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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ม.ค. 2023
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If a tree falls into the forest and doesn't decompose, what happens to it?
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Sources:
oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/c...
www.nature.com/articles/s4158...
ucmp.berkeley.edu/carbonifero...
www.nature.com/scitable/blog/...
www.science.org/doi/abs/10.11...
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073...
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www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073...
IMAGES
www.gettyimages.com
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
phrase=coal%20earth&adppopup=true
How 300 Million Year Old Forests Led To The Industrial Revolution
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Singular ONCEAGAn
I had to th-cam.com/video/5hfYJsQAhl0/w-d-xo.html
One of your worse videos, dump rose lol
So if it is uncommon for easy to exploit energy stores like carbon and oil to firm, then this could explain why we don't see any signs of intelligent life (even if it may be common, it just have not had an industrial and technological revolution yet). 🤔
then earthquakes aren't just caused by high-pressure, they are caused in both fracking (proven) and theoretically sequestration via dissolving rocks as well. sequestration is an addicts idea, it's like someone on meth drinking their own pee to get the most out of it; i.e. not sustainable, diminishing returns, just literally absolutely sickening.
Please, please whenever talking about carbon sequestration and immissions reduction, mention the importance of the earth's peatlands! They only account for 3% of the earth's land surface, but for twice as much of our carbon sinks than all forests combined. Also this is a mechanism that already works and has no environmental disadventages. Protect and restore peatlands!
+1
Until the peat is burned
Yes! I'd love to see a video of peatlands restoration efforts!
@@valiroime Or the area is drained and used for construction or agriculture
A decrease or increase of peatlands is actually *NOT* that important. I'm an environmentalist and nature lover, but the reality is that peat moss is like a sponge in an overflowing bathtub with the faucet still on. If you don't turn off the faucet, all the sponges in the world won't stop your tub from overflowing. Creating more peatlands does *NOTHING AT ALL* to end the burning of fossil fuels.
Imagine being a Buddhist carbon atom thinking you'd finally escaped your cycle of samsara and attained nirvana for tens of millions of years only to be dredged up, lit on fire, and resubmitted to the trials of the biosphere.
My luck, I'm going to come back as a dog that's allergic to pet hair with God asking if I'm ready to listen now.
Oh My Dog! Ben, I was thinking the very same thing!
Alternatively, Carbon Dioxide is an ancient evil that the trees of old managed to seal away by sacrificing themselves, and now mankind has accidentally released this ancient evil to wreak havoc on this world...
are you high?
@@benthomason3307 not that day, no. Just pleasantly sober and goofy.
"... there is a risk of triggering earthquakes through this process, which is not ideal."
But it _is_ totally metal.
Meh, geothermal plants already do that 😆
@@GreatBigBore That doesn't make it less metal! :P
With this title and that diagram of subduction and volcanism, I thought you were going to talk about how human evolution may have ultimately been triggered by the rise of the Isthmus of Panama which cut off the central connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which caused even less rain to fall on eastern Africa (thanks to a rain shadow created by the mountains along the present-day DRC-Uganda border), which caused eastern Africa to turn from a forest into an open savanna, which compelled our ancestors to leave trees, which eventually caused them to become fully bipedal, which eventually lead them to develop hands with opposable thumbs, and so on.
Seriously, Sci Show or some other science channel should cover that at some point, if you or they haven't already.
I hadn't heard of that hypothesis, so much as ones suggesting glacial cycles reduced rainfall, helped create the African savanna, and triggered the rest of human evolution that you mentioned.
Yip quickly turned into a CO2 propaganda piece...
@@MinusMedley ?
@@MinusMedley Ah yes, Big pharma and their huge carbon dioxide industrial complex
@@TitaniusAnglesmith Taking carbon out of the atmosphere is not a real solution, its a bandaide being pushed by the worst offenders, so they can keep burning carbon.
“Put that thing back where you found it or so helped me “ (movie reference)
Monsters inc
But it's "put that thing back where it came from or so help me"
People have doubtlessly mentioned this in the past but I must say, Rose, and every other Sci Show presenter enunciates so perfectly. The entire crew should start a workshop for other TH-camrs on how to be heard well over crappy low volume speakers (or by hard of hearing folks which probably includes me :p ).
Oh gosh yes so much this, as a production house they are so very consistent in being accessible in this manner.
@@Omniverse0 *_"Honestly?"_* Are you normally *not* honest? Anyway, thanks for the heads up that you're not lying.
@@Omniverse0 From a disabillity perspective, I'm all for captioning, because it benefits who are deaf or Hard of Hearing. But I believe enunciating is important too because it not only helps people who are blind or with Low Vision, but those who also use English as a Second Language. There are plenty of media out there that's literally just people talking, "the natural way" - following your argument, but enunciating suits better in Edutainment channels like SciShow.
How many slowed their reading down for the word enunciates?
😉
I really like Rose... but I was actually scrolling down to see if anyone else was complaining about the American? pronunciation of en masse... is it elitist to pronounce words the way they are spoken in the origin language... maybe... I'll leave it at that. :)
Seeing pictures of the earth makes me gaslight myself into thinking I could walk around it in no time.
If you walked 21 miles a day which is maybe possible and took breaks on weekends it would take you 7 years 3&1/2 months to walk the distance. I reckon that if you dedicated a decade of your life to doing it you could. To me that makes the world feel tiny
Tom Turich and his dog walked around the planet in about seven years. He’s the 10th person to compete this feat. You could be the 11th 🤘🏻 🌎🚶♂️
That's not even close to what gaslight means
Huh?
