Soda companies deliberately make CO2 in mass quantities every single day. Every time we open a soda, the CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Is soda really worth killing the planet over. Seems to me, the spread of sodas to other countries has helped in the acceleration of globel warming. It's not the only cause, but it is a major contributor that seems to be overlooked.
2007-08-01 03:33:27 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Environment ➔ Global Warming
Another excellent question. I had to think about this one a long time. The people who point out that it's a small contributor, are right. Still I'm not sure if we shouldn't eliminate CO2 production anywhere we can. Some areas that are big contributors are going to be very tough to come up with a technology. Hundreds of small fixes add up to the same as one big fix.
We dealt with a similar issue a few years back with chloroflourocarbons. They were used as aerosol propellants and in refrigeration at that time, and were causing the hole in the ozone.. They have mostly been replaced with other gases, and the hole in the ozone is shrinking, or it's rate of growth has slowed. It's too early to tell.
What I like about your idea is that it's doable. One can't be that quick to say that about all of the things we would like to do.
2007-08-01 06:28:44 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 3⤋
There's approximately 2-3 grams of C02 in a large carbonated cola. Source:
http://www.science-house.org/CO2/activities/co2/soda.html
Let's just assume that on average, each American drinks one such large carbonated beverage per day. We'll call that 2.5 grams of CO2 per day per person. Multiplying that by the US population (~300 million) and the number of days in a year (365) and the number of tons per gram (1/907184.74) we get a total of (drumroll):
~300,000 tons of CO2 from carbonated beverage drinking in the US each year, assuming all the CO2 in every beverage is released into the atmosphere, which it's not because most is absorbed by the person who drinks it.
Humans emit about 6 billion tons of CO2 each year, and the US is about 20% of that, so 1.2 billion tons. Thus even if we were emitting 300,000 tons from our sodas, it would comprise 0.005% of our total CO2 emissions.
That's not a major contributor. Plus as has been mentioned, the CO2 put into sodas is extracted from the air, so it's part of the natural carbon cycle. Global warming is caused by releasing the carbon in fossil fuels which has been trapped for millions of years and thus hasn't been part of the carbon cycle.
2007-08-01 04:55:43 · answer #2 · answered by Dana1981 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Major contributor?
Let's be a little quantitative here. The amount of excess CO2 causing Global Warming is about four metric tons of CO2 per person on Earth per year. A liter of soda weighs about a kilogram, and perhaps as much as 10 grams of that are CO2.
So four metric tons of CO2 corresponds to more than 400,000 liters of soda.
For your argument to be correct, the consumption of soda would need to be a large fraction of 1000 liters per day per person on Earth.
2007-08-01 03:56:19 · answer #3 · answered by cosmo 7 · 4⤊ 0⤋
It's not "a major contributor" at all.
The CO2 in soft drinks was extracted from the air a short time ago. Putting it back has virtually no effect. If we stopped soda production we'd stop taking that CO2 out of the air, too. Overall, very little change.
Fossil fuels are very different. The natural carbon cycle buried that carbon slowly over thousands of years. We dig it up and burn it real fast. That's what upsets the balance of nature.
We need to fix that.
2007-08-01 03:40:09 · answer #4 · answered by Bob 7 · 8⤊ 1⤋
This is not a major contributor-in fact as my fellow yahooligans point out it is pretty insignificant.
Like most things it comes down to money. Even if it was a "major contributor" the non environmentalists who lead this country would weigh the pros and cons check their wallets, accept campaign money from lobbyists from Coke and Pepsi and ok anything they wanted to matter how ridiculous.
i hope this answers your question
2007-08-01 04:16:12 · answer #5 · answered by msijg 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
well if we took all the CO2 out of the atmosphere and ade soda with it, there wouldn't be a problem.
it isn't a signicant contributor.
2007-08-01 04:01:42 · answer #6 · answered by jj 5 · 3⤊ 0⤋
wow, you should be the leader of Greenpeace or something or maybe AL gores' sister cause that's the best way to save the planet, nuke coke.dont you think if soda was warming the planet we'd put it in the cooler?
2007-08-01 03:40:25 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
CO2 is not the problem . That is a sign to the plants that is Therese and for that they give us back the O2. If it was not for the plants recycling our air we would all be dead now.
2007-08-01 05:57:09 · answer #8 · answered by JOHNNIE B 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
The electricity you're using to run your computer is doing more harm than all those sodas.
2007-08-01 03:48:49 · answer #9 · answered by Blue Oyster Kel 7 · 2⤊ 1⤋
dont give environmentalists a bad name...soda doesnt do anything for global warming so stop spreading stupid ideas
2007-08-01 04:07:36 · answer #10 · answered by njdevil 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