
Colossal peat bog discovered in Congo - jamesbritt
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27492949#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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VeejayRampay
For any other French-speaking reader wondering as I did (because speaking
English is one thing, but knowing all the botanical lingo is really something
else), a peat bog is what we call a "tourbière".

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demallien
And FYI a peaty whiskey is a whiskey tourbé :)

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jcr
Now I'm wondering what will be found in the bog? Bogs have an interesting
effect of preserving things like bodies.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body)

Not that they're related, but I'm also wondering what Congolese single malt
will taste like?

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timrogers
I imagine finding stuff is going to be pretty tough in such a large area - but
it'll sure be interesting.

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bencollier49
This has serious potential to be a very nasty source of CO2 emissions and
habitat loss if they decide to industrialise it.

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madaxe_again
Never mind industrialise. If they chop the trees down for lumber, as seems to
be the destiny for all tropical forests, the soil will dry, and microbes will
be able to start decomposing the biotic material currently locked up in an
anaerobic environment. This has already been seen in Norfolk in the UK, where
they increased drainage and removed ground cover, and ever since, the peat has
emanted vast amounts of CO2 as ground levels fall by inches a year due to
conversion of the solid matter into decomposition products (methane, CO2,
etc.)

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vanderZwan
Indonesia is also a pretty bad example - see Willie Smits' talk on
conservation:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHYLAXkenFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHYLAXkenFw)

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haggo
The dutch burnt a lot of peat in the old days.
[http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-
fossil-...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/09/peat-and-coal-fossil-fuels-
in-pre-industrial-times.html)

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jmnicolas
This amaze me that we're still discovering places on earth !

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markba
African Whisky

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arethuza
Just in case anyone is wondering - whisky isn't made from peat, it is made
from malted barley that was often dried over a peat fire and this very
distinctive aroma was imparted to the malt and then to the spirit.

NB When I was as student I used to have a summer job in a maltings that made
malt from barley that was used by a number of distilleries. Note that most
maltings are actually fairly large industrial plants - not really the normal
image people have of the Scots whisky industry although lots of higher end
distilleries do make their own malt.

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Torn
Saying that, supplies of highland & Islay peat are dwindling - in a few
hundred years they won't be using local peat to dry out the barley

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arethuza
I don't think there is any lack of peat in Scotland - I guess what there is a
lack of is areas where people are happy to ruin the landscape to harvest peat.

e.g. The Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_Country](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_Country)