@@woodfur00 Yes it is what are you talking about?
Trees during the Carboniferous period reminds me of plastics today, in terms of an unexpected source of carbon that most organisms haven't evolved to break down yet, and so it collects in enormous piles. Obviously one is anthropogenic, one isn't, but I still find the comparison intriguing.
+
@@nahadoth2087 Certainly so. Tipping points can occur blindly fast (from a geological timescale), but their effects typically last 10's or 100's of millions of years; the formation of coal deposits being a perfect example.
I mean, I heard that there's a type of bacteria that seems to have evolved the ability to start breaking down a certain kind of plastic (can't remember which one though) that they found in the lake that the plastic factory dumped all its wastewater into, so definitely a good comparison there... the bacteria are learning quicker it seems, over decades instead of millennia (and I for one am looking forward to see how this goes on in the future... go you funky little bacteria😂)
@@Manj_J People are so confused when science gets hijacked by politics. We're supposed to be terrified of a climate emergency, so much so that we're willing to pump CO2 at planetary scale into the earth's crust. But we're already doing carbon sequestration whenever we build things out of wood or plastic. But that's bad, for some reason, so now we need a bacteria to turn plastic into CO2...
Rather than storing carbon in rocks, it seems to make a lot more sense to restore forests and wetlands so that carbon is captured in the soil. If that's not good enough, I think it would still be easier to bury large amounts of fast-growing plant matter underground or sink it in anoxic deep water to prevent decomposition and thus trap the carbon long term than to inject it into rocks.
Exacty my thoughts, thanks for phrasing them so well.
When she called pumping CO2 into rocks "costly" I thought "energy intense?". So we can do it, but produce more CO2 in the process that we stow away?
@@HalfInt Not a climate expert, but removing carbon from the carbon cycle by using electricity (if it is electricity from carbon already in the cycle) removes more carbon overall.
@@cyalknight Well yes, if that electricity was already produced and is excess. I don't think there is any significant excess so far, though. Otherwise, why would we still produce more electricity from fossil fuels.
I agree. Storing carbon can also be done in our infrastructure btw. Use wood instead of concrete (where possible), dry walls, all sorts of decoration,... So basically use more wood. Maybe it's an idea to have an industrial process to mimic the coal forming without losing carbon in the process (deoxidised environments and pressure?). And maybe develop new technological materials with high carbon content. But the basics to me still seems to get carbon out of the air the easy way and that is growing trees (in bogs). We need a massive area for that though, or restore the Amazon forest of course.
@@countk1 big wooden domes filled with plastic covered firewood bricks, when the domes are full cover the roofs with layers of wood and plastics thousands of feet thick... plastic and wooden mountains built in old open pit mines?
I think we should discount the idea of Carbon Capture & Storage technology, at least for now, as it has been largely ineffective but gets used by fossil fuel companies for greenwashing propaganda.
I love this video about it: Honest Government Ad - Carbon Capture & Storage
youtuber Simon Clark (atmospheric physics researcher) did one about it recently as well (same conclusion)
This
@@joansparky4439 Thanks for the recommendation!
Because clearly developing a technology to mitigate a serious problem means we can't also work on other technologies to replace the ones that caused said problem in the first place. /s
@@angeldude101 No carbon capture project has ever succeeded in any meaningful level of offset for any extended period. The concept of clean coal has comprehensively failed to produce actual results. Among the most successful attempts at the process, which only exists to justify delaying the already possible replacement of coal plants, was an installation that was online a small fraction of the time, didn't achieve anywhere near what was promised, was only attached to one of the powerplant's many stacks, had to be powered with a natural gas powerplant that served no other purpose than running the carbon capture for the coal plant, and was permanently disabled a few years later because the company didn't want to pay to run it anymore, even with the construction costs of the installation itself having been virtually 100% government funded.
🎶Put that thing back where it came from or so help meeee🎶
There is something called Hydro Thermal Carbonization or HTC for short. You take anything from sewage sludge to agricultural scraps to wood to fabrics and put it in a big Pot and boil it with 200 degrees celsius and 20 bar of pressure and it will turn into solid, powdered coal. It’s a much better way to sequester it that way. And the cool thing, after it brought up to temperature it actually runs by it self and you can use it to heat up water.
Until we will have enough energy from carbon-free sources (and I do not mean only electricity), it will be better to burn those things for energy instead of fossil fuels. Not to mention that rugs can be used for paper production, sludge can be treated and used as fertilizer and so can be agricultural scraps. This will as well store portion of the carbon and at the same time improve quality of the soil.
How many tons of coal must you burn to get the energy needed for the process?
Part of the irony of how coal was formed/ abetted by low oxygen environments inside the swampy carbon piles was, I realized: the air above was super-rich in oxygen, highest % ever. From so much greenery giving off oxygen. E.g., enough oxygen rich air insects, who only have gas-permeable membrane circles on their sides to get oxygen passively -- got enough oxy to grow huge: crawly insects the length of Honda Civics & dragonflies w nearly 3 foot (near meter) length wingspans! Giant bugs can't grow in today's environments because there isn't enough oxy to do so.
Depends at what stage you are looking at. The laying down of coal led to a huge drop in CO2 and an equal rise in O2 in the atmosphere, but occurring over the length of a geologic era, not over a couple of centuries.
Thats not true, actually.
