Nick,
The evidence for c changing is not recent, just buried. My husband went through his university with a double major, half of which was physics. He never learned a whisper about c changing either -- had no idea it was possible. He did not learn about it from any creationist source, but from a book given to him about 25 years ago, which we have here now. It is Mysterious Universe, A Handbook of Astonomical Anomalies. compiled by William R. Corliss, Published by The Sourcebook Project, 1979.
What caught my husband's eye started on page 690: "Constancy of the Velocity of Light Questioned."
Now, every part of that book -- all 701 pages, is a series of articles/condensations of articles from peer reviewed journals up to within months of the March 1979 publication date. So there is nothing new about this at all.
My husband figured there must be some mathematical or instrumental error regarding these speed of light figures, and he figured he would give the matter about two weeks' worth of study and wrap it up. It didn't wrap up. The anomalies were real and at someone powerful's request, Birge, after years of charting the changing constants himself, wrote that any changes in the physical constants was against the spirit of science.
The spirit of science? Give me a break! The spirit of science is SUPPOSED to be a discovery of the truth, not the upholding of a preferred paradigm come hell, high water, or opposing data!
You ask why so many physicists are working with theories proved incorrect. It's the same in science as politics -- you want to get ahead you toe the line. You want publishing rights, you toe the line. You want advancement, you toe the line. You want professional respect, you toe the line....
It's sort of like the temptation Jesus got from Satan -- if you fall down and worship me, I will give you the world. I have worked in and around science for a very long time now, as a teacher, an editor, a collaborator, a peer-reviewer myself. It is the extremely rare person who prefers truth over and above self. Income, if not simple vindication, comes from publishing. The more you publish, the more respect you get. The more respect you get, the more you refuse to think of yourself as wrong. It is very, very hard to change after years of publishing.
In other words, a lot of them do know, or at least suspect. But, first of all, the old ages have been proven by geology, so they don't have to worry. The geologists assuage their doubts with the knowledge that old age has been proved by physics and biology....and so it goes.
There are some who have stood up to the mass innoculations against the truth which are going on in universities right now. A number of them have written chapters in the book "In Six Days". You might be interested in reading it.
Responding now to twohumble:
The guppies took one generation, the lizards only fourteen years. That is probably something between 7 and 14 generations. Speciation can be very rapid given the twin combination of isolation and an empty ecological niche. This, by the way, is exactly what happened after the Flood.
Then you said Setterfield is not a credible source. OK, if that is your opinion, fine. But I did not mention him, did I? Not in the series of quotes you quoted from my post. I quoted Birge and de Bray. They are umqualified too, in your twohumble opinion????
Nor is it simply a matter of Roemer's measurements. He was seventeenth century. Your 'critics' whom you are depending on seem to be ignoring a few other measurements. What about those from Delambre, Glasenapp, Bradley, Struve, Newcomb, Nyren, Peters, Wagner, Kustner, Marcuse, Doollittle, Comstock, Becker, Preston, Grachev, and even the International Latitude Service? Don't forget Fizeau, Cornu, Young, Forbes, and Perrotin, with the toothed wheel measurements. Or come up to the rotating mirror experiments by Foucault, MIchelson, and Newcomb?
Please, ask your friends about them...
By the way, Planck's constant has been measured as changing: here are some of the references with the measurements given in ergsec x10^-27
1939 -- Dunnington, F.G., The Atomic Constants, Reviews of Modern Physics, 11 (2), 65-83, Apr. 1939 -- 6.6214
1941 -- Birge, R.T., A New Table of Values of the General Physical Constants, Reviews of Modern Physics, 13 (4), 233-239, Oct. 1941 -- 6.6242
1947 -- DuMond, J.W.M., and E.R. Cohen, Our Knowledge of the Atomic Constants F, N, m and h in 1947, and of Other Constants Derivable Therefrom, Reviews of Modern Physics, 20 (1), 82-108, Jan. 1948 -- 6.6237
1950 -- Bearden, J.A., and H.M. Watts, A Re-Evaluation of the Fundamental Atomic Constants, Physical Review, 81, 73-81, Jan. 1, 1951 -- 6.62363
1952 -- DuMond, J.W.M., and E.R. Cohen, Least Squares Adjustment of the Atomic Constants, 1952, Reviews of Modern Physics, 25 (3), 691-708, Jul. 1953 -- 6.6252
1955 -- Cohen, E.R., et al., Analysis of Variance of the 1952 Data on the Atomic Constants and a New Adjustment, 1955, Reviews of Modern Physics, 27 (4), 363-380, Oct. 1955 -- 6.62517
1963 -- Cohen, E.R., and J.W.M. DuMond, Present Status of our Knowledge of the Numerical Values of the Fundamental Constants, p.152-186, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Nuclidic Masses, Vienna, Austria, July 15-19, 1963, W.H. Johnson, Jr., editor, Springer-Verlag, Wien, 1964 -- 6.62559
1965 -- Cohen, E.R., and J.W.M. DuMond, Our Knowledge of the Fundamental Constants of Physics and Chemistry in 1965, Reviews of Modern Physics, 37 (4), 537-594, Oct. 1965 -- 6.62592
1969 -- Taylor, B.N., W.H. Parker, D.N. Langenberg, Determination of e/h Using Macroscopic Quantum Phase Coherence in Superconductors: Implications for Quantum Electrodynamics and the Fundamental Physical Constants, Reviews of Modern Physics, 41 (3), 375-496, Jul. 1969 -- 6.626196
1973 -- Cohen, E.R., and B.N. Taylor, The 1973 Least-Squares Adjustment of the Fundamental Constants, Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data, 2 (4), 663-718, 1973 -- 6.626227
1986 -- E.R. Cohen , B.M. Taylor, The 1986 Adjustment of the Fundamental Physical Constants, Codata Bulletin #63, Pergamum Press, Nov. 1986 -- 6.626076
1998 -- P.J. Mohr and B.N.Taylor, Codata Recommended Values of the Fundamental Physical Constants, 1998, Reviews of Modern Physics, April, 2000 http://physics.nist.gov/constants -- 6.626069
As far as messing up star formation and what is necessary for life, that is the evolutionary take. It is pure theory.
It did not mess up creation at all, which is really what happened. The speed of light follows the redshift curve, by the way, and the massive changes were at the beginning. By the time of Abraham, things were pretty settled. How convenient? I can't help that. That is what the data show.
Nor does anyone need to appeal to a god of the gaps for any of this. We only need to look at creation as it is, instead of as evolutionists wish it to be.
And, finally, again, the ice core measurements are measuring storm surges, which NOW are annual. Given the record of catastrophes in the geologic column (all over the world there are severe breaks between the four major groupings), there is absolutely no reason to assume that storm surges were always annual. A high rate of volcanism, for instance, would provide the impetus for repeated storm surges in one year for a number of years. You need to look at the data and try to tease it away from the preconceptions which give rise to the conclusions. There are a good many surprises waiting for all of us when we do this.