{I've been collecting info on Catastrophism for some years in this forum thread: https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13
Below are most of the info I've gotten on coal, starting with the most recent. Curly brackets {} indicate newly added info.}
-1- “COAL” OF MT. ST. HELENS.
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=765
_GW: I have a box of rocks in my classroom including coalified and petrified wood, from the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, gleaned from ash in the logjam area near Spirit Lake. ... Coalified wood is also rapidly achieved with a minimal amount of added heat and the presence of a silica rich catalist such as clay, a common matrix material for coal.
-2- MOST RADIOACTIVITY IS IN GRANITE, SHALE, PHOSPHATE & COAL
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=750
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=690#p7573
_The reason most radioactivity is in granite, shale, phosphate and coal is because the granite continents have higher radioactivity & shale & phosphate must have formed mainly from continental granite. (Shale formed as mud on the continental shelf or slope of Pangaea, then the Great Flood washed most of the mud back onto Pangaea where it became shale or mudstone.) Coal formed from plants which grew from the breakdown products of the continental granite.
-3- WYOMING COAL
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=720
The Tejas {uppermost sedimentary rock megasequence} deposited Powder River coal beds in Montana and Wyoming.
-4- TSUNAMIS, TREES, VOLCANOES TO COAL
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=705
_Coal formed from floating hollow lycopod tree-forests in eastern North America and Europe which were destroyed by violently turbulent {Great Flood} tsunamis. Coal in other locations formed from normal trees {during the same Flood}. The wood which sank to the bottom of floodwaters was only able to form coal because of **clay catalysts from volcanic eruptions {which mixed in with the felled trees}.
ARTIFACTS FOUND IN COAL
_Video #4 ... describes ancient objects embedded in coal, concretions etc. Objects in coal could get there when coal is mined and thick coal dust covers the ground. Then the object can fall into the dust. If the dust is moistened by a spray of water or flowing water, the dust can form solid coal again as it dries out. Perhaps concretions can form similarly. See ARTIFACTS IN COAL NOT ANCIENT.
COAL IN MEGASEQUENCES
_There seems to be good indication that the Great Flood continued after the breakup of Pangaea and deposited those last two megasequences. There are also some possible problems with that model, so that there may have been a few centuries of time elapsed before the last two megasequences. But the coal beds were deposited within those megasequences. Destroyed Lycopod forests formed the coal beds in the supercontinent interior and destroyed forests of modern trees formed coal beds elsewhere, such as in the U.S. northwest.
-5- LYCOPOD FORESTS TO COAL
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=690
FLOATING LYCOPOD FORESTS {Image is from Creation.com}
_The log imprints came from trees growing before the Flood. There must have been trillions of trees floating on the Flood waters. Mount St. Helens provides an example. During the eruption, the waters of Spirit Lake washed up onto the mountain side and washed down trees, resulting in a million logs floating on Spirit Lake. Most eventually got water-logged and sank, but a quarter million logs are still floating after 35 years. The antediluvian world was apparently more lush than today. These were a different kind of trees, called lycopods, which were hollow and had rhizomes, instead of roots. Lycopod forests floated on water. During the Flood, they became floating log mats. The turbulence knocked off the bark which then sank to the bottom of the Flood waters and turned into coal.
Huge Layers of Coal
_Dayton, TN
CONTINENT-WIDE LYCOPOD FOREST DETRITUS WITH VOLCANIC ASH FORMED COAL
_In this coal mine on the ceiling are imprints of lycopod logs in shale instead of sandstone. Atop the shale is a coal seam with very flat top and bottom. The lycopod log mat sank over time to form a layer of bark and rhizomes. The coal wasn't formed in swamps. Swamp debris doesn't contain identifiable bark & rhizome pieces and doesn't form flat tops & bottoms. Coal seams are interlayered with thin seams of shale. The log mats must have dropped layers of bark, then moved away by wind while a thin layer of clay deposited. In the Illinois basin this cycle repeated 120 times.
_Nautiloid beds are in a lime mud, which flowed fast enough over the bottom of a body of water that it hydroplaned, without disturbing the layer of sediment under it. The shale seams in coal beds formed similarly and sometimes contain fossils, mostly marine fossils from the ocean. This coal seam extends from Canada to under the Gulf of Mexico and from Missouri to Russia. The plants and pollen and animals in the coal are the same throughout the entire continent-wide coal bed.
