I used to make the coal beds six to eight inches deep.

我过去常常把挖到 6 到 8 英寸深。

It is found in beds, or layers, or seams, deep down in the earth.

是从深深的地下的“矿床”或者叫“”找到的。

Cheap fossil energy, concentrated by geologic time and pressure in seams of coal or pools of oil, changed all that.

经过地质时间和压力的凝缩，富集和油田的廉价化石能源改变了这一切。

Some people believe that if this continues, oilfields and coal mines will become empty in the future.

一些人相信如果这种情况继续下去，油田和在来会枯竭。

In some coal mines seams of coal are worked which are three thousand feet below the surface of the ground.

在一些矿里，矿工采的，足有地表之下3000英尺深。

You will then walk along the low passages cut in the coal seam, and you will see men with pick-axes breaking down and cutting out great blocks of the coal.

然后你就可以沿着的巷道走一走，会看见人们拿着镐头，把大块的砍下来，挖出来。

To get coal, men called miners, or colliers, dig deep holes straight down into the earth, until they reach the seams of coal.

有一些叫做“矿工”的人，在地上挖出深洞，深洞笔直地向下延伸，一直挖到。

The seams of coal are often from three to eight feet thick, and there are layers of sandstone or of clay between them.

的厚度一般是3英尺到8英尺，之间是砂岩或者粘土。

In the coal itself it is very hard to tell one plant from another, for they have all been crushed together.

可是，在里面，就很难把一棵棵植物分，因为植物全都压碎了，混在一起了。

From the bottom of the shaft the miners cut low passages through the seams, and dig out the coal.

矿工们从矿井底部, 在里出巷道，把挖出来。

The entry is driven horizontally into the seam or  coal bed.

该条目水平打入或床。

The coal sits in big fat seams close to the surface.

炭位靠近地表的大肥。

A good example of this phenomenon is recorded in the coal-bearing layers of the 48-million-year old fossil site in Germany known as Geiseltal .

这一现象的一个很好的例子记录在德国4800万年前的化石遗址盖塞尔塔尔的含。

Burning these crude coal beds would have  released incredible amounts of particulates and greenhouse gases, both important for  driving cloud formation and rainfall.

燃烧这些原始的会释放出大量的颗粒物和温室气体，这两者对推动云形成和降雨都至关重要。

Then, to reach the buried coal seams, explosives are used to remove up to 800 feet of mountain elevation.

然后， 为了到达埋藏的，使用炸药移除高达 800 英尺的山体高度。

Coal mining, which liberates the stuff from coal seams, is the second-biggest source of Chinese methane after agriculture.

炭采从释放出物质，是国仅次农业的第二大甲烷来源。