Giant insects lasted until the Permo-Traissic boundary, when oxygen levels were comparable to how they are now. The pop culture darling, Meganeura (the giant dragonfly* you mentioned) was not even the largest flying insect to live. That honour belongs to Meganeuropsis, a gryphonfly that lived up until the Great Dying killed over 90% of all species. The honda sized bug you mentioned (Arthropleura, which was not an insect, but a millipede) also lived to the middle Permian when oxygen levels were also comparable to now.
The notion that arthropods could not actively respire is also outdated and incorrect. Modern day dragonflies and beetles (among many different groups) are capable of using spiracular muscles to pump air in and out of their trachea, the insect equivilent of a lung. Studies have shown that these mechanisms are no less efficient than the breathing of mammals.
The real reason why giant arthropods went extinct was because of competition from tetrapods. Arthropods are less efficient than tetrapods are larger sizes because of their possession of exoskeleton instead of endoskeleton. This makes them suffer far more stress while moving. Giant bugs would be able to evolve in today's environments if not for the menagerie of tetrapods that already exist
*: It was not actually a dragonfly, but a gryphonfly, an extinct relative of dragonflies
@@boningguan156you're stating this as if it's a fact. Is it not controversial among scientists? There are competing theories and we don't really know.
@@boningguan156 Thank you for your analysis, isn’t gaining more knowledge great!??!?!
I have a thought that maybe your have some knowledge about. Seems to me that any flying insect or mammal that lived it that time, wouldn’t be able to fly now, due to the lower density of the atmosphere. Do you know of any science that supports my theory? For sure, earth was a lot different then than now and since there is no way to accurately measure what the environment was like then, we have to use our best guess. But we can know the amount of lift that is needed to make those animals airborne. And, of course, efficiently. Seems to me, a massive amount of energy, or a much denser atmosphere would be needed.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
@@ITeachRick The atmospheric composition was not meaningfully different in the Carboniferous and Mesozoic as it is now, and certainly would not have caused different biomechanics to affect flying animals. There is no significant difference in the density of air back then and now. Any pterosaur flying in the Maastrichtian would be perfectly content in the skies of the Holocene.
Can we think twice before we start using fracking to store co2, please?
I did always find it strange how people who very vocally oppose fracking for legitimate reasons suddenly support it in the name of stopping climate change.
@@twerkingfish4029 I find it strange people cannot see the obvious differences. Well, not really. Most people aren't detail oriented and think that all of one thing is either good or bad, like frakking or nuclear energy. There are indeed good uses for frakking, kiddos.
Ms. Bear Don't Walk is a terrific host now, she's done amazing work with her presentation skills. Kudos to all.
Love Rose Bears Don't Walk.
It looks like you pressed Start on a random word generator.@@dianewallace6064
As an aside to the idea of using depleted mining sites for carbon capture and storage since they're more "geologically stable", recent research has tended towards human activities causing new destabilisations of those areas. A USGS report recently reaffirmed that wastewater injection from fracking has destabilising effects on the surrounding rock and has some future potential impacts, and some of the proposed tech for CC would use similar technology.
Well, of course it loses stability when you make lots of holes in it.
Better than pumping CO2 into the ground, just bury biomass under impermeable layers in old pit mines. Compressed hay pellets and such.
Using biochar as a soil amendment for agriculture has some promise. It not only improves yields and soil longevity, but it appears to take a couple of thousand years to decompose on average.
Every other CCS scheme I've heard of just doesn't work. Either it doesn't sequester the carbon, or, more often, it is just too energy and cost intensive to be a net sink. When we have way more clean energy than we need, then maybe... Now, not really.
Yeah, exactly! I thought this was an odd argument to use. In the UK, old coal mines have tons of minor seismic activity associated with them (due to collapses/groundwater infiltration after they were closed) so are actually some of the less stable places here, at least in present day... guessing it was being used as a catch-all to mean e.g. 'away from big complex prexisting faults'.
Human caused earthquakes are a real thing. At the top of the *list of threats to humanity* are things like climate change, astroid impact, next pandemic, and dictators. The threat of human caused earthquakes is on the list in place 938,432.
Love these tidbits of history ! Can you maybe do one on why some countries have more oil than others ? It's interesting to me how some countries in close proximity to the gulf states don't have as nearly as much oil on their offshore/onshore sites. And at what point is the wood considered coal and not petrified wood ?
Petrified wood is a type of fossil - all the carbon has been leached out and replaced with other minerals.
@@LimeyLassen Especially. Petrified Wood is a Mineral Model of the Wood.
Look up where the warm swamps were out pacing the fungi and bacteria that break down cellulose. Continental drift changes land forms.
Petrified wood is associated with silica. Usually if not always there is lots of volcanic ash/glass dust intimately associated with the petrified material. The multicolored material is associated with red and green soils. Such souls are usually restricted to variable depositional conditions…reflecting climate fluctuation a d changes in water levels.oxygenated and not oxygenated such as stagnant water saturated areas. Most petrified wood is a dark uninteresting material having been petrified in say, water saturated conditions.
The fact that most of our coal came from a random one off event really makes you wonder if it’s another potential “great filter” for intelligent life out there. I feel like coal, or something like it, which is abundant and combustible, would be essential for a civilization to become technological, so how common or rare is that in the universe?
Thanks for the video, y'all!
This is part of my preferred solutions to the Fermi Paradox.
Wouldn’t a society still be able to form around pure mechanical energy from water movement? I mean agriculture and transportation via waterways were a lot more fundamental to early society than coal. If anything I think it would just lead to concentration of civilization around rivers and lakes.
My thoughts exactly. Who knows how many intelligent races might be out there stuck forever in a pre-industrial state? You can't transition past medieval-level technology without coal, oil or gas.