_{Kurt said he did experiments on making rocks etc.} It only takes minutes to form most rocks from mineral powders under high heat and pressure. It took longer to form rocks at lower temperatures. The slowest forming rock Kurt made was coal, which took 3 or 4 weeks at about the boiling point of water. Putting only plant material into an oven never forms coal. In order to form coal, plants need a catalyst such as clay, i.e. montmorillonite, ilmenite, etc. When coal is burned, it leaves an unburnable ash, which is one of these clay catalysts. They come from volcanic ash, the fallout from volcanic eruptions.
VIBRATIONAL RESONANCE AFFECTED COAL DEPOSITION
_{ https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j30_3/j30_3_48-49.pdf It appears there was a resonance of the asthenosphere between the two probable free ends of the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. (One end could possibly be a forced end.) This resonance would explain the coal basins in New England having multiple turbidites, maceral plumes, unusual anthracite coal chemical composition, and fragmentary lycopod fossils. The pieces of the floating forest were being periodically spilled over the top of the Appalachian Mountains (the eastern end of the continental resonant basin).
-6- LUSH PREFLOOD VEGETATION FORMED COAL
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=675
_The severity and elevation of this stage of the Flood is why the first land creatures and plants start showing up in the fossil record laid down by the Absaroka megasequence.
_Entire ecosystems are buried in enormous deposits that later turn into coal, such as the extensive Appalachian coal beds. In fact, the U.S. has over seven trillion tons of coal reserves. Where did it all come from? While we know that coal is formed by dead plant material being sandwiched between sediment layers, we only have enough vegetation on the Earth's surface today to produce just a fraction of the existing coal reserves.
_This shows that the pre-Flood world was mostly covered by lush vegetation. The rising Flood waters and tsunamis that were necessary to sweep over the land and bury vast amounts of vegetation that turned into coal are best explained by a catastrophe of worldwide proportions.
WHEN OLDER COAL FORMED
_All of the older coal deposits had already been formed before any of the present-day {Atlantic & Indian} ocean crust had formed.
SOME RADIOHALO EVIDENCE FOR DATING COAL
See also Gentry's video: Young Earth and Strong Evidence That Noah's Flood Laid the Sedimentary Layers (which shows how coalified wood can form rapidly)
NOTE: This video starts out with a quote from a 1977 issue of Research Communications Network, written, I believe, by Steve Talbott, brother of Dave Talbott, who had published Pensee' magazine for the previous 2 years. That's when I first heard about Gentry's radiohalo findings. {See} https://creation.com/the-collapse-of-geologic-time
_There is spectacular, but little-known, evidence that is completely inconsistent with the evolutionary timescale, but entirely consistent with ... a young Earth and a catastrophic global Flood.
_The evidence is provided by radio–halos in coalified wood. This work has been published in some of the best peer-reviewed scientific journals, and its strong case against evolution’s millions of years is so far unanswered by the evolutionary community.
_Radiohalos have also been found in logs recovered from uranium mines on the Colorado Plateau of Western USA. The logs, partially turned to coal, were found in uranium-rich sedimentary rocks from three different geological formations.
_Fossilized dinosaur footprints have been found in these Colorado mines. In Cyprus Plateau Mine (Utah), a fossilized dinosaur footprint was found in the coal seam next to one of the many coalified logs of the plateau. In Kenilworth Mine, eight different types of dinosaur tracks were found.
_{The first article shows good evidence that coal formed rapidly during a Great Flood when dinosaurs hurried along through dense water-logged vegetation likely seeking to escape.}
_{(FLATTENED HALOS) It looks like Gentry et al. were wrong that the radiohalos (discolorations in mica, coal etc) were formed by alpha decay of polonium 210. Instead, they were surely formed by alpha decay of radon 222, a gas that can migrate away from its source U238 rather easily through rock microfractures (and cleavage planes).}
_{One of Gentry's findings was that} some coalified wood with radiohalos was ... smashed {probably by the weight of overburden}, making some of the radiohalos in the wood initially elliptical instead of spherical.
_Whereas most Cambrian to Recent graphite deposits occur in readily identifiable metamorphosed coal–bearing sedimentary rocks, Precambrian graphite deposits are commonly found in medium to high–grade regionally metamorphosed schists and gneisses “of controversial origin”
-7- TEJAS SEQUENCE IS ERODED DEPOSITS FROM ZUNI
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=660
_Deposits in the Tejas include the thickest and most extensive coal seams in the world (Clarey 2017a). [See Figure 13.]
_These huge mats of transported trees, almost exclusively non-lycopods, likely represented plants swept off the uplands.
