"Then we have something called "calibration," where we see if the model jives with how things work in the real world. Carbon 14 dating has been calibrated against items which can be tree-ring dated, ice-core dated, and historically dated."
and if two or more of those calibrations dont agree? this is possible in a volitile region like the mediterranean. a man tried to provide proof the water level is rising based on global warming and put a time scale on it in relation to some findings about a 100 miles from a volcano. he didnt account for the volcano making the land masses different, making his timing wrong. in this case, two of his methods agreed. water level given the current rate, and the findings of some fishing equipment in the area. it did not hold together when one thing disagreed however, volcanic activity.
calibration is needed, but how does anyone know that every aspect is accounted for and agrees with the datings?
There's an actual statistical term called "degree of confidence." It gets to where your results almost can't be a coincidence. Thus, there are things we pretty much know. This does not mean that there aren't things we don't know, and things we merely suspect, and things we strongly suspect but of which we are not certain, or even that these things blend almost imperceptibly into each other at the edges.
Creation science, with no evidence for its body of doctrine, seems built upon endless unremitting "healthy skepticism" of all contrary knowledge. It is constantly lawyering upon the existence of any confusion, any controvery, any uncertainty anywhere as evidence that all of modern science is a house of cards ready to collapse. This, oddly enough, is why it doesn't get equal time. It is the UN-science, furiously trying to tear down all we have learned since about ... 1859. As Rodney Dangerfield might say, "It don't desoive no respect!"