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Is Alcohol Killing Our Planet?
Andy_Spoo writes "Something that I've been trying to get an answer to: Is alcohol killing our planet? Alcohol is a byproduct of yeast, but another is CO2. As we all know (unless you've been asleep for years), CO2 is helping to warm our planet, sending us into destruction. So how much is the manufacture and consumption of alcohol contributing to the total world CO2 level? And don't forget that bars and pubs force beer through to their pumps using large compressed cylinders of CO2. Does anyone know?"
Ethenol is fermented from plant products, no net change in CO2. The CO2 in the keg system is taken from the air, no net change.
First they came for my beer, and I said nothing.
Alcohol is made from breaking down grains or other starches. Those plants gather CO2 from the air. So the consumption of alcohol doesn't really add to the problem. That is, at least only to the extent that agriculture does. If you're really worried about CO2 related to your food/beverage intake, you should cut back on meat, which has 8x-10x as much of a carbon footprint per calorie than grains. I guess alcohol would be somewhere in between.
We all know that the posting of really silly, unscientific stories on Slashdot increases the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere due to the tremendous amount of electricity exhausted in the transfer, dowmloading, and display of those stories, not to mention the CO2 output of the readers, who, at least most of them, exhale carbon dioxide! Something must be done!
Bruce Perens.
Comparing Cattle production (more CO2 equiv emissions than transport) and the alcohol industry? WTF?
Cattle production is a significant cause of soil compaction, topsoil degradation, coral reef degeneration, methane emissions, acid rain, water contamination (with cow shit / hormones / antibiotics).... I could go on & on.
One of the easiest things you can do to help the environment is consume less beef & dairy products.
No 'more' than cattle. Yeesh!
My pics.
Actually, the biggest tax benifits to companies that use up CO2 goes to Coke and McDonalds. They remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and from a "loophole" in the law, this counts as having a negative CO2 footprint. No doubt this law was written to benefit them. Of course the CO2 returns to the atmosphere.
It's not like the CO2 being released by the yeast came from fossil fuels ... it came from hops and grains, which took the CO2 out of the atmosphere. If those hops hadn't been grown, the CO2 wouldn't have been sequestered for part of the time. Think of all the undrunk beer as a temporal CO2 storage locker. There's probably a million tons locked up at any given time.
So help fight global warming by popping a cool one.
Wow. Freedom fries.
Serious silliness I miss not living in the US.
Might explain some of the questions I have gotten from English students on the subject.
(Wonder what could be done so that trying to link to the Japanese article doesn't send wikipedia to ampersand.)
(See, honey, reading /. is educational.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Damn, you beat me to it! Don't you love how any bullshit sounding remotely authoritative just gets modded up...
I will just add one simple statement as supporting evidence to your correction:
C6H12O6 => 2(CH3CH2OH) + 2(CO2)
Also, fermenting in (solid) dough tends to trap the gases in pockets, followed by cooking which evaporates the alcohol. Fermenting in (liquid) wort/must releases the gases (unless bottled, etc) and keeps the alcohol in solution.