The Mystery of Coal

There’s a mystery afoot! Almost all of the coal we use around the world was created in the same 60 million year period. Before or after that relatively short window of time, not so much. Just what exactly explains this geological mystery?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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.

(00:23):
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.

(00:45):
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,

(01:07):
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

(01:27):
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,

(01:50):
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

(02:14):
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

(02:36):
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

(02:58):
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

(03:21):
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

(03:41):
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

(04:03):
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

(04:25):
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

(04:46):
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,

(05:09):
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

(05:31):
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

(05:54):
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

(06:17):
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

(06:39):
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

(07:01):
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

(07:22):
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,

(07:42):
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,

(08:03):
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

(08:23):
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

(08:45):
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

(09:06):
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

(09:30):
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

(09:51):
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

(10:13):
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

(10:35):
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

(11:00):
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,

(11:47):
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

(12:07):
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

(12:30):
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.

(12:50):
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

(13:12):
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

(13:33):
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

(13:55):
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

(14:16):
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

(14:38):
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

(15:01):
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,

(15:26):
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

(15:46):
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,

(16:06):
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

(16:28):
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.

(16:50):
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

(17:12):
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

(17:32):
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

(17:54):
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

(18:14):
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

(18:36):
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

(18:59):
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

(19:21):
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

(19:43):
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

(20:04):
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

(20:25):
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

(20:49):
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

(21:11):
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

(21:31):
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

(21:53):
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,

(22:14):
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.

(22:36):
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

(22:56):
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

(23:18):
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

(23:39):
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.

(23:59):
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

(24:22):
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.

(24:44):
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,

(25:04):
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,

(25:28):
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,

(25:50):
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

(26:12):
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

(26:49):
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

(27:09):
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

(27:31):
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

(27:53):
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

(28:14):
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

(28:36):
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,

(28:58):
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.

(29:21):
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

(29:43):
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

(30:05):
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.

(30:26):
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

(30:48):
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.

(31:10):
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

(31:32):
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

(31:54):
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

(32:19):
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

(32:41):
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

(33:01):
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,

(33:25):
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.

(33:49):
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

(34:11):
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

(34:31):
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

(34:53):
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

(35:14):
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.

(35:37):
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

(35:59):
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

(36:22):
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,

(36:44):
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

(37:08):
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

(37:30):
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

(37:51):
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

(38:12):
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,

(38:35):
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.

(38:55):
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

(39:18):
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,

(39:38):
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

(40:02):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H m hm