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The Mystery of Coal · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and this is Stuff you Should Know. Uh.
0:17
Speaker 1: And that's that's it right there, The Mystery of Coal.
0:23
Speaker 1: You like the title I came up with. It's a
0:25
Speaker 1: working title, but now I guess it's the official title.
0:29
Speaker 1: I like it because I thought, well, what could be
0:32
Speaker 1: the mystery of coal? And now I know it's earth science,
0:37
Speaker 1: so I find it jazz metastic. Hey, you know, this
0:42
Speaker 1: is one of the only sciences I can really get into.
0:45
Speaker 1: So so did this one suck you in? Then? I
0:47
Speaker 1: guess it sucked me in like a fallen branch into
0:52
Speaker 1: the depths of a peat bog. Oh my gosh, that's
0:54
Speaker 1: some great man. I can't wait for forty seconds from
0:58
Speaker 1: now when we start talking about that part. But first
1:02
Speaker 1: we gotta tell everybody we're talking about coal. The titles correct,
1:07
Speaker 1: it's apt, it's accurate, and there is a mystery to
1:10
Speaker 1: the coal, which we'll get to. But there's a lot
1:12
Speaker 1: more to col than just the mystery behind it. Um
1:15
Speaker 1: And actually, the way that cole forms is super interesting
1:19
Speaker 1: and it's been forming for a really long time, and
1:21
Speaker 1: it turns out, chuck, humans have been using it for
1:23
Speaker 1: a really long time. There's evidence that the um, the
1:27
Speaker 1: people who inhabited China all the way back years ago,
1:32
Speaker 1: we're burning coal that they found around the surface as
1:35
Speaker 1: a fuel, which is pretty that's right. They were tailgating, sure,
1:42
Speaker 1: burning cole cooking up meat. Oh, I got you. Yeah,
1:46
Speaker 1: they were a big time. They had um wooden pickup trucks,
1:50
Speaker 1: the cook out of the back. Remember the stainless steel
1:53
Speaker 1: pickup trucks at the Atlanta Olympics. I have still never
1:56
Speaker 1: seen video of that. You're you just talked about it
1:59
Speaker 1: like it was some embarrassing Yeah, yeah, for sure, now
2:04
Speaker 1: you definitely have. Anyway, none of that has to do
2:06
Speaker 1: with wouldn't pickup trucks, is what we're here for. No,
2:08
Speaker 1: it has to do with coal. So let's just say
2:10
Speaker 1: about years ago we started taking coal from the ground
2:14
Speaker 1: and burning it, and on a very small scale, that's
2:18
Speaker 1: a pretty clever thing to do. Unfortunately, as we'll see,
2:21
Speaker 1: we've really kind of taken that to the mp degree
2:24
Speaker 1: starting in the Industrial Revolution, and it poses a lot
2:27
Speaker 1: of problems for the atmosphere that we'll talk about. But UM,
2:32
Speaker 1: more to the point because it takes so long to
2:36
Speaker 1: form coal, the rate that we're burning it at far
2:40
Speaker 1: outpaces the rate that it's being made at um, which
2:44
Speaker 1: makes coal a non renewable resource, which we kicked off
2:47
Speaker 1: years ago. But now finally, Chuck, we've arrived to that
2:50
Speaker 1: thing you foreshadowed on, and that's how coal is made.
2:53
Speaker 1: So if you want to have a grasp on how
2:55
Speaker 1: long it takes to make coal, we're going to explain
2:58
Speaker 1: it step by step. That's right. And I referenced Pete
3:02
Speaker 1: Boggs at the beginning, and people might have thought, what
3:05
Speaker 1: in the world is he even talking about with that,
3:08
Speaker 1: and why is Josh so excited? Chuck reference that, and
3:11
Speaker 1: here's the answer. Uh, Pete is where cold begins. And
3:16
Speaker 1: Pete is like, you know, sort of loose layers of
3:21
Speaker 1: all kinds of plant and mineral gobbledygook that accumulates in
3:26
Speaker 1: the forest in the swampy areas called Pete swamps. You
3:30
Speaker 1: might call them bogs or myers, depending on where you
3:32
Speaker 1: live in the world. But these are wet lands that
3:35
Speaker 1: have really great conditions to swallow up a fallen branch
3:41
Speaker 1: or a plant or something like that, or a dead
3:44
Speaker 1: animal and have it slowly sink down to the bottom
3:48
Speaker 1: and kind of protect it from not completely from erosion,
3:52
Speaker 1: but from erosion that would happen if it was on land, right, right,
3:56
Speaker 1: So like if you so, the reason why is protected
4:00
Speaker 1: from that from de camp um you know, like how
4:03
Speaker 1: a body decays or um uh like on the body
4:07
Speaker 1: farm at University of Tennessee, or if um you're talking
4:10
Speaker 1: about a wild animal in the forest or a mouse
4:13
Speaker 1: that got into your attic or a plant that fell
4:16
Speaker 1: over in your backyard. People, that stuff decomposes, right, it
4:21
Speaker 1: doesn't really decompose in the swamp because a swamp by
4:25
Speaker 1: definition has um basically stagnant water. Not much goes on
4:30
Speaker 1: in a swamp. Strangely enough, everything just kind of very
4:33
Speaker 1: slow motion biologically and geologically speaking. So that water, because
4:39
Speaker 1: it lacks oxygen, it's not a really great place for
4:43
Speaker 1: the microbes that carry out decomposition on planet Earth to
4:46
Speaker 1: live because they need oxygen to carry out those functions
4:49
Speaker 1: to eat things and decompose them. And so the swamp water,
4:53
Speaker 1: being stagnant and oxygen poor, acts basically as a preservative
4:58
Speaker 1: for the stuff that lived along the swamp and has
5:01
Speaker 1: now died and fallen into the swamp and settled on
5:04
Speaker 1: the bottom, creating what's lovingly known as muck. That's right,
5:09
Speaker 1: And the really important part here. You might be saying, like,
5:11
Speaker 1: big deal, a bunch of stuff falls to the bottom
5:13
Speaker 1: of swamp and kind of really really slowly decomposes, if
5:17
Speaker 1: at all. The really important part here, and this is
5:19
Speaker 1: how we get to coal, which ultimately leads to why
5:23
Speaker 1: we have problems with climate change, is that carbon is
5:28
Speaker 1: locked down in place in the bottom of that swamp
5:31
Speaker 1: with that muck. It's just it's just sitting there. It's
5:34
Speaker 1: not you know, if it was on dry land and
5:36
Speaker 1: it was a dead like like keep saying, dead dear
5:40
Speaker 1: dead mouse, sure, uh, it would decompose regularly and there
5:45
Speaker 1: would be an exchange of carbon happening pretty readily. But
5:48
Speaker 1: that's not the case. At the bottom of a peat bog,
5:50
Speaker 1: that carbon is staying locked in and that that carbon
5:54
Speaker 1: will eventually become the energy that we need or burn
5:58
Speaker 1: as coal precisely, so there's some decomposition that happens. Right.
