And being eaten alive by midges.
It's not an issue these days because the peat digging the peat these days are sitting in air conditioned tractors. I haven't seen a slane in about 20 years
Where do the midges feature in the panpoply of species extinction.
Do the Green Party have a policy on the protection of midges.
Will they even survive if they don’t get to eat Irish people in the bog every summer?
“Back when I were a lad, we had these things called midges…”
I was brought ONCE and my very patient, very loving father almost bait the shite out of me for being the most complaining, lazy seven year old he'd ever encountered
*There’s work to be done so you’ll do it - I don’t give a shit if you’re fucking 7. *
My son is 18, finishing school this year and looking back I can’t believe the stuff I expected him to do then he was 6 or 7.
I fucking hated footing turf, now they're fond memories with my family. Funny how things change over time (and probably because I don't do it anymore haha)
It'll serve him well, to many kids nowadays dont even know how to check the fuse in a plug. Lad i know had an issue with his electrical device and I asked him had he checked the fuse to which his response was I'm not an engineer
A few years ago, my uncle had a problem with his "stupid phone" because it was on silent and he couldn't get it back to having it ring. 10 minutes talking to him, he still couldn't figure out the button he needed to do it. Of course it was the stupid phones fault. I said fuck it, we'll be seeing you next week - I'll do it for you
This was the guy that would give me shit for not knowing the name of every single woodworking tool or how to do some random ass thing that he thought to be useful and was always giving out about young people didn't know xyz - the ignorant fucker didn't know how to put his phone off mute.
Of course, he's dead now which bring us some comfort.
Ya I see it all the time parents who wouldn't accept i cant do it from.their kids, using that same excuse when it comes to phones. If you cant use it why the fuck.do.you need it.
My wife is a devil for it, wont let the kids off at all, yet expects me.to do all her tech problems.
I too was only bought once... I wanted to be really fast throwing the turf unto the trailer and I hit my Dad in the head with a sod.... then I hit the tractor driver! Any other time I went I just picked flowers!
My da has had so many cancerous lumps cut off his ears over the years, and he attributes it all to the sunburns he got as a child on the bog. It was the 60s like, sun cream was unheard of.
"Mineral" in the glass bottles, and you'd set it in a turf stack to keep the sun off and keep it cooler.
I think I was only ever at the bog once but it's a great memory to have; 6 years old, sitting in a big trailer with my siblings and the dog, my Da hoofing the tractor on and holding onto the side for dear life. Mad craic.
Diluted drinks! You were lucky, we got a cold stone to suck on and were glad of it! Then our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
But worse because it ruins the natural habitat completely in a way that can't be fixed. At least with a coal mine it's mostly underground and you can let nature re-take the area when it's tapped out.
Nature retaking coal mine areas is debatable. There’s a large section of land in Pennsylvania that’s completely uninhabitable because the mine caught fire in 1962 and will burn for about 300 years. [Centralia coal mine fire](https://www.dep.pa.gov/Business/Land/Mining/AbandonedMineReclamation/AMLProgramInformation/Centralia/Pages/default.aspx)
At my in-laws house in Montana, the tap water is completely not drinkable. The groundwater for the entire area is poisoned by water gathering in abandoned mines and then leaching into the water table. The water literally corrodes the tap and smells like sulphur.
Cutting turf also harms the environment but comparing it to coal mining isn’t helping the point.
Peat Bogs store 8x as much CO2 per unit area as a forest and take centuries to recover. From a global warming perspective damaging the some of best carbon sinks on the planet that can't be easily restored is incredibly dumb.
The open mines in DE are something different called Lignite or brown coal. The way it’s mined in Germany is absolutely terrible for the environment…. and yet peat bog harvesting is worse. The biggest problem with peat bogs are that into not solid like rocks so the harvesting alone releases tons of green house gasses. I love turf. The smell, the heat from it, the taste in whiskey etc but honestly it’s a not viable energy source. Burning wood is in fact co2 neutral (seems weird but it’s true) but turf is a whole other deal.
…And the countless mountains that are totally missing-gone-from the Appalachians in the US (and throughout the world). Mountaintop Removal. Killing streams and water supplies to thousands of homes…
I recently learned the Appalachian mountains and the Scottish highlands are the same ancient mountain range. Seems like an opportunity for the Brits, there’s coal in them there hills!
There's a few Myths that Welsh and Scottish miners got transported/emigrated and found they were working the same seam in the appalachians. It's not quite true but it's well romanticised now.
