Researcher cites a tendency in science to ignore, rather than go after, theories believed to be false.
Two Stanford geologists are disputing the decade-old explanation of the large amount of coal accumulated during the Carboniferous Period. Associate Professor Kevin Boyce and Postdoctorate Research Fellow Matthew Nelsen collaborated with scientists across the country to release a paper this past month in which they propose a new understanding of coal development.
The previous hypothesis of coal accumulation focused on a temporal lag between the evolution of lignin production in woody plants and the evolution of lignin-degrading fungi to break down this new material. This would have resulted in the non-degraded lignin building up, depositing massive amounts of coal.
“But [this explanation] can’t be true,” Boyce said.
The paper that Boyce and Nelsen collaborated on uses several lines of evidence in order to disprove the old hypothesis.
The most convincing evidence includes a fossil record of lignin-degrading fungi pre-dating the Carboniferous period. New research also reveals that the standard preparation of fossilized plants washes away much of the fossilized fungi and microbes, suggesting the current fungi fossil record to be an underestimate of what was actually present at the time.
The hypothesized 130-million-year evolutionary lag between the plants and the fungi would also have resulted in severe environmental consequences.
“Even if plants were less productive then, there’s probably a good three or so gigatons of lignin being produced per year,” Boyce said. “If you had 80 million years without lignin decay, you’d run out of CO2 in the atmosphere in a couple hundred years… we’d freeze the earth.”
Their paper also includes a graph displaying the accumulation of organic sediments over time. Rather than showing a steady increase over the Carboniferous Period, the graph has many spikes of accumulation, each of which lasts around 500,000 years.
“If that was fungi, what would they do? Evolve, un-evolve, and then evolve back?” Boyce said. “The actual record of accumulation doesn’t really work for it being a biotic cause. It looks much more grounded in abiotic processes.”
The new theory explains coal accumulation using weather and tectonic activity. The Carboniferous Period was not only warm, but also coincided with the separation of Pangaea. The spikes on the graph coincide with basins opening up and providing a place for plant material to be deposited before eroding away.
Boyce and Nelsen looked at the coal accumulation in Denver around 50 million years ago as a model to explain the 300-million-year-old phenomenon of Carboniferous accumulation.
“It was equivalently productive and wet, and a lot of coal formed because the incipient Rocky Mountains were there so there was a place to put all the coal,” Boyce said. “So the local rates of accumulation were similar to what was going on worldwide during the Carboniferous.”
According to Nelson, discontent with the evolutionary lag hypothesis has been around for some time before the publishing of this recent paper.
“I think there were some grumblings in the literature: people going after this but not anywhere near the level of detail that we did,” Nelsen said.
This raises the larger issue: If geologists had seen problems with the hypothesis, why had nothing been done to disprove it earlier?
According to Boyce, the unique collaborative circumstances hadn’t occurred in the past.
“You’re vry often at the edge of what you know yourself and it’s very important to have the right collaborators looking at it from other directions,” Boyce said.
Further, “That becomes a real problem,” said Boyce, “because people using [geology] from outside the field aren’t going to recognize who was ignoring what… These things have actual consequences.”
Source: The Stanford Daily
Delayed fungal evolution did not cause the Paleozoic peak in coal production
Matthew P. Nelsen, William A. DiMichele, Shanan E. Peters, and C. Kevin Boyce
The Carboniferous−Permian marks the greatest coal-forming interval in Earth’s history, contributing to glaciation and uniquely high oxygen concentrations at the time and fueling the modern Industrial Revolution. This peak in coal deposition is frequently attributed to an evolutionary lag between plant synthesis of the recalcitrant biopolymer lignin and fungal capacities for lignin degradation, resulting in massive accumulation of plant debris. Here, we demonstrate that lignin was of secondary importance in many floras and that shifts in lignin abundance had no obvious impact on coal formation. Evidence for lignin degradation—including fungal—was ubiquitous, and absence of lignin decay would have profoundly disrupted the carbon cycle. Instead, coal accumulation patterns implicate a unique combination of climate and tectonics during Pangea formation.
