2992: UK Coal

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UK Coal

Title text: The Watership Down rabbits removed an additional 0.1 nanometers constructing their warren, although that was mostly soil. British rabbits have historically mined very little coal; the sole rabbit-run coal plant was shut down in the 1990s.

Explanation

This comic uses dimensional analysis to describe the end of coal-powered energy production in the United Kingdom, in reference to the shutting down of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power plant in central England on Monday, September 30, 2024. This event signified the closure of the last coal-fired power plant in the UK. This is an important milestone in global energy use, because the United Kingdom was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, which began an era of large-scale coal extraction to fuel the world's industries. Over the course of the past several decades, coal has increasingly fallen out of favor, with natural gas becoming a more viable power source, and an increasing percentage of energy needs being met without the use of fossil fuels (from sources such as nuclear, hydro, solar and wind power). The fact that the UK has now fully transitioned away from the use of coal as a major energy source marks a major shift in how industrialized nations are powered.

UK coal production has also been in decline significantly since the politically enforced decline in the 1980s, and the proposed opening of the new Woodhouse Colliery in Cumbria seems to have been stopped, leaving just the remnants of the coal-mining industry active. There remain uses for coal, both locally obtained and imported, but the conversion away from coal in various industries marks a possible soft-end to the era of coal use in Britain. The equation shown in the comic determines how much coal was mined in the UK with respect to the surface area of the region, and calculates that this represents the removal of an average of about 8.0 cm (in imperial units, 3.2 inches) across the whole of the United Kingdom. This is another example of Randall doing unusual unit cancellation, as seen for instance in the What If? chapter Droppings. The accompanying picture implies that this coal has actually been removed in an even layer across the surface area of the country, resulting in ground level now being three inches lower. In reality, coal is extracted from deposits in specific locations, leaving other areas generally unaffected. Also while some of it has been open-cast mined, leaving visible quarrying scars (that may have been partially relandscaped), much of it has been mined sub-surface, with minimal effect on the surface itself, except where it may cause localized subsidence, sometimes of significant depth.

The calculation can be performed as follows:

• UK total coal production: 25 billion = 25,000,000,000; tonnes = metric tons = 1000kg. So 25 billion tonnes = 25,000,000,000,000kg
• coal seam density: 1L = 0.001m³. So 1.3kg/L = 1300kg/m³.
• UK land area: 1km² = 1,000,000m². So 240,000km² = 240,000,000,000m².
• 25,000,000,000,000/(1300 * 240,000,000,000) = 25,000,000,000,000/312,000,000,000,000 = 25/312 = 0.08
• kg/[(kg/m³)*m²] = 1/(m²/m³) = m³/m² = m
• 0.08m = 8cm = 3.2 inches (1 inch = 2.54cm)

UK DESNZ, referenced in the comic, is the United Kingdom's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the source for the statistic on UK total coal production from 1853 to present; see DESNZ's historical statistics of coal production here.

Since Randall is warning about climate change in several of his comics, he likely sees this as an important step away from the use of fossil fuel.

The comic’s title text adds a similar, but even more ludicrous, metric for earth excavated for a rabbit warren. The volume of earth described, 0.1 nm × 240,000 km², is equal to 24 m³ (≈ 31 cubic yards). The text refers to Watership Down, a 1972 novel about a group of English rabbits. (A sole sequel to Watership Down, Tales from Watership Down, was published in 1996.) The text also refers to a former rabbit-run coal plant in the UK and claims that it was shut down in the 1990s. No actual rabbit-run coal plants have ever been documented.^{[citation needed]}

Transcript

[The following formula is shown (with the divisors below a horizontal line in the comic, rather than inside square brackets):]

UK total coal production (1853-present, UK DESNZ) / [(coal seam density) × (UK land area)] = 25 billion tonnes / [1.3kg/L × 240,000km²] ≈ 3 inches

[Cueball is standing to the right of the formula, upon a dotted line representing the prior ground level. Two arrows indicate that the dotted line is 3 inches above the solid line that is the current ground level. One arrow goes from the end of the word inches to the dotted line the other is short and goes up from below pointing at the solid line.]