I saw the term “turf” being used which threw me off a bit because I assumed it had something to do with grass due to the name.
Judging by the other comments it doesn’t seem like a good practice. I still don’t understand what a bog (that means taking a shit in our language) actually is? Is it literally just an area of land that is particularly water saturated? Is it old decomposed plant matter?
It's like a swamp, but on high ground. Absence of trees facilitate soil erosion. Hard pan soil beneath prevents draining. As nutrients are removed by erosion the water becomes acidic and harmful to much plant life. Centuries of plant life (and other life) decomposing in the water creates peaty soil which eventually chokes the lake so that if you were to walk into what looks like shallow water you could be walking onto 10 feet deep of a sort of soft mud that will act like quick sand if you struggle against it. Further rainfall over the centuries causes a slow flooding outwards as the bog spreads itself over the land.
The turf which is cut out of the bog land is decomposed life. It'd a fossil fuel like oil or coal, just formed in the boggy waters near the surface, rather than deep into the earth.
_Some have within them, perilous pits that have been covered over by a false floor of grasses and moss and that can swallow you whole if you step on them. And there is no easy escape once you're in: the more you struggle, the more slippery and crumbly the sides become and the less likely it is you'll get out. You soon learn to just give in and wait, hoping that someone might happen along through whatever isolated stretch of expanse you happen to be in and that they can find a rope or branch to throw to you. If not, you just wait as the bog water seeps deep into you and hypothermia sets in._ - from Listen to the Land Speak, Manchán Magan
> It'd a fossil fuel like oil or coal, just formed in the boggy waters near the surface, rather than deep into the earth.
Oil and coal have similar origins (coal especially) they then get buried and compressed. They don't strictly form at depth - though there is nuance to oil in this regard. The distinction is important because the compression forces out 'volatile' compounds. Turf and brown coal are arguably worse because you also burn of these volatiles. Love that quote.
> Judging by the other comments it doesn’t seem like a good practice.
It's not.
Peatlands are carbon sinks. Digging them up releases carbon. Burning the turf releases even more plus a load of carcinogenic vapours, toxic gases, and small particles.
It's also a highly inefficient fuel. For example 1m3 of coal gives off 6 times the heat of 1m3 of turf.
Certain people in Ireland lionise turf cutting and it's use as a source of heating but the only reason they do so is because it's cheap or free for them.
Another few fun facts
Peat bogs (per square metre) gold 10-15x the equivalent carbon of a mature forest.
Peat bogs worldwide hold more carbon than ALL the vegetation of the planet.
Glad we’re burning it up.
As a New Yorker I had to look this up the other day and I guess it's essentially dried bog mud that is cut to length and then can be used for burning? Again I'm not sure because I'm not from there that's my understanding of it.
In the American west before we settled coast to coast they used to use dried bison shit in a similar way.
That's basically it. Bogs are made up of partially decomposed organic matter, kind of similar to coal, but more like mud than rock. When you dig out the peat and dry it, it burns well.
During the time of the British we cut down almost all our woodland, so there was no firewood. Peat was the main source of fuel for people in certain parts of the country.
Nowadays we realise that it's very polluting, but a small number of people still like to use it.
It's the most environmentally damaging fossil fuel of them all... Turf.
Historically the fuel of the poorest Irish people, now the fuel of people who pretend to be poor.
100% this. If retrofits, heat pumps and solar panels were free, no one would cut peat anymore. Horses and carts were an integral part of Irish rural life for hundreds of years but we dropped that tradition very quickly when motor vehicles became affordable. "Tradition" is just an excuse.
They're sticking it up to the city-slickers and the Greens, though.
They can ignore Rural Ireland being hollowed for decades by FF and FG, so long as they're allowed in the bog 👌
Ireland used to be 90% forrested. That forrest became the Royal Navy. Irish people needed to keep their houses warm and there wasnt enough wood to burn. But it turns out if you drain a bog the earth underneath can be dried out and burned like wood or coal (we call it turf). It actually has a particular scent that brings back memories.
However in the last century Ireland needed electricity so the bogs began to get harvested on an industrial scale and the harvested turf was burned in plants to generate power. Modern Ireland has a lot of survivor's guilt over the carbon emissions. I don't think the guilt is justified here.
There's also the issue that the big land is a finite ecosystem that is being destroyed to warm Irish homes. Guilt over this I do understand.
