WEBVTT - The Mystery of Coal 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.240 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:17.919 and there's Chuck and this is Stuff you Should Know. Uh. 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:22.480 And that's that's it right there, The Mystery of Coal. 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:25.680 You like the title I came up with. It's a 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.400 working title, but now I guess it's the official title. 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.040 I like it because I thought, well, what could be 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:37.440 the mystery of coal? And now I know it's earth science, 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:42.159 so I find it jazz metastic. Hey, you know, this 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:44.720 is one of the only sciences I can really get into. 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:47.239 So so did this one suck you in? Then? I 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:51.520 guess it sucked me in like a fallen branch into 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:54.360 the depths of a peat bog. Oh my gosh, that's 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:58.080 some great man. I can't wait for forty seconds from 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:02.400 now when we start talking about that part. But first 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:07.320 we gotta tell everybody we're talking about coal. The titles correct, 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:10.600 it's apt, it's accurate, and there is a mystery to 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:12.240 the coal, which we'll get to. But there's a lot 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:15.600 more to col than just the mystery behind it. Um 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.520 And actually, the way that cole forms is super interesting 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:20.960 and it's been forming for a really long time, and 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:23.320 it turns out, chuck, humans have been using it for 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:27.720 a really long time. There's evidence that the um, the 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:31.560 people who inhabited China all the way back years ago, 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.399 we're burning coal that they found around the surface as 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:42.240 a fuel, which is pretty that's right. They were tailgating, sure, 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:46.119 burning cole cooking up meat. Oh, I got you. Yeah, 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:50.120 they were a big time. They had um wooden pickup trucks, 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:53.840 the cook out of the back. Remember the stainless steel 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.920 pickup trucks at the Atlanta Olympics. I have still never 0:01:56.960 --> 0:01:59.720 seen video of that. You're you just talked about it 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:03.920 like it was some embarrassing Yeah, yeah, for sure, now 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:06.040 you definitely have. Anyway, none of that has to do 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.239 with wouldn't pickup trucks, is what we're here for. No, 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:10.240 it has to do with coal. So let's just say 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:14.200 about years ago we started taking coal from the ground 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:18.320 and burning it, and on a very small scale, that's 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.240 a pretty clever thing to do. Unfortunately, as we'll see, 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:24.080 we've really kind of taken that to the mp degree 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.480 starting in the Industrial Revolution, and it poses a lot 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:32.520 of problems for the atmosphere that we'll talk about. But UM, 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.120 more to the point because it takes so long to 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:39.960 form coal, the rate that we're burning it at far 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:44.000 outpaces the rate that it's being made at um, which 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.799 makes coal a non renewable resource, which we kicked off 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.280 years ago. But now finally, Chuck, we've arrived to that 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:53.320 thing you foreshadowed on, and that's how coal is made. 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:55.440 So if you want to have a grasp on how 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:57.960 long it takes to make coal, we're going to explain 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:02.680 it step by step. That's right. And I referenced Pete 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.480 Boggs at the beginning, and people might have thought, what 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:07.280 in the world is he even talking about with that, 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:11.840 and why is Josh so excited? Chuck reference that, and 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:16.639 here's the answer. Uh, Pete is where cold begins. And 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:20.959 Pete is like, you know, sort of loose layers of 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:26.800 all kinds of plant and mineral gobbledygook that accumulates in 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:30.280 the forest in the swampy areas called Pete swamps. You 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:32.480 might call them bogs or myers, depending on where you 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.520 live in the world. But these are wet lands that 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:40.920 have really great conditions to swallow up a fallen branch 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.880 or a plant or something like that, or a dead 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:47.840 animal and have it slowly sink down to the bottom 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:52.840 and kind of protect it from not completely from erosion, 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:56.840 but from erosion that would happen if it was on land, right, right, 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.560 So like if you so, the reason why is protected 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:03.200 from that from de camp um you know, like how 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:07.200 a body decays or um uh like on the body 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:10.920 farm at University of Tennessee, or if um you're talking 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.480 about