6:02
Speaker 1: It's like if you look at swampmuck that eventually becomes
6:05
Speaker 1: pete that eventually becomes coal, that swampmuck, you can't really
6:08
Speaker 1: make out like a fish or a tree limb or
6:11
Speaker 1: anything like that after a while. So there is some decomposition.
6:14
Speaker 1: But the upshot of it is it doesn't fully decomposed
6:17
Speaker 1: like it would if microbes got onto it on land,
6:20
Speaker 1: like you were saying, And that decomposition that microbes carry
6:23
Speaker 1: out it unlocks all those chemical bonds that store chemical energy.
6:27
Speaker 1: It breaks up all of those um constituent elements and
6:30
Speaker 1: compounds that that make up those bonds um and then
6:34
Speaker 1: it spreads them out so that other plants can come
6:36
Speaker 1: along and use them. That doesn't happen in swampmuck. It
6:39
Speaker 1: just gets trapped frozen in time basically to a certain
6:42
Speaker 1: part of decomposition. And you still say, so, what, how
6:46
Speaker 1: does this make any sense? I'm reeling from all of
6:49
Speaker 1: this information. We'll just settle down because we're getting to
6:52
Speaker 1: the next most important part, and that is that if
6:55
Speaker 1: you look at a swamp, say the Okay Finoki or
6:58
Speaker 1: swamps in Indonesia, if you back far enough, you would
7:01
Speaker 1: probably be looking at something much deeper and more watery,
7:05
Speaker 1: like a pond or a lake. And for those ponds
7:08
Speaker 1: and lakes end up filling in over time, right, yeah,
7:12
Speaker 1: they you know, they start at the banks like you
7:13
Speaker 1: would think, and stuff drops in in the shallow areas
7:16
Speaker 1: and starts accumulating, and that just and we're talking over
7:20
Speaker 1: the course of a long period of time. It's not
7:22
Speaker 1: like you're gonna turn a lake into a swamp inside
7:25
Speaker 1: you know, a couple hundred years. Just try it. Yeah,
7:28
Speaker 1: I've tried, trust me, it's not working. But that just
7:32
Speaker 1: expands further and further towards the middle. Eventually that lake
7:36
Speaker 1: does turn into a swamp. Uh. And eventually that's going
7:38
Speaker 1: to turn into dry land. But that muck, that deposit,
7:42
Speaker 1: and that muck remains there, but it's now got earth
7:46
Speaker 1: on top of it, like you know, dry earth, and
7:50
Speaker 1: that that's a lot of compression. That's a lot of weight,
7:52
Speaker 1: and that's a lot of soil. And depending on and
7:55
Speaker 1: we'll get to this in a second, but depending on
7:57
Speaker 1: how deep you are and how much weight and how
7:59
Speaker 1: much pressure or uh is on top of you as muck,
8:03
Speaker 1: you're going to turn it into different things, uh, different
8:05
Speaker 1: kinds of coal. Yeah, definitely, so um that pressure that
8:09
Speaker 1: you mentioned, that's like the key ingredient and transforming muck
8:14
Speaker 1: to Pete to Cole and talked a little bit about
8:16
Speaker 1: this in the Diamonds episode. I think we had to
8:19
Speaker 1: have definitely, because eventually you get beyond Cole to graphite
8:23
Speaker 1: and then ostensibly from graphite onto diamonds, heat and pressure,
8:28
Speaker 1: right exactly, Um, and that that's so so Diamonds I
8:32
Speaker 1: guess start out as swamp muck too, and Cole is
8:36
Speaker 1: kind of like the the middle part of that long,
8:40
Speaker 1: lengthy process from muck to diamond basically. Um. But the
8:45
Speaker 1: album title, by the way, which what was it from
8:48
Speaker 1: muck to Diamond? Oh? Nice? That is good. I think
8:50
Speaker 1: that's like a that's like if your bands is really
8:53
Speaker 1: terrible at first but then just gets better and better,
8:56
Speaker 1: that's your greatest hits album title. Or if you're Neil
8:59
Speaker 1: Diamond and you really want to be on the nose.
9:01
Speaker 1: But is there a muck? Who know? Is there like
9:06
Speaker 1: a muck in the music world that he could have
9:08
Speaker 1: been doing? I don't think so, because he started out
9:12
Speaker 1: because that was in another episode as a writer at
9:15
Speaker 1: the the Brill building there for what was it called
9:18
Speaker 1: tim pan Alley tim pan Alley, Neil Diamond died. He
9:23
Speaker 1: was a Timpanaley. Guys, he was never he was never mucked.