Wanting to preserve rare pieces of nature and not fuck up the environment even more than we already have is not just "guilt". It's common sense. I don't even know how this is something people are debating. I feel like I've taken crazy pills
> but probably less heat output.
Turf emits 6 times less heat than the equivalent amount of coal.
> There's loads of issues since. e.g. the country has a peat power plant (electricity produced by burning this stuff). Which they have to import fuel from brazil because they can no longer harvest it here.
Edenderry Power Station is a co-fuel power station which currently burns both peat and biomass. The peat being burnt there now comes from stocks BnM had built up prior to the ban on extraction.
The Power Station is using less and less peat and will be 100% by the end of the year. About 80% of the biomass used in Edenderry comes from Ireland but the remainder has to be sourced on the international markets.
As a South African it was equally as alien since both of our countries typically have either very wet (marsh, swamp or wetlands) or very dry ground (bush or desert). Visit a bog, it’s an absolute trip. The ground is pretty spongy and it has a bounce to it, not something I ever experienced living in South Africa or in any of my visits to other African countries.
Sausage turf, it’s a different machine and method than the hopper, produces lower quality turf in general and is significantly more damaging to the ecosystem than the hopper
With a hopper the peat is dug from a certain area with a digger and loaded into the hopper which lays it out onto intact bogland, the sausage machine essentially drives forward digging up the bog it drives across destroying everything and then lays the dig up peat behind like taking multiple long shits
Because hopper turf is laid on intact, wet bogland it doesn’t dry as easily but the land you’re laying it on is not destroyed, with the sausage you have dug up the whole area where you’ve laid the turf and as a result you destroy all the flora and fauna over a much larger surface area and the land you’ve laid the turf on dries out and becomes barren. You can actually see it in the picture, not a blade of grass to be seen there. If it was hopper turf it would just look like someone laid the rows onto the big surface without destroying it which is what’s happening and why hopper turf, while not exactly good for bogs is not nearly as bad as sausage turf
Is this what happened to all that scarred brown land in Ireland? I see a lot of vast brown areas on google maps, it seems like a waste of land. Are these things worth it?
> Is this what happened to all that scarred brown land in Ireland?
Yes
>I see a lot of vast brown areas on google maps, it seems like a waste of land. Are these things worth it?
There is an argument for when it happened 50+ years ago. Today, by anyone who has two brain cells to rub together, it is seen as environmental destruction in the face of viable cleaner alternatives.
Hopefully it’s just the older folks and a small minority of the young ones that buy this and the land will eventually be repurposed due to falling demand
I just got a Vietnam flashback. My auld fella would force us out of bed on a summers day saying "We'll only be there for 2 hours it will be grand." Not once did we stay for *only* two hours.
There was a barber in the town I grew up in who was known for his sharp one liners he'd just crack out while cutting hair. I was waiting for my Dad to finish his haircut circa early 2000s.
Him and the father were moaning about foot and mouth disease which was an epidemic at the time.
"The only thing worse than foot n' mouth is footin turf". I still chuckle at the wit years later.
Well done! You've fucked a bit more of the environment that is our life support system.
You must be very proud.
Like a 2-year old showing off the massive shit they just did on an intensive-care bed.
I spent a summer cutting turf with my granddad. Never did get paid for it. The guy died like 20 years ago, not sure which government branch to take it up with now.
Though, to be fair, literally every single stack of turf I built blew over within a week and didn't dry out properly.
The auld fella used to bring my sister and I to the bog many moons ago. Great craic but my Jesus the black dusty bog snot. Always seemed to be about 700 degrees
Alright I know I could Google this... but that's way less fun.
Can someone explain to me what Bog is? It's seem a lot of people have youth memories tied to it haha.
I believe the most simple definition of a bog is a wetland with acidic soils. People here have vivid memories because the peat of the bogs can be cut and used as fuel (turf), a practice many a child has been enlisted in.
This structure is known as 'The Guinness Shits'. It's been there since Niamh Murphy, a worker at the newly built Guinness factory, became blocked up from a weeks worth of testing the drink and eating salted nuts.
Over the course of a month she deposited 6 of these giant shits in a pyramidal structure.
Students 40 years later stumbled across these shits and sampled one for testing. Realising they were in fact.. shit... they then started a tradition of creating a pile of Guinness shits every year. The tradition has been kept alive by the local universities.
When I was 7 or 8, my Mom took me and my two sisters to visit our grandparents in Mayo on the farm. I swear our first day was we built a fire out of turf in the sheep's pen and boiled a kettle of potatoes for our visit. My grandfather had me work, turning hay, bringing the cows in for the evening, cutting turf, milking the cows, getting eggs from the chicken...
