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You keep using this word "used", I do not think it means what you think it means... Fresh water is one of those strange things, where consumption is not necess
by evgen 11y ago
You keep using this word "used", I do not think it means what you think it means...
Fresh water is one of those strange things, where consumption is not necessarily destruction. You 'used' a glass of water that you drank this morning, then excreted it over the rest of the day as urine and water vapor where it became an input for another part of the cycle. The water did not go away when you consumed it, and in this case most of the water 'used' in the production of a litre of sugar-enhanced carbonated water was never lost.
- cpach 11y agoPerhaps it would be more illuminating to see how much energy was used to create the soft drink.
- eddd 11y agoOr how much energy is used to perform single google query.
- adrianN 11y agoThe marginal energy is probably not very much. The average energy might be significant, but it's probably dwarfed by a single can of soda if you include the can.
- spacehome 11y agoYou keep using this word "used", I do not think it means what you think it means... Energy is one of those strange things, where consumption is not necessarily destruction. You 'used' a joule of energy when you heated up your coffee this morning, then dumped the waste heat to the rest of your kitchen, where it became an input for another part of the cycle. The energy did not go away when you consumed it, and in this case most of the energy 'used' in the production of a cup of coffee was never lost. [I kid, I kid, I know you meant negentropy, but I just couldn't help myself.]
- cpach 11y agoGood point! The trouble is just that many popular sources of energy has lot of negative effects ;-)
- PepeGomez 11y agoEnergy is about the only resource where this doesn't hold true.
- vixen99 11y agoIn theory at least, all non-radioactive elemental resources are recoverable from whatever combinations in which they are found, given sufficient energy and information.
- PepeGomez 11y agoExactly.
- jdmichal 11y agoEnergy 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.)
- evgen 11y agoAnother way to look at this is that water is a proxy for energy. We can replace any fresh water that is 'used' via some application of energy to the abundant salt water on this planet. Soda may be a poor application of energy, but talking about it in terms of water 'used' is mostly FUD.
- rwjwjuwjudf 11y agoDid you use a computer to post your comment?
- noja 11y agoIt takes time to get the water back where you can drink it. We had this discussion before when we talked about the drought in California.
- evgen 11y agoIt takes energy, not time. It takes a long time if you passively wait for random environmental processes to slowly replace the water, and a very short amount of time if you actively apply energy to the problem.
- radiorental 11y agoWhere does this energy come from and, more importantly, how many does it cost. All of our problems could be solved with an unlimited amount of energy applied to them. Most of them were created that way too.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThat actually highlights the problem perfectly. Energy is the metric that matters. With current knowledge and level of technology humanity has, we can make almost anything by applying energy to shuffling dirt. Need gasoline? We can synthesize it. Need gold? We can recycle it out of stuff. Need drinking water? We can make it out of almost anything. All that's needed is energy, which is something we don't have much of. Last time I checked we didn't have the world full of nuclear reactors. Until we hit a sustainable and ridiculous energy abundance, we can't assume we can fix any global problem with energy - there's not enough of it to go around. EDIT: Wording.
- flopto 11y agoMy opinion on this is totally uninformed. A quick search for 'global aquifer depletion' yields "Scientists had long suspected that humans were taxing the world’s underground water supply, but... major aquifers [are] indeed struggling to keep pace with demands from agriculture, growing populations, and industries such as mining." ... "The situation is quite critical" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/16/new-nasa-studies-show-how-the-world-is-running-out-of-water/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/16/new-n...)
- evgen 11y agoThis talks about a water source, and more specifically a slow-filling source that has been tapped too much. This is where you should apply your concern and effort, to the protection and wise management of easily accessible fresh water sources that are being depleted too rapidly. If someone talks about water usage (usually in a generic 'it takes X gallons to make a Y, so you should feel bad about doing/using Y' format) without regard to the specific sources then they are trying to bullshit you. If they talk about a specific source and use then keep reading to see if the rest of their argument holds up to scrutiny.
- exelius 11y agoIt is still relevant though; because for things like soft drinks that have an extremely low price-to-weight ratio, the only production model that makes sense is a local one. Coca-Cola doesn't just have 3 or 4 factories in the US that make soda; they have one (if not more) in every major city. Some of those cities make use of vulnerable water supplies, and some don't. But ultimately it's the same conversation - any manufacturing of perishable / low-cost-to-weight ratio (e.g. cement is almost always produced at a factory within 50 miles of where it is used) at industrial scale is being done in a consistent, distributed way at many different locations around the country/world. If those processes damage vulnerable environments, they need to be looked at and modified.
- vonmoltke 11y agoNitpick: Concrete (as well as mortar, stucco, and other such products) is made locally, both dry and wet mix. Cement is made in remote areas, typically near the limestone quarries, because the process involves large, dirty, smelly kilns.
- tomp 11y agoYou can't destroy water, but you can most definitely destroy fresh water. Or else you could have the same argument for just about anything ("I didn't really break your cup, all the pieces are still lying on the floor.")
- shanehoban 11y agoWhat if I heated the earths atmosphere and then boiled all the earths water. What would you drink then? I'd drink soda.
- eveningcoffee 11y agoThis is especially funny as outside of US, this means baking soda (Sodium bicarbonate). In powder form.
- shanehoban 11y agoI'm from outside the US, it was just a joke :S
- eveningcoffee 11y agoYes, I can confirm, it was a joke. :) Full disclosure: I am from EU.
- lisivka 11y agoOur planet is getting hot, so we will have lot of vapor -> rains -> fresh water. Just collect it instead of dumping it into river or ocean.
- tomp 11y agoI'm not so sure about this. Water -> vapor -> water loop only works if there's a temperature gradient - you need heat to vaporize water and coldness to condense vapor into water again. If the whole planet is getting hotter, the atmosphere could simply get more humid, with no more rain/fresh water.
- rawTruthHurts 11y agoAdd to all the current comments in this subthread the fact that every drop of water you keep in a bottle is a drop of water you are keeping out of the system. It's not just what you drink, it's what you remove from the cycle. And you'd like to keep the balance, right?
- Zklsalue8 11y agoExactly. Thank you. Someone gets it. The only problem is energy. If you have enough energy you can make as much fresh water as you want.