high altitude, extremely dry and barren areas of the White Mountains in which they grow. It's cold and dry, so there's hardly any critters around to eat the wood or make it decay. Even when ancient wood lies directly on the ground, because the ground is essentially barren gravel, there's nothing to make it decay.
The fact that dead wood is cross-correlated with living wood kills the argument about multiple yearly tree rings. While there are a few such rings, they're few and they don't affect the final result, which is cross-checked with -- horrors! -- carbon 14 dating.
In some parts of Europe, carbon 14 dating has been cross-correlated not only with tree ring dating, but with sediment layers in lakes and bogs. These methods also correlate nicely with ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. When four independent methods from widely varying locations come up with the same dating scheme for events in the past 10,000 years, you know they're correct.
AlanF