_The Flood, apparently ‘wiped off’ these areas of highest elevation, where most of the large mammals, flowering plants and possibly humans may have existed,
spreading their remains in sedimentary layers on top of the earlier buried dinosaurs in rocks now identified as Cenozoic strata.
VAPOR CANOPY & LUSH VEGETATION
_Some have suggested that the vapour canopy caused a greenhouse effect before the Flood with a pleasant subtropical-to-temperate climate all around the globe, even at the poles where today there is ice. This would have caused the growth of lush vegetation on the land all around the globe. The discovery of coal seams in Antarctica containing vegetation that is not now found growing at the poles, but which obviously grew under warmer conditions, was taken as support for these ideas.
-8- COAL IS YOUNG
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=630
_Carbon-14 {is} in Fossils, Coal, and Diamonds {so they must all be much younger than thought.}
https://answersingenesis.org/geology/carbon-14/7-carbon-14-in-fossils-coal-and-diamonds/
DROPSTONES ARE SOMETIMES FOUND IN COAL
https://creation.com/kelp-dropstones
_There are lots of problems with the glacial interpretation of dropstones.1,3 These rocks can be deposited by many mechanisms other than floating ice, including bottom-hugging debris flows or turbidity currents, floating kelp, swimming animals, volcanic eruptions, meteorite impacts,4–6 and from floating tree stumps. Uprooted trees commonly contain soil and rock in the root ball (figure 1). The latter presumably explains boulders sometimes found in coal.7
-9- GOD STAR: ARCTIC TREES & COAL
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=615
_p.361 As early as the nineteenth century it was "admitted by all scientific authorities that at one time the regions within the Arctic Circle enjoyed a tropical or nearly tropical climate."
_p.363 The Canadian island of Axel Heiberg, in Nunavut, well above the Arctic Circle, well beyond the present tree line, is littered with the remains of ancient forests - stumps, logs, and remnants of leaves and even fruit. Although the relics of such forests are known from other parts of the world, those on Axel Heiberg are exceptional because, unlike other remains, they have not been petrified. On the contrary, the remains have maintained their original form and even tissue.
_Barren, gaunt, and forbidding as the island now is, its rolling hills bear the traces of more than twenty separate forest layers, stacked on top of each other, all of which are found in situ, testifying to growth on the spot rather than transmission by the forces of nature.
[COMMENT: The separate forest layers might have been deposited by flooding, as trees often sink in vertical position and sediment can bury them gradually over months' time, I think. The forests may have come from not so far away, in which case the following would make sense.]
_p.365 The coal-bearing sediments of the Eureka Sound Group scattered throughout most of the Arctic Archipelago also contain such remains.
_Trees from the middle Eocene in the same area reached up to 50 meters high.
{NEW COMMENT: Coal in the Arctic is probably better explained by rapid continental drift, which moved Alaska & eastern Siberia from lower latitudes to the Arctic Circle during the Great Flood. Likewise, coal in Antarctica is similarly explained; rapid continental drift moved most of Antarctica from near the equator of Africa to the south pole.}
-10- VELIKOVSKY'S CONCLUSION
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=240
_In addition to mixed plant debris from different botanical zones, some coal contains fossils of marine organisms which, when living, required vastly different environments. Erratic boulders and chunks of iron are also found in coal seams. These characteristics encouraged the suggestion that some materials washed down rivers and stacked up in bends to form coal. This overcomes many of the peat-bog problems, but does not explain the presence of ocean-dwelling species and the fact that deep sea crinoids and clear-water ocean corals often alternate with coal seams in thick beds. The suggestion of Velikovsky was as follows: "Forests burned, a hurricane uprooted them, and a tidal wave or succession of tidal waves coming from the sea {fell upon the charred and splintered trees and swept them into great heaps, tossed by billows, and covered them with marine sand, pebbles and shells, and weeds and fishes; another tide deposited on top of the sand more carbonized logs, threw them in other heaps, and again covered them with marine sediment. The heated ground metamorphosed the charred wood into coal, and if the wood or the ground where it was buried was drenched in a bituminous outpouring [from a comet?], bituminous coal was formed. Wet leaves sometimes survived the forest fires and, swept into the same heaps of logs and sand, left their design on the coal. Thus it is that seams of coal are covered with marine sediment; for that reason also a seam may bifurcate and have marine deposits between its branches."}
FISH IN COAL
_The most celebrated remains of fossil fish in Europe are those of the Saarbrucken in Germany. But these are found in coal formations.3 Does that mean that the coal in question was formed from the remains of unspoiled fish? Can coal be formed from fish? Or is it that the bituminous substance that went into the formation of coal also entombed the fish found in it? But then where did the bituminous substance come from?
