The Origins of Rot

[Bruce Taylor]

White rot, anyway (brown rot is another story). According to a paper in the March issue of Science, it started about 300 million years ago, when certain fungi figured out how to digest the lignin in woody plants.

Until the end of the Carboniferous era (360-300 million years ago), much of the material in wood was indigestible; so, the stuff just piled up, and eventually turned into coal. The usual explanation for the huge buildup of carbon in the Permo-Carboniferous is that anoxic conditions (like those we find in bogs) prevented decay. However, researchers have analyzed the genetics of 31 fungi and worked out the date at which organisms capable of breaking down lignin (the types of Agaricomycetes that produce white rot) first evolved. The date coincides suggestively with the end of the Carboniferous:

Molecular clock analyses suggest that the origin of lignin degradation might have coincided with the sharp decrease in the rate of organic carbon burial around the end of the Carboniferous period.

Anyway, it's something to think about, as you slop CPES over your boat.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6089/1715.full

[wardd]

so it's no more coal

[Nicholas Carey]

Fascinating!

[Peerie Maa]

so it's no more coal

Which is kind of important. Coal is not just a source of global warming but an important chemical feed-stock.

[Nicholas Carey]

Which is kind of important. Coal is not just a source of global warming but an important chemical feed-stock.

I have a friend who's an organic chemist. He maintains that modern organic chemistry is largely the chemistry of petro chemicals. They're far too important as feedstocks to be burning them for fuel. Without petrochemical feedstocks we'd have to invent a whole new chemistry -- no plastics, no composites, just for starters.

[wardd]

I have a friend who's an organic chemist. He maintains that modern organic chemistry is largely the chemistry of petro chemicals. They're far too important as feedstocks to be burning them for fuel. Without petrochemical feedstocks we'd have to invent a whole new chemistry -- no plastics, no composites, just for starters.

not to mention cheap lubricants

[Bruce Taylor]

I just noticed that the original article doesn't come up in the link I posted...freakin' academic paywalls. Sorry about that. I had a VPN connection running when I posted it, so I didn't notice. Anyway, if you click through to the abstract, you get the gist.

[LeeG]

Hell of a story

[Arizona Bay]

Fascinating ...With all that un-rotted vegetation lying around, imagine the fires that could burn. I wonder what the co2 and ash content of the atmosphere was around that time.

[skuthorp]

I thought this was another political thread by the title.........................