a wild animal in the forest or a mouse 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:16.280 that got into your attic or a plant that fell 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:21.800 over in your backyard. People, that stuff decomposes, right, it 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.280 doesn't really decompose in the swamp because a swamp by 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:30.400 definition has um basically stagnant water. Not much goes on 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.520 in a swamp. Strangely enough, everything just kind of very 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:39.200 slow motion biologically and geologically speaking. So that water, because 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:42.919 it lacks oxygen, it's not a really great place for 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.320 the microbes that carry out decomposition on planet Earth to 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:49.800 live because they need oxygen to carry out those functions 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:53.720 to eat things and decompose them. And so the swamp water, 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:58.480 being stagnant and oxygen poor, acts basically as a preservative 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.640 for the stuff that lived along the swamp and has 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.680 now died and fallen into the swamp and settled on 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:09.320 the bottom, creating what's lovingly known as muck. That's right, 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:11.800 And the really important part here. You might be saying, like, 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:13.880 big deal, a bunch of stuff falls to the bottom 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.360 of swamp and kind of really really slowly decomposes, if 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:19.960 at all. The really important part here, and this is 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:23.240 how we get to coal, which ultimately leads to why 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:27.760 we have problems with climate change, is that carbon is 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.720 locked down in place in the bottom of that swamp 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.720 with that muck. It's just it's just sitting there. It's 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:36.680 not you know, if it was on dry land and 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:40.520 it was a dead like like keep saying, dead dear 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:45.400 dead mouse, sure, uh, it would decompose regularly and there 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.839 would be an exchange of carbon happening pretty readily. But 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:50.960 that's not the case. At the bottom of a peat bog, 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:54.720 that carbon is staying locked in and that that carbon 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:57.960 will eventually become the energy that we need or burn 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:02.720 as coal precisely, so there's some decomposition that happens. Right. 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.240 It's like if you look at swampmuck that eventually becomes 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.479 pete that eventually becomes coal, that swampmuck, you can't really 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:10.960 make out like a fish or a tree limb or 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.440 anything like that after a while. So there is some decomposition. 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:17.920 But the upshot of it is it doesn't fully decomposed 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:20.760 like it would if microbes got onto it on land, 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:23.600 like you were saying, And that decomposition that microbes carry 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.839 out it unlocks all those chemical bonds that store chemical energy. 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:30.200 It breaks up all of those um constituent elements and 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.760 compounds that that make up those bonds um and then 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:36.400 it spreads them out so that other plants can come 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:39.000 along and use them. That doesn't happen in swampmuck. It 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:42.720 just gets trapped frozen in time basically to a certain 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.720 part of decomposition. And you still say, so, what, how 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:49.240 does this make any sense? I'm reeling from all of 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:51.960 this information. We'll just settle down because we're getting to 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:54.960 the next most important part, and that is that if 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.000 you look at a swamp, say the Okay Finoki or 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:01.800 swamps in Indonesia, if you back far enough, you would 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:05.200 probably be looking at something much deeper and more watery, 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:08.560 like a pond or a lake. And for those ponds 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:12.000 and lakes end up filling in over time, right, yeah, 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:13.720 they you know, they start at the banks like you 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.800 would think, and stuff drops in in the shallow areas 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:20.320 and starts accumulating, and that just and we're talking over 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:22.080 the course of a long period of time. It's not 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:25.480 like you're gonna turn a lake into a swamp inside 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:28.440 you know, a couple hundred years. Just try it. Yeah, 0:07:28.680 --> 0:07:31.920 I've tried, trust me, it's not working. But that just 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.920 expands further and further towards the middle. Eventually that lake 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:38.880 does turn into a swamp. Uh. And eventually that's going 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:42.240 to turn into dry land. But that muck, that deposit, 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:46.760 and that muck remains there, but it's now got earth 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:49.880 on top of it, like you know, dry earth, and 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.320 that that's a lot of compression. That's a lot of weight, 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:55.000 and that's a