9:25
Speaker 1: How old is he? Like, man, I don't remember that
9:30
Speaker 1: little faces on its way to true diamond. He is,
9:34
Speaker 1: he's graphified right now. Yeah, so sorry, Neil diamond. So
9:38
Speaker 1: um as the as more and more earth just gets
9:41
Speaker 1: deposited through the processes of erosion and deposition, and like
9:45
Speaker 1: rivers springing up and like flood their banks and spread
9:48
Speaker 1: out stuff, like more and more earth like builds up
9:51
Speaker 1: over that deposit of swamp muck that got laid down
9:55
Speaker 1: over time, and that as more and more builds up
9:59
Speaker 1: a above it, there's more and more weight and pressure
10:02
Speaker 1: pushing down and compressing and condensing it. And eventually that
10:06
Speaker 1: pete turns into coal. But you can't just say that
10:10
Speaker 1: coal is like really old pete because the pressure is
10:13
Speaker 1: so tremendous and the heat it's kind of like it
10:17
Speaker 1: cooks um it cooks the pete into coal. So the
10:22
Speaker 1: heat and the pressure actually make it go through like
10:25
Speaker 1: a bio geochemical transformation and it becomes a sedimentary rock,
10:30
Speaker 1: something that's not at all pete. It's it used to
10:33
Speaker 1: be pete, but now it's something totally different. It's undergone
10:35
Speaker 1: a metamorphosis, which is pretty neat. Yeah, I mean, it's
10:39
Speaker 1: awesome all that moisture is just squeezed out. All the
10:42
Speaker 1: impurities are squeezed out, and you're left, but you're you know,
10:45
Speaker 1: you're still left with those chemical bonds and there this
10:49
Speaker 1: this is a thing, and it's called qualification, and it's
10:52
Speaker 1: there's no better titled thing in earth sciences, I think
10:55
Speaker 1: than qualification and and very straightforward the process of turning
11:00
Speaker 1: muck to Pete's pete ification. Yeah, I think you should
11:04
Speaker 1: just addification onto every word to make it really easy
11:06
Speaker 1: to understand. Neil diamondification, yeah, podcastification. Yeah, that's great. Now
11:12
Speaker 1: we just became an earth science Should we take a break, Yeah,
11:16
Speaker 1: let's and then we'll come back and talk about the
11:18
Speaker 1: different types of coal. How about that sounds great? All right,
11:47
Speaker 1: we're back. We promised talk of different types of coal.
11:50
Speaker 1: Uh if when you last left us, pete has been
11:54
Speaker 1: squeezed out underground and we're talking, I don't even think
11:58
Speaker 1: we said about two and a half to six in
12:00
Speaker 1: a quarter miles beneath the earth. It's a long way down.
12:04
Speaker 1: It takes like that much compression to really start to
12:07
Speaker 1: turn pete into into coal. Right, So don't go uh
12:12
Speaker 1: digging a tin foot deep hole, throw some sediment in
12:14
Speaker 1: there and expect anything to happen, right Because also I
12:17
Speaker 1: don't know if we said this or not, but um,
12:20
Speaker 1: this process that we're talking about takes place over millions
12:23
Speaker 1: to hundreds of millions of years, depending on the situation
12:26
Speaker 1: in conditions. That's right, a long long time. And so
12:30
Speaker 1: there are a few different things that this coal can
12:34
Speaker 1: turn into, or the peat can turn into a few
12:36
Speaker 1: types of coal. The first one is lignite. Uh, it
12:40
Speaker 1: is crumbly still at this point, and it's not black yet.
12:43
Speaker 1: It's sort of brownish and you can still sort of
12:46
Speaker 1: see parts of the original plant material when it's lignite.
12:50
Speaker 1: Right after that is bituminous coal UM. And that's the
12:54
Speaker 1: coal that most people are familiar with. It's far and
12:57
Speaker 1: away the most widely used coal most like most widely
13:00
Speaker 1: mind coal. There's just a lot of it on earth.
13:03
Speaker 1: And that's just um coal that's been cooking and and
13:07
Speaker 1: pressed longer than lignite. Soft though, but it's not soft
13:12
Speaker 1: like to the touch, you know, it's just compared to
13:14
Speaker 1: the next step anthracite, it's soft. So yeah, it's called
13:19
Speaker 1: soft coal. And then yeah, the next step after that
13:21
Speaker 1: coal is left alone for much much longer um. And
13:25
Speaker 1: then there's again you've you've added some sort of heat source.
13:29
Speaker 1: It's either that um that original deposit of swamp muck
13:33
Speaker 1: has been moving pushed down further and further closer to
13:37
Speaker 1: the Earth's core so that it's just warmer there than
13:40
Speaker 1: it is towards the surface, or it happened to be
13:43
Speaker 1: deposited near like um volcanic activity, so there's that kind
13:47
Speaker 1: of heat. So you've got some heat. It's like it's
13:49
Speaker 1: in an oven and the pressure. After a long enough time,
13:52
Speaker 1: you eventually come up with anthracite. And anthracite is like
13:55
Speaker 1: the money coal, right, and that is officially hard coal. Uh,
14:00
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop there. I think you mentioned something about
14:02
Speaker 1: neil diamond turning into graphite. That is sort of the
14:06
Speaker 1: final thing that it can become. And you might think, oh, graphite,
14:10
Speaker 1: that sounds great, like that must be that must be
14:13
Speaker 1: the slowest burning, best coal on the planet. But it's
14:16
Speaker 1: really not true because graphite that their bonds, the energy bonds,
14:19
Speaker 1: are so strong that it takes a lot of energy
14:23
Speaker 1: to break those up. So you know, like regular soft coal,
14:27
Speaker 1: and I think even anthracite, you can ignite it without
14:30
Speaker 1: a ton of energy. But it's it's going to take
14:33
Speaker 1: a lot of energy to ignite graphite. Yeah, and the
14:35
Speaker 1: anthracite is sweet, sweet stuff. It doesn't take much energy
14:38
Speaker 1: to ignite. It has a low flame, it's um low smoke.
14:43
Speaker 1: It's just beautiful stuff. It's just much much rare than
14:47
Speaker 1: the bitchamus bituminous coal that we know, the bitamus. Yeah,
14:53
Speaker 1: it's not nobody likes it, no, so um chuck, I
14:58
Speaker 1: think we should also mention at this point, um, because
15:01
Speaker 1: it's about here where I was like, wait, what about oil?
