[Coyoteman]

For instance, now that Britain has found that its soil is releasing carbon due to global warming, wouldn't it be prudent to question the method of carbon dating? Isn't the "given" that carbon gets released at a steady rate over the millenia now debunked, and that the rate is determined by the warming and cooling cycles of the earth?

Carbon 14 dating is calibrated using bristlecone pines, which in turn can be accurately dated by simply counting tree rings. In other words, you can count the rings in a series of trees (using overlapping rings series to bridge the multiple trees needed), then date a particular ring or group of rings. Thousands of samples dated in this manner allows accurate calibration of the carbon 14 method back to about 10,000 years ago.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Note that ice-core rings and varves and other tree-rings from other parts of the world (rather the Historical Edge of North America) also can be used. They all agree.