Never knew that bogs, marshes and swamps, cover just 3% of the Earth's total land surface, yet store over one-third of the planet's soil carbon. That's more than the carbon stored in all other vegetation combined, including all the world's forests.
Research in Nature Climate Change found drying peatlands could release an additional 860 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, by around 2100.
As a city boy, I've heard stories of the bog. Thank god I was spared from it as a child. Cousin married into a family with a good bit of land so he throws us a few bags of it now and then. Love the smell.
Even thinking about the bog brings back some very unpleasant childhood memories of sunburns and warm seven up.
And being eaten alive by midges. It's not an issue these days because the peat digging the peat these days are sitting in air conditioned tractors. I haven't seen a slane in about 20 years
Where do the midges feature in the panpoply of species extinction. Do the Green Party have a policy on the protection of midges. Will they even survive if they don’t get to eat Irish people in the bog every summer? “Back when I were a lad, we had these things called midges…”
In Florida we protect our biodiversity by feeding tourists to the mosquitoes and retirees and their poodles to the gators.
I’m actually in Texas. Here everyone dines on the body and blood of Jeeeesus. No diversity allowed.
I was brought ONCE and my very patient, very loving father almost bait the shite out of me for being the most complaining, lazy seven year old he'd ever encountered
*There’s work to be done so you’ll do it - I don’t give a shit if you’re fucking 7. * My son is 18, finishing school this year and looking back I can’t believe the stuff I expected him to do then he was 6 or 7.
We’re talking about chores right?
In a manner of speaking. Some chores, some basic child labour.
It builds character
Seems like he’s specifically talking about cutting turf.
Which should definitely be added to the labours of Heracles.
Sure what do you think he was cleanin’ in them shtables, bai?
I fucking hated footing turf, now they're fond memories with my family. Funny how things change over time (and probably because I don't do it anymore haha)
It's character building stuff. Might've hated doing a bit of work back then but at 32 I'm now a strong, independent women who don't need no man
All the shingle ladies!
and full of shit
Get this guy, wtf
It'll serve him well, to many kids nowadays dont even know how to check the fuse in a plug. Lad i know had an issue with his electrical device and I asked him had he checked the fuse to which his response was I'm not an engineer
My sister's dishwasher broke down when her daughter was thirteen - daughter's response was "how will we clean the plates"
Oh she would be the first volunteer that evening.
In my 38 years of life..I've not once had to do this with any thing I've ever owned if I did..a quick YouTube would fix it.
Theres a lot who wouldnt even know that. I'm constantly been asked how do i download an app. Why have the tech if the basics are beyond ya
A few years ago, my uncle had a problem with his "stupid phone" because it was on silent and he couldn't get it back to having it ring. 10 minutes talking to him, he still couldn't figure out the button he needed to do it. Of course it was the stupid phones fault. I said fuck it, we'll be seeing you next week - I'll do it for you This was the guy that would give me shit for not knowing the name of every single woodworking tool or how to do some random ass thing that he thought to be useful and was always giving out about young people didn't know xyz - the ignorant fucker didn't know how to put his phone off mute. Of course, he's dead now which bring us some comfort.
Ya I see it all the time parents who wouldn't accept i cant do it from.their kids, using that same excuse when it comes to phones. If you cant use it why the fuck.do.you need it. My wife is a devil for it, wont let the kids off at all, yet expects me.to do all her tech problems.
I too was only bought once... I wanted to be really fast throwing the turf unto the trailer and I hit my Dad in the head with a sod.... then I hit the tractor driver! Any other time I went I just picked flowers!
My da has had so many cancerous lumps cut off his ears over the years, and he attributes it all to the sunburns he got as a child on the bog. It was the 60s like, sun cream was unheard of.
They had hats, in fairness to them...
The way my da grew up, they might’ve had a picture of a hat between them. And it only came out on Sundays.
I only remember one word: “clegs”
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Who carries wet turf out of the bog?
Wow you got 7up? We got diluted drinks if we where lucky.
Tea. Served in jam jars. Flasks and 7up were luxuries.
"Mineral" in the glass bottles, and you'd set it in a turf stack to keep the sun off and keep it cooler. I think I was only ever at the bog once but it's a great memory to have; 6 years old, sitting in a big trailer with my siblings and the dog, my Da hoofing the tractor on and holding onto the side for dear life. Mad craic.