-11- HYDROCARBONS FROM METEORS TO COAL?
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=225
{https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01808308 Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in C1 and C2 Carbonaceous Chondrites appear to be the product of a high-temperature synthesis.}
That's evidence that comets may contain hydrocarbons too, since meteorites may come from comets.
-12- BITUMINOUS & ANTHRACITE COAL COMPOSITION
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum3/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13&start=210
"Bituminous coal is more metamorphosed and the plant parts are more flattened, but it is still possible to study plant fragments within the coal. Anthracite coal, the most highly metamorphosed type, is altered to such an extent that little of the original plant material is recognizable. Some coals can be thin sectioned for microscopic examination, and pollen grains, spores, and fragments of cuticle can be discerned.
_Bituminous coal predominates in the Upper Carboniferous, where it occurs extensively from Texas all the way to the Donetz coal basin, north of the Caspian Sea.
WORLD COAL MAP
_Here's a good map of world coal deposits. Looks like the most coal is in northern Asia and eastern Australia.
_Much of the mountainous country in northern China, from Manchuria to the Kazakh border, is covered in coal seams which lie close to the surface. These often ignite spontaneously and it is estimated that up to 200 million tonnes of coal are being incinerated each year [by wildfire].
DATING COAL
_Specimens of coal from Spain thought to be tens of millions of years old were radiocarbon dated to 5,025 and 4,250 years ago by Gifsur-Yvette testing labs. (Radiocarbon Vol. 8 (1966).
ARCTIC/ANTARCTIC COAL LACK OF SUNLIGHT
_The late Cretaceous ... is the period when the huge coal deposits were formed on the Arctic slope. Much of this coal comes from evergreens, which could not have survived in high latitudes due to the lack of sunlight.... (Anonymous; "Fragmented Alaska," Open Earth, no. 17, 1982.)
_Evidence of warmer climates that once prevailed in the Arctic was brought to light in the nineteenth century with the discovery of coal in the Canadian Arctic Archipeliga.
_Coal beds are also known from Spitzbergen {in the Arctic}....
_No landmass in Antarctica's present position could have supported the vegetation that has become the low-grade coal in the Transantarctic Mountains, perhaps the world's most extensive coal formation." A well-known Antarctic fossil plant is Glossopteris, a flora dating from the earliest part of the Permian but which had vanished by the Triassic. Glossopteris included bug trees with annual growth rings, an indicator of seasonality; these flora were fossilized into coal beds on several parts of Antarctica. Coal deposits, with Glossopteris leaves and conifer needles, have been found within 250 miles of the South Pole.
_Antarctica undoubtedly had a warm distant past, as coal seams running through the Transantarctic Mountains are some of the most extensive on earth.
{As I commented above, Antarctica and the northern continents moved toward the poles during rapid continental drift during the Great Flood. So the forests grew in normal sunlight at lower latitudes, then those continents moved poleward.}
COAL ANALYSES ETC
_"Lignin + Clay = Coal" source: NEW SCIENTIST 1.9.83, p. 623 Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy have recently been able to produce coal artificially by heating lignin (the substance that binds plant cells together) and various clays. The clays appear to catalyze the conversion of lignin to coal: low grade coal can easily be produced by such methods by heating at 300 F for as little as two weeks. High grade coals require longer heating.
_A combination of iron catalyst, heat, pressure and vibration on vegetable matter produces fuel, oil or coal depending on whether water is trapped in the reaction or not. Heat seems to be the crucial factor in the production of fossils.
SHATTER CONES IN COAL
_Bucher further presented shatter cones made of bituminous coal, which, of course, could not be explained by meteorite impact. He explained that high-pressure gas, impregnating the pores of permeable rock, will make rock so brittle that it will react to stresses by forming shatter cones.
CARDONA: TREE RINGS
_Carboniferous trees lack rings, as do trees found in coal swa[m]ps. Trees found in the Permian period, and also in Canada, Europe and Asia often have weak tree rings. South American trees often have strong tree rings. In the Triassic period, and in the Amazon, there are found a mixture of trees both with and without tree rings. Some tropical trees do not grow rings, some grow 3 or 4 rings per season. In the dry season, rings may be missing. What all this shows is that tree rings are not determined by seasons, but by water and growing periods {and sometimes by species}.