@@datboigroovin8200 sure but they would be extremely hard to find, the fermi paradox is about not meeting aliens. If they exist but they're all stuck in the bronze age, that is a possible answer
@@datboigroovin8200 That’s perfectly fine for a pre-industrial society. That’s not going to help produce massive amounts of steel, airplanes, rockets, etc. Almost all of our modern society was created through fossil fuels because of the dense energy they provide and the fact that they can be moved wherever they’re needed. Without fossil fuels, human society would still very much resemble what it was shortly after the American Revolution.
@@vcuheel1464 ... I think much earlier than that.
Thank you Rose Bear Don't Walk, (and all others that helped in the production,) that was an awesome, informative video.
Our society is based on countless flukes
Hey, have ya'll done an episode on the Judean date palm? That resurrected species of date palm that went extinct ~600 years ago from a 2 thousand year old seed?
I havent heard about that until now and I googled it and it is super interesting. I hope Sci-show will make video about it. Thanks for the info.
Thank you Rose, that is a brilliant idea!
Do you guys think this is the common way for it to go down throughout the universe? If a planet evolves life and plants, is it likely that plants would evolve before those who break it down will
yes. every time.
Too bad this is the only place where life exists.
It could be, and not even plants necessarily, just any (bunch of) organisms that predate intelligent life and leaves enough carbon to become coal
Usually a resource has to exist before a niche evolves to exploit it, so most likely yes.
If the dominant hypothesis is correct, that the life that could decompose it hadn't evolved yet, then yes it seems like the likely result.
If the hypothesis referred to in this video is correct, that tectonic movement is the greater factor, then it may be a much less common way to go.
The Carboniferous was not "mostly tropical". The coal bearing regions were in the tropics. Because so much carbon was sequestrated the atmospheric greenhouse shut down and the Carboniferous was an ice age even more severe than the Pleistocene.
A minor nit: Trees are not mostly carbon. Carbon only constitutes about twenty to thirty percent of the weight of dry wood.
Maybe a great filter is the leap from sapience to industrialization, and a lot of aliens never have access to the cheap energy that we had in the Industrial Revolution, so they never advanced past late Renaissance tech.
In Larry Niven’s Ringword, when the advanced civilization that built the titular megastructure collapsed, the species lived on as an agricultural society since there were no mineral deposits and they didn’t know how to repair the transmutators
Theoretically it is very easy to find alternatives to coal for cheap energy, some of which competed with coal during early industrialization. The very, very important thing here is rather the abundance of mineral deposits in general - many things are only possible because we have easy access to iron & copper etc.
@@Argacyan Many of the trains and steamships burned wood because, locally, it was cheaper than coal. However, that equation changes rapidly when there is more than a few furnaces to feed and wood can't be cut or grow back fast enough. Wood and peat work as an alternative to coal in low demand or supplementary situations, but not at the intensity we are accustomed to.
I don't hear Ringworld references very often, great read!
@@Argacyan maybe it’s a soft filter, and species take a thousand years instead of a hundred to fully industrialize. That may mean many species never struggle with global warming, though they may struggle with other kinds of environmental depletion
I have heard some other theory, we are here just too early.
I always like to plug the awesome/interesting Project Vesta, which is trying to use olivine rock to sequester carbon from the ocean by literally making beaches made of green olivine sand! It's an extremely elegant solution and if nothing else it looks beautiful.
Imagine living in the Caroniferous period and building a house or a boat.
It never rots.
It truly would have been glorious.
not sure if i can build it before taking 2 breaths and dying of oxygen toxicity
@@viktorm3840 going to have to exhale eventually
"...focus on getting that carbon out of the atmosphere and back where it came from". It came from the atmosphere. Ancient trees took it from the atmosphere.
Thank you for the inforative lecture. Well spoken. I love the message on the toque as well!
“Stay tuned for our discussion of carbon sequestration’s unintended consequences.”
At this point, most of the consequences are separating investors from dollars. IMO the only meaningful carbon capture tech is building topsoil, which isn’t going to make anyone the killing they’re expecting.
The Seas did not BOIL: At the beginning of the carboniferous period the CO2 content was 1500 PPM. Four times the amount that we have in the atmosphere today. As stated it was "wetter and warmer". Warmer conditions creat fast evaporation rates at sea and increased rainfall on land. PLANTS LOVED IT. Oxygen levels Rose from 21% to 35-37%.
But living organisms need long time periods to adapt to the changes of climate. Yes, there were periods of warm climate, but the ecosystems were adapted to that. The climate is now changing much much faster than it was ever in the past (maybe with the exception of the event that killed the dinosaurs, that was even more abrupt change. But it started one of the mass extinctions - not a great example of climate change being ok). The nature is not able to adapt to changes so fast. Another mass extinction may be just beginning to happen right now. After the clima stabilizes, in million or tens of millions of years, new ecosystems will form and new life form will thrive. And it is quite possible that this future forms of life will indeed be very happy with the abundance of CO2. We can't destroy the life itself. But we are capable of destroying the ecosystems we rely on now, and with these ecosystems, our civilisation will colapse.
Rose has become such a great scishow host :) Everything in this video is made more interesting and compelling with her narration! Great job and I’m excited to see more!!!
YESSS!!!!! ive been "yay, rose!" from teh first time she came on :) i definitely become happier when i see her in a video haha. Not to say anything bad about the other hosts of course, theyre all great :)
She is definitely the worst host
@@dillonyang6869 dang, how does it feel to be so confidently wrong?
