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Why almost all coal was made at the same time

AV1611VET

SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE
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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?
 
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Warden_of_the_Storm

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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.
 
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Tuur

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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.
 
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Ophiolite

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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.
 
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dlamberth

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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.
 
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