Abstract
Organic carbon burial plays a critical role in Earth systems, influencing atmospheric O2 and CO2 concentrations and, thereby, climate. The Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic is so named for massive, widespread coal deposits. A widely accepted explanation for this peak in coal production is a temporal lag between the evolution of abundant lignin production in woody plants and the subsequent evolution of lignin-degrading Agaricomycetes fungi, resulting in a period when vast amounts of lignin-rich plant material accumulated. Here, we reject this evolutionary lag hypothesis, based on assessment of phylogenomic, geochemical, paleontological, and stratigraphic evidence. Lignin-degrading Agaricomycetes may have been present before the Carboniferous, and lignin degradation was likely never restricted to them and their class II peroxidases, because lignin modification is known to occur via other enzymatic mechanisms in other fungal and bacterial lineages. Furthermore, a large proportion of Carboniferous coal horizons are dominated by unlignified lycopsid periderm with equivalent coal accumulation rates continuing through several transitions between floral dominance by lignin-poor lycopsids and lignin-rich tree ferns and seed plants. Thus, biochemical composition had little relevance to coal accumulation. Throughout the fossil record, evidence of decay is pervasive in all organic matter exposed subaerially during deposition, and high coal accumulation rates have continued to the present wherever environmental conditions permit. Rather than a consequence of a temporal decoupling of evolutionary innovations between fungi and plants, Paleozoic coal abundance was likely the result of a unique combination of everwet tropical conditions and extensive depositional systems during the assembly of Pangea.
Scientific problems are holistic. Holistic problems are solved by summarizing all of the observations and then actively developing competing theories to attempt to solve the problem. The correct solution eliminates all of the anomalies and paradoxes.
The standard analysis methodology for private industry to solve holistic problems is the plane crash investigation methodology. As the public would not accept planes from time to time crashing as there are unresolved engineering defects and required maintenance issues that were not identified or addressed, the plane crash methodology is used. The plane crash methodology is used to solve holistic problems where it necessary to solve the problem as soon as possible as opposed to the talk and write about the problem forever methodology.
The plane crash methodology requires (for practical logical reasons) that all the data/analysis is summarized, In the plane crash analysis there is absolutely no barriers to developing new theories. In plane crash analysis theories advance to the top of the short list (note in plane crash analysis there is a short list as opposed to the lets pick one theory a decade before we start the new analysis and never relook at the fundamental issues methodology and attempt to keep the first chosen theory regardless of the evidence methodology.
In the plane crash analysis any and all paradoxes/anomalies are noted ((things that are not explained or contradict a theory). Finally it is an absolute requirement in plane crash analysis that the entire analysis/set of observations is documented without prejudice so third parties can check the validity of all conclusions and recommendations and to enable third parties or the original team to use the formal plane crash analysis documentation as a base to relook at a problem if necessary.
The holistic analysis methodology/process use to solve what causes a plane crash or why a refinery blew up, and so on is similar/analogous to solving a picture puzzle. The shape of the puzzle pieces changes when the observations are viewed with a different theory. What a theory can or cannot explain depends on its mechanisms. Staying with the picture puzzle analogy, as more and more observations are available and the analysis has matured, it becomes easier and easier to solve the problem. The solution drops out, if fundamental theory errors are corrected. There is no guessing required, the observations point to the solution.
Pure science uses the one paper with blinders on forever analysis methodology where the authors ignored the observations and paradoxes that disprove the theory they are pushing, In pure science the authors will call any competing theory cranky, sometimes decades ago with no formal analysis. In pure science individuals are allowed to actively or covertly attack anyone attempting to advance a competing theory based on observations. In pure science the observations that are paradoxes and anomalies never make it into the text books, so it is common for the new people in the field to be complete unaware that the base theory is an urban legend.
In pure science people are paid to publish papers, not to solve problems. In pure science, people advance their careers by getting the support of old guys that went through the same gauntlet. The old guys in pure science hate any competing theory (imagine you have published hundreds of papers pushing the standard theory, you have spent years attempting to make paradoxes and anomalies go away, you are now head of a small department and control funding and member selection of large projects. Can you see how the irrational bias to theory changes develops?) and will and have worked to stop publication of observations, and have blocked funding for research for competing theories. In the old guys paradigm stopping research into competing theories is just saving money for the real important work.
The old guys develop over time a weird emotional attachment to specific theories which they would be fired for in private industry. In private industry problems must be solved and all theories/mechanisms belongs to the group trying to solve the problem not to an individual. In private industry there are senior specialists that make sure there are no stones unturned and to stop all theoretical prejudices. Senior specialists get paid to help multidiscipline specialists solve problems, not to study problems endlessly.
The forever analysis methodology complete with its we hate any competing theory paradigm explains why there is an astonishing pile of breakthroughs ( Noble prize winning discoveries, discoveries that would require re-writing textbooks, discoveries that would change the course of humanity/our everyday life, discoveries that would lead to interstellar space travel, and so on) in almost every field of pure science that are comically/surreally easy to find.
