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]

#201

Post by slyn » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #150

TeMPOraL wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This might be a dumb question, but is there any reason other than costs that we couldn't eventually just blast unrecycleable nuclear waste off into the sun/space? There must be an inflection point where the cost of storing the hazardous material safely on earth is more expensive after a period of time than just sending it out of orbit on a space elevator/ICBM.

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

#202

Post by dang » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

This submission broke the HN guidelines by cherry-picking a detail from the article and using that for the title ("340 to 620 litres of water are used for every litre of soft drink produced"). That is editorializing, and it's not allowed here. The HN rule says to change the original title only when it is misleading or baity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We've changed this one back to the original, truncated to fit HN's 80 char limit.

You can see from this thread how powerfully a discussion is determined by the title when people do this. That's why we don't allow it. On HN, being the first (or luckiest) submitter of an article confers no special rights over the story. You don't get to frame it for others—they can and should make up their own minds. For that we need titles that reflect the content itself, not submitter spin.

If you'd like to point out what you think is important about a story, you're welcome to do so in the thread, where your opinion is on a level playing field with everyone else's. The title, though, should be that of the article or (when necessary to change it) an accurate and neutral description drawn from the article.

There's no more important single factor in making HN the substantive place we want it to be. The effect of an editorialized title is much stronger than you might think; in this case it was nearly total. I should remember this one to use as an example in the future.

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

#203

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

codeisawesome wrote: post #198

snuxoll wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Almost?) All water on Earth came from a comet, pretty amazing when you think about it.

Extremely. I just can't reconcile the fact that all this water came from multiple comet impacts. It somehow feels wrong .

...and if even one of the trillion comets over a billion years had some spore or cell frozen inside...

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

#204

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 9:58 PM UTC

slyn wrote: post #201

atemerev wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This might be a dumb question, but is there any reason other than costs that we couldn't eventually just blast unrecycleable nuclear waste off into the sun/space? There must be an inflection point where the cost of storing the hazardous material safely on earth is more expensive after a period of time than just sending it out of orbit on a space elevator/ICBM.

Sending things to outer space is crazily expensive in terms of fuel; the same holds if you aim for the Sun - the common idea that it's easy is very wrong. The Earth is moving around the Sun at 30km/sec, you need to burn off most of that velocity to actually hit it. For leaving the Solar System, the Internet provides the value of around 40km/sec. You can get most of those speeds by clever use of slingshot maneuvers though, and this is the way we usually do missions to outer planets.

Also, honestly, I don't see the point. The amount of nuclear waste we produce is minuscule compared to other equally or more dangerous chemical substances. Besides wasting perfectly good rocket fuel, destroying it this way would rob us of opportunity to reuse it in the future - hell, we already know how to reprocess some of the spent nuclear fuel for next-gen fission reactors!

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

#205

Post by meric » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 10:29 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

meric wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most our energy comes from fossil fuels. Even fertiliser for our food. So we can't just replace it all with solar power. One key questions for rulers and governments from antiquity is how to allow the population to gather energy to survive. It could be farming, or building oil wells and then hand out the profits or build a service economy around the oil. I couldn't figure out how to maintain a modern population witho…

> Most our energy comes from fossil fuels. Even fertiliser for our food. So we can't just replace it all with solar power. But we can with nuclear plants, and I'm thinking garden variety fission plants, not the always-30-years-from-now fusion ones. There are various areas where we use fossil fuels only because its more convenient - e.g. ground transportation. We can go electric with most of it. Fertilizers - I'm not…

I have thought about this problem and came to the same conclusion - we need to move to nuclear. But then if most of our energy needs are from nuclear, now we're going to be back in the same situation in 50 years running out of uranium.

Or we could sit in top of our coal power plants slurping oil, wait for the magical thorium reactor and/or solar power to become another 10 times more economical.

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

#206

Post by dustingetz » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 10:35 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #202

This submission broke the HN guidelines by cherry-picking a detail from the article and using that for the title ("340 to 620 litres of water are used for every litre of soft drink produced"). That is editorializing, and it's not allowed here. The HN rule says to change the original title only when it is misleading or baity ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). We've changed this one back to the origi…

Hi dang, comments like this are seen by .0000001% of your users, can we encode the rules in some moderation tools please? displaying the guidelines above the comment form would go a long way too.

