The message m
from Bry contains these words:

Pead does become coal. Lignite is just a half way stage between peat
and coal. This link should explain everything:

http://tinyurl.com/pv2g

Peat doesn't. Do you believe everyting you read on the web?

As for peat forming again, that wasn't my angle at all. When I say
irreplaceable resource I an refering to the peat bog as a whole, not
the individual chunks of peat. Basically, the peat bogs are the only
known natural regulator of the concentration of oxygen to carbon
dixoide, and with the excess ammounts of carbon in the atmosphere now
it would be logical to leave them to do their job.

And of course, grassland, forests, the oceans, freshwater areas, gardens
even have no part in locking in carbon? Do have some sense of
proportion.

If someone pulls up
vast ammounts of a peat bog, eventually they stop producing peat, and
as we have no way of making a new bog I can say they are irreplaceable.

Moss and other plants grow. As they die and decay, peat begins to build
up beneath the surface. The process recommences within the year, and
little disruption to the miniscule contribution of areas of cut peat to
CO2 locking takes place.

The difference between digging up coal and peat is not that peat can
form again faster, it's that peat is comming from a living environment
that can easily be dammaged beyong repair. Coal on the other hand is a
dead lump of highly compacted 290 million year old carbon. Before being
removed from the ground it is probably 100% sterile of all microbes and
bacteria, it has no environment to dammage during removal.

Nope. bites tongue You'd be surprised at just where microbes are to be
found, and in what hostile environments. They are found deep beneath the
ice in Antarctica, and living in temperatures well above the boiling
point (at NTP) of water round 'chimneys' on the ocean floor.

--
Rusty Hinge
horrid·squeak&zetnet·co·uk
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/tqt.htm