There are books that have been written decades ago that summarize paradoxes and anomalies in different fields and come up with a solution that is incorrect but points in the direction of the solution. As the decades have past there are more and more new observations and analysis results so it is now fairly straightforward to put the pieces together to solve the different related puzzles.
Nice!
The problem with the concept of ‘abiotic coal’ is that coal contains fossils of biological entities. Even at the chemical level the presence of polycyclic hydrocarbons (naphthalene, anthracene, phenanthrene, etc.) with linked rings of 10 or more carbon atoms argues against the origin of coal seams from simple one-carbon molecules such as methane or CO2.
The coal is more likely formed by anaerobic cooking at temperatures too warm for the fungi to thrive. Anybody who has ever mulched knows that the ‘fermentation’ of rotting vegetation can generate heat – occasionally enough for spontaneous combustion.
“The problem with the concept of abiotic sandstone is that sandstone contains fossils of biological entities.”
“The problem with the concept of abiotic petrification is that petrified objects are fossils of biological entities.”
…or isn’t the logical fallacy evident?
In any case, would it be true that fungi participate in fermentation?
(Just take it easy folks. The biotic theory necessarily requires that all the carbon in hydrocarbons and carbonaceous materials started out in the atmosphere. That has huge implications.)
Quite so. Plus, as anyone who’s read a simple geology textbook knows, no deposits of coal were formed until after land plants evolved,i.e. in about the last one-tenth of the Earth’s history. Before that, there were only marine black shales that get progressively more scarce as you look at older and older rocks. Formation of coal and oil is related to the evolution of life forms (and geological environments that can develop large accumulations of dead life forms).
Of course, most of the carbon that was trapped in those dead organisms had previously existed as CO2 or CH4 (carbonate rocks being rather sparse before the Carboniferous). And it all came from within the mantle, and is probably still escaping from the mantle to some extent. But the idea that you can drill deep enough to tap into endless gas is pretty far-fetched – at the depths they are talking about, permeable zones that could hold easily recoverable reserves cannot be sustained because of the confining pressure. If anything, you might get a continuous slow seepage of methane. Maybe.
So, there are no Montana sized bubbles of pure methane lurking under the crust, just waiting for us to stick a straw through and suck it out?
Doh!
William A.,
Thanks for your input. My finding have been dismissed because I am an autodidact.
I have had to convince professors that most of their life’s work is wrong.
Terra Preta is a good example. The consensus has been that the rich plots of topsoil in
the Amazon was created by the natives who farmed them. Some of the plots have been
farmed for thousands of years. Evidence of human occupation in the yellow soil below
the rich top soil convinced people that humans must have created the soil.
Again cause was confused with effect. The microbes which consume the natural gas
from the plumes over which the topsoil sits are aerobic. As in-falling dust raised the
top of the soil, the level to which the methanotrophs can breathe also rises, eventually
above the first evidence of human occupation. The microbes consume the gas, use
the hydrogen for energy, and excrete the carbon, making the soil dark. As the heavy
rains fall, they leach the carbon, leave the soil yellow once again, as no more carbon
is deposited that deep.
The folks in Brazil do not want to hear that their ancients were not geniuses.
Terra Preta is one of the touchstones of “sustainable farming”.
http://permaculturenews.org/2010/05/25/back-to-the-future-terra-preta-%E2%80%93-ancient-carbon-farming-system-for-earth-healing-in-the-21st-century/
Tadchem,
I don’t believe anyone proposed that coal was formed only by natural gas, and when I
use the term, I don’t mean methane only.
Think of the earth as a large hydrocarbon distillery/cat cracker. The earth generates
the complete range of hydrocarbons.
So what did happen to all the forests of huge plants which covered the Earth and produced all of the oxygen that oxidized the iron in the ocean, and created the O2 rich atmosphere which allowed bugs as big as trolley-cars to evolve?
And, for that matter, where did the oxygen come from?
Early atmosphere was highly reduced.
Seems to me the O2 we have so much of came from CO2 outgassed from volcanoes, and oxidized via photosythesis to free O2.
Jerry H
When you distinguish between Methane and Natural Gas. I assume you’re referring to the unfortunately named “Natural Gas Liquids” which are gases at room temperature and pressure. Yes, those things — Ethane, Propane, Butane, Isobutane are often present in the gas mix from natural gas wells as are other gases like Hydrogen Sulfide, Sulphur Dioxide, Carbon Dioxide, etc. There are often some actual liquids (i.e. “oil”) present as well. The non-methane stuff is separated out and those for which there is a market are sold separately. The product sold as “Natural Gas” is Methane plus an oderant. It’s probably best to try to structure your terminology to acknowledge the common usage. If you don’t, you may not confuse yourself, but you’ll confuse everybody else.
