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

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