Stuff You Should Know - The Mystery of Coal

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

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?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is Stuff You Should Know. And 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 jazmatastic. Hey, you know this is one of the only sciences I can really get into. 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 was some great foreshadowing, man. I can't wait for 40 seconds from now when we start talking about that part. But first, we got to tell everybody we're talking about coal. The title is 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 coal

than just the mystery behind it. And actually, the way that coal 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 people who inhabited China all the way back 5,500 years ago were burning coal that they found around the surface as a fuel, which is pretty impressive. And tailgating. That's right. They were tailgating. Sure. Burning coal, cooking up meat. Oh, I got you. Yeah, they were big time. They had wooden pickup trucks. Right. Remember the stainless steel pickup trucks at the Atlanta Olympics? I have still never seen video of that. You just talked about it like it was some... I've mentioned it before, haven't I?

So embarrassing. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You definitely have. Anyway, none of that has to do with wooden pickup trucks. This is what you're here for. No, it has to do with coal. So let's just say about 5,500 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 nth degree, starting in the Industrial Revolution. And it poses a lot of problems for the atmosphere that we'll talk about. But 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, which makes coal a non-renewable resource, which we kicked off 5,500 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? Sure. And why is Josh so excited? Right. Chuck referenced that. And here's the answer. Pete is where coal begins. And Pete is sort of loose layers of all kinds of plant and mineral gobbledygook that accumulates in the forest in

these swampy areas called Pete swamps. You might call them bogs or mires, depending on where you live in the world. But these are wetlands 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 it's protected from that, from decomp, like how a body decays on the body farm at University of Tennessee, or if 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, all that stuff decomposes, right?

It doesn't really decompose in the swamp because a swamp by definition has basically stagnant water. Not much goes on in a swamp, strangely enough. Everything's 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 a big deal, a bunch of stuff falls to the bottom of the 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 sitting there. It's not, you know, if it was on dry land and it was a dead, keep saying dead deer, dead mouse, sure. 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 carbon will eventually become the energy that we

need or burn as coal. Precisely. So there is some decomposition that happens, right? It's like, if you look at swamp muck that eventually becomes peat, that eventually becomes coal, that swamp muck, you can't really make out like a fish or a tree limb or anything like that after a while. So sure. There is some decomposition, but the upshot of it is it doesn't fully decompose, 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 those constituent elements and compounds that make up those bonds, and then it spreads them out so that other plants can come along and use them. That doesn't happen in swamp

muck. 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 Okefenokee or swamps in Indonesia, if you went back far enough, you would probably be looking at something much deeper and more watery, like a pond or a lake, and those ponds and lakes end up filling in over time, right? Yeah, they start at the banks like you would think, and stuff drops in in the shallow areas and starts accumulating, and we're talking over the course of a long period of time. It's not

like you're going to turn a lake into a swamp inside a couple hundred years. Yeah, just try it. Yeah, I've tried, trust me. It's not working, but that just expands further and further toward the middle. Eventually, that lake does turn into a swamp, 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 dry earth, and 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 is on top of you as muck, you're going to turn it into different things,

different kinds of coal. Yeah, definitely. That pressure that you mentioned, that's like the key ingredient in transforming muck to peat to coal. We talked a little bit about this in the diamonds episode, I think. We had to have, definitely, because eventually you get beyond coal to graphite, and then ostensibly from graphite onto diamonds from heat and pressure. Right, exactly. Diamonds, I guess, start out as swamp muck, too, and coal is kind of like the middle part of that long, lengthy process from muck to diamond, basically.

Great album title, by the way. What was it? From muck to diamond. Oh, nice. That is good. I think that's like if your band is really terrible at first, but then just gets better and better, there's your greatest hits album title. Or if you're Neil Diamond and you really want to be on the nose. Right, but is there a muck who is like- Was he ever muck?

No, is there like a muck in the music world that he could have been doing duets with? Oh, I don't think so, because he started out, because that was in another episode, as a writer in the Brill building there for, what was it called? Tin Pan Alley. Tin Pan Alley. Neil Diamond did? Mm-hmm. He was a Tin Pan Alley guy, so he was never muck. How old is he? Like 150?