Your theory that (some?) coal is formed by methane (or a mixture of natural gases) interacting with organic rich soil is one I don’t think I’ve I’ve never heard before. But I’m skeptical for at least two reasons. First, upland environments for the most part tend to erode, not to get covered and preserved. When they are preserved they tend to be topographic low points — lakes and ponds. There are some paleosoils preserved here and there. But I don’t recall them being described as especially organic rich. Second, I would think that coals formed in the way you propose (assuming that’s even possible) would surely include a lot of dirt — i.e. would have a very high “ash content”. Customers don’t much like coal with a high ash content so there wouldn’t be much point in mining it.
Two, probably naive questions based solely on the summary and abstract:
– Why is it unreasonable to suppose lignin consuming fungi might experience periodic die off and regeneration/adaption? Is there any evidence to contradict this? The incidence of antibiotic resistant organisms, their adaptation and subsequent evolutionary success is well documented in literature, why couldn’t a similar mechanism apply in this example?
– Why is this process refereed to as “abiotic”? Certainly the production of lignin is biotic, whether decomposed by a biological process (lignin consuming fungus) or not? The resulting biological material evolving to coal by geologic processes must still be consider biotic in origin?
The title captured my attention after reading many hypothetical papers on abiotic fossil fuel origins, but those are largely restricted to the inorganic synthesis of long chain hydrocarbons. This paper seems to take a different approach to the definition of “abiotic”?
.
True dat!
You said a mouthful, Bartleby.
Careful! What was once extolled as “critical thinking” could now qualify as “denialism.”
Groty
We don’t think they do, we say they do, because we were taught to repeat that storyline.
Anthony, you have a lot of TYPO’S today !! :
Marcus
February 5, 2016 at 5:09 am
Typo error ??
“You’re vry often at the edge of what you know yourself and ………
Reply
Pop Piasa
February 5, 2016 at 8:46 am
Also the title has the word Caboniferous.
Gruniaditis?
speech to text not yet perfect
..But corrections can make it all better !
Marcus, you have a typo. It’s Grauniaditis.
http://grauniad.co.uk/
Richard Courtney @1:42PM
Different plants are fossilized by different minerals depending upon location. Wood
has been found to be fossilized by silica, calcite, pyrite and opal in addition to
hydrocarbons.
Microbes and many insects eat hydrocarbons. Their death creates the sheen seen on
petroleum products which is one of the things which has lead people to the conclusion
that hydrocarbons are biotic.
In nature, the methanogens generating methane from biomass tend to be balanced by
methanotrophs eating it.
Scientist searching for what they expected to be a massive plume from the Deep Water
Horizon spill found none. The microbes had bloomed to the extent of the food and
consumed it all.
The same happens with the microscopic life which has been given credit for the buildup
of hydrates at great depth in the oceans. Methanogens eat the food on its way down
or as it hits the bottom, then methanotrophs consume their product, forestalling
any buildup.
The buildup of hydrates takes place, usually hundreds of feet below what appears
to be the bottom of the ocean.
Off the coast of the Carolinas, there is ~ a five hundred foot layer that appears to
be the ocean bottom, but below that is a 500 meter layer of hydrates.
The hydrates accumulate until the pressure of the hydrates is heavy enough
to resist the upward force of the up welling gas, and remain so until something
changes their zone of stability.
Isn’t opal just silica ?? As in silica laid down in epi layers from aqueous solutions (maybe tidal), that coagulate together to form arrays od diffracting spheres whose different sizes create the different diffraction colors.
Don’t opals just fall apart in the presence of water ??
g
No george they don’t fall apart in water. They are actually 31% water. There are lovely petrified wood pebbles with some of the rings replaced by opal. These were found in a buried channel of the Missouri River when it flowed the other way – north through Canada before the last glacial period. It is some 200 -300 feet below the present surface in southwest Manitoba, Canada buried in the sediments of the glacial Lake Agassiz that inundated a large area with the retreating ice as its northern shore. The flooding resulted in the water being forced to flow south and another small river flowing into the Mississippi “captured” the headwaters of the old Missouri that then cut a new channel the other way. Glacial rebound of the land assisted.
If you heat opal, it will ‘fall apart’.
There is a problem with the following paragraph: ‘The new theory explains coal accumulation using weather and tectonic activity. The Carboniferous Period was not only warm, but also coincided with the separation of Pangaea. The spikes on the graph coincide with basins opening up and providing a place for plant material to be deposited before eroding away.’
