Why almost all coal was made at the same time

Most of the coal on earth was created during a single short period of geological history 300 million years ago. It's called the carboniferous period. Find out why coal production stopped so abruptly.

CORRECTIONS

So this video was quite rushed because I wanted to get it out in time for the #teamtrees launch. Here are a couple of things I got wrong:

Not ALL coal was made during the carboniferous period. There exists some younger coal here and there that formed under rare conditions that enabled it in spite of the presence of capable fungi. I did film myself saying that but it was lost it my rushed edit.

Photosynthesis is more complicated than I described. It involves water for a start. And it seems that the oxygen released during photosynthesis comes from the H₂O not the CO₂. Though I haven't be able to verify that.

And here's a non-correction! The thing I was holding up at the start was not charcoal. It was a coal dust briquette. You could argue that the briquette was made recently but the coal it's made of is old!

So yeah, the thrust of the video still stands but it's been a learning opportunity for me!

A final thought on planting trees for carbon capture. A lot of comments saying "what's the point? When the trees die the decomposers will release the CO₂ back into the atmosphere. But really this is more about planting *forests*. In a forest, when a tree dies, another tree grows in its place recapturing the carbon. But also, it's my understanding that it takes a very long time to release the CO₂. Like hundreds of years. So in terms of tackling climate change which is a problem of human time scales, it's a useful endeavour.

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[SteveMould]

CORRECTIONS


So this video was quite rushed because I wanted to get it out in time for the #teamtrees launch. Here are a couple of things I got wrong:


Not ALL coal was made during the carboniferous period. There exists some younger coal here and there that formed under rare conditions that enabled it in spite of the presence of capable fungi. I did film myself saying that but it was lost it my rushed edit.


Photosynthesis is more complicated than I described. It involves water for a start. And it seems that the oxygen released during photosynthesis comes from the H₂O not the CO₂. Though I haven't be able to verify that.


And here's a non-correction! The thing I was holding up at the start was *not* charcoal. It was a coal dust briquette. You could argue that the briquette was made recently but the coal it's made of is old!


So yeah, the thrust of the video still stands but it's been a learning opportunity for me!


A final thought on planting trees for carbon capture. A lot of comments saying "what's the point? When the trees die the decomposers will release the CO₂ back into the atmosphere. But really this is more about planting *forests*. In a forest, when a tree dies, another tree grows in its place recapturing the carbon. But also, it's my understanding that it takes a very long time to release the CO₂. Like hundreds of years. So in terms of tackling climate change which is a problem of human time scales, it's a useful endeavour.

[YouLilalas]

So basically we are stuck with plastics for the next 60 million years until some bacteria figure out how to decompose them?

[KevinUchihaOG]

That's actually one of the most interesting thing i've learned this month.

[kekeke]

Millions years later: "Why almost all fossil plasic was made at the same time"

[TheDirtyShaman]

A common misconception that you included is that plants split CO2 into carbon and oxygen, while they actually split water and bind the hydrogen to the CO2 to create sugar and release the left-over oxygen from the water into the air.

[nodoxplz]

1:50 Lignin: Essence of Wood, A Mould Fragrance

[ewy]

I play Minecraft, and I can confirm this is true

[bobmetzger]

Geologist speaking here: There is Permian coal, Pennsylvanian coal, Cretaceous coal, Eocene coal all of vastly differing geologic time. Mr Mould holds up a piece of man-made charcoal. Much of his thesis is basically just incorrect.

[Lorentari]

I love geological time "It all happened at the same time" = it happened over a time period more than 60 times the period humans have existed

[solalflechelles]

Hello, and good day!
The theory presented here has been mostly abandoned by experts a few years before you published this video.


I greatly appreciate your videos, and recently I watched your 2019 video on the Carboniferous coal production peak. It presents a very compelling and persuasive story, dating as best I can tell all the way back to a 1990 paper, that explains the coal production peak by a lag between the evolution of lignin production in plants and the evolution of lignin degradation in fungi. That hypothesis was bolstered in 2010 by a Science paper which used the molecular clock to estimate the evolution of white-rot Agaricomycetes, the main known lineage with lignin degradation ability, to the early Permian, right at the end of the Carboniferous.
However, that hypothesis has been mostly abandoned after a 2016 PNAS paper questioned it on several grounds:
- the low lignin content of some of the most important Carboniferous peat-forming plants: lycopsid bark is very abundant in Carboniferous coal, yet it contains no lignin,
- periods when lignin was abundantly produced do not correspond to observed peaks in coal production,
- coal accumulation peaks seem to reflect local environmental conditions, not the lignin content of the plant material,
- Carboniferous fossil wood often does exhibit signs of fungal decay,
- while lignin-degrading peroxidases do seem to have appeared in the Early Permian, other less effective lignin-degrading enzymes do exist which seem to have evolved as far back as the Devonian (420–359 Ma), effectively closing the gap between lignin production(∼420 Ma) and lignin degradation evolution,
- massive coal deposits have been formed during the Permian, after the evolution of lignin degradation by white-rot Agaricomycetes,
- furthermore, if the gap hypothesis was correct, the lack of lignin degradation and subsequent carbon burial should have led to the depletion of atmospheric carbon in a much shorter time than the proposed 120 Ma Carboniferous gap.
Rather, the Carboniferous peak is explained by the abundance of equatorial wetlands, which maximize productivity while minimizing decay thanks to waterlogged anoxic ground. Crucially, this accumulation is sustained thanks to the continued subsidence of the ground (ie, the ground sinks) caused by the formation of the Pangea: the collision of continental tectonic plates led to buckling of the crust, creating basins where the ground slowly sink, being filled all the while by sediments charged with organic plant matter, which eventually formed coal.

[berekhalfhand]

Coal found in Australia is from the Permian period i.e. after the Carboniferous period, therefore not all coal formed at the same time.

[beebop]

Planted 15 trees this fall. Costed a darn site more than a dollar a piece.

[notgate]

So for millions of years the ground just had stacks of dead trees that couldn't break down? Just miles of soggy wood that goes down a long way?

[dijasom]

always wondered why there are no "new" coal deposits.

[EmoryM]

The world must have looked so alien covered with dead yet not decomposing trees.

[chrisjermyn]

That was the best explanation of how trees grow and how coal was formed i've ever heard. Cheers

[Berre]

Coal is solar energy stored as a solid fuel.

[krisknowlton]

"All coal was formed at the same time." Holds up a charcoal briquette.

[Jesse__H]

Another fun fact that I'm paraphrasing from one of my other favorite youtube channels, PBS Eons:

The Environmental pressure that originally caused the ancestors of trees to grow so tall was all that undecomposed matter lying around. It got so deep over time it blocked out access to the sun for plants trying grow on the ground! So over time, trees got taller and taller in an effort to retain access to sunlight!

[michelprins]

as a todler my grandfather threw me in the coalshed on the balcony when lying there i saw a diamond in one of the coals so beautifull colors, long time i thought i imagined it untill i learned in school that they are made of the same substance so it made sence. ;)