How do they determine how powerful an enzyme is? I mean what is even the scale here and what happens if it's over 9000??
I guess (not a biologist) it depends on efficiency?
If it's over 9000, the Saiyans get scared.
Everything comes down to chemical bonds in the end, I think in this case "powerful" describes it's ability to break apart polymers. A hammer breaks rocks but a knife cuts rubber, powerful is pretty conditional here and kind of seems like a poor choice of words honestly.
Its not that deep, just some lyrical hogwash to convey importance and intrigue without having to sacrifice time to explain, its the most basic of short form science communication tricks
What? 9000?
Another problem with carbon sequestration: the energy required to pump it into high-pressure underground storage will eat a lot of the energy obtained by burning it. It's like pumping water back uphill after it's gone through a hydro dam.
We already use a lot of energy turning petroleum products into plastic, turning trees into wood and paper, etc. So just bury those cabon-based trash items. We already do carbon sequestration in this way. The idea of pumping CO2 into the ground is... nuts to me. It's used by trees, plants and plankton and we need those things to eat, so if we're really successful at carbon sequestration we all die.
which is something we do for storage of excess energy
@@namenloss730 The pumped storage facilities use the principle that nuclear power runs more efficiently at a constant level. When demand is low (such as weekends or nights), the excess power is used to pump the water up to a holding pond. When demand is higher than the reactor is dialed in for, they release the water back down through the turbines and generate power.
It can also be used with solar or wind generation where the generation changes between weather patterns. In the same way that nuclear isn't well suited for instant demand changes, neither is solar or wind. The pumped storage helps smooth out the demand curves.
Of course it isn't 100% efficient, but it is much more efficient than constantly adjusting control rods to account for fluctuations in demand or waiting for the weather to change.
@@chadportenga7858 yes, thanks for detailing it
@@namenloss730 Sure, but (1) that subtracts a lot from the energy we wanted to get from the fuel (2) we can only make use of that stored energy by releasing the CO2. Which we were trying to avoid. BTW, even if you released it, the total energy you would get (burning the fuel, then later releasing the CO2) would be less than you'd get the old-fashioned way. You lose both ways.
I’m studying environmental geology so that I can hopefully do this sort of thing.
All the luck to you, Zane.
Lignin is also in books and why you get that vanillin smell whenever you find an old bookstore with that lovely, lovely stench.
nicely presented, Thorough
It’s almost like there was a flood that buried all those trees
This is a very human response. Lets try too hard to fix everything. Because things only got the way they have thanks to us. Here's an idea, bandaging a wound helps not if we just keep stabbing, tearing and scratching at the wound. Just stop destroying everything and give it time to heal itself, the planets surface is alive.
Agreed but we passed the exit where the Earth could heal about 7,999,000,000 people ago.
Fun fact: Lignite (a type of coal) is named after the lignin in plants
So a long time ago I was allowed to read a peer-reviewed paper on using fracking sites to seal away various toxic chemicals.
The conclusion was it was feasible. The problem came that the fracking companies flatly refused to take a bit of care with their fracking so we could use the sites after.
Figure we'll have the same problem with this. It won't be "cost effective".
Is it accurate to call peat "proto-coal"? I mean, peat is also flammable material made of dead plant matter compacted down by newer dead plant matter above it.
technically yes though you need the right conditions for peat to be able to get converted into coal. During the Late Devonian and Carboniferous what would become the coal belt was a number of mature volcanic arc complexes near the equator and the Earth was actually in the late Paleozoic ice age where the minor supercontinent Gondwana sat at the south pole buried beneath kilometers of ice which waxed and waned in extent. Effectively the Milankovitch cycles created the conditions by lowering sea levels allowing coal swamp rainforests to expand and then get inundated during the subsequent interglacial where shallow tropical waters allowed the accumulation of overlying salts which prevented hydrocarbons from easily escaping and then the arc basins got smashed between the continents Laurentia Baltica and Siberia as they met with Gondwana in the southern hemisphere to form Pangaea.
In essence coal is peat that has been altered by metamorphosis in this case driven by the formation of towering mountains as the continents squished the arcs into belts which thanks to the basins and accretionary process were buried deep enough that they got not only preserved but metamorphized.
Some of the deeper and deposits of peat are on their way to being coal. Those deposits more closely resemble bituminous (soft) coal than the compressed plant matter that one would expect peat to be. Though, keep in mind that these are the oldest deposits known and we were already burning them in the middle ages.
It's not as long term as the coal but converting some biomass into charcoal and adding it to the soil can sequester some carbon. When people burn brush instead of letting it burn to ash it can be added in layers to limit oxygen and either quenched or smothered. I've been making char I mix into my compost that goes on the yard and garden, my yard doesn't dry and crack in dry years anymore.
Our current issue with Carbon is the modern day equivalent to the horse manure problem of the late 1800s and early 1900s. We’ll find a new medium for our problem, and it will end up being an even bigger issue for future generations.
Exactly! That's what humans have been doing since agriculture. It looks like most of the "solutions" to a fossil fuel economy will produce more pollutants than the current economy when you examine them in detail and the period of transition will produce massive amounts of CO2 and toxic waste. There's a good chance that we'll fry and poison ourselves in the race to stop global warming.
Great video!
[Puts carbon back in coal mine where we got it.]
"Hello, I'd like a refund."
Most of the southern hemisphere coal deposits actually come from the Permian, the period after the Carboniferous.
Possible solution to the Fermi Paradox? Coal or some equivalent could be the key to the industrialization that leads to advanced technology, meaning any alien civilizations that lack it would never hit the rapid advancement necessary to become space faring.