lot of soil. And depending on and 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:56.760 we'll get to this in a second, but depending on 0:07:57.120 --> 0:07:59.440 how deep you are and how much weight and how 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.920 much pressure or uh is on top of you as muck, 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:05.800 you're going to turn it into different things, uh, different 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:09.800 kinds of coal. Yeah, definitely, so um that pressure that 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:14.240 you mentioned, that's like the key ingredient and transforming muck 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:16.840 to Pete to Cole and talked a little bit about 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:18.960 this in the Diamonds episode. I think we had to 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:23.520 have definitely, because eventually you get beyond Cole to graphite 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:28.239 and then ostensibly from graphite onto diamonds, heat and pressure, 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:32.800 right exactly, Um, and that that's so so Diamonds I 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:36.360 guess start out as swamp muck too, and Cole is 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:39.920 kind of like the the middle part of that long, 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:45.120 lengthy process from muck to diamond basically. Um. But the 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.120 album title, by the way, which what was it from 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:50.520 muck to Diamond? Oh? Nice? That is good. I think 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.600 that's like a that's like if your bands is really 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:55.839 terrible at first but then just gets better and better, 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:58.960 that's your greatest hits album title. Or if you're Neil 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:00.360 Diamond and you really want to be on the nose. 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:06.720 But is there a muck? Who know? Is there like 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:08.640 a muck in the music world that he could have 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:11.959 been doing? I don't think so, because he started out 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.839 because that was in another episode as a writer at 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:18.720 the the Brill building there for what was it called 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.960 tim pan Alley tim pan Alley, Neil Diamond died. He 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:25.520 was a Timpanaley. Guys, he was never he was never mucked. 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:30.880 How old is he? Like, man, I don't remember that 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:34.160 little faces on its way to true diamond. He is, 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.680 he's graphified right now. Yeah, so sorry, Neil diamond. So 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.520 um as the as more and more earth just gets 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:45.240 deposited through the processes of erosion and deposition, and like 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:48.040 rivers springing up and like flood their banks and spread 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.440 out stuff, like more and more earth like builds up 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:55.040 over that deposit of swamp muck that got laid down 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:59.640 over time, and that as more and more builds up 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:02.480 a above it, there's more and more weight and pressure 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:06.600 pushing down and compressing and condensing it. And eventually that 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:09.920 pete turns into coal. But you can't just say that 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.760 coal is like really old pete because the pressure is 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.080 so tremendous and the heat it's kind of like it 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:22.280 cooks um it cooks the pete into coal. So the 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.440 heat and the pressure actually make it go through like 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:30.760 a bio geochemical transformation and it becomes a sedimentary rock, 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:33.439 something that's not at all pete. It's it used to 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.880 be pete, but now it's something totally different. It's undergone 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:39.760 a metamorphosis, which is pretty neat. Yeah, I mean, it's 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:42.200 awesome all that moisture is just squeezed out. All the 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.720 impurities are squeezed out, and you're left, but you're you know, 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:49.200 you're still left with those chemical bonds and there this 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:52.200 this is a thing, and it's called qualification, and it's 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:54.920 there's no better titled thing in earth sciences, I think 0:10:55.640 --> 0:11:00.000 than qualification and and very straightforward the process of turning 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:04.040 muck to Pete's pete ification. Yeah, I think you should 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:06.720 just addification onto every word to make it really easy 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:12.320 to understand. Neil diamondification, yeah, podcastification. Yeah, that's great. Now 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:16.280 we just became an earth science Should we take a break, Yeah, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:18.000 let's and then we'll come back and talk about the 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:46.640 different types of coal. How about that sounds great? All right, 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:49.680 we're back. We promised talk of different types of coal. 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:54.280 Uh if when you last left us, pete has been 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:58.079 squeezed out underground and we're talking, I don't even think 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:00.199 we said about two and a half to six in 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:04.160 a quarter miles beneath the earth. It's a long way down. 