15:03
Speaker 1: You know, it turns out that oil and coal undergo
15:06
Speaker 1: virtually the same processes. It's just the location of where
15:10
Speaker 1: they started out and then the source material that really
15:12
Speaker 1: makes them differ. So, coal, as we've seen, is made
15:16
Speaker 1: in swampy areas um from land based plants, and oil
15:21
Speaker 1: is just made in marine areas from sea based life basically. Yeah,
15:26
Speaker 1: it's really remarkable. How and I remember when we talked
15:29
Speaker 1: about like where oil comes from. It's a bit of
15:32
Speaker 1: a mind blowing thing to understand. And I feel like
15:35
Speaker 1: coal kind of completes the picture for me at least,
15:40
Speaker 1: depends on where it is right or the or how
15:43
Speaker 1: it started to Well, yeah, I mean that's where it
15:46
Speaker 1: was when it started. I got you, I got you,
15:49
Speaker 1: like Tin ban Alley, poor Neil Diamond. So um, the
15:54
Speaker 1: feeling he would make an appearance. I don't know why.
15:56
Speaker 1: I guess because you know we're talking graphite. Once you
15:59
Speaker 1: talk fight, your half a skip away from talking about
16:02
Speaker 1: Neil Diamond, because everyone knows he has gold records, platinum records,
16:06
Speaker 1: and a whole wall full of graphite. That's right. So um,
16:12
Speaker 1: it's not just us who understands cole. Like, we're just
16:14
Speaker 1: basically reporting what science has figured out. Science has a
16:17
Speaker 1: pretty pretty great understanding of how coal forms, the processes
16:21
Speaker 1: it overgoes all that, so like that you needed to
16:24
Speaker 1: point that out. So um, we understand coal enough that
16:28
Speaker 1: we can actually even go back and say like, hey,
16:31
Speaker 1: this seem actually probably came here, and we've got a
16:35
Speaker 1: little yarn. We can tell you guys about where one load,
16:38
Speaker 1: in particular, when major cole seem came from. Uh. And
16:42
Speaker 1: the whole thing started all the way back in the
16:44
Speaker 1: Carboniferous period, which was really wet and really really warm. Um.
16:50
Speaker 1: I think the average global temperature for the first half
16:53
Speaker 1: of the Carboniferous Carboniferous period it was like sixty degrees fahrenheit,
16:57
Speaker 1: which is twenty celsius. Okay, that doesn't sound very warm,
17:01
Speaker 1: but consider that one of the I think it was
17:04
Speaker 1: like the second hottest year on record, the global temperature
17:09
Speaker 1: was fifty eight point seven six degrees fahrenheights. So this
17:12
Speaker 1: is a good ten degrees fahrenheight warmer on average. That's
17:16
Speaker 1: a lot warmer for a global temperature. It is, uh,
17:20
Speaker 1: and it's hard to wrap your head around a global temperature,
17:23
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's that's everything, right, not just where you live,
17:26
Speaker 1: you know, because when I first saw these numbers, I
17:28
Speaker 1: was like, it's could that be correct? But yeah, you don't.
17:31
Speaker 1: Kind of when you think of global averages, it's a
17:32
Speaker 1: whole different ballgame, yeah, because I mean you're you're not
17:35
Speaker 1: just taking the equator into into um account. You're also
17:40
Speaker 1: taking the poles into account. You're mixing it all together,
17:42
Speaker 1: carrying the one. A bell goes off when you finally
17:46
Speaker 1: reach the answer, and there you go. That's right. And
17:48
Speaker 1: there were a lot of swamps back in those days, obviously,
17:52
Speaker 1: and uh, there were a lot of them were around
17:54
Speaker 1: where the equator is, so it was going to be
17:56
Speaker 1: especially hot there. And one in particular near the equator
18:00
Speaker 1: or was straddling. And I know we've talked a lot
18:02
Speaker 1: about tectonic plates and mirriad episodes, including the volcanoes. One
18:07
Speaker 1: but one of them straddled a plate boundary right where
18:10
Speaker 1: a couple of these plates met. Uh, And I guess
18:14
Speaker 1: we should say where it is. Uh, present day Europe,
18:17
Speaker 1: Asia and North America was called Laurasia, and then Gondwana,
18:22
Speaker 1: which is present day Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, and India.
18:28
Speaker 1: And these guys started banging up against each other as
18:30
Speaker 1: plates do when they when they meet and say hello.
18:34
Speaker 1: And mountain ranges are formed. And we know this is
18:36
Speaker 1: how mountain ranges are formed. But this particular mountain range
18:39
Speaker 1: was formed and then kept moving and kept moving until
18:43
Speaker 1: it eventually became the Appalachian Mountains. And so as these
18:48
Speaker 1: these massive supercontinents collided with one another and pushed it
18:51
Speaker 1: into one another and created this mountain range. Um, as
18:55
Speaker 1: the the land that made the mountains went up, the
18:59
Speaker 1: land on either side of those mountains bowed down, which
19:02
Speaker 1: was swampy if you remember. Yes, And that's really important
19:05
Speaker 1: because when that that process took place, and it's not
19:09
Speaker 1: like they just ran into each other like a car
19:11
Speaker 1: crash or anything. Took place over a really long time,
19:14
Speaker 1: but it was enough that it was it was dropping
19:17
Speaker 1: huge amounts of swamp muck and vegetation deep below the
19:21
Speaker 1: earth at a much faster rate than the succession of
19:24
Speaker 1: a lake to a pond to a swamp to dry
19:27
Speaker 1: land happened. So it was dropping a bunch of swamp
19:30
Speaker 1: muck down on either side of it. And that as
19:33
Speaker 1: that mountain rage moved forward and settled in the northeastern
19:36
Speaker 1: United States and southern southern part of Canada, it took
19:40
Speaker 1: those deposits with them, and then it baked and cooked
19:43
Speaker 1: for a couple of hundred million years. And now you
19:45
Speaker 1: have the coal seams up in the Appalachians right now.
19:49
Speaker 1: That's right. And this is no mystery, like it makes
19:52
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. We know why a lot of
19:54
Speaker 1: coal was formed. Then it was the first part of
19:58
Speaker 1: the Carboniferous period, which is called of the Mississippian epoch.
20:02
Speaker 1: Uh And like you said, it was really warm and
20:04
Speaker 1: sea levels were a lot higher than they are now,
20:07
Speaker 1: and a lot of the land was underwater. There was
20:09
Speaker 1: a lot of sea, a lot of marine environment environments
20:13
Speaker 1: where oil would form and this was at the beginning.
