COAL: big, black & embarrassing

 

M.V. Meister

Six Greenpeace activists boarded the coal ship Meister bound for South Korea from Queensland's Abbot Point terminal, in a protest at the increased export of coal.     They then expected the captain to detour with his multi-million dollar loaded vessel and drop them off at their convenience!





Newcastle coal loader

Coal exports have become vital to Australia's economy since coal was discovered beside the Hunter River in 1797, but do such protesters understand or care?              H   e   l   l   o  ? ?  

How are you supposed to ignore global demand for a resource when Australia sits on the 4^th largest reserves, earning $60 billion annually? In fact, the world would grind to a halt without coal, with at least half of production used in the generation of electricity and another large proportion used in the manufacture of iron and steel, plus drugs, dyes and fertilizers.



Let’s leave others to haggle over global warming, 'carbon pollution' (all living things are made of carbon!), carbon footprints , carbon emission trading schemes and carbon credits, and see where this handy fossil-fuel came from. The claim is that peat below swamps has been continuously buried by sediment during 1 to 400 million years, forming coal. How well does this claim stack up?…

                

It takes 1 – 2 metres of plant matter to make 0.3 metres of coal but seams can be up to 120 metres thick! Where are you going to get a continuous depth of at least 400 metres of plant matter from a swamp?

Coal can be found on every continent, including Antarctica!

Coal lies under the oceans! Hunter Valley miners extract coal from underneath the ships that will transport it overseas!

After 200 years of large-scale mining there are still recoverable reserves of at least 1 trillion tonnes – enough for maybe 250 years!

Fossilized trees can be found in coal seams – still vertical!                  

Human artifacts and marine fossils have been found in coal seams!

In ideal chemical and temperature conditions it takes only a few months to form coal!

What are logs of trees, not found growing in swamps, doing in coal seams?

Why are large deposits of pollen sometimes found under coal seams?

Would you say that the Earth must have been once covered with lush vegetation which was suddenly buried under global cataclysmic flooding?
Urrr…where have we heard that story before? Perhaps coal is really an embarrassment – a vital resource that tells a story people don’t want to know.

Recommended viewing: www.undergroundcoal.com.au
www.youtube.com/watch?v=649dZPCTD30
                                       
Acknowledgements:
World Book 2005 
en.wikipedia.org                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        www.australiancoal.com.org     
Photo credit: M.V. Meister / greenpeace.org

                                                              

AWESOME SLIPPERY SURVIVOR

Hey, would you rather have this fish swimming beside you in the creek?.....or on your plate as smoked eel?

Before we put this monster in the smokehouse let's check out this extraordinary animal that still has the marine scientists puzzled.

The anguilla australis or short-finned eel begins life in an egg laid deep (200 metres) in the Coral Sea near New Caledonia. The larva drifts in the ocean current down the east coast of Australia until reaching fresh water flowing out of a river in say Victoria, triggering development into a transparent 'glass eel' which then navigates its way up the river and its tributaries. On a rainy or dewy night it can then slither cross-country as an 'elver' to take up residence in a farm dam, lake, or swamp, absorbing oxygen from the moisture through its protective slimy skin. Should temperatures fall below 10 degrees C it will hibernate, and if necessary will bury itself in mud or sand. After reaching maturity at between 10 and 20 years it will stop feeding as its digestive system shuts down and dissolves. No matter what the conditions: hot or cold, salty or fresh, wet or dry, deep ocean or grass, mud, sand - it doesn’t faze this clever, tenacious survivor.

What now? Isn’t it finally time to retire and go on that Pacific Ocean cruise?

Not likely - how about a 4000 kilometre swim on an empty stomach, against the current, with no Olympic gold medal at the end? The elderly eel now makes its way down the river and swims 3-4000 kms back to the SAME spawning ground where its life began, arriving as not much more than a skeleton ready to reproduce before dying.

This awesome survivor has heroically sacrificed itself for the sake of new life – but who wrote the eel’s miraculous program?

Acknowledgements: Dept. Primary Industry, Victoria wikipedia.com

Photo credit: Roy Britten / thecourier.com.au

Tropical termite palace

Imagine you are a project manager by royal appointment and your client’s brief calls for the construction of a spacious eco-friendly multi-story palace in the tropics.

Here are the specifications:

·       The royal suite sited near the lobby – the king and queen will be too busy mating (or how about laying  30,000 eggs per day?) to enjoy the penthouse views.

