Brett - this is a common phenomena & can either be natural or man made. Google Smoking Hills to see the hills / escarpment in the Canadian Arctic where the coal beds have burned for centuries & are thought to have been ignited by lightning. Also at Fernie we have an abandoned coal mine burning underground. I'm not sure for how long or what started the burn.
Be good,
Rick.

Reply: Thanks Rick for your input. Brett

My understanding is that many coal mines are in remote areas, very difficult to put out and easy to ignore. With plentiful coal reserves there is little economic incentive to putting them out.

Notice, that estimates of the extent of the problem vary by a factor of 10!

Here is a link to one coal mine fire expert.

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~prakash/coalfires/coalfires.html

From the link.

In China alone, the figures given by various scientific groups vary in this regard. According to reports of the Beijing Remote Sensing Corporation (BRSC), Aerophotogrammetry and Remote Sensing Bureau of China Coal (ARSC) and works of Professor Guan Haiyan from China, the annual loss of coal due to coal fires in China is between 10 to 20 million tons. However, figures given by Rozema et al. in 1993 are 10 times higher which means that 100 to 200 million tons of coal are lost due to coal fires in China. Assuming these latter figures to be a realistic measure of the coal being burnt, the CO2 emitted, solely due to these fires, would amount to 2 to 3 percent of the world's total CO2 emission due to fossil fuels.

Reply: Thanks for the link Andrew.

I saw the same article Brett. Sadly, the article didn't give a whole lot of detail or references. Since then, I've done a little searching of my own and found similar results to Andrew - widely ranging estimates.

However, since controlling as much CO2 emission seems to be the current mantra, I would think finding a way to extinguish these fires would be something we'd want to do. And that is not even counting the economic loss from coal burning that could be used elsewhere.

Bear in mind, CO2 is not the major pollutant from burning coal. Sulfur dioxide is the major pollutant and is a significant contributor to acid rain. Thankfully, technology has reduced emissions of S02 at coal fired electricity plants. Additionally, beyond CO2 and SO2, there is significant amount of NO2 (a smog contributor) and particulates. Again, thankfully, scrubber technology has reduced these emissions in coal fired plants. Therefore, I would think extinguishing these "unscrubbed" coal fires would be important.

Reply: Thanks Greg for adding to that brief article. Brett

They probably put out as much CO2 as flatulating moose in Norway.

Check this one out. The temperature in Vostok, Antarctica is forecast to be -122F next Tuesday. Close to the all time coldest temperature ever recorded on earth.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=-78.44999695,106.87000275

Up here in the balmy northern hemispheric summer, Greenland is much more pleasant. It is only supposed to get down to -36F on Tuesday.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=72.58000183,-38.45000076

I can certainly see why Al Gore is so concerned about Antarctica and Greenland melting. I think we should raise taxes automatically if Antarctica gets above -100F.

The debate is over, the consensus is in-

LESS THAN HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=b35c36a3-802a-23ad-46ec-6880767e7966

Reply: I will have more on that later. Brett

I�m sure all efforts are being made to put out the fires where it is economically viable to do so. In America and Australia the fires have been left to burn for years after being started by lightning, . Coal fired power stations in China are not all blessed with the same technology that makes generating our electricity more efficient and less polluting, our coal is processed or crushed before being blown into the furnace. In China brown coal is used, the most polluting, and is shovelled into the fire in the same condition that it arrives from the mines, sometimes damp and full of material that will not burn. China has such an insatiable appetite for fuel that even your recycled plastic waste may also be going into their furnaces.
When the developed nations recycle China burns.
Much better to encourage China to use more efficient ways to make Mc Donald�s free giveaways and poisoned Thomas the tank engines.

This type of article takes the focus off what can be done to limit co2 emissions in developed countries and tries to make it seem that reducing co2 in our nations is pointless when smoke from Chinese mines will undermine the effort. This is nonsense because somewhere in the world coal or shale will always be burning under the ground just as some volcanos will always be exploding. This has been the case for millions of years and not much can reduce these types of emission, it�s pretty silly to suggest we even try to solve global warming now by controlling what are mostly natural events.

Next the author might suggest a cap be placed over active volcanoes so that co2 emissions can be put under pressure liquefied and pumped through pipelines so that it can be injected into depleted oil and gas fields.
Hey now theres an idea why not build geothermal plants on the sides of active volcanoes to make electricity? The water will cool the volcanoe and reduce the chances ofv an eruption while generating an emmission free source of power.

In the Four Corners area of the Southwest, there is a Cretaceous age deposit that we called clinker. Kind of looks like pottery shards. In reality, it is baked clay from a Cretaceous coal seam fire most likely started by either lightning or dinosaurs on a camping trip.

Another off-topic comment, Breaking: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

So much for the concensus. Andrew?

Reply: There is more to this than meets the eye, more on this later. Brett

I think Greg hit on some major points concerning coal and sulfuric areosols. Some scientists have conjectured that one of the reasons the global climate has warmed significantly since 1980 can be attributed to enviormental regulations in both North America and Europe. Coal burning power stations must now be fitted with special equipment that scrubs SO2 out of the exhausts. Since this is pretty expensive, many power stations have either switched to oil or natural gas -both exhaust signifcantly less SO2. The rapid decrease in SO2 has resulted in more sunlight making its way to the surface.

China and India BTW do not have any such restrictions on thier old or newer power plants. China is bringing one power station online every 3-5 days. This has generated fears on the West Coast of a prepetual blanket of high level SO2, which, in turn, could have dire effects on thier climate. There are also long term health concerns for the Chinese themselves. So much pollution concentrated in such a region does not bode well for anyone in Asia.

These are all high level questions that bring into account the West's desire to extract large productivity gains on the Chinese and Indians. Beside outsourcing our manufacturing, we are outsourcing our pollution. Already there are some rumblings in China about higher wages, and as a result, som companies are now looking to Africa as a new source of cheap labor.

Simon makes a good point with geothermal plants on the side of active volcanoes for an emission free source of power.

Be good,
Rick.

President James Earl Carter supported a plan to rubbleize most of the Green River formation and ignite it to drive kerogen out of the oil shale. It not only would caused subsidence over much of a three state region, but would have caused massive contamination to the ground water and air.

(This was of course in his spare time when he wasn't busy turning Iran over to the Ayatollah Khomeni, planning bungled rescue attempts in US Embassy, or later convincing Saddam to invade Iran.)

Fortunately, the American people had the good sense to elect Reagan President and end the Synthetic Fuels Corporation.

Cool.... Canada could send in our fire finghting teams and in one fell swoop meet our Kyoto target.
We could then sit back, have a beer and watch as the rest of the world devastates their economies trying to cap emmisions.
Can we call dibs!

Developing a technology and using it to put out undergound coal fire isn't a something that should even be debated. I don't see a downside here.