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.280 It takes like that much compression to really start to 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:11.920 turn pete into into coal. Right, So don't go uh 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:14.840 digging a tin foot deep hole, throw some sediment in 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:17.640 there and expect anything to happen, right Because also I 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:19.800 don't know if we said this or not, but um, 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.400 this process that we're talking about takes place over millions 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.880 to hundreds of millions of years, depending on the situation 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:30.160 in conditions. That's right, a long long time. And so 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:34.360 there are a few different things that this coal can 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:36.400 turn into, or the peat can turn into a few 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:40.000 types of coal. The first one is lignite. Uh, it 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:43.480 is crumbly still at this point, and it's not black yet. 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.240 It's sort of brownish and you can still sort of 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:50.160 see parts of the original plant material when it's lignite. 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:54.760 Right after that is bituminous coal UM. And that's the 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.079 coal that most people are familiar with. It's far and 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.640 away the most widely used coal most like most widely 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:03.120 mind coal. There's just a lot of it on earth. 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:07.680 And that's just um coal that's been cooking and and 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:12.439 pressed longer than lignite. Soft though, but it's not soft 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:14.800 like to the touch, you know, it's just compared to 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:19.120 the next step anthracite, it's soft. So yeah, it's called 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.240 soft coal. And then yeah, the next step after that 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:25.320 coal is left alone for much much longer um. And 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:29.760 then there's again you've you've added some sort of heat source. 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:33.880 It's either that um that original deposit of swamp muck 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:37.199 has been moving pushed down further and further closer to 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.199 the Earth's core so that it's just warmer there than 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.200 it is towards the surface, or it happened to be 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:47.400 deposited near like um volcanic activity, so there's that kind 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:49.400 of heat. So you've got some heat. It's like it's 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.600 in an oven and the pressure. After a long enough time, 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:55.320 you eventually come up with anthracite. And anthracite is like 0:13:55.360 --> 0:14:00.160 the money coal, right, and that is officially hard coal. Uh, 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:02.640 it doesn't stop there. I think you mentioned something about 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.520 neil diamond turning into graphite. That is sort of the 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:10.559 final thing that it can become. And you might think, oh, graphite, 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.120 that sounds great, like that must be that must be 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.680 the slowest burning, best coal on the planet. But it's 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.920 really not true because graphite that their bonds, the energy bonds, 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.080 are so strong that it takes a lot of energy 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:27.400 to break those up. So you know, like regular soft coal, 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.880 and I think even anthracite, you can ignite it without 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:33.240 a ton of energy. But it's it's going to take 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:35.640 a lot of energy to ignite graphite. Yeah, and the 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.880 anthracite is sweet, sweet stuff. It doesn't take much energy 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:43.320 to ignite. It has a low flame, it's um low smoke. 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:47.440 It's just beautiful stuff. It's just much much rare than 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:53.400 the bitchamus bituminous coal that we know, the bitamus. Yeah, 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:58.360 it's not nobody likes it, no, so um chuck, I 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.240 think we should also mention at this point, um, because 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:03.240 it's about here where I was like, wait, what about oil? 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.520 You know, it turns out that oil and coal undergo 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:10.080 virtually the same processes. It's just the location of where 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:12.880 they started out and then the source material that really 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.440 makes them differ. So, coal, as we've seen, is made 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:20.920 in swampy areas um from land based plants, and oil 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:26.520 is just made in marine areas from sea based life basically. Yeah, 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:29.520 it's really remarkable. How and I remember when we talked 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.120 about like where oil comes from. It's a bit of 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.680 a mind blowing thing to understand. And I feel like 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.840 coal kind of completes the picture for me at least, 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.680 depends on where it is right or the or how 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.880 it started to Well, yeah, I mean that's where it 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:48.480 was when it started. I got you, I got you, 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:54.520 like Tin ban Alley, poor Neil Diamond. So um, the 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:56.320 feeling he would make an appearance. I don't know why. 0:15:56.920 --> 0:15:59.480 I guess because you know we're talking graphite. Once you 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.800 talk fight, your half a skip away from talking about 