waste of time talking to you lot, you don't understand the science
We do but I suspect it's a different science to the one you believe. Your time has only been wasted if you don't look at the science we believe in and try to understand why the majority of people, including governments and horticulturalists, are happy to follow its recommendations.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
As I said further back in this thread, @pauty141-aoxdmNG - you need to provide links to proper scientific backing for your claims. If you do so, I will read them.
When I provided evidence about the percentage of peat used in horticulture I gave chapter & verse about where I'd found it. There are plenty of us on this forum who do understand the science and would be interested to know where you found your information.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
and particularly consider how very many posters here have had significant problems with the quality of peat free composts. This group is by no means sanguine about the incoming peat bans. We've been round this loop many times and don't have a consensus, not yet. But the argument here has largely moved on from whether we need to stop using it - we're more or less convinced on that, some more and some less - and onto what we use instead, which is much more difficult, so far.
The trouble with framing your argument in such a combative way is that you provoke the hard liners like me into reacting by making scientifically inaccurate statements and then sulking when we disagree with you. You'd get further if you stopped making stuff up to suit your case, thinking we won't check what you say, and, if you really want to have a debate, make your real point, which seems to be that you think the loss to horticulture outweighs the cost to the planet?
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
the science is in what other countries are doing to extract peat in a sustainable way, Canada, Sweden, etc. etc. etc. Britain is stand alone on the subject and the RHS and BBC and other celebrity gardeners are force feeding gardeners with misinformation, we do not use 67% of peat that is farmed in horticulture, it's approx 1%. nobody wants to use huge amounts of peat anymore, just in seed, potting and ericaceous composts and the minimum amount to give plants starting all the help they need, is that not fair.
The only reference I can find that Canadian peat extraction is sustainable, is on the sungro.com website. They are one of the principal peat extraction companies in Canada. Their site says: "Peat Moss grows more than 60 times faster than it is harvested."
I did a quick fact check on this. I think the following figures come from premiertech.com via pthorticulture.com, but I haven't traced them back - they seem reasonable to me. Troy Buechel, looking at the Canadian peat industry, says: "Sphagnum moss grows at a rate of 0.75-4.75 inches (2-12cm) per year. The lower parts of the plant die and accumulate at the bottom of the bog, gradually forming peat. Annual peat accumulation is about 0.5-1.0 mm."
So - at that rate, even if you're disingenuously looking at the annual growth rate of the living sphagnum moss, rather than the annual accumulation rate of peat, I can't see how sungro's figures add up.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
Basically if you have one square metre of peat-producing sphagnum making its optimum 1mm of peat per year then you'd need 1000 square meters to replace one m3 of extracted peat. So if your peat bog is 5m deep then you need a hectare of land to remain untouched just to extract two square metres 'sustainably'. This sounds fine in principal if you have enough pristine peat bog to work with but ignores the time it takes for the extracted land to recover its ecosystem which can take 100 years. Climate change is causing wildfires and drought in peat producing regions so optimum peat production is often suboptimal. Also peat bogs aren't always that deep so you may need two or three times that area to replace the soil that is harvested. Scale this up to the amounts being harvested and allow for the 1000 years it will take to regrow a metre-deep peat bog.
OP also says:
"peat does not oxidize spontaneously to form CO2 when dug up, it's the
small amount of CO2 released from the water as it dries out is where
people who don't understand the science are being misled by so called
experts who should know better, as in the whole climate change
misinformation."
I'm not a so called expert but I know how peat is formed and I know about the carbon cycle in decomposition. I'm not sure that you do? Perhaps it would change your mind if you looked into it.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
@Liriodendron , I too looked a year or two ago at those Canadian metrics.
I haven't looked at it again, so I may have forgotten, but I vaguely recall that their stats made some kind of sense when one looked at the entire Canadian peatland stock / and what proportion was allowed to be "farmed".
Separately, and I haven't looked into this for peat in detail, but I can imagine that as with shale, the damage done in extraction varies enormously depending on the geology ( ie I am not saying shale exploration is 'good' for the environment, I am just saying some shale extraction may be 'worse')
Posts
When I provided evidence about the percentage of peat used in horticulture I gave chapter & verse about where I'd found it. There are plenty of us on this forum who do understand the science and would be interested to know where you found your information.
The trouble with framing your argument in such a combative way is that you provoke the hard liners like me into reacting by making scientifically inaccurate statements and then sulking when we disagree with you. You'd get further if you stopped making stuff up to suit your case, thinking we won't check what you say, and, if you really want to have a debate, make your real point, which seems to be that you think the loss to horticulture outweighs the cost to the planet?
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I did a quick fact check on this. I think the following figures come from premiertech.com via pthorticulture.com, but I haven't traced them back - they seem reasonable to me. Troy Buechel, looking at the Canadian peat industry, says: "Sphagnum moss grows at a rate of 0.75-4.75 inches (2-12cm) per year. The lower parts of the plant die and accumulate at the bottom of the bog, gradually forming peat. Annual peat accumulation is about 0.5-1.0 mm."
So - at that rate, even if you're disingenuously looking at the annual growth rate of the living sphagnum moss, rather than the annual accumulation rate of peat, I can't see how sungro's figures add up.
I haven't looked at it again, so I may have forgotten, but I vaguely recall that their stats made some kind of sense when one looked at the entire Canadian peatland stock / and what proportion was allowed to be "farmed".
Separately, and I haven't looked into this for peat in detail, but I can imagine that as with shale, the damage done in extraction varies enormously depending on the geology ( ie I am not saying shale exploration is 'good' for the environment, I am just saying some shale extraction may be 'worse')