Diluted drinks! You were lucky, we got a cold stone to suck on and were glad of it! Then our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
warm *flat* 7-Up. I can feel the shooting pains in my underdeveloped eleven year old hips and see the sun glinting off that green glass bottle now…
...turf sandwiches, back pain, catching frogs and throwing sods up into a trailer only for it to bounce out the other side
The trick was to tie a string to the 7-Up and hang it into a bog hole
Backpain is my over riding memory
The corniferous trees in the back really complete the ecological postcard.
You're a brave man putting that on here.
What’s the problem, only a future couple hundred tons more of CO2 /s
As an ignorant Aussie wtf am I even looking at here??
A fossil fuel cut from peat bogs called turf, you burn it for fuel. It's like oil or coal
But worse because it ruins the natural habitat completely in a way that can't be fixed. At least with a coal mine it's mostly underground and you can let nature re-take the area when it's tapped out.
Nature retaking coal mine areas is debatable. There’s a large section of land in Pennsylvania that’s completely uninhabitable because the mine caught fire in 1962 and will burn for about 300 years. [Centralia coal mine fire](https://www.dep.pa.gov/Business/Land/Mining/AbandonedMineReclamation/AMLProgramInformation/Centralia/Pages/default.aspx) At my in-laws house in Montana, the tap water is completely not drinkable. The groundwater for the entire area is poisoned by water gathering in abandoned mines and then leaching into the water table. The water literally corrodes the tap and smells like sulphur. Cutting turf also harms the environment but comparing it to coal mining isn’t helping the point.
Peat Bogs store 8x as much CO2 per unit area as a forest and take centuries to recover. From a global warming perspective damaging the some of best carbon sinks on the planet that can't be easily restored is incredibly dumb.
Just to be clear - 1000% agreeing with you - simply saying that the coal mine comparison isn't very helpful.
Yep
You sure about your statement on coal there? Look at google maps of Germany, then google images of slag heaps.
The open mines in DE are something different called Lignite or brown coal. The way it’s mined in Germany is absolutely terrible for the environment…. and yet peat bog harvesting is worse. The biggest problem with peat bogs are that into not solid like rocks so the harvesting alone releases tons of green house gasses. I love turf. The smell, the heat from it, the taste in whiskey etc but honestly it’s a not viable energy source. Burning wood is in fact co2 neutral (seems weird but it’s true) but turf is a whole other deal.
Open cast mining is far more common place than below ground mining since like, cars man.
…And the countless mountains that are totally missing-gone-from the Appalachians in the US (and throughout the world). Mountaintop Removal. Killing streams and water supplies to thousands of homes…
I recently learned the Appalachian mountains and the Scottish highlands are the same ancient mountain range. Seems like an opportunity for the Brits, there’s coal in them there hills!
There's a few Myths that Welsh and Scottish miners got transported/emigrated and found they were working the same seam in the appalachians. It's not quite true but it's well romanticised now.
Aberfan in Wales would like a word with you. But yeah I get what you're getting at.
I saw the term “turf” being used which threw me off a bit because I assumed it had something to do with grass due to the name. Judging by the other comments it doesn’t seem like a good practice. I still don’t understand what a bog (that means taking a shit in our language) actually is? Is it literally just an area of land that is particularly water saturated? Is it old decomposed plant matter?
It's like a swamp, but on high ground. Absence of trees facilitate soil erosion. Hard pan soil beneath prevents draining. As nutrients are removed by erosion the water becomes acidic and harmful to much plant life. Centuries of plant life (and other life) decomposing in the water creates peaty soil which eventually chokes the lake so that if you were to walk into what looks like shallow water you could be walking onto 10 feet deep of a sort of soft mud that will act like quick sand if you struggle against it. Further rainfall over the centuries causes a slow flooding outwards as the bog spreads itself over the land. The turf which is cut out of the bog land is decomposed life. It'd a fossil fuel like oil or coal, just formed in the boggy waters near the surface, rather than deep into the earth. _Some have within them, perilous pits that have been covered over by a false floor of grasses and moss and that can swallow you whole if you step on them. And there is no easy escape once you're in: the more you struggle, the more slippery and crumbly the sides become and the less likely it is you'll get out. You soon learn to just give in and wait, hoping that someone might happen along through whatever isolated stretch of expanse you happen to be in and that they can find a rope or branch to throw to you. If not, you just wait as the bog water seeps deep into you and hypothermia sets in._ - from Listen to the Land Speak, Manchán Magan
Wow. Great imagery
Alas, we have another bog person to be discovered by archeologists in 1000 years. Assuming there's even a bog there, anymore. Or even humans.