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:06.880 Neil Diamond, because everyone knows he has gold records, platinum records, 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:10.920 and a whole wall full of graphite. That's right. So um, 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:14.640 it's not just us who understands cole. Like, we're just 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.520 basically reporting what science has figured out. Science has a 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:21.560 pretty pretty great understanding of how coal forms, the processes 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.120 it overgoes all that, so like that you needed to 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:28.680 point that out. So um, we understand coal enough that 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.440 we can actually even go back and say like, hey, 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.120 this seem actually probably came here, and we've got a 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.240 little yarn. We can tell you guys about where one load, 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:42.040 in particular, when major cole seem came from. Uh. And 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.360 the whole thing started all the way back in the 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:50.520 Carboniferous period, which was really wet and really really warm. Um. 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:53.560 I think the average global temperature for the first half 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:57.920 of the Carboniferous Carboniferous period it was like sixty degrees fahrenheit, 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:01.680 which is twenty celsius. Okay, that doesn't sound very warm, 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:04.760 but consider that one of the I think it was 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:09.320 like the second hottest year on record, the global temperature 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.359 was fifty eight point seven six degrees fahrenheights. So this 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:16.520 is a good ten degrees fahrenheight warmer on average. That's 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:20.600 a lot warmer for a global temperature. It is, uh, 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:22.640 and it's hard to wrap your head around a global temperature, 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.600 but yeah, that's that's everything, right, not just where you live, 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:28.600 you know, because when I first saw these numbers, I 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:31.160 was like, it's could that be correct? But yeah, you don't. 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:32.960 Kind of when you think of global averages, it's a 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:35.480 whole different ballgame, yeah, because I mean you're you're not 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:40.200 just taking the equator into into um account. You're also 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:42.399 taking the poles into account. You're mixing it all together, 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:46.080 carrying the one. A bell goes off when you finally 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:48.960 reach the answer, and there you go. That's right. And 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:51.840 there were a lot of swamps back in those days, obviously, 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:54.320 and uh, there were a lot of them were around 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.159 where the equator is, so it was going to be 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.959 especially hot there. And one in particular near the equator 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:02.520 or was straddling. And I know we've talked a lot 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:07.120 about tectonic plates and mirriad episodes, including the volcanoes. One 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.800 but one of them straddled a plate boundary right where 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:14.440 a couple of these plates met. Uh, And I guess 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.240 we should say where it is. Uh, present day Europe, 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:22.199 Asia and North America was called Laurasia, and then Gondwana, 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:28.239 which is present day Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, and India. 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:30.920 And these guys started banging up against each other as 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.320 plates do when they when they meet and say hello. 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:36.680 And mountain ranges are formed. And we know this is 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:39.800 how mountain ranges are formed. But this particular mountain range 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.280 was formed and then kept moving and kept moving until 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.679 it eventually became the Appalachian Mountains. And so as these 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.560 these massive supercontinents collided with one another and pushed it 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.800 into one another and created this mountain range. Um, as 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.840 the the land that made the mountains went up, the 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.920 land on either side of those mountains bowed down, which 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:05.800 was swampy if you remember. Yes, And that's really important 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:09.560 because when that that process took place, and it's not 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:11.520 like they just ran into each other like a car 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:13.800 crash or anything. Took place over a really long time, 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.000 but it was enough that it was it was dropping 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:21.240 huge amounts of swamp muck and vegetation deep below the 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.480 earth at a much faster rate than the succession of 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.040 a lake to a pond to a swamp to dry 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:30.560 land happened. So it was dropping a bunch of swamp 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:33.400 muck down on either side of it. And that as 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:36.600 that mountain rage moved forward and settled in the northeastern 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.080 United States and southern southern part of Canada, it took 0:19:40.400 --> 0:19:43.119 those deposits with them, and then it baked and cooked 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:45.560 for a couple of hundred million years. And now you 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:49.120 have the coal seams up in the Appalachians right now. 