He's 104. Man, I don't remember that little fact. He's on his way to true diamond. He is. He's graphite right now. Sorry, Neil Diamond. As more and more earth just gets deposited through the processes of erosion and deposition, and like rivers spring up and 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 above it, there's more and more weight and pressure pushing down and compressing and condensing it, and eventually that peat turns into coal. But you can't just say that coal is like really old peat, because the pressure is so tremendous, and the heat, it's kind of like it cooks the peat into coal. So the heat and the pressure actually make it go through like a biogeochemical transformation, and it becomes a sedimentary rock, something that's not at all peat. It used to be peat, 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 still left with those chemical bonds, and this is a thing, and it's called colification, and there's no better title thing in earth sciences, I think, than colification. No, and very straightforward. The process of turning muck to peat is pedification. Yeah, I think you should just add edification onto every word to make it really easy to understand.

Right, Neil Diamond edification. Yeah, podcast edification. Yeah, that's great. 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.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

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I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars. If you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. We promised talk of different types of coal. 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 and a quarter miles beneath the earth. So it's a long way down.

It takes like that much compression to really start to turn Pete into Indicol. Right, so don't go digging a 10-foot deep hole and throw some sediment in there and expect anything to happen. Right, because also, I don't know if we said this or not, but this process that we're talking about takes place over millions to hundreds of millions of years, depending on the situation and conditions. That's right, a long, long time. And so there are a few different things that this coal can turn into,

or the Pete can turn into, a few different types of coal. The first one is lignite. 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, and that's the coal that most people are familiar with. It's far and away the most widely used coal, most widely mined coal.

There's just a lot of it on earth. And that's just coal that's been cooking and pressed longer than lignite. It's still known as soft though, but it's not soft. It's still known as soft though, but it's not soft like to the touch. No, it's just compared to the next step, anthracite, it's soft. Yeah. So yeah, it's called soft coal. And then yeah, the next step after that coal is left alone for much, much longer.

And then there's, again, you've added some sort of heat source. It's either that original deposit of swamp muck has been moving push 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 volcanic activity. So there's that kind of heat. So you 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, but it doesn't stop there. I think you mentioned something about Neil Diamond turning into graphite. Right. 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, their bonds, the energy bonds are so strong that it takes a lot of energy to break those up.

So it, you know, like regular soft coal, and I think even anthracite, you can ignite it without a ton of energy, but it's going to take a lot of energy to ignite graphite. Yeah, and that anthracite is sweet, sweet stuff. It doesn't take much energy to ignite it. As a low flame, it's low smoke. It's just beautiful stuff. It's just much, much rarer than the bituminous coal that we know and like. The bitumous?

Yeah. It's not, nobody likes it. No. So, Chuck, I think we should also mention at this point, 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 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 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. Yeah, coal completes it. It just depends on where it is.

Right, or how it started, too. Well, yeah, I mean, that's where it was when it started. I got you, I got you. Yeah, like Tin Van Alley. Poor Neil Diamond. So... What kind of feeling he would make an appearance? I don't know why.

I guess because, you know, we were talking graphite. Once you talk graphite, you're 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 it's not just us who understands coal. Like, we're just basically reporting what science has figured out. Science has a pretty great understanding of how coal forms,

the processes it undergoes, all that stuff. Oh, I thought you needed to point that out. So, we understand coal enough that we can actually even go back and say like, hey, this seam actually probably came here. And we've got a little yarn, we can tell you guys, about where one load in particular, one major coal seam came from. And the whole thing started all the way back in the Carboniferous period, which was really wet and really, really warm.

I think the average global temperature for the first half of the Carboniferous period was like 68 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 20 Celsius. That doesn't sound very warm, but consider that 2020, one of the, I think it was like the second hottest year on record, the global temperature was 58.76 degrees Fahrenheit. So, this is a good 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average. That's a lot warmer for a global temperature. It is, and it's hard to wrap your head around a global temperature,

but yeah, that's everything. Right. Not just where you live, because when I first saw these numbers, I was like, could that be correct? But yeah, when you think of global averages, it's a whole different ball game. Yeah, because I mean, you're not just taking the equator into account, you're also taking the poles into account. You're mixing it all together, carrying the one.