In the US, the Carboniferous Period is divided into the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian. A reconstruction of the Mississippian can be found here: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/340_Miss_2globes.jpg
A reconstruction of the Pennsylvanian can be found here: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/300_Penn_2globes.jpg
You will note that the Iapetus Ocean was being consumed between the North American, European, and African Plates during this time. Hence, the supercontinent Pangea was being created during the Carboniferous Period, not a breakup.
The coal beds laid down in North America during the Carboniferous Period involved numerous transgression – regression episodes in shallow seas covering parts of the continent. This occurred as the Appalachian mountains were being formed.
Pangea began to break apart during the Triassic Period.
I think the mountains you refer to were the Grenville mountains, and the orogeny was the Grenville Orogeny.
What we call the Appalachians are merely the once deeply buried roots of these mountains.
The Grenvilles were worn down to a pediplain, and then further erosion exposed the highly folded and metamorphosed formations that comprise the Appalachians.
At least, that was how they were teaching it when I was learning Earth history in various geology classes.
“I think the mountains you refer to were the Grenville mountains, and the orogeny was the Grenville Orogeny.
What we call the Appalachians are merely the once deeply buried roots of these mountains.”
I THINK that’s mostly the pre-plate-tectonics theory which demanded eroding Himalayian scale mountains in New England during the early to mid Paleozoic to support rapidly eroding West running rivers that formed the so called Queenstown and Catskill deltas in New York. Nowadays the two “deltas” have become forearc basins. The Eastern mountains have (I believe) shrunk to more moderate size. The rocks East and South of Logan’s Line (roughly the Hudson River nearly to the St Lawrence then Northeast right through Newfoundland and on to the British Isles and Scandanavia) are recognized as a jumble of chunks of Laurentia(proto North America), Iapetus Sea sediments, small volcanic island arcs and one, maybe two, long narrow micro-continents called Avalonia.
In this model, Grenville sediments probably underlie most of the Western Appalachians, but the only place in the Appalachians they are exposed on the surface is the Adirondack uplift. In this vision, other old metasediments in the Eastern Appalachians like the Rocks at Great Falls on the Potomac are Avalonian not Grenvillian (at least this year).
This new Geology looks to be still a work in progress. For example, there is a long sequence of sediments and metasediments exposed along the New Haven River in Vermont that made little sense in the pre-plate-tectonics world, and doesn’t make much more sense in the new geology.
One part that this “new geology” of the region needs to explain are today’s continuing low-energy earthquakes on the St Lawrence River “fault line” extending all the way towards the middle of the continental towards Memphis, through the New Madrid earthquake foci, towards the Ozark warm springs and Ozark mountains. Seems the original “stable North American plate” is showing off at least one crack through its middle.
“The problem with the concept of ‘abiotic coal’ is that coal contains fossils of biological entities.”
-tadchem
===========
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/quaternary/smilodon.gif
A fossil of a biological entity preserved in a fossil of a biological entity at the San Andreas fossil-filled fault. (La Brea Tar Pits)
* * * * * * * * * * *
“Natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, pitch or tar—brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. The tar is often covered with dust, leaves, or water. Over many centuries, the bones of animals that were trapped in the tar were preserved.”
[…]
“Tar and wild flower run within La Brea campus”
“Other asphalt deposits can be found in Texas, Peru, Trinidad, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Poland.”
– wiki/La Brea Tar Pits
* * *
“The desert sand dunes along the equator, while devoid of open liquid, nonetheless hold more organics than all of Earth’s coal reserves.”
-wiki/Lakes of Titan
* * *
“Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is a mysterious place. Its thick atmosphere is rich in organic compounds. Some of them would be signs of life if they were on our planet.”
-European Space Agency
* * * * * * * * * * *
What happens to extinct tar seeps and asphalt volcanoes?
They become tourist attractions.
Not to mention the Alcohol clouds in space!
http://phys.org/news/2006-04-astronomers-alcohol-cloud-spanning-billion.html
Thinking about the lakes on Titan. They are, hypothetically, liquid ethane, which is a viable rocket fuel for interplanetary travel. Here on Earth, ethane is a component of natural gas, and there’s an excess of it in shale gas that should be put to use for on-site electricity generation:
http://www.ogfj.com/articles/print/volume-11/issue-10/features/stranded-ethane-can-power-gas-turbines.html
Odd article, since it does not appear that the “previous hypothesis of coal accumulation focused on a temporal lag between the evolution of lignin production in woody plants and the evolution of lignin-degrading fungi” was much of a consensus. It doesn’t take much searching to conclude that the consensus view of coal creation does not involve fungi evolution.
