Why almost all coal was made at the same time

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Most of the coal on earth was created during a single short period of geological history 300 million years ago. It's called the carboniferous period. Find out why coal production stopped so abruptly.

CORRECTIONS

So this video was quite rushed because I wanted to get it out in time for the #teamtrees launch. Here are a couple of things I got wrong:

Not ALL coal was made during the carboniferous period. There exists some younger coal here and there that formed under rare conditions that enabled it in spite of the presence of capable fungi. I did film myself saying that but it was lost it my rushed edit.

Photosynthesis is more complicated than I described. It involves water for a start. And it seems that the oxygen released during photosynthesis comes from the H₂O not the CO₂. Though I haven't be able to verify that.

And here's a non-correction! The thing I was holding up at the start was not charcoal. It was a coal dust briquette. You could argue that the briquette was made recently but the coal it's made of is old!

So yeah, the thrust of the video still stands but it's been a learning opportunity for me!

A final thought on planting trees for carbon capture. A lot of comments saying "what's the point? When the trees die the decomposers will release the CO₂ back into the atmosphere. But really this is more about planting *forests*. In a forest, when a tree dies, another tree grows in its place recapturing the carbon. But also, it's my understanding that it takes a very long time to release the CO₂. Like hundreds of years. So in terms of tackling climate change which is a problem of human time scales, it's a useful endeavour.

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