Coal
When I was a child I
used to help my mother by filling and carrying the coal bucket from the garage
to the kitchen. I enjoyed the sight, smell and feel of the black and shiny
lumps, and I liked to watch it burning, red and hot, through the grating in the
stove. Sometimes I noticed the pattern of wood grains in the coal and it was
then that I realised, for the first time in my life, that coal was made from
wood – or more accurately, coal was wood, though modified by some
process I did not understand.
I had no idea how
wood turned into coal, or how it got to be buried under the ground, but with a
little more thought I have come to realise several important things.
Before I elaborate,
I would like to describe a coalmine. To be specific, the
The structure of
the Latrobe coal deposit is interesting too. It is made largely of very fine
plant debris interleaved with layers of ash and pollen-rich layers. It also
contains made uprooted trees, buried at all sorts of angles.
When I was at
school, the only teaching I had on coal and how it formed went this way : Coal
is formed very slowly over tens of thousands of years, as a forest drops its
leaves in the watery swamp around its roots. As the peat bog or swamp, which is
on a floodplain near the coast, collects its layers of vegetation it slowly
sinks, and eventually the peat changes into coal. Eventually the ocean rolls in
and buries the swamp, until humans come along to dig it up again.
If this typical
school teaching is true, we ought to find soil and roots under the coal, along
the base of the deposit, but at Latrobe the coal stops dead at a layer of clay.
This clay (called kaolin) is so pure it could be used for high-class pottery.
The fact that the coal stops at the clay indicates that the coal was actually
dropped on top of the clay, rather than grew on it.
Another problem is the layers of ash. If this ash had been dropped on a
swamp or bog the layer would not be so clear-cut. Roots and water, seasons and
time would have destroyed it. So it looks like the coal was laid down quickly,
followed by further layers of ash, then more coal (or wood and plant material),
before decomposition could dissolve or disrupt it.
Another problem is
the fact that the type of plants found in the Latrobe coal are mostly not
suited to growing in swamps. The Northfolk Island Pine, the Kauri Pine, the
Huon Pine, The Celery-top Pine, the Brown Pine, the Banksia and the native NZ
Pine usually prefer well-drained soils. How was it then that trees which
normally do not grow in swamps are found in a huge deposit which (it is said)
is the result of a swamp? It seems more likely that trees once growing on
higher slopes were suddenly uprooted and dropped in layers across a huge
stretch of land.
And what are we to
think of the thickness of the coal? The school teaching about a slowly-sinking
area of swamp really asks too much. Nowhere on earth today do we find swamps
300 miles long and wide slowly sinking, evenly, and populated by dry-soil
plants, forming coal to a depth of 5 km. What bogs we do have are usually very
small, and there is no sign of any coal in them.
I was also taught
at school that coal takes millions of years to form, yet recent experiments
have produced coal from wood in only a matter of hours. All it takes is a bit
of heat and pressure and wood turns black and shiny. Obviously coal does not
need immense time-spans to form.
As a Christian, I
find the most satisfying explanation for the presence of coal in the simple
narration of the Bible. In Genesis 7 and 8 we are told of a world-wide flood
which covered all land for about one year. A force this powerful would explain
the formation of the global phenomenon of sedimentary rocks containing billions
of fossils. It would also explain the huge Latrobe coal mine and other similar
deposits, containing billions of tons of plant material, swept into enormous
heaps and covered by sediment.
If it was not a
world-wide flood which formed the Latrobe deposit, I would like to know what
other force could have done it.
So while I was busy
carrying the coal for my mother, I was actually holding some very important
evidence supporting the early chapters of the Bible. There must be some sort of
irony in all this. It seems that our present world is using the remains of the
former world to cook its meals and drive its power-stations!