Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#141

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:24 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #112

atemerev wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even given the cost overruns, insurance, nuclear pools, etc it is quite cheap. The only problem with nuclear power is that it is highly centralized and requires significant upfront capital expenditures. And political consequences of radiophobia are so high that investing in nuclear power is limited. I think that solar and nuclear are the only sustainable power generation methods these days. The rest are either bad fo…

Radiophobe here. I can't accept the morality of handing stewardship of spent nuclear fuel to my children and their children for a thousand generations. Would you still want to be caring for a monster left to us by the people who wrote on cave walls? As far as a DGR, I'll believe it when a nation other than Finland has shovels in the ground to actually build one.

Nuclear fuel waste is much less dangerouns than many other substances created in industrial chemical processes, and occur in much smaller amounts. Managing that is a non-problem compared to other hazardous waste. That people are afraid of radioactive waste and aren't of what their friendly neighbourhood chemical plant produces is pure FUD.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#142

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:25 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #99

>340 to 620 litres I amused myself trying to find the source. The article is based from a quote from the book which is based on a study: The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products, Twente Water Centre http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-... I think he is for example counting the rain and irrigation water that falls on the sugar cane that it used to make the Cok…

The large majority of the water used (2/3) is for 'green water', AKA rainfall. If the rainfall wasn't used by the sugar cane, it would probably have been used by another plant occupying almost exactly the same ecological niche.

Blue water is groundwater (1/4) and you may be able to say the same thing about it. Some blue water comes from underground acquifiers, so pumping may be bad thing if you're pumping faster than it replenishes; others is pulled up by the root system so is completely natural.

8% is grey water, water required to flush fertilizer and other pollutants. That sounds bad, but it too is often part of the natural water cycle.

Most of the problematic water usage is caused by irrigation. Sugar cane & beet can and is produced without irrigation, but doing so requires more land usage and possibly extra fertilizer. In other words, it's a matter of trade-offs.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#143

Post by ArkyBeagle » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

vijayr wrote: post #60

jtwaleson wrote: post #7

How much is used to produce one litre of bottled water?

What about meat? Doesn't the animal industry also use insane amounts of water?

It depends on who you mean by "the meat industry" and who's doing the measuring. It's possible to have deplorable levels of inefficiency at one end and something approximating buffalo grazing on the other.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#144

Post by drzaiusapelord » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:30 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #99

>340 to 620 litres I amused myself trying to find the source. The article is based from a quote from the book which is based on a study: The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products, Twente Water Centre http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-... I think he is for example counting the rain and irrigation water that falls on the sugar cane that it used to make the Cok…

>sweetened with beet sugar.

Not in the US. Its corn syrup or an artificial sweeter. Curious to know if corn's water footprint is more or less than sugar beet.

I guess there's a larger issue here on how water like this isn't truly lost or in competition for human drinking water. Its part of a natural cycle of rainwater, runoff, and back into the aquifers or evaporated. A better metric is the real cost of irrigation for those farms. There are a lot of practical areas to grow corn or sugar beet. Those areas are rich in water, so its not a big deal if you use that much water for argiculture. Water heavy farming in the midwest is different than water heavy farming in California.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#145

Post by basseq » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:33 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #131

tim333 wrote: post #99

>340 to 620 litres I amused myself trying to find the source. The article is based from a quote from the book which is based on a study: The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products, Twente Water Centre http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-... I think he is for example counting the rain and irrigation water that falls on the sugar cane that it used to make the Cok…

Besides which, that water isn't lost; in the Netherlands, it either sinks into the soil to eventually become ground water again (after which it's reused), or it ends up in the sea via canals and rivers. It's not like we have a water shortage in NL, not yet anyway. Besides ground water, there are several rivers passing through NL coming from the Alps, sometimes to the point of overflowing. Really, the only thing waste…

Scientifically-speaking, is any water "lost"? Thinking back to those pictures of plains and mountains with a big circular arrow in my seventh grade science textbook: couldn't you say that even the water used by crops, turned into coke, and consumed by humans is eventually returned the ecosystem in some form or another?

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#146

Post by Gargoyle » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:42 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #140

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides which, that water isn't lost; in the Netherlands, it either sinks into the soil to eventually become ground water again (after which it's reused), or it ends up in the sea via canals and rivers. It's not like we have a water shortage in NL, not yet anyway. Besides ground water, there are several rivers passing through NL coming from the Alps, sometimes to the point of overflowing. Really, the only thing waste…

> ends up in the sea via canals and rivers That water is "lost" by any practical definition. For humans to use it again, it would have to be desalinated, which is expensive.

It's desalinated by becoming rain again.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#147

Post by PepeGomez » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #87

PepeGomez wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy is about the only resource where this doesn't hold true.

In theory at least, all non-radioactive elemental resources are recoverable from whatever combinations in which they are found, given sufficient energy and information.

Exactly.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#148

Post by PepeGomez » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:45 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #136

PepeGomez wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy is about the only resource where this doesn't hold true.

Energy is the only resource I know about where there is a physical law stating that this must be true. (To be fair, you could have less energy offset by more mass. But the point stands.)

Not if the thermodynamic laws hold true.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#149

Post by Shivetya » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:45 PM UTC

johnloeber wrote: post #14

Here's what I'm curious about: how much water is used for every liter of drinking water ? It seems clear that a "liter of water", which could be all kinds of polluted, is NOT the same as a liter of bottled or tap water. A liter of drinkable water has to undergo some filtration process, etc. and I'd be extremely interested in seeing how much water is used in that process. That would help put the headline's figure in c…

Not just drinking water, but what of any liquid sold at the store? How much water does that milk take to produce by the gallon, orange juice, and such. I do know that in many plants most of the water is recycled as its cheaper than sending it out of plant. Even car washes recycle water for reuse.

Re: Dominions of fizz: the carbonated-drinks industry and public health [pdf]

#150

Post by atemerev » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 2:46 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #141

mikepurvis wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radiophobe here. I can't accept the morality of handing stewardship of spent nuclear fuel to my children and their children for a thousand generations. Would you still want to be caring for a monster left to us by the people who wrote on cave walls? As far as a DGR, I'll believe it when a nation other than Finland has shovels in the ground to actually build one.

Nuclear fuel waste is much less dangerouns than many other substances created in industrial chemical processes, and occur in much smaller amounts. Managing that is a non-problem compared to other hazardous waste. That people are afraid of radioactive waste and aren't of what their friendly neighbourhood chemical plant produces is pure FUD.

Not exactly, unfortunately. (I am as pro-nuclear as one could be). However, all chemical waste can be neutralized and reprocessed (though this might be expensive to do so). Some nuclear waste can't be reprocessed and has to be stored safely for hundreds of years. This scares some people.

However, it's not _that_ dangerous. Even if containment is breached, it generally stays in the same place and can be collected and put back (happened a lot of times).