·       The sky’s the limit but we’ll settle for 6 metres max. with a convenient rooftop cemetery – the dead have got time for the view.

·       The design must incorporate arches, access tunnels, chimneys, ventilation shafts, nursery and other chambers, complete with insulation

·       Serviced by underground freeways

·       A fungal garden/sewerage treatment works to process faeces for further digestion

·       The building materials available are limited to: earth, saliva and excrement

Labour hire? 

The Queen controls the castes by exuding the appropriate chemicals so that an army of workers will develop to totally focus on the tasks at hand: cleaning, maintenance, construction, hospitality, child-care, water supply and climate control. There will be no distractions like sex for these guys but they have one feature you should be aware of – they are virtually blind!

On-site security?                                                      

No problem. The Queen will also provide soldiers armed with either powerful jaws or chemical weaponry to retard enemy approaches.

Catering?                                                    

There’s plenty of dead wood lying around and microscopic organisms in the gut will assist in the digestion of cellulose.

Hang on… we forgot to give you the site plan.                                

We’re in the tropics with its torrential rains and flooding and possibly inland with extreme temperature variations. Among 2300 species of termite we find the Amitermes meridionalis or magnetic termite, common in northern Australia.  The blind workers cleverly align the termite mound with magnetic north.  Why?  So that the flat sides capture the minimum amount of mid-day heat from the sun!

Now that we’ve built such a magnificent edifice why would anyone want to leave? Life goes on and every year, mature fertile alates swarm, all at the same time, try to survive predators and establish a new colony after a brief flight. The prospective new king follows his queen into a new nest where they will shed their wings, establish quarters and start to breed their staff.

So who designed this incredibly multi-skilled creature, wrote its program, and taught it: family planning, surveying, road building, construction, defence, aviation and hi-tech recycling?...before we had any idea ourselves!

 

Acknowledgement: Samuel J. Hornsey

Photo credit:  chennaipestcontrol.co.in

SOLDIER CRABS ON DUTY

Imagine you are a soldier crab (Mictyris longicarpus) that lives in the inter-tidal zone along the east coast of Australia. Your job is to avoid getting eaten by shore birds while scouring the sand at low tide and cleaning it of detritus, like an army of vacuum cleaners.
You have been hiding in the sand under the water - up to 2 metres deep. Your temporary refuge has been a bubble of air (about 4 times your body volume) that you created around yourself as you quickly burrowed down in a clockwise corkscrew motion, by walking backwards with your right legs.
Now that low tide has occurred there's no time to waste -
Call the muster! Form into rank! Forward march! It's just as well you're not like other crabs - imagine the pathetic army with soldiers that could only walk sideways!
Hang on a minute. How are you supposed to complete your tour of duty if you keep breaking rank to run off and wet your gills like other crabs? No problem. You have been designed with not only gills but also lungs, adjacent but distinctly separate, to provide you with 90% of your oxygen requirements. In fact you are even capable of absorbing oxygen through the decalcified joints of your legs and absorbing moisture through the silky hairs on your abdomen. No toilet stops, drink breaks or even breathers for you!
What a very cleverly designed little soldier, and smart...
Without tide-tables, calendar and watch, you even know when the next low tide is due.
Wherever did you get your sense of time from?

Acknowledgements:

David P. Maitland, Arthur Maitland, Caroline Farrelly, Peter Greenaway, University of NSW
Photo credit: Tony Sullivan

QUICK-SET ROCK

No time to even finish your lunch!

Apparently there are 200 million fossils stored in museums worldwide and these are predominantly marine fossils recovered from the sedimentary rock which covers ¾ of Earth’s continental area ( plus most of the ocean floor). Scientists seem agreed that catastrophic flooding by sea water has occurred on all continents and that animals must have been rapidly buried in sediment to be preserved as fossils before disintegration occurred.
(Even children know this!)

So, do sedimentary rocks take millions of years to form? 

Actually, no. Cementing agents such as calcite (lime or Calcium Oxide) and/or silica (Silicon Dioxide) must be present with water; pressure facilitates the process by forcing out the water. 
These same agents are the major ingredients of Portland cement which has to have gypsum (Calcium Sulphate) added to.....SLOW the process.

How quickly can cement start to set?...after 15 minutes!

How quickly did Mt. St.Helens sediment turn rock hard?
In less than 5 years.

It's not rocket science...it's rock science!....that children easily understand.