'What should I wear for this video?'
'Here...try these goofy, distracting earings'
'ok'.....Should I wear a hat?'
''You would be stupid if you didn't.'
Carbon recapture devices are... kind of impossible, as far as a solution for fixing what we've done to the planet.
Agreed. I love this video about it: Honest Government Ad - Carbon Capture & Storage
No, they are not. Saying so is flat out silly.
Thank goodness for photosynthesis and the carbon capture micro devices in plant cells.
@@filonin2 I'll believe it when they start working at their promised efficiency and fossil fuel companies stop lying about CCS as a greenwashing tactic.
@@cindypuckett2782 - The only problem is the natural system is 1000's of times too slow to help us over the next few centuries. We are in for a long, tough fight to keep parts of earth livable, most likely scenario is that 1/2 or more of the earth's population of humans will not survive the next 200 years.
I often find these videos have great bits of information that's new to me and easy to digest -- not like those lignins! And Rose's presentation style is really accessible.
Here is some information for you to get your head around. There is no climate crisis, you can ignore the data all you like and abuse the meaning of English words all you like but at the end of the day there is no crisis, natural or human induced. Look at the Keeling Curve dataset, notice how there is no "signal" detectable from the covid slowdown of the economy? That means that you don't even have direct proof that humans are the major contributor to the rate of CO2 rise in the Earth's atmosphere. I kid you not, go and look up the data yourself.
Actually, I find Rose the worst presenter in SciShow lineup. So bad I can't even finish her videos despite how much I like this channel.
@@Muaddibize They all seem the same to me? Like even down to the intonation and hand gestures
@Peter Lorimer This is my 1st time seeing Rose. Seems quite good. I like her big earrings today.
Those are some pretty nice earing you're rocking there, Miss. Bear Don't Walk.
Isn't burying plastics in landfills a form of carbon capture?
Radiology states it will oxidise given enough time
Yes, and also it makes the mine sites of tomorrow
@@off-labelbotanist5355 Is that good or bad?
@@MatthewMakesAU I want to be the best environmentalist I can, and I know it sounds horrible, but isn't burying old plastic make sense? More than using still more energy to try to inject into rocks or recycle it?
@@1chumley1 Yes, putting plastic in landfill is the best thing to do with it. We should make more use of landfills for material that can in theory be recycled but current technology doesn't allow it without using excessive resources. That's what I mean by the landfill of today is the mine site of tomorrow
While it may only be a technicality, that isn't the only source of the coal we use, just the source of the highest quality coal; there are alternative ways for coal to form, like the lowest quality coal, lignite, which is just sedimentary rock formed from a peat bog, a formation process which is still present in the modern era.
This method of carbon capture bears a bit of resemblance to a certain method of file extraction. Therefore, I suggest we call this method "unfracking"
In many ways using liquid CO2 is a superior medium for fracking than water and solvents. Liquid CO2 injection can also be used to rinse out depleted oil fields and extend the service life of existing wells so that less new environmental cost is incurred for getting more oil which we still need now and will continue to need some of in the future. All while the majority of the injected CO2 remains liquid in the ground where the petroleum it displaced was. And yes, in some circumstances it may eventually come back to the surface, but even then it will buy time by being out of circulation for possibly thousands of years and probably longer. The CO2 can be gathered at the "smokestack" of many types of industrial facility, from fertiliser plants, to electricity generator stations, to centralised municipal heating furnaces (where steam is a utility), liquefied and piped back as a commodity for various applications including the aforementioned extraction and sequestration. This can usually be done at much less cost than atmospheric collection, but only if the collection pipelines are in place. If the emissions of biomass and garbage burning electricity generating stations are captured for sequestration then they could be carbon negative.
I'm waiting for these young scishow kids to notice that recent U.S. authorization for small modular reactors is the solution to 'carbon'.
"Most of the world was pretty tropical"
Gondwana comprising South America, Africa, Arabian Peninsula, India, Australia and Antarctica: am I a joke to you?
Good video though
What I think is pretty neat is a sub period of the carboniferous period is named after my home state... Pennsylvania!
Perhaps this is one reason why we don’t see life on other planets. Other planets would have to go through an industrial era of some kind, and if ours was because of a fluke…how likely is that fluke to happen elsewhere in the universe
Perhaps they get different flukes to us. Maybe we missed out on certain compounds they get, and we're looking for chemical signals different to what they emit.
You should also describe the atmosphere 300 MYA.
I love your style!
Carboniferous. This is so cool. By the way, I have difficulty communicating because I had a stroke in Broca’s area, the part of the brain that controls speech. 2/8/2021 but I lived again. (My wife helped me compose this.)
Looks like the recovery's going well. My aunt had a stroke that made her talk in a very arythmic rate and completely monotone, and now a year later she sounds like her old self. You'll get there, my dude. Keep it up!
Glad she's around to write youtube comments for you instead of being in control of her own life 🤷♂️
@@Ducky69247 do you think being in control of your own life means you should stop caring for people close to you?
@@nuklearboysymbiote sure, if that's what you read, then it must be what I said.
@@Ducky69247 troll
Can you clarify if this geological element is the new primary reason for coal deposits as opposed to the inability of fungi to brake down plants? Is this new consensus amongst the scientific community or a new less confident theory? Thank you. :)
That was my understanding, too, that the reason Earth won’t create any more coal is that since the end of the Carboniferous, fungi evolved the ability to break down lignins. Biology moving faster than geology
I’m pretty sure they were saying the inability for fungi to break down lignin was the original sole theory for the existence of the Carboniferous layer, but now they believe it might be more so because of geological activity (tectonics) that created lots of environments where the carbon could be trapped (isolated and low oxygen, even underwater). Of course it could be both which they haven’t discounted yet, but they probably lean more towards the geologic activity as the main culprit. That’s what I got from the video at any rate.