Admit, of course, that you have to ask, “a consensus among whom?”
It explains why so much coal formed and formed so readily. The fungi were not a reason for coal formation, but may be a reason why most of the worlds coal formed during this period.
Remember too that what we have left is a fraction of what was originally formed. Entire mountain ranges have come and gone since the Carboniferous. I do not have a number, but the fraction of what formed is remaining may be quite low.
The lignin-feasting fungi must have been living down south in Gondwana during the Carboniferous, as there is precious little coal of that age to be found down under.
Anyhow, during the late Carboniferous/Early Permian, a “(not so) unique combination of everwet tropical conditions” existed in Gondwana while it was parked at the geographic South Pole, resulting in the formation of the massive Permian coal deposits found in Australia.
So it was the evolution of those damn plants that made it cold! /sarc
The paleomaps at http://www.scotese.com/late.htm seem to put Australia pretty far South during the Upper Carboniferous and even further South during the Permian. And there are thought to have been periodic glaciations because sea level seems to have been bouncing around. It may simply have been too nippy in Oz back then to accumulate thick coal beds.
That is the first I have seen the term “temporal lag/evolutionary lag” with regards to the formation of coal in the Paleozoic. The gaps in accumulation can be attributed to transgression/regression of the seas (ie Marine to Terrestrial deposits).
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/17/10976.long The evolution of multicomponent systems at high pressures: VI. The thermodynamic stability of the hydrogen–carbon system: The genesis of hydrocarbons and the origin of petroleum
Abstract
The spontaneous genesis of hydrocarbons that comprise natural petroleum have been analyzed by chemical thermodynamic-stability theory……For experimental verification of the predictions of the theoretical analysis, a special high-pressure apparatus has been designed that permits investigations at pressures to 50 kbar and temperatures to 1,500°C and also allows rapid cooling while maintaining high pressures. The high-pressure genesis of petroleum hydrocarbons has been demonstrated using only the reagents solid iron oxide, FeO, and marble, CaCO3, 99.9% pure and wet with triple-distilled water. ….
I suspect there is oil/tar etc along with water ice at the lunar poles. All meant to have come from comet impacts.
All the carbon on earth came from an ancient supernova that seeded the neighborhood and the sun and planets coalesced from that.
The only argument about oil/gas/coal is whether or not it got cycled through life.
Gold’s books are worth a read. He isn’t dogmatic and suggests experiments by which his hypothesis can be disproved. Some of today’s so called scientists should take heed.
The key to Carboniferous coal is understanding how much of it was simply the result of forest fires.
Oxygen was more than 30% of the atmosphere at the time and forest fires were unstoppable. They would burn right across a continent for thousands and thousands of kms. All the big trees of the Carboniferous burned to ground every 10 years at least.
Not hard to imagine 1 million years of successive high growth forests getting burnt to the ground every 10 years turning into a good coal seam after getting buried by sediments (as also occurred in this period because of rapid sea level change from the on-off ice ages in Gondwana at the South Pole). The coal of the Carboniferous formed in low elevation areas which were near the equator at the time.
Forest fires would have simply created charcoal. Good for preserving organic materials, not so good for generating hydrocarbons (coal, oil and gas). http://www.palaeocast.com/episode-22-fire-and-charcoal/#.U446-i-KWKO
FWIW, you generally need ~10′ of peat material to form 1′ of coal.
“If you had 80 million years without lignin decay, you’d run out of CO2 in the atmosphere in a couple hundred years… we’d freeze the earth.”
I have long grown weary reading a trace gas determines whether or not we freeze [or] boil. Water vapor’s absorption range of long wave radiation pretty much overlaps CO2, except at the very cold range of temperatures (I think it is -70 oC or lower). You could increase CO2 to 1,200+ PPM and it wouldn’t make a spit of difference because water vapor already absorbed all the long wave radiation being admitted from our planet’s surface.
CO2 is supposed to be well-mixed in the atmosphere, H2O is not. So, wouldn’t the dry valleys of Antarctica be the best place to see how CO2 is affecting temperature?
Peer-reviewed science in Antarctica has apparently not yet succumbed to consensus filtering and shows no discernible warming trend there. For example:
http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=geog_fac
And, paywalled:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v415/n6871/full/nature710.html
“The McMurdo Dry Valleys have cooled by 0.7°C per decade between 1986 and 2000” and there is “evidence of rapid terrestrial ecosystem response…including decreased primary productivity of lakes (6–9% per year) and declining numbers of soil invertebrates (more than 10% per year).” Uh oh.
