Posted on 03/07/2007 6:16:59 AM PST by 50mm
Now, before the corporate lawyers for these beverage giants suffer the effects of knotty underwear, let me state for the record that these two companies are not implicated by any scientific study that I am aware of, for causing global climate change. In fact, the only reason I used Pepsi and Coke in the headline, is that those two names are synonymous when speaking about soft drinks in general.
I do have some anecdotal evidence; however, which at the very least is interesting for intelligent people to consider while discussing the cause and effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is a website called Science-House.org, on which I discovered a simple experiment for measuring the weight of carbon dioxide gas in a 16 ounce bottle of Pepsi One soda. The article title was: “How much CO2 is in a Bottle of Soda?” by Dr. David G. Haase, The Science House.
Climate change crusader Al Gore speaks briefly with the media as he arrives at a speaking event in Toronto Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2007. The former U.S. vice-president?s conversion from wooden politician to inspired eco-warrior brought him to Canada on Wednesday to promote his popular Oscar-nominated climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" to sold-out audiences in Montreal and Toronto. (AP PHOTO/CP,Adrian Wyld)
Upon completion of the experiment, the author determined that approximately 2.2 grams of carbon dioxide gas is contained in each bottle of soda. At least that was the amount of gas that he could extract from the liquid.
On another website called DrHealthSecrets.com, they claim that in the United States during the year 2000, more than 15 billion gallons of soda was sold. According to a CIA website fact-book, there were an estimated 298,444,215 people in the United States as of July 2006. So by my rough calculations, that means that every man, woman, and child in the U.S. drinks 50.26 gallons of soda in a years time.
With that in mind, and knowing that whatever we put into our bodies will eventually come out, we can roughly calculate the amount of carbon dioxide gas that is belched or otherwise deposited into the atmosphere by soda-bloated consumers in this country. The human race in America loads the atmosphere with 132 million kilograms, or 291 million pounds of carbon dioxide gas, every year, simply by drinking soda pop.
By now you may wonder how Al Gore fits into this story. Aside from his personal soda consumption characteristics, of which I am completely unaware, his Tennessee mansion has been in the news these past few days. It was reported that his 10,000 square foot home consumed 191,000 kilowatt hours of electricity in 2006, while the average Tennessee home consumes only 15,600 kilowatt hours in a years time.
Math often makes my brain hurt, so I’m not going to try to calculate the number of pounds of carbon dioxide Al Gore generates with his gargantuan home in Tennessee. He claims that he balances this consumption by purchasing from renewable energy sources such as Wind and Solar, but what this assumption fails to recognize is that he is consuming a huge amount of what is available from these limited alternative sources. Thus, everyone else is theoretically forced to use the “dirty” stuff.
Now don’t assume that I am in favor of reckless and imprudent misuse of our beloved planet. Whenever mankind is able to do something in a manner that is environmentally friendly, I think we ought to do it. I am simply pointing out that moderation is always the best policy, no matter what the subject. Can we make some changes over time that will reduce our carbon dioxide foot-prints? Sure we can, but what the soda guzzling, electricity hogging, private jet traveling hypocrites would have us do is something different altogether.
Something tells me that if Al and his ilk have their way, the American economy will suffer enormous damage, and the impact on energy and transportation costs will slap every man woman and child across the face. The lower the income, the harder the slap.
Yet at the same time, internet-inventing folk like Al Gore will still find a way to consume as they please. They will convince themselves and their fellow jet-setters of their own heroics, and will never miss a wink of sleep in the process.
Phil Harris is a software engineer, author of Cry for the Shadows and blogs at Citizen Phil.
Don't just talk about soda. The entire alcoholic beverages industry and the ethanol industry are massive producers of CO2. When any carbohydrate (corn for ethanol, for example) is fermented to produce ethanol, the reaction emits a prodigious amount of CO2. CO2 is what provides the fizz in beer and sparkling wine.
I'm assuming this is tongue in cheek but probably 90% of the population would believe this. So, for them, the CO2 in the bottle comes from the atmosphere and when you open the bottle it goes back. Then they put it in another bottle and let it out. Etc., etc. It's recycled. Isn't that nice? Just like the water in the drinks.
I'm sure there is some group of adults or kids out there right now getting together an organization to ban carbonated drinks for causing global warming.
But, for those who don't understand the process, the CO2 was taken out of the atmosphere, stored in the plants as carbohydrates, and released during the fermentation process. Plant CO2 is just recycled.
The only 'new' CO2 is that released by burning coal or oil taken from the ground or by breaking down minerals/chemicals from the earth that have stored it for ages.
CO2 for carbonated drinks is not manufactured by distilling it from air as this would be very inefficient. Most CO2 used in manufacturing is produced by chemical reaction.
Would Ted Kennedy give up Scotch and Soda to save the planet?
Yeah, I guess that's true. But I bet a lot of the chemically produced CO2 is waste that was going to be dumped into the air anyway.
Where did the co2 come from, though?
The CO2 in coal and petroleum was also taken from the atmosphere and stored in plants, which decayed many millenia ago and were incorporated into the earth's surface.
So then it's not really new either, is it?
What they want is for people to stop doing nasty things, such as living.
maybe the soda
Yeah, I know. And it was out of the atmosphere for millions of years. That's why I called the CO2 released from them 'new' since is is new to our current atmosphere. That's not the same as short term storage by plants living today, which is rapidly recycled.
Now that's bumper sticker material if anything is!!
"People like Al Gore jet about the earth, living from mansion to mansion and say that they want to drastically lower the living standards for most people on the earth. Then, the so called peoples's people, who talk about "eqality" the most, think this is just fine."
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