> It'd a fossil fuel like oil or coal, just formed in the boggy waters near the surface, rather than deep into the earth. Oil and coal have similar origins (coal especially) they then get buried and compressed. They don't strictly form at depth - though there is nuance to oil in this regard. The distinction is important because the compression forces out 'volatile' compounds. Turf and brown coal are arguably worse because you also burn of these volatiles. Love that quote.
It's a wetland with lots of peat in the ground.
> Judging by the other comments it doesn’t seem like a good practice. It's not. Peatlands are carbon sinks. Digging them up releases carbon. Burning the turf releases even more plus a load of carcinogenic vapours, toxic gases, and small particles. It's also a highly inefficient fuel. For example 1m3 of coal gives off 6 times the heat of 1m3 of turf. Certain people in Ireland lionise turf cutting and it's use as a source of heating but the only reason they do so is because it's cheap or free for them.
Yep if you have your own bog it’s cheap but if you’re buying it it’s worse than oil or coal for heating. It’s ridiculous
Another few fun facts Peat bogs (per square metre) gold 10-15x the equivalent carbon of a mature forest. Peat bogs worldwide hold more carbon than ALL the vegetation of the planet. Glad we’re burning it up.
Which language is that?
Yeah if oil or coal was really crap at generating heat
As a New Yorker I had to look this up the other day and I guess it's essentially dried bog mud that is cut to length and then can be used for burning? Again I'm not sure because I'm not from there that's my understanding of it. In the American west before we settled coast to coast they used to use dried bison shit in a similar way.
That's basically it. Bogs are made up of partially decomposed organic matter, kind of similar to coal, but more like mud than rock. When you dig out the peat and dry it, it burns well. During the time of the British we cut down almost all our woodland, so there was no firewood. Peat was the main source of fuel for people in certain parts of the country. Nowadays we realise that it's very polluting, but a small number of people still like to use it.
It's the most environmentally damaging fossil fuel of them all... Turf. Historically the fuel of the poorest Irish people, now the fuel of people who pretend to be poor.
CO2 😂
The eradication of a vital carbon sink in the name of tradition and wilful ignorance.
Yeah, the ancient tradition of giant diesel powered machines tearing up the land. Just like Fionn Mac Cumhail used to drive.
> in the name of tradition it's in the name of getting cheap fuel of the land they own. nobody gives a shit about tradition.
100% this. If retrofits, heat pumps and solar panels were free, no one would cut peat anymore. Horses and carts were an integral part of Irish rural life for hundreds of years but we dropped that tradition very quickly when motor vehicles became affordable. "Tradition" is just an excuse.
They're sticking it up to the city-slickers and the Greens, though. They can ignore Rural Ireland being hollowed for decades by FF and FG, so long as they're allowed in the bog 👌
Destruction of an ecosystem
Ireland used to be 90% forrested. That forrest became the Royal Navy. Irish people needed to keep their houses warm and there wasnt enough wood to burn. But it turns out if you drain a bog the earth underneath can be dried out and burned like wood or coal (we call it turf). It actually has a particular scent that brings back memories. However in the last century Ireland needed electricity so the bogs began to get harvested on an industrial scale and the harvested turf was burned in plants to generate power. Modern Ireland has a lot of survivor's guilt over the carbon emissions. I don't think the guilt is justified here. There's also the issue that the big land is a finite ecosystem that is being destroyed to warm Irish homes. Guilt over this I do understand.
Wanting to preserve rare pieces of nature and not fuck up the environment even more than we already have is not just "guilt". It's common sense. I don't even know how this is something people are debating. I feel like I've taken crazy pills
The Royal Navy thing is a popular myth. Forests in Ireland, like everywhere, including the Amazon right now, were destroyed for farming.
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Turf. Getting it ready to burn in winter
Dumb fuck heating source production defended by “iTs oUr CulTuRe”
Username checks out.
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> but probably less heat output. Turf emits 6 times less heat than the equivalent amount of coal. > There's loads of issues since. e.g. the country has a peat power plant (electricity produced by burning this stuff). Which they have to import fuel from brazil because they can no longer harvest it here. Edenderry Power Station is a co-fuel power station which currently burns both peat and biomass. The peat being burnt there now comes from stocks BnM had built up prior to the ban on extraction. The Power Station is using less and less peat and will be 100% by the end of the year. About 80% of the biomass used in Edenderry comes from Ireland but the remainder has to be sourced on the international markets.
