I was opening up a bottle of Coke the other day and got to wondering. What percentage of global CO2 emissions were caused by the release of CO2 found in soft drinks?

I have done some digging to get the numbers I require for this incredibly rough estimate. I will point out that these figures are very far from accurate as I have not tested anything myself, just grabbed and crunched what figures I could find.

How Much CO2 in a Bottle of Soda
I came onto a blog article by Dr. Davig G. Haase, “How Much CO2 is in a Bottle of Soda”.  I will not go into great depth on how he made the calculations, you can read his article for that, but the end result was an estimated 2.2 grams of carbon dioxide per 454 mil bottle of Pepsi One. (I will assume that the numbers for Coke and all other soft drinks would be about the same.)

Soda Consumption
I found it difficult to get figures on soda consumption, but I did find this random site, DentalGentleCare.com . I have no idea where they get their numbers, but they claim that the average American drinks more than 53 gallons of carbonated soft drinks each year. Lets assume this is true. If we take the population of the US as of July 2007 (according to cia.gov ) of 301,139,947, this gives us a total of 15,960,417,191 Gallons of soda. Really? Wow! 1 US gallon = 3.78 liters, so this makes a total annual consumption of soda in the US roughly: 60,330,376,981.

CO2 Emissions from Soda
60 Billion liters of Soda? That’s insane. I should double check these sources to find others that confirm this, but I’m lazy – lets assume its correct. If this is true, that would result in 292,602,328,362 grams of CO2 emissions from Soda in the US each year.

Lets get an easier number to work with. According to google 1 gram is equal to 0.00220462262 pounds. If we do the math that equals 645,077,711 pounds of CO2, or, since 1 metric ton is equal to 2204 pounds, that works down to 292,684 metric tons of CO2 – I know cause I made an excel sheet.

Now that we know the numbers for Soda, lets figure out what percentage this is for the total US emissions. The total annual CO2 emissions is estimated at 27,245,758,000 metric tons according to, yes I know, Wikipedia .

So now we can break this down we end up with a really small number. 0.001% of all CO2 emissions in the US are contributed by Soda. (1 thousandth of 1 percent).

So there you have it. If you drink soda you are contributing to the end of the world, 4.85 grams at a time.

Raw Data
- Grams of CO2 per liter of soda: 4.85
- US population (July 2007): 301,139,947
- Soda consumed by average American Each Year: 53 Gallons
- Liters of soda consumed: 60,330,376,981
- Annual CO2 (in Grams) from soda: 292,602,328,362
- Annual CO2 (in Pounds) from soda: 645,077,711
- Annual CO2 (in Metric Tons) from soda: 292,684
- Total annual CO2 emissions in US: 27,245,758,000
- Percentage of total CO2 released by soda: 0.001%

Note: I just realized that I have no idea where the CO2 that the soda companies put into the beverages comes from, so perhaps, the CO2 would end up in the atmosphere anyways?

It is just about that time again. For many of us in around the world the clocks will go back an hour on Sunday November 2nd at 2:00am, giving us that much needed extra hour of weekend sleep.

Daylight savings time (DST) has been around for a while now – far beyond my lifetime, but do you know the history behind it?

When do we set our clocks?
DST begins on the second Sunday in March when we set our clocks ahead 1 hour. Clocks are then set back an hour on the first Sunday in November. These dates changed in March of 2007.

Why was daylight savings created and when did it start?
If we want to get technical, daylight savings started, in various forms, back with ancient civilizations. At one time the daylight hours were divided up into 12 equal portions. This resulted in longer hours in the summer and shorter hours in the winter.

DST as we know it today, started at different times in different countries, but for the most part happened around the turn of the 20th century. During World War I, a scarcity of resources resulted in Germany instituting the first daylight saving laws in 1915. This reduced the number of hours after dark that people stayed up before bed, and reduced the strain on fuel sources.

Canada was one of the many countries to follow suit and adopted the policy back in 1917. The US followed shortly after in 1918. Canada was the first jurisdiction in North America to adopt the policy.

Where is daylight savings time used?
Many countries all around the world use DST, however, the majority of these are located in the northern hemisphere, and almost all of North America practices with the exception of a few pockets. From a population standpoint, the total number of people who follow daylight savings are in the minority on a global scale.

Daylight savings misconception…
I had to add this as I saw a post on FailBlog that cracked me up. It is well worth taking a quick look for a laugh.

Perhaps this guy, Chris Hill, needs to be taxed!