Its more complicated than this and frankly Sci Show didn't do their homework here very well if at all.
Namely they somehow missed that we know from evidence such as glacial drop stones temperature proxy data and the relative apparent timing between transitions in environments from swamp jungles to shallow seas appear to follow Milankovitch cycles. During this period of time known as the late Paleozoic ice age which lasted from 360 to 255 million years ago saw the polar continent of Gondwana.
The majority of our coal comes from this time and is at least in part due to the inundation of continental shelves during interglacials. However more broadly for context most of the land which formed coal existed in the form of numerous large mature volcanic arc complexes which had been active since the Neoproterozoic.
These mature volcanic arcs had been around for hundreds of millions of years and likely had reached the stage where they had become anchored to the tropics as subducted crust piled up to sink into the lower mantle. These arcs were covered in thick jungles which are responsible for most of the coal. In this sense they were as a general role largely analogous to the Sunda shelf of Indonesia and Sahul the greater Australia including accreted arcs onto the Australian continental shelf to the south.
Around this time however Laurentia Baltica and Siberia were in the process of plowing into these archipelagos and ultimately these arcs were smashed up between these continents and Gondwana around the south pole as they met in the southern mid latitudes to form Pangaea. It is these accreted arcs which became compressed into our worlds modern coal belts a history which is even given away in part by their name as these belts were formed from accreted terrain that got squished together during the collisions.
So while the volcanic arcs played the role of sequestering and concentrating the coal long term it was actually the glacial interglacial sea level changes which caused the anaerobic inundation of these coal swamps a process which can be observed from excavations around modern continental shelves today showing us that there are buried forests and even archeological artifacts beneath the sediment.
Thank you
In pre-Columbian South America, indigenous peoples produced what the Portuguese called terra preta (black earth). It is formed by digging pits 3 to 4 feet deep, filling them with wood, scrap food and bones along with broken seashells and broken pottery and then smoldering them under low oxygen and producing biochar. Not burning it, which releases a lot of carbon into the air in the form of smoke, but charcoalizing it in a special way. The resulting stuff captures carbon and does not let it go. It is a veritable permanent carbon sink. Planting lots of trees is very helpful to the environment because it captures carbon and produces oxygen, but when trees die, most of the carbon finds its way back into the environment. Terra preta fixes the carbon and does not release it back into the atmosphere.
The process creates an unbelievably rich, fertile soil that produces 25% - 50% more abundant crops naturally, using no fertilizer whatever, and remains fertile for hundreds and hundreds of years. Locals in Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia bag and sell terra preta as a super-fertilizer. If it is added to your soil, it turns a limited area into terra preta as well.
If this could be produced on a large scale, which Cornell University has begun testing, it could mitigate several important problems: the overuse of chemical fertilizers, the need for increased food, and the sequestration of carbon.
That actually makes me think… i wonder if aliens that evolve on worlds without large supplies of coal and natural gas would be able to develop to our level of technological advancement? Were quite lucky in that regard
"life, uhh... finds a way"
The industrial revolution would not have happened without coal, but scientific and technical progress would still have continued. Humans would harness electricity from other sources even if it took a couple hundred years longer to develop. On a galactic timescale, that's like a single grain of sand on a beach.
There's only two things that can get a rocket into space.
1) Lots of fossil fuels.
2) Lots of nuclear explosions.
So a civilization in lack of one would be forced to use the other. Possibly to their own ruin.
@@Yonkage-ik5qb Hydrogen. Which can, and is though expensively, gotten from water and electricity.
I agree with Dem Pilafian. Energy density is often a bottleneck on technology. The 2nd Industrialization Revolution in particular was predicated (among other things) on the widespread adoption of the combustion engine, which depended on coal and metallurgy. But it's possible to advance science without industrialization. Scientific advancement is more a matter of social institutions.
Brilliant..!
Don’t believe CC is our best bet right now though
Love your cap and what it reads! Mitakuye Oyasin
i notice the hat.... that's so sweet! nice touch. you all are amazing
I always love Rose and her earrings but now her hat! - plus it’s giving me major Olivia vibes and I’m happy about that too.
I like the catastrophic plate tectonics theory. In short, the ocean plates completely subducted in a short and violent event, tore apart Pangea. washed the oceans right over the continents, and when it settled down, it was much closer to the Earth we have today.
I tend to think that an extraterrestrial collision initiated a lot of the motion.
Pangea was forming during the Carboniferous, not breaking apart.
Sounds a lot like Noah’s flood
The part of Pittsburgh I live in has two formations, my neighborhood has Casselman and Monongahela formation loaded with fossils and coal.
Congratulations! Excellent presentation.👍 ... nice earrings, by the way. 🌐 👌🤩
7:47 honestly you probably want to be turning that carbon dioxide into what ever carbon compound make up charcoal and then plowing that charcoal into the farms fields and forests maybe something involving a fast growing plant like bamboo those from what i understand now trees and plants and such arent nearly as effective at pulling carbon out of the air as i thought there wear so in that case ... idk something involving massive amount of i think it was crushed basalt and weathering
Well there is another similar method called Enhanced Rock weathering. The rocks/minerals containing Calcium that soak up carbon dioxide is used to amend soil for balancing ph instead of liming which releases carbondioxide
@@aleenaprasannan2146 oh yeah i think i head thunderfoot talking about that in one of his videos awhile back
Here's me looking at her earrings and thinking, "The beadwork reminds me of indigenous jewelry, cool." then I'm listening to her, and I glance over at her hair and I'm like, "Hmm, that's tightly braided." After a bit I read her hat, and I realize, "Oh, that's why I'll never be a detective, I'm oblivious to the obvious."