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

#207

Post by jdmichal » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 10:41 PM UTC

PepeGomez wrote: post #148

jdmichal wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

... That's exactly what I was referring to? You seem to be confused. Your responded to a post stating that energy is never destroyed, with the sentence:

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

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

#208

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Apr 05, 2016, 11:08 PM UTC

meric wrote: post #205

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most our energy comes from fossil fuels. Even fertiliser for our food. So we can't just replace it all with solar power. But we can with nuclear plants, and I'm thinking garden variety fission plants, not the always-30-years-from-now fusion ones. There are various areas where we use fossil fuels only because its more convenient - e.g. ground transportation. We can go electric with most of it. Fertilizers - I'm not…

I have thought about this problem and came to the same conclusion - we need to move to nuclear. But then if most of our energy needs are from nuclear, now we're going to be back in the same situation in 50 years running out of uranium. Or we could sit in top of our coal power plants slurping oil, wait for the magical thorium reactor and/or solar power to become another 10 times more economical.

Maybe not in 50 years, because it seems that we have a lot of fissile material available[0] that should last us for a long time - long enough to expand past this planet if we continue the growth curve, or at least to advance and deploy renewable solutions without a hurry. But yeah, with continued growth we would hit an energy ceiling in the future too. That ain't bad if reasonably managed - we could fix all the damage done to this planet and expand to the Solar System. But then again, humanity isn't exactly known for reasonable management.

[0] - http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_162.shtml

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

#209

Post by meric » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 2:04 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #208

meric wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thought about this problem and came to the same conclusion - we need to move to nuclear. But then if most of our energy needs are from nuclear, now we're going to be back in the same situation in 50 years running out of uranium. Or we could sit in top of our coal power plants slurping oil, wait for the magical thorium reactor and/or solar power to become another 10 times more economical.

Maybe not in 50 years, because it seems that we have a lot of fissile material available[0] that should last us for a long time - long enough to expand past this planet if we continue the growth curve, or at least to advance and deploy renewable solutions without a hurry. But yeah, with continued growth we would hit an energy ceiling in the future too. That ain't bad if reasonably managed - we could fix all the damag…

http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_162.shtml:

>> "A once-through one-gigawatt nuclear power station uses 162 tons per year of uranium"

>> "World total (conventional reserves in the ground) 4.7[million tons]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

>> "The IEA estimates that, in 2013, total world energy consumption was 13,541 Mtoe , or 5.67 × 1020 joules, equal to an average power consumption of 18.0 terawatts.[3]"

One gigawatt nuclear plant uses 162 tons per year.

The world uses 18000 gigawatts per year. (40% oil, 10% coal, 15% natural gas, 35% other).

If all the fossil fuel-based energy were replaced with nuclear power, the nuclear power plants need to provide 18000 gigawatts times 65% = 11700 gigawatts.

11700 gigawatts times 162 tons of uranium is 1.9 million tons of uranium, per year.

The world's conventional reserves of 4.7 million tons will last for three years.

The 22 million tons in Phosphate deposits will last for another 10 years. (if and when methods to mine them economically are discovered)

Perhaps the seawater uranium will come in time, but as yet it is not an economical method of uranium extraction. The cost needs to be reduced by 5 to 10 times.

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

#210

Post by bjelkeman-again » Wed, Apr 06, 2016, 7:17 AM 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…

Water isn't lost, but water is polluted. And when you put water into the groundwater then it mixes with heavily polluted water from, among other things, agriculture. The Dutch farms may be efficient, but they are definitely polluting.

"In the Netherlands water pollution originating from agriculture is an important environmental concern. While recent trends indicate that the pressure from farming on water quality is diminishing, absolute levels of pollution remain amongst the highest across the OECD (Figures 2-5). Agriculture is the major source of nutrients, pesticides and the only known source of heavy metals in water. Pollution from endocrine disrupters and veterinary medicines in terms of potential impacts on human and wildlife reproductive systems is also a concern. The total external costs of agricultural water pollution are unknown, but in the late 1990s the annual external costs of eutrophication associated with nitrate emissions was estimated at €600 million (US$540 million), and for treating drinking water polluted with nitrates at an annual cost of €23 million (US$21 million)."

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07900627.2010.53...