Physicists have made a recent discovery that just might affect you this Christmas. It seems that when you peel scotch tape off of the roll, it emits X-Rays lasting about a billionth of a second long. no need to be too worried though – apparently this phenomenon only occurs within a vacuum.

When the tape is pulled away from the roll electrons jump from the roll to the sticky underside of the tape. When hitting the stickiness of the tape, the electrons slow down and that is when they emit the X-Rays.

Unless you plan on wrapping your Christmas presents inside your Electrolux, you really have nothing to worry about, but its interesting never the less.

I have to say, some people are just idiots. At least Sandor Ferenci, a motorcycle stunt driver from the UK. Ferenci had had friend video him driving at speeds of more than 130 miles per hour. His video was then posted on YouTube.

A random motorist had seen Ferenci driving recklessly and reported it to the police. They went to his home to investigate, and he asked them “Is this about the YouTube video?” Well, the police didn’t know about the video and looked into it.

The video ended up being the final nail in his coffin. He Ferenci was sentenced to 12 weeks in jail, and will also lose his driving privilages for the next two years. He will be required to take a driving test before getting his license back sometime in 2010.

All I have to say is, what an idiot. Posting his crimes online wound up screwing him in the end. While he does deserve what he gets, its amazing how people go out of their way to advertise what they are doing. This isn’t the first, nor will it be the last time when someone posts something to the web and winds up incriminating themselves. Watch out what you post online! That’s all I have to say!

I was reading the November 2008 issue of Discover Magazine. I really enjoy this magazine and find it quite interesting, even though many of the concepts they discuss are far beyond my level of education.

Discover has a section titled “Mind Games” where thy list various puzzles etc. This month they focused on the relatively new number puzzle “Hidato”. The idea is to connect all the given numbers with consecutive numbers. Numbers must be adjacent to each other connecting either vertically, diagonally, or horizontally.

One of their puzzles provided this example, and asked how many possible locations are there for the missing #16.

Hidato Puzzle - Click to Enlarge

The very first location I discovered, did not appear in their solutions. They state there are four different possible squares where the #16 can be placed. Ahh, they were wrong. There are at least 5! Here is their answer:

Hidato Puzzle Answers - Click to Enlarge

Here is my 5th solution they didn’t think of!

Hidato Extra Solution

Doesn’t this make me feel smart! (I am not posting this to say “in your face discover” – I actually love the magazine and have a subscription. I just thought, hey, this is something I can write about )

What Time Does Evening Start? 4:00 4:30 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 At Sunset View Results  Loading ...

Lyndsay and I were having a discussion – what time does evening start? I say 6:00, she says 5:00. What do you think? UPDATE: Take our Poll to the right!!

I tried finding an answer online and came up with a 50/50 split between these times from various sources… can’t seem to find an official answer. Some crazies think it starts at 8… others 4. I think they are far wrong – must be either 5 or 6. Maybe we’ll just split the difference.

What are your thoughts? Vote or comment and let us know. I think I’ll lose sleep on this one.

I came across a post written a few months ago about USB wristbands being sold at live concerts, and found it a rather interesting idea.

As more and more people are turning towards a world of digital music, and as CD’s are breathing their last breaths, bands are getting creative in their marketing.

A band that I have never heard of before, “Slightly Stoopid”, had a concert back in August and was the first to sell USB wristbands that had the nights full concert saved to them. The drives were made available 15-20 minutes after the concert.

What great concert souvenirs – the full concert in digital format. I am certain we will be seeing much more of this in the very near future.

• HELP – Anyone know what % of Americans still use Dial-up? Anyone have a link to stats on this? Thx in advance #
• Question: What are everyone’s thoughts on load time and organic SEO? #
• @jimhedger Great!! (but its actually 10% that use dial up – that 14% referred to how many of those 10% don’t have other options #

• To All Canadians – Make sure you vote today!! #

I have to say that PETA’s stance on urging Ben and Jerry’s to use human breast milk as a replacement for cow’s milk in their ice cream is just disgusting. While I am confident that this is something that will never happen, should some how this become a reality, I will switch exclusively to Haagen Dazs. No more “half baked” for me. (sigh)

Now first off, I want to note that perhaps human breast milk would be the more natural choice, after all, that’s what most of us start off living on, and in some aspects, consuming cows milk seems strange – but our lifestyles and culture evolve around drinking and eating cows milk based products, so it just seems normal – after all, we’ve been doing it for centuries.

One of the biggest questions on my mind is however, if Peta finds milking cows to be in-humane what would the millions upon millions of women who then need to be “milked” think if man kind made the switch in their dairy sources… seems to me that milking women for mass production dairy is less humane then milking cows…