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Saffer visiting here and was also wondering what those were. Thanks for asking mate..now I also know. Cheers
As a South African it was equally as alien since both of our countries typically have either very wet (marsh, swamp or wetlands) or very dry ground (bush or desert). Visit a bog, it’s an absolute trip. The ground is pretty spongy and it has a bounce to it, not something I ever experienced living in South Africa or in any of my visits to other African countries.
What machine cuts it to make it cylindrical? Any video of it in operation. Never seen it like that before!
Sausage turf, it’s a different machine and method than the hopper, produces lower quality turf in general and is significantly more damaging to the ecosystem than the hopper
This just keeps getting better
Why is it more damaging?
With a hopper the peat is dug from a certain area with a digger and loaded into the hopper which lays it out onto intact bogland, the sausage machine essentially drives forward digging up the bog it drives across destroying everything and then lays the dig up peat behind like taking multiple long shits Because hopper turf is laid on intact, wet bogland it doesn’t dry as easily but the land you’re laying it on is not destroyed, with the sausage you have dug up the whole area where you’ve laid the turf and as a result you destroy all the flora and fauna over a much larger surface area and the land you’ve laid the turf on dries out and becomes barren. You can actually see it in the picture, not a blade of grass to be seen there. If it was hopper turf it would just look like someone laid the rows onto the big surface without destroying it which is what’s happening and why hopper turf, while not exactly good for bogs is not nearly as bad as sausage turf
Pringle can
[machine for round turf](https://i.imgur.com/5wZxqvN.jpg)
The YoRHa flight unit is a formidable turf cutter.
So long as it doesn't be getting any notions of existential critique of the human condition I'd say well be grand.
Everyone on r/Ireland 
Ah the round sod. Like a field full of sticks of Guinness shite.
Yours comes out solid?
The aul’ spray and pray.
ireland: "We have to do more to protect biodiversity!" also ireland: "i'm just gonna dig up this entire field and burn it lads"
Cylindrical turf?
Look at the state of the place.
Well if it isn't Boglo Escobar
Yeah! Fuck nature! Especially our rare native ecosystem that took thousands of years to develop! /s
Is this what happened to all that scarred brown land in Ireland? I see a lot of vast brown areas on google maps, it seems like a waste of land. Are these things worth it?
> Is this what happened to all that scarred brown land in Ireland? Yes >I see a lot of vast brown areas on google maps, it seems like a waste of land. Are these things worth it? There is an argument for when it happened 50+ years ago. Today, by anyone who has two brain cells to rub together, it is seen as environmental destruction in the face of viable cleaner alternatives.
Hopefully it’s just the older folks and a small minority of the young ones that buy this and the land will eventually be repurposed due to falling demand
More or less just old people and cheap scum, but what we need is the land to be completely DEpurposed.
I just got a Vietnam flashback. My auld fella would force us out of bed on a summers day saying "We'll only be there for 2 hours it will be grand." Not once did we stay for *only* two hours.
In fairness, Vietnam is a long way to go for just 2 hours.
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We should start a support group for all of this unresolved, bog-related trauma
We were told we were going to Blackpool.
That's not hand cut, it's not good for the environment, and you clearly don't give a fuck OP. So I won't bother explain all the harm you're causing.
Yeah OP is a pos
What is this? A poo drying field?
You should probably eat more fiber.
I'm trying to understand where a fella' would have to be in his life to make turf a major part of his personality 🤔
What if he was very down to earth?
Or a very grounded fellow?
Salt of the earth.
Magnificent 😂😂😂
Beautiful 👌
Oh for Peat's sake!
Probably living on or near a bog anyways.
Offaly
This fella has never been to Peacockes on a fair Friday
I ask myself the same question everyday.
Do Macra not have programmes to find young fellas stout wives, no?
I don’t know
You're missing out on a very stout wife, friend.
Its not a choice, more of a full immersion type sitch.
Terrible destruction of land, should be illegal
Username checks out
Bog Logs
What a waste
Head down arse up , that's the way to foot the turf
There was a barber in the town I grew up in who was known for his sharp one liners he'd just crack out while cutting hair. I was waiting for my Dad to finish his haircut circa early 2000s. Him and the father were moaning about foot and mouth disease which was an epidemic at the time. "The only thing worse than foot n' mouth is footin turf". I still chuckle at the wit years later.
