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A coal seam has been burning for 6000 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain A long list of simi
by WithinReason 5y ago
A coal seam has been burning for 6000 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain
A long list of similar fires:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire
In Colorado, coal fires have arisen as a consequence of fluctuations in the groundwater level, which can increase the temperature of the coal up to 300 °C, enough to cause it to spontaneously ignite.
- drocer88 5y agoOklo, Gabon had an underground nuclear reaction for hundreds of thousands years: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/zhao1/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/zhao1/
- lostlogin 5y agoThis sentence is neat “In the hundreds of thousands of years operating as a nuclear reactor, Oklo never had a meltdown or explosion.”
- mizzao 5y agoAh, now it makes sense why that nuclear startup is called Oklo. Especially if they can market that hundred thousand year track record!
- quickthrower2 5y agoInteresting. Presumably that would have been a good source of genetic mutations for early life?
- novok 5y agoI wonder how much green house gasses come from these kind of fires in the world.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- alar44 5y agoNot an amount that even remotely matters. Traffic in a day is probably many orders of magnitude more than these put out in a year.
- Hankenstein2 5y agoI don't know 3% seems small but significant... "Across the world, thousands of underground coal fires are burning at any given moment. The problem is most acute in industrializing, coal-rich nations such as China.[7] Global coal fire emissions are estimated to cause 40 tons of mercury to enter the atmosphere annually, and to represent three percent of the world's annual CO2 emissions.[8]" From the wikipedia article above
- blululu 5y agoHard to estimate how much coal is burning per year but the answer seems to be a significant amount. Up to 1% if global CO2 from China (second largest coal reserves at time of writing). This would potentially put the figure at a reasonable level. https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3084/pdf/fs2009-3084.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3084/pdf/fs2009-3084.pdf
- shmerl 5y agoHere is another one that's more recent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire
- justinator 5y agoI think there's one just a couple a miles from where I live. Here it is, almost a 100 years ago: https://localhistory.boulderlibrary.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A62140 https://localhistory.boulderlibrary.org/islandora/object/isl...