Desmond, I take exception to your comment that Man has harvested peat for fuel for hundred of years yet it regenerates. It may regenerate, but takes a long time. Just like coal, it is being mined and will regenerate over millions of years. Once the peat is mined, for all intents it is gone.

This story about release of CO2 from peat is a travesty of the truth. In the introductory comments the presenter said that peat contains one third of the world's organic carbon. This is a startling statistic with which to start the programme. This is a fictitious statistic made up by some one who did not listen carefully to the Scientist Ellen who presented the results of her work. Of course it gets one's attention to promote the "global warming caused by CO2 emissions" argument but it is plainly wrong. During the programme Ellen was asked about this statistic and what she said is "peat contains one third of world's soil organic carbon". That is vastly different from the "world's carbon" because the world's carbon includes trees and photosynthetic plankton as well as other carbons sources that cannot be classified as soil carbon. The discussion about the consequences of this release of CO2 is also suspect although one's assessment of the results can be a matter of Scientific conjecture and opinion. One of the conclusions of this work based on the idea that vast amounts of CO2 will be released with 1C rise in temperature has to be that with such a small rise the peat bogs will be wiped out, they must be if there is a net release of CO2 over the years. Yet for hundreds of years, irrespective of local temperatures, Man has harvested peat for fuel yet it keeps regenerating. I have no personal knowledge of this, I base this comment on the Irish experience with peat, maybe other European nations have also use Peat in that way. By the way, any rise in temperature will automatically raise metabolic activity and hence release of CO2. I think it encumbent on your programme to correct the false fact you have reported.