On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 15:57:04 +0000 (UTC), "Franz Heymann"
wrote:


"Jaques d'Altrades" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Franz Heymann" contains these
words:

In all fairness, the amount of peat used by gardeners is minuscule
when
you consider the amount burned in peat fired power stations.

Are there any in the UK?

Dunno, but there are in Eire.

I realised that. I reckon there are none in the UK, though.

There are six in Ireland.
--
Martin

On Sun, 05 Oct 2003 18:50:50 +0200, martin wrote:

On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 15:57:04 +0000 (UTC), "Franz Heymann"
wrote:


"Jaques d'Altrades" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Franz Heymann" contains these
words:

In all fairness, the amount of peat used by gardeners is minuscule
when
you consider the amount burned in peat fired power stations.

Are there any in the UK?

Dunno, but there are in Eire.

I realised that. I reckon there are none in the UK, though.

There are six in Ireland.

perhaps not various Irish web sites give anything between 3 and 6.
5 appears to be the most popular number.
--
Martin

Franz Heymann wrote:
"ned" wrote in message
...

big snip

However, ..... in some specific areas where they are trying to
re-introduce wetlands (creating one environment at the expense of
another), it is necessary to skim off the higher exposed layers
of
peat and so a certain amount is still being commercially
'harvested'
under strict controls and licences. It's an ecological juggling
act.

In which the extractors hold all the trump cards, if one may be
said
to do an ecological juggle with cards.

....."under strict controls and licences"

Yes. The sops to Cerberus.
Bugger the controls and licences. If you can destroy in one year
what
nature took millennia to produce, there is something quite seriously
wrong.

....... just as it is wrong to mine any mineral? Coal? Oil?

--
ned

Not quite, a peat bog is a carbon sink that actively collects the carbon from the environment and locks it up, then over millions of years it sinks down further in to the ground and is burried. Eventually it will become coal.

Digging up peat does something that digging up fosil fuels like coal and oil doesn't, it is destroying a natural environment that cannot be replaced. Adding carbon to the atmosphere through burning coal, gas and oil is one thing, but destrying an irreplaceble resource that is helping to reduce this carbon is very different. Without it, the environment can't 'landfill' excess carbon.

I don't even aprove of digging it up to replace wetlands. In fact, I think we should be researching ways to create artificial peat bogs as somewhere to dispose of all the extra carbon from burning fossil fuels.

Buying peat is a personal choice, but I don't recomend it, and the fact that some people are buying it doesn't make it right or our smaller garden usage less significant.

Bry wrote:
ned wrote:

....... just as it is wrong to mine any mineral? Coal? Oil?

--
ned [/b]

Not quite, ......

............... tangentially speaking. ;-)

--
ned

The message
from "Franz Heymann" contains these words:

Are there any in the UK?

Dunno, but there are in Eire.

I realised that. I reckon there are none in the UK, though.

I don't know - there is a lot of peat in The Highlands and in East
Anglia. We do have a chicken litter fired power station near Eye in
North Suffolk.

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

On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 19:15:36 +0100, Jaques d'Altrades
wrote:

We do have a chicken litter fired power station near Eye in
North Suffolk.

Rhode Island Red melt down?
--
Martin

The message m
from Bry contains these words:

ned wrote:

....... just as it is wrong to mine any mineral? Coal? Oil?

--
ned [/b]

Not quite, a peat bog is a carbon sink that actively collects the
carbon from the environment and locks it up, then over millions of
years it sinks down further in to the ground and is burried. Eventually
it will become coal.

pedant

Er, no it won't. I can't remember exactly what it becomes, but it isn't
coal. Lignite, IIRC.

/pedant

Digging up peat does something that digging up fosil fuels like coal
and oil doesn't, it is destroying a natural environment that cannot be
replaced. Adding carbon to the atmosphere through burning coal, gas and
oil is one thing, but destrying an irreplaceble resource that is
helping to reduce this carbon is very different. Without it, the
environment can't 'landfill' excess carbon.

You have this completely arse-about-face. Peat will form again (assuming
the weather conditions remain favourable), but coal and oil, once
removed, will not regenerate in that position.

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

On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 21:41:15 +0100, Jaques d'Altrades
wrote:

The message m
from Bry contains these words:

ned wrote:

....... just as it is wrong to mine any mineral? Coal? Oil?

--
ned [/b]

Not quite, a peat bog is a carbon sink that actively collects the
carbon from the environment and locks it up, then over millions of
years it sinks down further in to the ground and is burried. Eventually
it will become coal.

pedant

Brown coal?
--
Martin

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

http://www.uky.edu/KGS/coal/webcoal/pages/coalform.htm

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. 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. 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.

Bry

"martin" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 19:15:36 +0100, Jaques d'Altrades
wrote:

We do have a chicken litter fired power station near Eye in
North Suffolk.

Rhode Island Red melt down?

{:-))

Franz

Bry wrote:

big snip
If someone pulls up
vast ammounts of a peat bog, eventually they stop producing peat,

....... usually because the water table has been lowered. Not an
irretrievable situation.

and
as we have no way of making a new bog I can say they are
irreplaceable.

Of course we can make a new bog. As with all new environments, it wont
happen overnight but I am sure it is not outwith the ingenuity of man
(David Bellamy for one) to grow sphagnam moss, tend it, care for it
and wait.

--
ned

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

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

The message m
from Bry contains these words:

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?

Mainly what would amount now to rainforest. You'll find fossils of
leaves like giant ferns and ginkco biloba in it.

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.

As it decomposes - and it does - it releases carbondioxide. The areas of
peat in the world are really insignificant in the great order of things.

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.

I've forgotten just how many *MILES* underground they have been found,
but it seems this planet could be a great deal harder to kill than you
think.

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