Jun 17, 2020 02:34 AM
(This post was last modified: Jun 17, 2020 03:32 AM by C C.)
Coal-burning in Siberia led to climate change 250 million years ago
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-coal-burni...years.html
INTRO: A team of researchers led by Arizona State University (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton has provided the first ever direct evidence that extensive coal burning in Siberia is a cause of the Permo-Triassic Extinction, the Earth's most severe extinction event. The results of their study have been recently published in the journal Geology... (MORE)
Centralia: the ghost town that sits atop an inferno
https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature...tralia.htm
EXCERPT: The smallest municipality in [...] Pennsylvania is a former mining community located about two hours northwest of Philadelphia. Records tell us it had 1,435 residents in the year 1960. Today, fewer than 10 people still live there. The U.S. Postal Service revoked Centralia's zip code in 2002 and the local portion of State Route 61 was permanently closed off nine years earlier. ... Since (at least) 1962, a coal-seam fire has been smoldering right below the town. No one knows exactly how it got started, but whatever set the thing off, this long-lived blaze isn't some kind of fluke.{*}
Naturally occurring coal deposits are called "seams" in the mining industry. Wherever such veins occur, coal-seam fires (like the one under Centralia) are apt to break out. [...] China's 3,106-mile (5,000-kilometer) coal mining belt is notorious for its seam fires. So is the town of Jharia, India, where unwanted fires have claimed about 41 million tons (or roughly 37 million metric tons) of coal since 1918. ... humans aren't always responsible. Down in New South Wales, Australia, there's a famous coal seam under Mount Wingen that's been burning for 6,000 years straight...
[...] "Uncontrolled coal fires have all of the potential environmental impacts of burning coal for power generation, with none of the benefits ... In addition to emitting carbon dioxide, trace metals such as mercury, and harmful fine particles are emitted." [...] To this day, smoke rises from earth through fissures around Centralia. Meanwhile, the terrain has become perilously unstable over time. "[...] land can suddenly collapse (sink) as the fire just 'eats up' the ground underneath ... Such collapses can damage houses, roads, train tracks etc."
That's why Pennsylvania closed off 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) of Route 61 in 1993. Subterranean pillars that held up the pavement were destroyed or weakened by the flames, making the roadway totally unsuitable for motorists. [...] According to the state's Department of Environmental Protection, the fire might keep on raging for over 100 years yet to come... (MORE - details)
{*} history dot com: In May 1962, the city council proposed cleaning up the local landfill in time for Centralia’s Memorial Day festivities. “This might seem like irrelevant, small-town history except for one thing,” wrote David Dekok in Fire Underground, his history of the fire: “Centralia Council’s method for cleaning up a dump was to set it on fire.” Though competing theories exist about how the fire was sparked, it’s thought that the Centralia dump fire sparked a much larger mine fire beneath the town. Soon, a fire was raging in a coal seam beneath Centralia. It spread to mine tunnels beneath town streets, and the local mines closed due to unsafe carbon monoxide levels. Multiple attempts were made to excavate and put out the fire, but all of them failed. The reason, ironically, is the aftermath of the mining that defined Centralia for all of those years. There are so many abandoned mine tunnels in the area that one, many or all could be fueling the fire—and it would be prohibitively expensive and likely impossible to figure out which ones stoke the fire and to close off every single one of them.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/NSIjB96H4Sc
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-coal-burni...years.html
INTRO: A team of researchers led by Arizona State University (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration professor Lindy Elkins-Tanton has provided the first ever direct evidence that extensive coal burning in Siberia is a cause of the Permo-Triassic Extinction, the Earth's most severe extinction event. The results of their study have been recently published in the journal Geology... (MORE)
Centralia: the ghost town that sits atop an inferno
https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature...tralia.htm
EXCERPT: The smallest municipality in [...] Pennsylvania is a former mining community located about two hours northwest of Philadelphia. Records tell us it had 1,435 residents in the year 1960. Today, fewer than 10 people still live there. The U.S. Postal Service revoked Centralia's zip code in 2002 and the local portion of State Route 61 was permanently closed off nine years earlier. ... Since (at least) 1962, a coal-seam fire has been smoldering right below the town. No one knows exactly how it got started, but whatever set the thing off, this long-lived blaze isn't some kind of fluke.{*}
Naturally occurring coal deposits are called "seams" in the mining industry. Wherever such veins occur, coal-seam fires (like the one under Centralia) are apt to break out. [...] China's 3,106-mile (5,000-kilometer) coal mining belt is notorious for its seam fires. So is the town of Jharia, India, where unwanted fires have claimed about 41 million tons (or roughly 37 million metric tons) of coal since 1918. ... humans aren't always responsible. Down in New South Wales, Australia, there's a famous coal seam under Mount Wingen that's been burning for 6,000 years straight...
[...] "Uncontrolled coal fires have all of the potential environmental impacts of burning coal for power generation, with none of the benefits ... In addition to emitting carbon dioxide, trace metals such as mercury, and harmful fine particles are emitted." [...] To this day, smoke rises from earth through fissures around Centralia. Meanwhile, the terrain has become perilously unstable over time. "[...] land can suddenly collapse (sink) as the fire just 'eats up' the ground underneath ... Such collapses can damage houses, roads, train tracks etc."
That's why Pennsylvania closed off 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) of Route 61 in 1993. Subterranean pillars that held up the pavement were destroyed or weakened by the flames, making the roadway totally unsuitable for motorists. [...] According to the state's Department of Environmental Protection, the fire might keep on raging for over 100 years yet to come... (MORE - details)
{*} history dot com: In May 1962, the city council proposed cleaning up the local landfill in time for Centralia’s Memorial Day festivities. “This might seem like irrelevant, small-town history except for one thing,” wrote David Dekok in Fire Underground, his history of the fire: “Centralia Council’s method for cleaning up a dump was to set it on fire.” Though competing theories exist about how the fire was sparked, it’s thought that the Centralia dump fire sparked a much larger mine fire beneath the town. Soon, a fire was raging in a coal seam beneath Centralia. It spread to mine tunnels beneath town streets, and the local mines closed due to unsafe carbon monoxide levels. Multiple attempts were made to excavate and put out the fire, but all of them failed. The reason, ironically, is the aftermath of the mining that defined Centralia for all of those years. There are so many abandoned mine tunnels in the area that one, many or all could be fueling the fire—and it would be prohibitively expensive and likely impossible to figure out which ones stoke the fire and to close off every single one of them.