LiveScience has worrisome article titled: “Melting Permafrost Found in Antarctica’s Dry Valleys.” But if you read the article, you find that this is one area of one valley, and that “…unlike regions of Antarctica that are warming, temperatures in the Dry Valleys stayed the same or cooled in the past 20 years.” Researchers “found one weather shift in the valley. For still-unknown reasons, the U-shaped gorge is baking under more intense sunlight. Weather stations record increased sunlight in the valley in recent years, which means more solar radiation is heating the thin, dark blanket of dirt on top of the frozen ground.”
The paper: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep02269
So, in spite of increased solar radiation, temperatures are falling. (Oh dear, I’ve spilled the beans. Stay tuned for contrary “research.”)
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are considered the closest Earth environment to Mars, and Martian not-so-permafrost has also been melting:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
Of course, correlation does not imply causation outside of political activism.
Don K. @ur momisugly 12.37 AM
I wasn’t clear about attribution for abiotic theories. George Agricola, 16th century,
Alexander von Humbolt, 19th century, and Demetri Mendeleev , of periodic table fame,
19th century,are the guys that get most of the credit for the abiotic theory. Russia
teaches it and has been very successful with it.
I became a fan in the late 1950s when my general science teacher told us that Saturn and
Jupitor and the outer planets had hydrocarbons in their atmosphere. My next marker was
in the mid 1960 when the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer said that a meteorite
that had just hit the earth was a high percentage hydrocarbon. My next major revelation
was in the mid 1970s during the “Oil shortage”, the American Petroleum Institute (API)
put out a document which said that there was as much oil under the surface of the earth
as their was water in the oceans. No, unfortunately I no longer have the document and
my web searches have been fruitless. At that time, “experts” were saying that we had a
25 year supply left and i supposed that the API panicked. They have since gone back to
the biotic position, so as to make people believe that there is a finite supply of the stuff.
In the face of much more evidence, oceans of hydrocarbons on Titan, further analysis of
the outer solar system planet’s atmospheres, and every extra solar system planet’s
atmosphere’s analysis I have read says hydrocarbons are everywhere and are abiotic.
For me, the belief that earthly hydrocarbons are biotic defies logic.
Dr. Gold contributed to my current knowledge by explaining why gas and oil had the
rainbow sheen on them. It’s the dead of the microbes that eat some of the petroleum
on its way to the surface. That was the last thing that bothered me about the
abiotic theory.
As far as I have been able to determine, Dr. Gold gave the only explanation of the Plume
theory for coal formation. The Cumberland plateau was probably deep under water
when the coal formed and it wouldn’t have been just natural gas, but the heavier molecules,
from which the lighter ends later evaporated. I was just saying that the residual plume
continues with some of natural gas is still making it to the surface, some of it sequestered
in the Chattanooga Shale still well below the surface.
My claim and findings extend Gold’s and people like Giuseppe Etiope’s work. I first
theorized in 2007 that topsoil mined from Terra Preta sites which was found to grow
back at a rate of about 1/3 inch per year when surrounded by poor yellow jungle soil
in the Amazon required an enormous amount of energy. As plumes of natural gas
were found to power the food chain at black smokers, I concluded that natural gas
(yes I do mean Methane, Ethane, Butane, Etc.) must power the plots of Terra Preta,
and proceeded to the theory that all upland top soil must be similarly powered.
After researching it endlessly on the internet, and finding no support, I decided to
do the field research. My first test site was in the tall grass area of northeast Kansas,
where the topsoil is more than a meter thick.
I dug a hole through the topsoil, well below any bio-mass and installed a 14 inch
ss salad bowl which I inverted, drilled a hole in the now top and soldered in a brass
compression fitting to which i attached a 1/8 id copper tube which extended about
6″ above the top soil and attached a closed gas valve and closed the hole.
The soil was easy to re-consolidate because it was raining by then. I waited
one day and returned to check for results.
I had rented an expensive and sensitive hydrocarbon tester, flame ionization device
FID, and found several hundred ppm of combustible hydrocarbons. Since then I
have tested many sites and received a positive every time.
I have since purchased a much less sensitive (infrared) devise, + or – 5 PPM which
is sensitive enough until i find someone with a PHD who is willing to write the Paper
with me.
Many people have tested the topsoil and found “methane”. The USEPA says that
upland topsoil is a sink for atmospheric methane, to the tune of TG30 per year. but
the real problem is that methane, freed to the atmosphere rises.