20:16
Speaker 1: The Pennsylvania epop epoch came next, and this is when
20:19
Speaker 1: the temperature is cooled down, and this was kind of
20:22
Speaker 1: the latter half of the Carboniferous period. That seawater is
20:25
Speaker 1: locked up in the ice. Toward the poles, the seawater retreats,
20:29
Speaker 1: and this is where you got those big swamps, and
20:31
Speaker 1: this is you know, the Pennsylvanian epoch was when uh,
20:36
Speaker 1: basically there was a huge spike in what would become coal. Yeah,
20:39
Speaker 1: so it makes total sense, and we understand why a
20:42
Speaker 1: huge deposition of the word world's coal came from this
20:45
Speaker 1: particular epoch of the Carboniferous period, because before that everything
20:49
Speaker 1: was too much underwater for there would be swamps, and
20:52
Speaker 1: you need swamps to create coal, right. But the thing is,
20:55
Speaker 1: there's a mystery and that shortly after the end of
20:59
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania period of or epoch of the Carboniferous period,
21:04
Speaker 1: that that deposition of cold just drops off suddenly. So
21:07
Speaker 1: it's almost like there's just one slice of of Earth's
21:11
Speaker 1: natural geological history where most of the coal that we
21:15
Speaker 1: find in the entire world was created. There's some before that,
21:20
Speaker 1: there's some still going on today. Coal still being made.
21:23
Speaker 1: But the bulk of it, the vast majority, happened during
21:27
Speaker 1: this and why why it started then, no mystery why
21:31
Speaker 1: it stopped around then? That has been a long standing mystery.
21:34
Speaker 1: And here is of course, where we get to the
21:36
Speaker 1: mystery of coal. Uh, that's right. And to explain the mystery,
21:42
Speaker 1: I guess we gotta get to sort of the second
21:43
Speaker 1: part of why there was so much coal, and that
21:46
Speaker 1: was due to the giant plants all of a sudden
21:49
Speaker 1: that we're happening happening during the Pennsylvanian epoch. It was
21:53
Speaker 1: just a lot of new plant diversity and they were
21:55
Speaker 1: really really big plants. They sucked up a lot of
21:58
Speaker 1: the CEO two in the atmosphere, admitted a lot of oxygen,
22:02
Speaker 1: and that made the plants grow biggie biggie big, and
22:05
Speaker 1: those big, big plants fell over into these swamps. And
22:09
Speaker 1: so this that's sort of part two of you know,
22:12
Speaker 1: if you have a lot of material all of a sudden,
22:14
Speaker 1: and a lot bigger material, h then you can eventually
22:17
Speaker 1: get more coal. So we know all this stuff and
22:20
Speaker 1: that's all well and good, but scientists started to look
22:22
Speaker 1: around again and say, like we need to try and
22:26
Speaker 1: figure out and I guess you know, it's an understanding
22:30
Speaker 1: of what happened in the past so we can understand
22:33
Speaker 1: what may happen in the future. It's a meta narrative.
22:36
Speaker 1: It is a meta narrative. Uh. And so to get there,
22:39
Speaker 1: we to the mystery. We have to explain what lignant is, right. Yeah,
22:43
Speaker 1: So one of the one of the reasons all those
22:46
Speaker 1: plants were allowed to get so huge wasn't just that
22:48
Speaker 1: they sucked up all the CEO two. It's that apparently
22:52
Speaker 1: around this time, lignan appeared on Earth, and lignant is
22:56
Speaker 1: what gives plants cell walls, their sturdiness, um, their heartiness,
23:02
Speaker 1: UM makes it difficult for them to break down after um,
23:07
Speaker 1: after they die, after they fall over and hit the
23:10
Speaker 1: swamp floor. And so they said, okay, lagnan came around
23:14
Speaker 1: around then. Maybe the reason why there was so much
23:18
Speaker 1: coal being laid down during that period and then it
23:21
Speaker 1: tapered off is because lignin showed up before anything that
23:26
Speaker 1: could break down. Lignant appeared on Earth, and then once
23:30
Speaker 1: that stuff came along, UM, the deposition of coal dropped
23:34
Speaker 1: off dramatically. And that's what's called the white rock appearance
23:39
Speaker 1: theory of where our coal came from her wind. That's right.
23:44
Speaker 1: And it sounds so boring too, you know, the regular
23:48
Speaker 1: person on the street. But if you're a scientists, well
23:51
Speaker 1: you think you don't You think it sounds pretty interesting.
23:53
Speaker 1: White rock theory, Yeah, I think that sounds amazingly interesting.
23:59
Speaker 1: It's as feel like it's the theory title that only
24:02
Speaker 1: an Earth scientists would love. But you're also in Earth science, wonk.
24:06
Speaker 1: So of course you're gonna gonna turn your crank, you
24:09
Speaker 1: know what I mean, I guess my grank. It's spending
24:11
Speaker 1: a million miles right now. So they had this theory
24:15
Speaker 1: and they started looking back and the U. S. Department
24:18
Speaker 1: of Energy said, and this was in twelve. They came
24:22
Speaker 1: out with the theory and said, hey, I bet you
24:25
Speaker 1: anything there was this. There was this new kind of
24:27
Speaker 1: fungus that came on the scene that could take care
24:31
Speaker 1: of lignant like nothing else before it could take care of.
24:35
Speaker 1: And they said, I bet you dollars to donuts that
24:37
Speaker 1: this made an appearance right about that same time. And
24:41
Speaker 1: they went back and checked and they were right. Yeah.
24:44
Speaker 1: They analyzed the genomes of a ton of different fungi
24:48
Speaker 1: from a class of fun guy called wood decay fun Guy,
24:51
Speaker 1: which really lives up to its name. It's one of
24:53
Speaker 1: the one of the few things on Earth that is
24:55
Speaker 1: capable of breaking down lignan. But boy can't. Like if
24:59
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a bunch a weird shingle like mushrooms
25:01
Speaker 1: growing out the side of a fallen tree in the woods, yeah,
25:04
Speaker 1: that's the type of wood decay fun Guy. And if
25:06
Speaker 1: you've ever picked up a piece of wood and it's
25:09
Speaker 1: just crumbled in your hands, that was because of the
25:12
Speaker 1: fun Guy, you can thank you for that dry rock.