[Caption below the panel:]

The UK shut down their last coal power plant today, which means that over the course of the industrial revolution, they dug up and burned an average of 3 inches of their country.

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Discussion

nuclear power is better in all aspects anyway 172.70.90.105 19:40, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Not true - the rabbits can't get into the radiation suits.172.70.85.62 14:11, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Here before the explanation :) 172.71.154.9 20:12, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Ew. ProphetZarquon (talk) 20:13, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I made an initial explanation, but it needs a lot of work still; hopefully someone with more experience editing on this wiki can improve it (this is my first explanation) MathEnthusiast (talk) 20:27, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

"the sole rabbit-run coal plant was shut down in the 1990s." Just checking, but this isn't referencing some particularly egregious, badly managed coal power plant in the U.K., is it? Fephisto (talk) 20:43, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think so; I believe it’s simply that Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant is the last UK coal plant to be shut down.

The 1990 comment in particular. 172.68.36.171 15:07, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Randall uses SI units in the formula, as every person with the tiniest bit of tech/science education would, but then gives the result in inches (3.15) instead of centimeters (8.0). Americans are weird. 162.158.110.162 20:56, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

^^ This! 172.70.90.109 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Because metric units make more sense for calculating, but common sense units are what people can actually visualize. Mathmannix (talk) 23:59, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Define "common sense"... ;) 172.70.162.206 06:50, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

About 0.3937 centimeters guess who (if you want to | what i have done) 04:19, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

"Because metric units make more sense for calculating, but *[American-only] units are what *[his American primary target audience] can actually visualize", there, fixed that for you. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:21, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

One should not forget that the 3 inches are very unevenly distributed. Some areas on top of coal mines have sunken in much further creating new flooding risks that require continued future interventions. --172.64.236.34 21:08, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, I used to line in the north of England and road signs would say, "Road liable to subsidence." I also wonder about the year 1853. Mining was going on long before that. The industrial revolution started in the mid-eighteenth century.--141.101.98.22 07:46, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Presumably, that's just the earliest that UK DESNZ has data for.172.71.23.209 18:34, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I understand that Watership Down is sometimes categorized as "children's literature", but it always catches me off guard. The Wikipedia page for it calls it an "adventure novel" and it's in the adult fiction section at my library. I'm just wondering if perhaps the explanation here should be a little less specific in its categorization of the book.Dextrous Fred (talk) 21:35, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's ever categorized as children's literature (I'm surprised at no mention of the more well-known and more likely reference of the movie), they're often MISTAKEN (or mis-categorized, if you will) as being for children, considering the fluffy bunnies and animated feature. NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:21, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

From the perspective of someone who lived through the 1980s Miner's Strike (not directly affected, my father worked at a steel-works, not at a pit like my friends' fathers) and then the decline of the steel manufacturing industry (which did affect my father, obviously), I have rather naturally kept a general eye on the extraction and use of coal. There still are working coal-mines (though there isn't going to be that new one, in Cumbria), and there are still uses for UK coal (enough to import to add to tht which we dig out). It's really a bit early to say that the layer of total coal dug out won't deepen slightly (very, very slightly) in the future. And coal that is dug is only loosely associated with coal which is turned into electricity, so the last coal-generator stopping seems like an oddly off-topic detail for Randall to leap into the amortised accumulation of extracted volume. 172.68.205.165 22:01, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Full conversion to US Customary Units (AKA US Bullshit Units):

(25e9 Tonnes / (1.3 kg/L * 2.4e5 km^2)) * (1000 kg / 1 Tonne) * (1 km^2 / (1000 m)^2 ) * (1 m^3 / 1000 L) * (39.37 in / 1 m ) ~= 3"