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:52.240 That's right. And this is no mystery, like it makes 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:54.600 a lot of sense. We know why a lot of 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:58.359 coal was formed. Then it was the first part of 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.880 the Carboniferous period, which is called of the Mississippian epoch. 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:04.720 Uh And like you said, it was really warm and 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:06.840 sea levels were a lot higher than they are now, 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:09.720 and a lot of the land was underwater. There was 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:13.520 a lot of sea, a lot of marine environment environments 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.080 where oil would form and this was at the beginning. 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:19.520 The Pennsylvania epop epoch came next, and this is when 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:22.000 the temperature is cooled down, and this was kind of 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:25.480 the latter half of the Carboniferous period. That seawater is 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:28.800 locked up in the ice. Toward the poles, the seawater retreats, 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:31.840 and this is where you got those big swamps, and 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:35.840 this is you know, the Pennsylvanian epoch was when uh, 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:39.160 basically there was a huge spike in what would become coal. Yeah, 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:42.159 so it makes total sense, and we understand why a 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.399 huge deposition of the word world's coal came from this 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:49.680 particular epoch of the Carboniferous period, because before that everything 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.040 was too much underwater for there would be swamps, and 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.399 you need swamps to create coal, right. But the thing is, 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.159 there's a mystery and that shortly after the end of 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:03.359 the Pennsylvania period of or epoch of the Carboniferous period, 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:07.479 that that deposition of cold just drops off suddenly. So 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:11.240 it's almost like there's just one slice of of Earth's 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:15.280 natural geological history where most of the coal that we 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:19.720 find in the entire world was created. There's some before that, 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:23.400 there's some still going on today. Coal still being made. 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:27.400 But the bulk of it, the vast majority, happened during 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:31.320 this and why why it started then, no mystery why 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:34.560 it stopped around then? That has been a long standing mystery. 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:36.800 And here is of course, where we get to the 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:41.640 mystery of coal. Uh, that's right. And to explain the mystery, 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:43.919 I guess we gotta get to sort of the second 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:46.199 part of why there was so much coal, and that 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.240 was due to the giant plants all of a sudden 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:53.240 that we're happening happening during the Pennsylvanian epoch. It was 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:55.880 just a lot of new plant diversity and they were 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:58.520 really really big plants. They sucked up a lot of 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:01.720 the CEO two in the atmosphere, admitted a lot of oxygen, 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:04.919 and that made the plants grow biggie biggie big, and 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:09.080 those big, big plants fell over into these swamps. And 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:12.320 so this that's sort of part two of you know, 0:22:12.359 --> 0:22:14.240 if you have a lot of material all of a sudden, 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.400 and a lot bigger material, h then you can eventually 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:20.000 get more coal. So we know all this stuff and 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:22.920 that's all well and good, but scientists started to look 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:26.159 around again and say, like we need to try and 0:22:26.200 --> 0:22:30.119 figure out and I guess you know, it's an understanding 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:33.040 of what happened in the past so we can understand 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:35.800 what may happen in the future. It's a meta narrative. 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:39.760 It is a meta narrative. Uh. And so to get there, 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:43.520 we to the mystery. We have to explain what lignant is, right. Yeah, 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:46.200 So one of the one of the reasons all those 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:48.879 plants were allowed to get so huge wasn't just that 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:52.080 they sucked up all the CEO two. It's that apparently 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:56.760 around this time, lignan appeared on Earth, and lignant is 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:01.560 what gives plants cell walls, their sturdiness, um, their heartiness, 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:07.520 UM makes it difficult for them to break down after um, 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:10.480 after they die, after they fall over and hit the 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:14.920 swamp floor. And so they said, okay, lagnan came around 0:23:14.960 --> 0:23:18.120 around then. Maybe the reason why there was so much 0:23:18.200 --> 0:23:21.359 coal being laid down during that period and then it 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:26.199 tapered off is because lignin showed up before anything that 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:30.040 could break down. Lignant appeared on Earth, and then once 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:34.919