25:14
Speaker 1: So they're really good at it. But they're doing that today.
25:17
Speaker 1: And they came along at some point in time. And
25:19
Speaker 1: when they analyzed the genes of one kind a white
25:23
Speaker 1: rot fungi, which is a mushroom bearing fungus um, they said,
25:28
Speaker 1: you know what, I think this actually came along towards
25:30
Speaker 1: the end of the Carboniferous period beginning of the Permian period,
25:35
Speaker 1: And this is probably the reason why all of that
25:38
Speaker 1: cold deposition suddenly dropped off all of a sudden, right,
25:42
Speaker 1: because now you have a situation where instead of dropping
25:45
Speaker 1: off falling into a swamp, largely decomposed and sitting there forever,
25:50
Speaker 1: you've got it falling down, and you know, the funk
25:53
Speaker 1: is doing its thing, just like we see more of today. Yeah,
25:57
Speaker 1: it jumped on it like the bunny from Monty Python
25:59
Speaker 1: and the Holy Grail. That's what that's how they pounce. Uh.
26:04
Speaker 1: Is this a good time for a break? I guess so.
26:07
Speaker 1: But I think we need to throw a little cliffhanger
26:09
Speaker 1: in their chuck, because there's a lot of scientists out
26:12
Speaker 1: there to say, not so fast. You can take your
26:14
Speaker 1: white rock theory and shove it, because I'm not convinced.
26:17
Speaker 1: I think that's a great cliffhanger. Thank you, all right,
26:20
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Okay. So some scientists have made
26:49
Speaker 1: the white rock theorists cry secretly in the bathroom atwork,
26:53
Speaker 1: not openly, but they did cry because they weren't very
26:56
Speaker 1: kind about it. They weren't. It was really mean. But
26:59
Speaker 1: um they did make some really good points, and one
27:02
Speaker 1: of them is that you know, we're not entirely certain.
27:05
Speaker 1: Maybe white rock ancestors showed up around the end of
27:09
Speaker 1: the carboniferous period. It's possible, but that's not to say
27:13
Speaker 1: that there's nothing that could break down lignant that existed
27:17
Speaker 1: before that. So maybe there was something already and you
27:21
Speaker 1: can actually see evidence of it from fossilized plant material
27:24
Speaker 1: that are partially decayed. Um, how would they have been
27:29
Speaker 1: at all decayed if there wasn't anything that could break
27:31
Speaker 1: down lignan before white rock came along. Yeah, so something
27:35
Speaker 1: was breaking stuff down. Uh, this may have sped it
27:38
Speaker 1: up or whatever, but something was already happening, and it appears,
27:42
Speaker 1: and I might let me know if I have the
27:44
Speaker 1: wrong take on this, but it appears what they're saying
27:47
Speaker 1: as an alternate theory is maybe there was not a
27:53
Speaker 1: big drop off more so than there was just a
27:56
Speaker 1: weird anomalous spike because of these tectonic lights crashing together
28:02
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden it happened to happen where
28:04
Speaker 1: all this swamp Plan was and that just really sped
28:08
Speaker 1: things up. So what we saw then was, uh, like
28:12
Speaker 1: what we're seeing today maybe is more in the order
28:14
Speaker 1: of just kind of how it normally is. And there
28:17
Speaker 1: was just a big spike because there was a big
28:19
Speaker 1: spike because of these tectonic plates happening and all of
28:22
Speaker 1: a sudden, this huge deposits of stuff and the Swamplan
28:25
Speaker 1: being buried underground. Yeah, like that's that's precisely right. That
28:29
Speaker 1: that we've been looking at it the wrong way. It's
28:31
Speaker 1: it's not like that was the normal process of coal making.
28:34
Speaker 1: It just so happened that there was this period of
28:36
Speaker 1: time in Earth's history where the conditions were perfectly right
28:41
Speaker 1: to make a bunch of coal all at once, and
28:44
Speaker 1: that window eventually closed and the continents broke up and
28:47
Speaker 1: they took their coal seams with them around the world.
28:50
Speaker 1: This see, this is the stuff that really fascinates me
28:54
Speaker 1: about Earth sciences is sort of the sliding doors thing, Like,
28:58
Speaker 1: had that not happened, we would not have had coal
29:01
Speaker 1: on the order that we have today at all, And
29:04
Speaker 1: like what what would how would that have changed the world,
29:06
Speaker 1: And how would that have changed the Industrial revolution? Or
29:10
Speaker 1: maybe prevented the Industrial Revolution from happening, because I guess
29:13
Speaker 1: we'd would still be burning would I guess who knows
29:18
Speaker 1: we'd be we would have figured out how to burn diamonds. Maybe. Yeah.
29:21
Speaker 1: It's just really interesting that this, you know, tectonic plates
29:25
Speaker 1: millions and millions of years ago, uh, ends up affecting
29:29
Speaker 1: like well as we'll see the Earth's climate today, but
29:33
Speaker 1: how we get around in the world, and like the
29:36
Speaker 1: energy we consume and not just tectonic plates. But the
29:39
Speaker 1: happenstance that there was the appearance of lignant which allowed
29:43
Speaker 1: all of this stuff, to all these plants to diversify
29:46
Speaker 1: and explode in size, and that fascinating and that yeah,
29:49
Speaker 1: it is. It took all these different little factors to
29:52
Speaker 1: make the coal that we see today so abundant. Because yeah,
29:56
Speaker 1: if that hadn't happened, if we didn't have these abundant deposits, um,
30:00
Speaker 1: who yeah, who knows where we would be or what
30:02
Speaker 1: we would be doing for for energy. And and that
30:05
Speaker 1: is the thing, because we are definitely using a lot
30:08
Speaker 1: of coal for energy and as a result, we're, um, well,
30:13
Speaker 1: we're wrecking the planet. There's really no other way to
30:15
Speaker 1: put it. It's definitely not just because of coal, but
30:18
Speaker 1: coal has definitely been a huge culprit because we've been
30:21
Speaker 1: using it for so long. Again it powered the industrial revolution, um.