--JayTeeEll (talk) 22:57, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

"US Bullshit units", but I still see a lot of kilo this and that metric, :) "Full"? NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:21, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

He has not added the amount of "flotation" that results from the removal of all that material from the islands. Have the islands risen more than 3 inches in the crust, due to the removal? SDSpivey (talk) 23:37, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Scotland's still going up (after the last Ice-Age melt) and the south of Britain is still going down, IIRC. Which'll confuse matters. But I don't see how the component contributions to raising level (due to the digging out) could outpace the removal (due to that digging), by any significant amount. Rebound takes a while, and the effects should roughly equal out (so long as we haven't been digging too deep). 172.68.205.151 23:41, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

He doesn't mention anything about the surface height at all, though. He says that an average 3" has been dug up and burnt, but not that the country is 3" lower as a result.172.70.86.204 13:45, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Between the diagram and the text (including title-text), it looks as if he is indeed lowering the surface' from what it might have been without the extraction. 172.70.86.35 16:49, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I have a nagging feeling that although rabbit-run coal plants aren't (known to be) a thing, there must be Victorian children's books (e.g. Beatrix Potter) in which bunnies use coal scuttles or coal fires. "When Horace Hedgehog arrived, it was tea-time, so Mr Hoppy put some more coal on the fire..." BunsenH (talk) 00:36, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Funnily enough, Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter was published in 1901, the same year as Queen Victoria’s passing, which marked the end of the Victorian Era. 42.book.addict (talk) 15:39, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I felt confident that there was probably a place named Rabbit Run, with a coal-based facility nearby, but all I found was a rather pedestrian footrace.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 20:21, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

UK DESNZ refers to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which is a ministerial department of the UK government. So basically that text is citing the source for the data.172.70.162.185 03:33, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

To help balance this out, should someone import coal into the formerly coal producing areas to fill in the now empty veins, or would that be selling coal to Newcastle? RegularSizedGuy (talk) 05:35, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

From the miner's strike onwards, a lot of coal was imported (particularly from (Poland) to run the coal-fired power stations since it was much cheaper, so wasn't dug out the ground in the UK. 172.70.90.105 07:51, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The formula doesn't take into account that the UK has ...changed land area over that period. Land area of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Ireland) was 315000 km² until 1922. This changes the reading in SI units from 8 cm to 7 cm, but the rounded value in inches is unchanged, 3 in. Which explains why you call those units of his glorious majesty Imperial, I guess. --172.71.172.180 08:34, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I checked the source and it doesn't say wether production data for 1853-1922 is for the CURRENT territory of UK or includes production in the territory now belonging to Eire. Maybe we should inquire. --162.158.111.89 11:03, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Coal production in the territory now known as the Republic of Ireland (not Éire, that is just the Irish language name for the island) was historically quite low compared to Britain, with somewhere around 50,000 tons per year before independence, so it can largely be discounted 162.158.111.89 14:28, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't like the punctuation spatter in "The UK shut down their last coal power plant today, which means that over the course of the industrial revolution, they dug up and burned an average of 3 inches of their country." And the place I'd put a new comma might confuse others' sensibilities. Perhaps "..., which means that (over the ... revolution) they dug ...". Or just get rid of the one after revolution and accept a rather long run-on clause. Not that it's changable here, being Transcript of what's there but it's strangely off in grammatical meter and span from how I would try to say/write the same words. 172.70.85.101 10:06, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

I feel like I missed the joke somewhere with this: "The volume of earth described, 0.1 nm × 240,000 km2, is equal to 24 m3. This is a humorous play on depictions of anthropomorphic rabbits in children's literature." Are these two separate statements that happened to be placed in a misleading way, or is something funny about 24 cubic meters having to do with anthropomorphic rabbits? 162.158.111.237 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

i hear that stoats are getting into nuclear now, tho. 172.69.58.215 20:29, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Reminds me of ferrets, and the "Nuclear Ferret" section in particular. (Yes, "microscopic steel particles called mesons" makes me glad they seem far more expert in muscalid matters than with physics. And web-page design.) 172.70.162.206 06:50, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

finally made my own account, can someone help create my user and talk pages??? CalibansCreations (talk) 10:22, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