The methodology of most people who tested topsoil for methane found methane,
but used an FID analyzer which checks only for a flammable hydrocarbon,
confirmation bias. The people who used a gas chromatograph for similar tests
found natural gas, confirmation for me.
My findings prove that natural gas perks up all around the world, but is not evenly
distributed. The Atlanta,GA area has a granite shield layer near the surface, so
the topsoil is red clay and very poor. The Ukraine has very rich topsoil which
is 2 meters thick in places and is the reason that it was the Roman Empire’s
bread basket.
My findings prove that hydrocarbons are not a “fossil fuel” and are created on an
ongoing basis. Think carbonated drink, but removing the stopper allows more gas
to rise from below continuously. My findings are very unpopular with the AGW ,
USEPA, Big oil, anyone trained by traditional geology professors, Big Wind,
Big Solar, etc.
My findings are very easy to replicate. Test instruments have gotten much cheaper,
and I have even heard a rumor that an infrared test instrument for ethane should
soon be available, no gas chromatograph required.
I am fully convinced that the ‘fossil’ theory of hydrocarbons and the abiotic deep-methane theory can both be completely true, and both mechanisms were/are at work.
When observations do not support a theory, it moves to the waste bin of failed theories. Gold’s theory of Abiotic origins of petroleum, Steady State theory and Garbage theory all failed the test of Science. Gold’s abiotic theory only survives in the realm of conspiracy theorists.
Post from Dr.John Clarke- re: debunking Gold’s abiotic theory (don’t have original source of post)
“The fact remains that the abiotic theory of petroleum genesis has zero credibility for economically interesting accumulations. 99.9999% of the world’s liquid hydrocarbons are produced by maturation of organic matter derived from organisms. To deny this means you have to come up with good explanations for the following observations.
The almost universal association of petroleum with sedimentary rocks.
The close link between petroleum reservoirs and source rocks as shown by biomarkers (the source rocks contain the same organic markers as the petroleum, essentially chemically fingerprinting the two).
The consistent variation of biomarkers in petroleum in accordance with the history of life on earth (biomarkers indicative of land plants are found only in Devonian and younger rocks, that formed by marine plankton only in Neoproterozoic and younger rocks, the oldest oils containing only biomarkers of bacteria).
The close link between the biomarkers in source rock and depositional environment (source rocks containing biomarkers of land plants are found only in terrestrial and shallow marine sediments, those indicating marine conditions only in marine sediments, those from hypersaline lakes containing only bacterial biomarkers).
Progressive destruction of oil when heated to over 100 degrees (precluding formation and/or migration at high temperatures as implied by the abiogenic postulate).
The generation of petroleum from kerogen on heating in the laboratory (complete with biomarkers), as suggested by the biogenic theory.
The strong enrichment in C12 of petroleum indicative of biological fractionation (no inorganic process can cause anything like the fractionation of light carbon that is seen in petroleum).
The location of petroleum reservoirs down the hydraulic gradient from the source rocks in many cases (those which are not are in areas where there is clear evidence of post migration tectonism).
8 ) The almost complete absence of significant petroleum occurrences in igneous and metamorphic rocks (the rare exceptions discussed below).
The evidence usually cited in favour of abiogenic petroleum can all be better explained by the biogenic hypothesis e.g.:
Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in igneous rocks (better explained by reaction with organic rich country rocks, with which the pyrobitumens can usually be tied).
Rare traces of cooked pyrobitumens in metamorphic rocks (better explained by metamorphism of residual hydrocarbons in the protolith).
The very rare occurrence of small hydrocarbon accumulations in igneous or metamorphic rocks (in every case these are adjacent to organic rich sedimentary rocks to which the hydrocarbons can be tied via biomarkers).
The presence of undoubted mantle derived gases (such as He and some CO2) in some natural gas (there is no reason why gas accumulations must be all from one source, given that some petroleum fields are of mixed provenance it is inevitable that some mantle gas contamination of biogenic hydrocarbons will occur under some circumstances).
The presence of traces of hydrocarbons in deep wells in crystalline rock (these can be formed by a range of processes, including metamorphic synthesis by the fischer-tropsch reaction, or from residual organic matter as in 10).
Traces of hydrocarbon gases in magma volatiles (in most cases magmas ascend through sedimentary succession, any organic matter present will be thermally cracked and some will be incorporated into the volatile phase, some fischer-tropsch synthesis can also occur).
Traces of hydrocarbon gases at mid ocean ridges (such traces are not surprising given that the upper mantle has been contaminated with biogenic organic matter through several billion years of subduction, the answer to 14 may be applicable also).
The geological evidence is utterly against the abiogenic postulate.”