30:26
Speaker 1: And then also because it is just such a dirty
30:29
Speaker 1: energy source. It is. Uh. But here's the thing, when
30:34
Speaker 1: used as an energy source, as a dirty energy source,
30:37
Speaker 1: if that coal were uh, we're not extracted and it
30:42
Speaker 1: just you know that the plant matter fell into the
30:44
Speaker 1: swamp and and it and it decomposed very slowly down
30:48
Speaker 1: there and eventually became uh, you know the three stages
30:51
Speaker 1: of coal, or I guess the four stages of coal.
30:53
Speaker 1: It would just stay that CEO two would stay locked
30:55
Speaker 1: down in there. Yes, it's uh, it actually acts as
30:58
Speaker 1: a sequest to rower I guess, to keep that carbon
31:03
Speaker 1: locked underground where it would have stayed had it not
31:07
Speaker 1: been for us. Yeah, so that makes it a carbon sink.
31:10
Speaker 1: Um is a sequester. Reminds me of that kids in
31:15
Speaker 1: the hall eradicate toor um So, but being a carbon sink,
31:21
Speaker 1: that makes it a really major part of the carbon cycle,
31:24
Speaker 1: which is the shuffling of carbon throughout the Earth, into
31:28
Speaker 1: the oceans, into the atmosphere, and that actually acts as
31:32
Speaker 1: Earth's thermostat because, like we were talking about, when all
31:35
Speaker 1: those plants came along in the Mississippian epoch of the
31:39
Speaker 1: Carboniferous period, they the more and more plants sucked more
31:42
Speaker 1: and more carbon dioxide out of the air, which actually
31:45
Speaker 1: cool global temperatures. Right, So, less carbon in the atmosphere
31:49
Speaker 1: equals lower lower temperatures. More carbon in the atmosphere equals
31:54
Speaker 1: higher temperatures, and so over time is that carbon moves
31:58
Speaker 1: slowly from atmosphere into rock and then released again into
32:02
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. That just keeps temperatures stable generally globally within
32:08
Speaker 1: a range. Um and cole plays a big part of that.
32:12
Speaker 1: But we have radically accelerated the pace of release of
32:19
Speaker 1: that carbon from those the carbon sink, that is coal
32:22
Speaker 1: back into the atmosphere by digging it up and burning
32:25
Speaker 1: it and not just um, not just speeding it up
32:28
Speaker 1: by by by um, you know, setting it on fire
32:31
Speaker 1: rather than letting it a road naturally over time, but
32:34
Speaker 1: also just the massive amounts that we burn have had
32:38
Speaker 1: a terrible effect. Well yeah, I mean you make a
32:41
Speaker 1: good point. You know, this coal, like an earthquake might
32:43
Speaker 1: push this coal seum above ground eventually and that exposes
32:48
Speaker 1: it to the atmosphere, but it's still going to be
32:49
Speaker 1: releasing that CEO two very slowly because it's not on fire.
32:54
Speaker 1: Then the point you made was like, there may be
32:56
Speaker 1: an unlucky thing, like you know, lightning might hit it
32:58
Speaker 1: and light it on fire or something like that, but
33:01
Speaker 1: save that or or some human coming along and doing it,
33:05
Speaker 1: it is going to be a really slow sort of
33:06
Speaker 1: natural process, and you're not gonna see these big spikes
33:09
Speaker 1: of c O two being released. Yeah, so a good um,
33:12
Speaker 1: a good reference point of references. Volcanoes are like the
33:15
Speaker 1: biggest emitter of carbon from the Earth back into the atmosphere.
33:20
Speaker 1: They it literally melts rock that contains carbon, including coal,
33:25
Speaker 1: and shoots that that out. Is like volcanic emissions back
33:29
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere. On a given year, volcanic activity releases
33:34
Speaker 1: between a hundred and thirty and three eighty million metric
33:38
Speaker 1: tons of carbon dioxide. On a given year, humans release
33:43
Speaker 1: thirty billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
33:49
Speaker 1: So yeah, and coal is a big, big part of that,
33:52
Speaker 1: um and it just kind of gives you an idea
33:55
Speaker 1: of like just how lopsided things are becoming. So hence
33:58
Speaker 1: we reached that point where global warming even though it's
34:01
Speaker 1: hot or it's cold, and there's freak weather and weird weather,
34:04
Speaker 1: and it's like, what does global warming even mean? We're
34:07
Speaker 1: contributing to global warming by releasing more carbon dioxide into
34:11
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, which warms the atmosphere, warms the surface of
34:14
Speaker 1: the oceans, which leads ocean a cidification to sea levels rise,
34:19
Speaker 1: and a whole cascade of really unpleasant stuff is happening
34:23
Speaker 1: and is about to happen that we're all going to
34:26
Speaker 1: have to adapt to and get used to. Yeah, I
34:28
Speaker 1: think we've It's interesting, I don't we've never done one
34:31
Speaker 1: solely on climate change, have we? I think we have? Oh,
34:35
Speaker 1: have we? I believe we have maybe global warming itself.
34:39
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but I feel like we have done
34:41
Speaker 1: because I just I kind of thought that we had
34:44
Speaker 1: covered it pretty fully in bits and chunks and a
34:48
Speaker 1: lot of different episodes, which really sort of bells very
34:53
Speaker 1: clearly out that you know, there are so many reasons
34:57
Speaker 1: and so much there's so much history to it, Like
35:00
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we probably did cover it in
35:02
Speaker 1: one episode, but I just the the tendrils of climate
35:06
Speaker 1: change are so far reaching, Like it's not it's not
35:08
Speaker 1: a surprise that it's made appearances and like dozens of
35:11
Speaker 1: our episodes. But I think that's one of the things
35:14
Speaker 1: I like about our job is like, you know, there's
35:18
Speaker 1: everybody knows that, like CEO two contributes to climate change,
35:21
Speaker 1: but you and I have the opportunity to like kind
35:23
Speaker 1: of take it slow and slow things down and explain
35:25
Speaker 1: it in a little more detail, you know, so that
35:28
Speaker 1: people who listen to us can can be like, oh, yes,
35:30
Speaker 1: that's true. And I know why, you know. I think
35:33
Speaker 1: that's it's very rewarding job that we have, Chuck, it is.
