Quote (written in reference to peat being the first stages of coal formation): Peat doesn't. Do you believe everyting you read on the web?

Well, I'm not basing my entire belief that peat becomes coal on one web site, it just happened to explain what I believe very well. I have also been told the same thing by my science teacher, dozens of text books, several TV productions, the people who mine coal, the environmental groups who explain where coal came from...etc. Perhaps they're wrong, but I'm hardly likely to believe you over them (the long standing well formed idea) without some kind of theory as to where coal does actually come from, if it's not peat?

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

Well, that's the whole problem - scale and proportion. Plants do lock up carbon, but they release it again quickly when they die. Plant's are from this carbon cycle, thus they are short term storage at most. Peat on the other hand stores carbon and provided it's not dug up or drained of water will store it for good.

Quote: 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.

No, I wouldn't really be suprised at all. Microbes are classified as to the temp range they live in. The lowest is psychrophile which ranges from -10 to 20 degrees centigrade. The higest is hyperthermophile which ranges from 60 to 115 degrees centigrade. I expect they can live in quite hostile conditions, but I sill have doubts that they can live 200-330 million years under anaerobic conditions.

Bry