Rose Bear Don’t Walk
Late but I’m guessing you missed both the credits at the end and the description because they both say that the host for this episode is Rose Bear Don’t Walk and it was either that or you didn’t realize
Bear Don’t Walk is a Native American name.
native beauty, I was sure off your looks but the toque made it official. right on rose! one more reason to watch scishow
I am a fan of the show Ax Men which is about loggers. It is a reality show that follows lumberjacks from different areas from Alaska to Florida. One company is in Florida and another in Louisiana. Both were searching for a lost treasure of logs. The man in Louisiana finally found a barge which sank in Lake Pontchartrain in the 19th century. The Floridians finally found a train that went off a bridge at the junction of rivers in the 19th century. They were both getting logs that had been under water for over 100 years. Sometimes submerged logs are rotted in the core but it was reliably certain -- to a commercial certainty -- that they are not.
Grow fast growing plants like bamboo and just create biochar and bury it. Also it can create better soils along with locking up the carbon.
... and when growing other plants for crops, biochar the parts not used for food. Charring straw from wheat and plowing it back in is both good for the soil locks up the carbon, as you suggest.
Why can't we build houses with it? Like, is the goal for all these solutions the most humans to die?
Very interesting video! And I love Rose’s hat! 😊
It looks like a hat
But the carboniferous period did so well with plants because it had more atmospheric CO2 than today. The CO2 in our atmosphere today is near the lower limit for plants to thrive. That's why many modern commercial greenhouses add CO2 to the air inside the greenhouse.
I think you showed a nuclear plant venting water vapor when you talked about "burning coal" - which is not what is happening in that shot
What about storing away all the grass clippings and plant matter we create? Is there a way to extract the nitrogen for fertilizer, and sequester the rest of the carbon filled plant material?
lawns are terrible for the environment
Would take millions of years and would take more energy to artificially create the environment needed for coal to form than the energy we'll get from ot
Chemistry is magic. You can do all of this.
Except, in every carbon storage project, the actual amount of carbon emitted through their processes is always larger than the amount of captured carbon.
Also, all this captured carbon could leak back into the atmosphere, lakes, rivers or geound water. These problems occur to 90% of carbon capture projects.
storing carbon is fine, but requires energy.. we don't even manage to source all our energy carbon neutral right now, so there is no way carbon storage as you envision it will be a carbon sink
Justayoutuber1986 creating compost from them helps as some carbon remains as humus, and high-humus soils become better at sequestering more cabon as humus
In places without coal we burn wood to do the same job. Fresh carbon as opposed to ancient. People think of forest trees as sequestering carbon but even better is pastures grazed by livestock who produce delicious healthy meat and fat - a far better carbon storage method.
We should stuff abandoned quarries with lots of plant matter.
I'm still a fan of the "evolution took a while to figure out how to efficiently decompose wood" theroy. Honestly, it is probably a combination of geological and the biological theories... As is normal
The science literature will be filled with folks arguing over which was more important, and the pop media will report it as one theory vs the other. As is normal :(
The great irony is we dug up the remnants of an ancient mass grave and wonder why our world is dying.
Love the toque.
Why not just fill old coal mines with organic matter that we’re already putting in the landfill? (grass clippings, bush trimmings, wood chips, leaves etc.) We could even dry, grind, and compact it in there, basically putting it back where it came from.
If every human being on earth planted a tree it would make a huge difference
Not necessarily a positive difference though. In a lot of environments, planting trees is a net carbon source for at least a few decades. They can have a big effect on the soil and plants already there... And not in a good way carbon storage wise.
Kia ora Rose Bear, off topic but you might enjoy the podcast series; The Aotearoa History Show, on the RNZ website or TH-cam. Ngā Mihi.
Whoa, Whoa! The Carboniferous period was not the only time of major coal formation. In New Mexico, for example, we have been mining vast amounts of coal from the Cretaceous period.
One thing you didn't mention is how the lignin can combine with magma to create ligma.
I apologize for this joke, I feel ashamed for making it.
Love the "You're on Native land" hat
The first thing viewers can do to help sequester carbon is ditch their green lawns and plant back dense forests. There is no reason every suburban home should be a green lawn. It is ugly, it is stupid and it is lazy. If we reverse the land use change happened, we can capture that carbon into the trees, then we need to stop building with concrete and start building with wood again. Every 2x4 in a building is helping to store carbon dioxide. So plant trees, build buildings with them, make sure the buildings are maintained and the wood does not end up in a landfill. If the wood needs to be removed from the building, it should be used to power industrial processes to at least extract the energy from the wood before it turns back into CO2. We should also deagriculturize.
The real question: How much carbon went into making those earrings!?
I was curious why you didn't mention hydrothermal carbonization. It could be used as a carbon sequestration tool without the problems you mentioned here with sequestration in rocks. It can duplicate the processes that took a few million years down to a few days. It's a 1913 German technology (it's a pressure cooker) that could be used to create a coal alternative (carbon neutral), waste management, filtration stratums, strengthening concrete and lots more. Maybe you could do a scishow on it.