Why almost all coal was made at the same time

[AV1611VET]

That's easy, it was Steve the T-Rex back when administerial duties were carried out by dinosaurs.

Let's leave Steve the T-Rex in Jurassic [sic] Park, shall we?

 

[Tuur]

Is that why the title of the thread and the video says "Why ALMOST all coal" then?

In light of the report I cited, do you think the fungi premise is valid?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

In light of the report I cited, do you think the fungi premise is valid?

One study does not overrule an accepted and pretty well evidence scientific fact, but I won't say anything for or against it because more study obviously needs to be carried out.

 

[Tuur]

One study does not overrule an accepted and pretty well evidence scientific fact, but I won't say anything for or against it because more study obviously needs to be carried out.

Accepted or just popular because it's "neato?" Lignite coal is a huge outlier, and the ability of boggy places to slow or stop decay is well documented. Such as that 3,500 year-old shovel unearthed in the Arne Moors in Dorset County, England. Add to this that fungi doesn't fossilize well, and we have a poor picture of what was going on that level during the Carboniferous Age.

The idea that we have coal seams because white fungus didn't exist then is a "neato" thing. If it just wasn't for all that lignite coal.

 

[Ophiolite]

Accepted or just popular because it's "neato?" Lignite coal is a huge outlier, and the ability of boggy places to slow or stop decay is well documented. Such as that 3,500 year-old shovel unearthed in the Arne Moors in Dorset County, England. Add to this that fungi doesn't fossilize well, and we have a poor picture of what was going on that level during the Carboniferous Age.

The idea that we have coal seams because white fungus didn't exist then is a "neato" thing. If it just wasn't for all that lignite coal.

You are correct for the wrong reasons. My objection to your "So?" post was twofold.

1. Your "So?" reaction to the OP indicated you had an objection, but the exact nature of that objection was obscure. (You objected to the absolute "all", yet - as others have pointed out - the video thumbnail qualified that from all to most. You raised the issue of the lignite and have since doubled down on it, for which, see point 2.)
2. You seem to overlook two points: how coal is formed; the importance of burial sequence.

In summary, the hypothesis presented in the OP video is invalidated, not by the existence of lignite in the post-Carboniferous, but by the presence of lignin "eating" organisms in the Carboniferous and by a satisfactory and well established alternative explanation for the extensive Carboniferous coal deposits.

As to formation of coal, the conversion of suitably preserved vegetable matter to coal is dependent almost entirely on temperature. As the temperature rises the material is converted to lignite, sub-bituminous coal, bituminous coal and finally, anthracite. Avoid the critical temperatures for each stage and that stage is not reached. That is why we find lignite of Carboniferous age in the Moscow basin, because it was never buried deeply enought to be converted to a coal of higher rank. Or, the Miocene lignites of Indonesia that I logged in the Java Sea, were converted, on the volcanic island of Java, to bituminous coals by the high geothermal gradient.

A key phrase in the paragraph above is "suitably preserved", for once the vegetable matter is buried practically all that now matters is the temperature as to whether it becomes lignite, or anthracite, or somewhere in between.
And there we have one of the two principal reasons for the massive coals of the Carboniferous: look up cyclothem, repeated rock sequences running from coarse marine sediments, of increasing fineness to terrestrial ones, fossil soils and topped with coal. Their origin is the consequence of well established fluctuations in eustatic sea level caused by glacial cycles and likely side effects of plate tectonics.
The second reason was the vast quantity of peat that accumulated on the huge wetlands that dominated the equatorial regions in Carboniferous times.

Finally, @dlamberth in particular and everyone in general, we all know that YouTube videos are simplifications, sometimes gross simplifications and often wrong. I think we should have our critical thinking dialed way up when viewing them. And for some random guy on an internet forum turn the setting to 11. I await the evidence based objections from you, @Tuur , or anyone else.

 

[dlamberth]

Finally, @dlamberth in particular and everyone in general, we all know that YouTube videos are simplifications, sometimes gross simplifications and often wrong. I think we should have our critical thinking dialed way up when viewing them. And for some random guy on an internet forum turn the setting to 11. I await the evidence based objections from you, @Tuur , or anyone else.

The video, I felt, presents an interesting idea to consider. It's a new to me perspective which suggest an evolutionary living relationship that life has with itSelf, in this case the suggested process of how coal was made. There's no way that I'd argue as it's true. The science is not developed enough to do so. At the same time it strikes me as feasible and aligns nicely with how I experience the inter-relationships within the evolutionary processes of life on this Earth.

 

[eclipsenow]

If someone making a science video gets a fact wrong right off the bat, then why should I assume they know what they're talking about? Since lignite coal is 60 million years old, then all coal wasn't made roughly 350 or so million years ago, and that alone argues strongly against that premise.

Case in point: the man in the video prattles on about lignin and fungi, but then you come across something like this that argues against his premise:

Why was most of the Earth’s coal made all at once?

Even without that study, the existence of lignite already argues against the fungus theory simply by existing long after the supposed arrival of fungi that could break down woody material.

Yeah I immediately thought it was a strange argument - and thought the guy must be a YEC going on about the flood. I mean - aren't there some spots today where coal is probably being made? Just in extreme slow motion - and probably unlikely to finish as us humans seem intent on paving over or ploughing up as much of the planet as we can?

 

[Tuur]

Yeah I immediately thought it was a strange argument - and thought the guy must be a YEC going on about the flood. I mean - aren't there some spots today where coal is probably being made? Just in extreme slow motion - and probably unlikely to finish as us humans seem intent on paving over or ploughing up as much of the planet as we can?

That's what was once taught, with peat being an example. Ireland burns peat though the country is moving away from it. The Okefenokee came to mind because of the peat. and much of it remains submerged.

Interesting thing seen on a lignite map that has nothing to do with the topic but is kind of "neato." Part of a deposit in the US seems to run right up to the ancient Gulf Stream Trough - Apalachicola Embayment. Would have assumed it would have been further away.