35:37
Speaker 1: We're lucky, dudes, We are lucky. Um, you got anything else?
35:42
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. This is a fun one, kind
35:43
Speaker 1: of short and sweet but dense like coal. That's right. Uh, Well,
35:49
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Cole, there's a
35:51
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to read, a lot of stuff, surprising
35:54
Speaker 1: amount of stuff on coal out there. Um, and it's
35:57
Speaker 1: kind of fun. Uh. And since I said it's kind
35:59
Speaker 1: of fun, that means it's time for a listener mail.
36:05
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this from an assie friend of ours. Hey,
36:08
Speaker 1: gent's sending a hello all the way from Australia Land.
36:12
Speaker 1: Like many of your listeners, I never really had a
36:14
Speaker 1: reason to write in other than to thank you guys,
36:16
Speaker 1: until the other day. That is. Recently, In one of
36:19
Speaker 1: your new new episodes, Josh made a point to clear
36:22
Speaker 1: any possible confusion about the way people should interpret the
36:26
Speaker 1: title of the show. He explained that he was unsure
36:29
Speaker 1: whether people should be or would be saying it and
36:32
Speaker 1: stuff you should already know or cool stuff we think
36:35
Speaker 1: you should know. It's funny you're just kinda talking about that. Uh.
36:39
Speaker 1: And with that out loud brain fart of an f overthought,
36:44
Speaker 1: I finally had my reason to get in touch. It's
36:46
Speaker 1: like you were speaking to me and I didn't even
36:47
Speaker 1: know it. Uh. And here goes the explanation. Okay, growing
36:52
Speaker 1: up in a home with a single mom and a
36:54
Speaker 1: protective one, Uh, there are a lot of very basic
36:56
Speaker 1: yet potentially dangerous things that I was not allowed to
36:58
Speaker 1: do or even learn how to do. The logic being
37:01
Speaker 1: if I didn't know, I wouldn't try it and I
37:04
Speaker 1: wouldn't get hurt. Uh. This was just so so great
37:08
Speaker 1: until I was an adult out in the real world
37:10
Speaker 1: with no idea how to use a can opener. So
37:12
Speaker 1: now there's me searching for a cool new podcast to
37:16
Speaker 1: listen to and I see one called Stuff You Should Know,
37:19
Speaker 1: and I swear to Steve Irwin, my first thought was,
37:23
Speaker 1: bloody hell, they might be able to teach me how
37:26
Speaker 1: to use a can opener. Of course, instead, what I
37:30
Speaker 1: found was an absolute beheamoth of a discography with more
37:34
Speaker 1: amazing stories, topics and jokes and I could ever have
37:36
Speaker 1: wished to hear about or even even if I look
37:39
Speaker 1: to be a hundred. Uh now listen to all the
37:41
Speaker 1: episodes and can't wait for the new ones through the week.
37:44
Speaker 1: I don't really need to be a listener mail. The
37:46
Speaker 1: fact that it seems you guys genuinely read these is
37:49
Speaker 1: amazing enough to me. I hope you guys and your
37:51
Speaker 1: families are well and staying safe. Keep it up, you
37:54
Speaker 1: bloody effing legends. Cheers. That is from Jackson and can Burra, Australia.
38:02
Speaker 1: Nice thanks Jack Cambarra, Canberra, Canberra. All right, um, I
38:08
Speaker 1: really brushed up before our Australian Yeah, that was a
38:12
Speaker 1: great email, Jackson, like one of the one of the
38:14
Speaker 1: better ones we've ever gotten, So thank you very much
38:17
Speaker 1: for that. Um, I think practice makes perfect with a
38:20
Speaker 1: with a can opener, Okay, I just need to close
38:25
Speaker 1: that circle. Yeah, and I don't think I could. I
38:27
Speaker 1: could explain it. I'm thinking of it and I don't
38:31
Speaker 1: think I can, so just give it some Yeah, you mean,
38:35
Speaker 1: I have one that goes on the top and it
38:38
Speaker 1: it actually like breaks the seal between the top of
38:42
Speaker 1: the can and the actual can. And I it took
38:46
Speaker 1: me several times. I think I actually went and looked
38:48
Speaker 1: up online how to use that one. Because I'm like,
38:50
Speaker 1: it cuts around the side and takes the whole lit off. Yes, yeah, yeah,
38:53
Speaker 1: I've seen those. Those are good. Yeah, I've seen him too.
38:55
Speaker 1: I've never tried to use one before, and it's not intuitive,
38:58
Speaker 1: so I guess you're Yeah. My advice, Jackson is to
39:01
Speaker 1: just go look up a couple of how to videos
39:04
Speaker 1: on the internet and they will explain how can openers work?
39:07
Speaker 1: And that means by proxy, I've just explained how can
39:10
Speaker 1: openers work? Or by one of those great old school
39:15
Speaker 1: seventies p green electric cannon putters and set it on
39:18
Speaker 1: your counter. Those are awesome. Yeah, you want to talk
39:19
Speaker 1: about home defense, just like, keep a couple of those
39:23
Speaker 1: lids laying around. You can throw them like throwing stars
39:25
Speaker 1: at in true ninja stars. And is there anything in
39:29
Speaker 1: the seventies that wasn't dangerous? I don't think so. I
39:33
Speaker 1: don't either remember the strollers back then? Good lord? Sure well,
39:38
Speaker 1: we could go on like this forever, but I can
39:40
Speaker 1: hear John Hodgman rolling over in his grave and he's
39:42
Speaker 1: not even dead yet. He'd pre rolls though, just to
39:46
Speaker 1: you know, get the practice in right. So if you
39:48
Speaker 1: want to get in touch of this, like Jackson did
39:50
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to stuff podcast at
39:52
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
39:58
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio. More podcasts my heart Radio, visit
40:02
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
40:04
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H m hm