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 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 was straddling, and I know we've talked a lot about tectonic plates in myriad episodes, including the volcanoes one,

but one of them straddled a plate boundary right where a couple of these plates met. And I guess we should say where it is. 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 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. Right. And so as these massive supercontinents collided with one another and pushed in one another and created this mountain range, as 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 process took place, and it's not like they just ran into each other like a car crash or anything, this took place over a really long time, but it was enough that 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 happens. Right. So it was dropping a bunch of swamp muck down on either side of it, and that as that mountain range moved forward and settled in the northeast of the United States and southern part of Canada, it took those deposits with them, and then it baked and cooked for a couple 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 the Mississippian Epoch, and like we 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 Epoch came next, and this is when the temperatures 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 Pennsylvania Epoch was when 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 world's coal came from this particular Epoch of the Carboniferous period. Because before that, everything was too much underwater for there to be swamps,

and you need swamps to create coal, right? But the thing is, there's a mystery in that shortly after the end of the Pennsylvania Epoch of the Carboniferous period, that deposition of coal just drops off suddenly. So it's almost like there's just one slice 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. That's right.

And to explain the mystery, I guess we got to 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 were happening during the Pennsylvania Epoch. It was just a lot of new plant diversity. And they were really, really big plants. They sucked up a lot of the CO2 in the atmosphere, emitted 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 that's sort of part two of if you have a lot of material all of a sudden and a lot bigger material, 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 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. And so to get there, to the mystery, we have to explain what lignin is, right? Yeah. So one of the reasons all those plants were allowed to get so huge wasn't just that they sucked up all the CO2. It's that apparently around this time, lignin appeared on Earth. And lignin is what gives plants cell walls their sturdiness, their hardiness, makes it difficult for them to break down after they die,

after they fall over and hit the swamp floor. Right. And so they said, okay, lignin 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 lignin appeared on Earth. And then once that stuff came along, the deposition of coal dropped off dramatically. And that's what's called the white rot appearance theory of where our coal came from or went.

That's right. Right. And it sounds so boring to the regular person on the street. But if you're an Earth scientist, you think it sounds pretty interesting? White rot theory, yeah. I think that sounds amazingly interesting. I feel like it's the theory title that only an Earth scientist would love, but you're also an Earth science wonk. So of course, you're going to turn to your crank, you know what I mean?

I guess my crank is spinning a million miles an hour right now. So they had this theory, and they started looking back, and the U.S. Department of Energy said, and this was in 2012, they came out with the theory and said, hey, I bet you anything, there was this new kind of fungus that came on the scene that could take care of lignin 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 fungi called wood decay fungi, which really lives up to its name. It's one of the few things on Earth that is capable of breaking down lignin. But boy, if you've ever seen a bunch of weird shingle-like mushrooms growing out of the side of a fallen tree in the woods, that's the type of wood decay fungi. And if you've ever picked up a piece of wood, and it's just crumbled in your hands, that was because of the fungi. You can thank it for that dry rot.

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, they said, you know what, I think this actually came along toward the end of the carboniferous period, beginning of the Permian period. And this is probably the reason why all of that coal 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 fungus doing its thing, just like we see more of today. Yeah, it jumped on at like the bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That's how they pounce. Is this a good time for a break? I guess so, but I think we need to throw a little cliffhanger in there, Chuck, because there's a lot of scientists out there that say not so fast. You can take your white rot 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. What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life.

In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. The situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay.

So some scientists have made the White Rott theorists cry secretly in the bathroom at work, not openly, but they did cry. It's because they weren't very kind about it. They weren't. It was really mean. But they did make some really good points. And one of them is that, we're not entirely certain. Maybe White Rott 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 lignin 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. How would they have been at all decayed if there wasn't anything that could break down lignin before White Rott came along? Yeah. So something was breaking stuff down. This may have sped it up or whatever, but something was already happening.

Right. And it appears, and I might, let me know if I have the wrong take on this. Okay. 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 plates crashing together. And all of a sudden, it happened to happen where all this swampland was. And that just really sped things up. So what we saw then was 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 in the swampland being buried underground. Yeah. That's precisely right that we've been looking at it the wrong way. 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. See, this is the stuff that really fascinates me about Earth's 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 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 still be burning wood. I guess. Who knows. We'd have figured out how to burn diamonds maybe. Yeah, it's just really interesting that this tectonic plates millions and millions of years ago 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 lignin which allowed all of this stuff to all these plants to diversify and explode in size. Fascinating.