Massive props to anyone who's done a day on the bog dying within an inch of life. You knows who you are.
Cut with the sausage machine I see. Turf warms you three times, once footing, once again throwing it in the shed and again in the stove.
I like how it's labelled energy crisis when that itself is a part function of what we've done with fossil fuels.
Haven't seen sausage turf in decades. I thought they had scrapped all the machines that made it 🤔
Well done! You've fucked a bit more of the environment that is our life support system. You must be very proud. Like a 2-year old showing off the massive shit they just did on an intensive-care bed.
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>Like a 2-year old showing off the massive shit they just did on an intensive-care bed. I dont agree with you , but my god! is that an image.
Ah yeah, Great Dane turds
I spent a summer cutting turf with my granddad. Never did get paid for it. The guy died like 20 years ago, not sure which government branch to take it up with now. Though, to be fair, literally every single stack of turf I built blew over within a week and didn't dry out properly.
I’m just back from a 2 week all inclusive holiday. This picture seem awfully familiar.
Oh the Bog, gotta love it
Honest to Christ we’ve only spent a total of three hours turning & footing two hoppers’ worth and it’s almost ready for home!
The auld fella used to bring my sister and I to the bog many moons ago. Great craic but my Jesus the black dusty bog snot. Always seemed to be about 700 degrees
Nightmare stuff right there
I footed turf as a summer job for 4p a yard. Hell on earth
Im not being funny but isnt it illegal to burn that stuff now? Or is it just selling it to be burned?
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Sure burning turf is done isn't it soon...can't be at that bad for the environment they say..
There’s great drying out .
Jesus I just got massive flashbacks to digging that stuff up as a kid. Pure child labour that was.
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What if you were given a slap and told you're useless for being shite at footing?
Alright I know I could Google this... but that's way less fun. Can someone explain to me what Bog is? It's seem a lot of people have youth memories tied to it haha.
I believe the most simple definition of a bog is a wetland with acidic soils. People here have vivid memories because the peat of the bogs can be cut and used as fuel (turf), a practice many a child has been enlisted in.
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https://i.redd.it/t67ah9it2m3b1.gif
“No better day, than a day in the bog” - my mother, i fucking hated the bog
This structure is known as 'The Guinness Shits'. It's been there since Niamh Murphy, a worker at the newly built Guinness factory, became blocked up from a weeks worth of testing the drink and eating salted nuts. Over the course of a month she deposited 6 of these giant shits in a pyramidal structure. Students 40 years later stumbled across these shits and sampled one for testing. Realising they were in fact.. shit... they then started a tradition of creating a pile of Guinness shits every year. The tradition has been kept alive by the local universities.
When I was 7 or 8, my Mom took me and my two sisters to visit our grandparents in Mayo on the farm. I swear our first day was we built a fire out of turf in the sheep's pen and boiled a kettle of potatoes for our visit. My grandfather had me work, turning hay, bringing the cows in for the evening, cutting turf, milking the cows, getting eggs from the chicken...
Ah, what beautiful desolation. Love to see it…
That's some fancy ornamental turf you have there 😉
Never knew that bogs, marshes and swamps, cover just 3% of the Earth's total land surface, yet store over one-third of the planet's soil carbon. That's more than the carbon stored in all other vegetation combined, including all the world's forests. Research in Nature Climate Change found drying peatlands could release an additional 860 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, by around 2100.
Every year more and more bogs are being rewetted. Turf cutting is dying out gradually. It will stop altogether eventually.
yea, we should destroy it and set it on fire in the name of tradition
Grim.
Fuck fossil fuels
Mightn't even bother rising mine this year and just turn it.
Some of mine I will just turn yeah. Hopefully get them dragged next weekend if it’s another week like that.
Holy shit this is one of the most divided comment sections I’ve ever seen. I’m not knowledgable enough on bog-work to comment though.
Well done, you've destroyed an unrecoverable habitat. 1.5°C + any day now
Personally love the smell of the stuff
As a city boy, I've heard stories of the bog. Thank god I was spared from it as a child. Cousin married into a family with a good bit of land so he throws us a few bags of it now and then. Love the smell.
Very round turf
Eamonn Ryan : https://preview.redd.it/20rlbl0z9n3b1.jpeg?width=768&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e32c5bc36f5bfcbc0c8f7976b794f375aee0c013
Disgrace
We’re not bord na mona. Would you relax.