Is Alcohol Killing Our Planet? 468
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?"
CO2 is Balanced (Score:3, Informative)
Actually shouldn't have TOO much effect. I can't comment on the cylinders of CO2 used in pumping or carbonation, but the CO2 that the yeast releases is balanced by the CO2 which the plant absorb in order to produce the sugar that is fermented.
As to how many petrochemicals/fossil fuels are used in the production/creation of those plants and that sugar, that's a different story, but that is less related to alcohol specifically and more to how our agricultural/transportation system function generally.
No net change (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Grains (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Is Slashdot Killing our Planet? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bloody hell! (Score:1, Informative)
Besides, as any brewer or baker will tell you, yeast used in brewing is genetically inclined to produce more alcohol than CO2, whereas the yeast used in baking is just the opposite - it produces much more CO2 than alcohol. That's why you don't bake with brewer's yeast, or brew with baker's yeast.
Remember, not everyone drinks alcohol, especially not everyday, but almost everyone eats bread at least once a day if not more...
Folks, it's almost Passover - maybe unleavened bread can save the planet!
Re:No more than cattle? WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Comparing Cattle production (more CO2 equiv emissions than transport [fao.org]) 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!
Re:Bloody hell! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bloody hell! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:what matters is where the carbon came from (Score:0, Informative)
Where did the carbon in the ground come from? It wasn't always there, it was above ground, in living form. At some point in our planet's history, all that carbon you are talking about that is now underground was above ground. All of it. And the planet was covered with life.
Re:Bloody hell! (Score:3, Informative)
I was at Cambridge Brewing Co. in Boston a few years ago when they rolled out a one-batch beer called Ninkasi, brewed with sourdough bread yeast from an Egyptian bakery that had been culturing it continuously for over a millenium. It was delicious.
freedom fries? (Score:5, Informative)
Wow. Freedom fries [wikipedia.org].
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.)
I am a homebrewer (Score:2, Informative)
With regards to CO2 tanks, multiple people have already pointed out that this is CO2 that was already in the atmosphere, captured, and bottled.
But if you're really curious about how much CO2 I go through for kegs, I have a 5 pound tank of CO2. That lasts me about 5 homebrewer kegs (at 5 gallons apiece). That gets me both the initial carbonation and all of the pouring. In comparison, burning one gallon of gasoline gets you about 19 pounds of CO2 released into the atmosphere.
I've never put the fermenter on the scale before and after fermentation - I imagine that would be the best way to track CO2 emissions, as the only thing that should leave the fermenter in this time is CO2. However, let's assume the volume of the beer doesn't change that much during fermentation. I start with 5 gallons at a specific gravity (density of the beer / density of water) of 1.06. That's 42.4 pounds. I end up with about 5 gallons at a specific gravity of 1.01. That's 40.4 pounds. So assuming the volume of the beer doesn't increase, that's 2 pounds lost. In reality, since alcohol is less dense than water, there should be a larger volume in the end, and so the final weight is probably above 40.4 pounds.
So in the worst case scenario, there's 3 pounds of CO2 involved in the fermentation and serving of 5 gallons of beer. I bet that having my stove on full blast for 2 hours to boil the water emits much more CO2 than that. Heck, me driving to the homebrew store 6 miles away definitely emits more than that.
So in conclusion - I think it makes much more sense to focus on the costs involved with distributing the beer and heating the water that makes the beer, and much less on the fermentation and kegging systems.
Re:Bloody hell! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Perfect opportunity for a Simpson's quote (Score:3, Informative)
Alcohol - The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
As I write this, I'm wearing my Homer baseball cap with that exact slogan on it. Creepy, man.
That slogan is one of my favorites, and is proof that only the truth is funny.
Re:Bloody hell! (Score:2, Informative)
Incorrect: "you'll look like sloppy to the people who do."
Correct: "you'll look like you are sloppy to the people who do."
Correct: "you'll look like slop to the people who do."
Correct: "you'll look sloppy to the people who do."
So, not only are you a hypocrite for complaining about the previous poster's poor grammar, but you are obviously an arrogant hypocrite for not only complaining about other peoples grammar in the same post that you used poor grammar, but also because even when your mistake was pointed out, instead of looking closely at what you wrote, you assumed that your grammar was perfect instead of doing the proof reading you claim is required to be respectful of other readers.
You should immediately make a public apology for your rudeness to every single reader of slashdot, and specifically to the original poster for complaining about his behaviour when you do not behave any better.
You should also apologize to every slashdot reader for the lack of respect you showed them when you wrote:
"It's not high an mighty, it is simply paying attention to the details."
As you clearly did not "simply pay attention" to the detail that the saying (which is correctly spelled in my post) is "high and mighty".
Re:Fossil fuels for themselves (Score:2, Informative)
Dude, check the numbers.
Amount of coal the U.S. burned in 2007: 1,145.6 x 10^6 tons [doe.gov]
Total mass of Earth's atmosphere: 1.135 x 10^16 tons [wikipedia.org]
Assuming (a) pure carbon, and (b) it all stays in the atmosphere, this represents 0.00002% of atmospheric mass, a trivial amount. (By comparison, China uses 1900 x 10^6 tons of coal each year [wikipedia.org], much more than the U.S.) Previous numbers are 2006 figures, according to wikipedia. 2008 production amounts are found here [sourcewatch.org], and show China producing twice that of the United States. I didn't bother to check what India is using.
Now, I agree that dumping all this stuff into the atmosphere is a bad idea, a terrible open-ended experiment. But chasing a poor scientific theory (AGW) with worse data ('200 Pyramids of coal') is even worse. Blaming a single country is worse still. Let science do its job- none of the problems are hard- and lets fix the problem instead of running back to the stone age. Energy consumption is not the problem; efficient and clean energy production is.
So, lets get back to the beer and other yummy yeasty foods.
Re:Bloody hell! (Score:3, Informative)
The thing everyone apparently has overlooked is that a major byproduct of respiration is CO2. Since all animals utilize respiration in the production of energy, is anyone researching alternative methods of energy production to reduce or eliminate the amount of respiration in order to save the planet?