And that yeah, 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, who knows where we would be or what we would be doing for energy. And that is the thing because we are definitely using a lot of coal for energy. And as a result, 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. And again, it powered the Industrial Revolution. And then also because it is just such a dirty energy source.

It is. But here's the thing. When used as an energy source, it's a dirty energy source. If that coal were not extracted and it just, you know, the plant matter fell into the swamp and it decomposed very slowly down there. And eventually became, you know, the three stages of coal or I guess the four stages of coal. It would just stay, that CO2 would stay locked down in there. Yes. It actually acts as a sequesteror, 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. That's better than sequesteror. A sequesteror reminds me of that kids in the hall eradicator. So, but being a carbon sink, that makes it a really major part of the carbon cycle, which is this 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, the more and more plants sucked more and more carbon dioxide out of the air, which actually cooled global temperatures, right? So less carbon in the atmosphere equals 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. And coal plays a big part of that. But we have radically accelerated the pace of release of that carbon from the carbon sink that is coal back into the atmosphere by digging it up and burning it. And not just speeding it up by setting it on fire rather than letting it erode 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 seam above ground eventually.

And that exposes it to the atmosphere, but it's still going to be releasing that CO2 very slowly because it's not on fire. Right. And 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 some human coming along and doing it. It is going to be a really slow sort of natural process and you're not going to see these big spikes of CO2 being released. Yeah. So a good reference point of reference is volcanoes are like the biggest emitter of carbon from the earth back into the atmosphere. They literally melt rock that contains carbon, including coal and shoots that out as like volcanic emissions back into the atmosphere.

On a given year, volcanic activity releases between 130 and 380 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. Okay. On a given year, humans release 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Holy cow. So yeah, and coal is a big, big part of that. 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 to ocean acidification.

The 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 it. All right, 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 spells 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 tendrils of climate change are so far reaching. Like, it's not, it's not a surprise that it's made appearances in like dozens of our episodes. For sure. But I think that's one of the things I like about our job is like, you know, there's everybody knows that like CO2 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 be like, oh, yes, that's true. And I know why, you know? Right.

I think that's neat. It's a very rewarding job that we have, Chuck. It is. We're lucky dudes. We are lucky. 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. Well, if you want to know more about coal, there's a lot of stuff to read, a lot of stuff, surprising amount of stuff on coal out there. And it's kind of fun. And since I said it's kind of fun, that means it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this from an Aussie friend of ours. Hey, gents, 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 newer 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 or would be saying it is stuff you should already know or cool stuff we think you should know. It's funny, you're just kind of talking about that. And with that out loud brain fart of an 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. And here goes the explanation. Growing up in a home with a single mom and a protective one, there were 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. 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 swear to Steve Irwin, my first thought was bloody hell they might be able to teach me how to use a can opener. Oh, okay. Of course, instead what I found was an absolute behemoth of a discography with more amazing stories, topics, and jokes than I could ever have wished to hear about. Or even if I'd love to be a hundred. 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 male.

The fact that it seems you guys genuinely read these is amazing enough to me. Hope you guys and your families are well and staying safe. Keep it up, you bloody effing legends. Cheers. That is from Jackson and Canberra, Australia. Nice. Thanks, Jackson. Canberra?

Canberra. Canberra? Mm-hmm. All right. I really brushed up before our Australian tour. Yeah, nice work. That was a great email, Jackson, like one of the better ones we've ever gotten. So thank you very much for that.

I think practice makes perfect with a can opener. Okay. Nice for you to close that circle. Yeah, and I don't think I could explain it. I'm thinking of it and I don't think I can. So just give it a few shots. Yeah, you mean I have one that goes on the top and it actually breaks the seal between the top of the can and the actual can. And it took me several times.

I think I actually went and looked it up online how to use that one because I'm like... So it cuts around the side and takes the whole lid off? Yes. Yeah, yeah, I've seen those. Those are good. Yeah, I'd seen them too. I'd never tried to use one before and it's not intuitive. So I guess...

Yeah, you're right. 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 buy one of those great old school 70s pea green electric can and put 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 intruders.

Yeah, ninja stars. Me and those things are dating. Is there anything in the 70s 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 pre-rolls though just to get the practice in. Right. So if you want to get in touch with us like Jackson did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me. And my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.