Embracing evolutionary theory has forced scientist to adopt really, really old earth models. I attended a debate at the University of Oklahoma where the one of the evolutionary proponents was the head of the geology department at OU.
He stated that geologists can build old earth models or they can work with young earth models. He simply decides to work with old earth models because of his belief in evolution.
Of course, biology is NOT his field. So he, in essence, admitted that his approach to his own scientific discipline was due to something that is not his specialty. Exactly, who has distorted science, here.
Nobody probed him further on this subject. I presume that when he used the term “young earth”, he probably did not mean “a few thousand years”. But he clearly conceded that geological science has driven geologists to accept the “millions and millions of years” viewpoint.
The old earth model is useful in debunking the anthropogenic climate change theory. The earth has had thousands of climate cycles over millions of years. The climate changers have to argue that what has been occurring regularly for millions of centuries is now (for the first time in the history of the universe) caused by Man and it is a crisis.