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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?"
Oh, and regarding the actual article, no CO2 from the alcohol industry is on a wholly different scale from CO2 emissions from industry and transport.
It's like wondering if you peeing in the ocean when you go for a swim is making a difference to global oceanic warming because, after all, your pee is quite warm.
I hate printers.
(I'm SOOO going to mod-point hell for the above posts.)
I hate printers.
Alcohol - The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Carbon from biomass is just cycling in and out of the atmosphere, no big deal.
The problem is digging up carbon that has been buried for millions of years and releasing it (either directly into the atnosphere or into a place where it is likely to get released).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
is aliens probing us rectally?
is beer causing global warming farts?
how is babby formed?
issues are the complicated. i try to thinks hard abouts them when i'm on the toilets. and i push reals hard and out come deep thoughts like: pubs cause global warming
i am the smarts type person with the deeply thinking type stuff
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
I'd have to say alcohol is the solution to saving our planet. As a very short friend of mine once said, all you have to do is:
1. Drink excessive amounts of liqueur
2. ???
3. ???
Help fight spam
No, you're going to the *special* hell, the one reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.
Yes, here in America the staple source of starch is French Fries.
[Citation needed]. The biochemistry of anaerobic conversion of sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide produces a fixed ratio of alcohol to carbon dioxide, independent of the yeast strain. The main difference would be that baker's yeast has to be rapid-growing (the bread has only a few hours to leaven), while brewer's/wine yeast can take more time but must survive under high alcohol concentrations.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
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.
Surely the best way for me to reduce the number of cattle is for me to eat more of them?
Steak anyone?
Whoever wrote this article clearly doesn't realize they themselves breathe out as much CO2 as an entire microbrewery. For the sake of the environment, they can hold their breath while the rest of us enjoy our beer in peace.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
BUT recall that methane has 20x the greenhouse gas potential of CO2, and I know some people who convert ethanol to methane at a disturbing rate.
How to Brew Beer in a Coffee Pot:
http://www.allaboutbeer.com/features/235coffee.html
Honestly, I had no idea that staples contained starch.
I have a whole new respect for the lowly office supply cabinet now.