There may have never been a coal plant run by rabbits, but there's been at least one spontaneously-forming nuclear power plant. And coal seams can of course light on fire. --162.158.91.59 08:04, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

(Inexplicably was in Community Portal/Miscelaneous) I'm getting a factor of 10 difference in the calculation

in today's comic (#2992 (September 30, 2024)

We see the depth of the UK coal industry. The calculation is presented as

            25 Billion Tonnes
         -------------------------  ~= 3 inches.
          1.3Kg/L x 240,000 Km^2

I reduced the units and got:

CoalProduction_Tonne = 25e9;

CoalProduction_Kg = CoalProduction_Tonne * 1000;  % 1000Kg/tonne

VolumePerLiter_MCubed = .001;  % cubic meters

AreaOfUk_KmSquared = 24e3;  % Km^2

AreaOfUk_MSquared = AreaOfUk_KmSquared * 1e6;  % 1e6m^2 in 1Km^2

DepthOfCoal_M = CoalProduction_Kg/(1.3/VolumePerLiter_MCubed * AreaOfUk_MSquared);

DepthOfCoal_mm = 1000 * DepthOfCoal_M

DepthOfCoal_mm = 801.28,approx. 32 inches.

Where is this wrong? 172.71.23.209 (talk) 20:52, 1 October 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The original comic (#2992) sets the UK land area as 240,000 km^2, which is equal to 24 * 10^4 km^2 (or 2.4 * 10^5 km^2, or 240 * 10^3 km^2, or 2.4 * 10^5 * (10^3)^2 m^2 = 2.4 * 10^11 m^2), exactly one order of magnitude different from your numbers. I ran my own calculations (before really looking deeply at yours) and got 3.2 inches (rounded off to two sig figs). Coolclawcat (talk) 00:59, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

In other words:

AreaOfUk_KmSquared = 240e3;                          % Km^2

BunsenH (talk) 02:40, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

That was it: DepthOfCoal_in = 3.1547 172.71.31.55 (talk) 13:07, 2 October 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

As a Brit, I just want to say: wooohoooo!! Finally! As an environmentalist, I'll also add: Sorry about all the anti-nuclear power stuff. Many of my predecessors got it very badly wrong. 172.70.86.35 08:44, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm quite amused at the "citation needed" on "There's no documented evidence of a rabbit-run plant". Yes, provide documentation on how there's no documentation. :) I like that one. NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:21, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Coal is of organic origin and there are still quite a lot of organics running around the planet today. Perhaps Randal, or someone here, could calculate the time needed for the extracted coal to be naturally replenished? These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 00:13, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia says 50-400 million years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future Nitpicking (talk) 11:57, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think his calculations take into account the ash produced by burning all that coal. I wonder how much less the average subsidence would be if you took this into account. 172.69.23.76 (talk) 19:01, 14 October 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Obviously, the ash should be used to consistently and systematically raise the seabed surrounding the UK until it is above High Tide. look forward to the calculations necessary (with reference to accurate depth-charts) to determine exactly how 'thick' this extra band of reclaimed land will be as it extendes evenly perpendicularly 'offshore' from the convoluted HAT line. And also the effective creation of a lagoon immediately 'inshore' of significant (variably-wide) stretches of the coast where the non-land-filled surface of the UK falls below the HAT line by those few inches of enforced subsidence, and thus collects both water draining off the rest of the landmass and occasionally gets flooded with storm-surges passing over the HAT-level infill. (Yes, I know. I have such simple wishes.) 172.69.79.138 19:59, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Can we create a category of comics that (ab)use dimensional analysis, like this, Oily House Index, and Dimensional Analysis? 172.70.49.16 05:21, 15 October 2024 (UTC)